12 or 20 (second series) questions with Azad Ashim Sharma
Azad AshimSharma is the director of the87press, poetry editor atthe CLR James Journal, Philosophy and Global Affairs, and a PhDCandidate in English and Humanities at Birkbeck College, University of London.He holds a BA in English and a Post-Graduate Diploma in Critical Theory fromthe University of Sussex as well as an MA in Creative-Critical Writing fromBirkbeck College. He is the author of three poetry collections, most recently, Boiled Owls (Nightboat Books/Out Spoken Press, 2024). He is the recipient of theCaribbean Philosophical Association’s Nicolás Cristóbal Guillén BatistaOutstanding Book Award (2023). He lives in South London. His poetry and essayshave been published widely and internationally, most recently in Wasafiri.
1 - How didyour first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare toyour previous? How does it feel different?
My first book, Against theFrame, initially appeared as a chapbook from Barque Press in 2017 in the UKand consisted of a single sequence of short poems that excavated the colonialwars in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan in the context of growing Islamophobia inthe ‘liberal’ Global North from the position of a Muslim subject living in‘Brexit Britain’. I was 25 years old when it was released and extracts appearedin zines/online publications from Oakland to Nepal. I read from it in a host ofdifferent spaces and it received a second printing quite quickly after itslaunch. At that time I was very much in the throes of addiction and had sadlyhad to drop out of a Master’s programme at my alma matter, the University ofSussex. I was invited to read in Delhi at a small literature festival in Feb2018. Afterwards, I decided to pull my application to Law School (I was goingto give it all up, the poetry and the drugs and the booze, go on the ‘straightand narrow’ etc), I decided to apply to another MA programme in London and givemyself another chance to live a life of letters. I don’t think I’d’ve done thathad it not been for the small successes that chapbook gave me in terms ofachievement and connection to a reading public that was international yetlocalised, intimate, affecting yet critically sound. Not that any of thosequalities are necessarily mutually exclusive. That chapbook also catalysed myfriendship with Kashif Sharma-Patel, my now closest friend and the head editorof the87press, a publishing company we co-founded in 2018.
A 5th Anniversaryedition of Against the Frame was published in 2022 by Broken SleepBooks. This expanded edition of the original moves dialectically from theinitial critique of white supremacy and imperial war towards a critique ofidentity politics with a Sufi inspired musical-mythopoetic interlude. It isbookended by two critical papers, one by Kashif and another by Lisa Jeschke whotook the collection in its earlier chapbook form to a summer school whererefugees from the Global South were being taught English as a second language.That Lisa took my book directly to the people it sought to express solidaritywith and that they wrote poetry back to me, as part of their many educationalworkshops and activities, remains one of the greatest gifts I’ve ever receivedfrom this life. I’ll be forever grateful for that connection to disparateothers who have suffered more than I could possibly imagine due to my residencein the Global North but with whom I am always in solidarity. Against theFrame may have not won awards or reached thousands of people, but the folksit did reach it registered with. In terms of my small life’s trajectory: it wasworld-making. In similar vein, Kashif’s essay really placed my work in acritical and discursive context, evoking much of our conversations over theyears. I’m really grateful to know my work was read on its terms and respondedtoo. I think that’s the most a writer can hope for, really.
My third collection, for whichI’m currently on tour, is called Boiled Owls and it began in 2017, theyear my first chapbook was released. It charts the trials and tribulations of asubject in the throes of addiction, seeking recovery, relapse, family andradical care. It’s a very different collection both in subject matter and form.But there are similarities in terms of compositional elements, the use oftheoretical and philosophical language as part of the poetic weave, theinsistence on approaching complexity with nuance, the penchant for outbursts ofanger or finding a form for rage in the face of so much death anddestruction. Yet there’s a tightness tothe formal experiments and enjambed lines in Boiled Owls that is perhapsless consistent in both Against the Frame and my second collection Ergastulumwhich was a work of collage between the lyric in its times and the existentialsubject. Above all it feels like Boiled Owls is materially a verydifferent book, it’s published by Nightboat Books in the USA and Out-SpokenPress in the UK. I’m currently on this wild 30 day book tour for it in the USA,ending up with a reading at the largest regular poetry night in Europe, OutSpoken’s series at the Southbank Centre in London. I’m just doing my best tostay grounded and embrace all these new experiences. But that isn’t sodifferent from how I felt in 2017 when my chapbook came out and I travelled,alone for the first time, to Delhi to read at a festival. That my work hasgiven me these opportunitoes, to be on the threshold of new experiences andmake new connections with people and institutions, remains the great wonder ofall of this life in letters. But even as I type this, I’m thinking of how toopen myself to the next challenge the language and the poetry has to offer.
2 - How didyou come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
In truth – I didn’t. I initiallystarted with drawing and painting. My mother would often take me to artgalleries in London and I was fascinated by abstraction, street art, andsurrealism. I first experimented with writing concurrent to my indulgence inart, aged 10-13, with short stories that mimicked the wizards and elves LOTRworld and crossed them with action scenes inspired by my obsession with DragonBall Z. I wrote one in an exam for secondary school and I think a teacherexpressed concern at the descriptions of violence to my mother so I stoppedwriting them. I then progressed to song writing by the age of 14. Poetry onlycame to my life aged 16/17 when I was under the spell of adolescence and allthose embarrassing memories. I became ‘serious’ about poetry during mybachelors at the University of Sussex. The funny thing is, I’m also working ona lot of critical writing (non-fiction) and a novel as part of my PhD. So I’mstill working across forms and learning the ropes of different demands placedon language by them. I guess the poet who made me want to write was John Donnefor, alas, he was the most exciting poet on the syllabus at school during thoseyears. Shakespeare was fun but mechanical when taught for the express purposeof examinations. But as I always tell writers I’m working with or students Iteach through workshops, I was always a reader first – it was readingwhich came to me and helped me address more complexity in the world both realand imagined. Poetry is just the form that the majority of my thoughts thus farhave chosen to take. But that won’t always be the case, I don’t think.
3 - Howlong does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writinginitially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear lookingclose to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
Oh it varies so much! BoiledOwls took me six years to write, with many errant tangents explored and alot of editing. It started just as an attempt to help myself make sense of whatI was going through, addiction and the attempts at recovery. Against theFrame was written in 18 months and then expanded five years later in about12 months. Ergastulum was about 12 months of consistent, almost dailyand intense, writing alongside research. My PhD is well into its third year andfast approaching its fourth. I’m due to submit in 2026 which means I’ll havebeen enrolled for about 5 years in total. I’ve an intense few years ahead withthat lined up for sure! All writing is, is just re-writing and editing, findingpeers to help you see things from a different perspective, bibliomancy, thatsort of thing. It’s the great challenge of repetition but also the even greaterchallenge of managing consistency in a fast world by giving yourself the timeto slow down.
In general my research andreading phases don’t often yield copious notes but I do re-read texts multipletimes and find different ways of putting the ideas, as they are represented inlanguage (with new difficult conceptual terms), to use in the line, the clause,the stanza, the poem, etc. Often the poems in their final form look vastlydifferent to their drafts, partly because I only play around with space andtighten the form once I’ve discovered the order of the language or the orderthe language requires. The main techniques I use are automatic writing,collage, and what Keston Sutherland would call a ‘philological poetics’ where Iposition my work, at least in my mind when composing, as in dialogue with otherpoets, philosophers, ideas, discourses.
4 - Wheredoes a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that endup combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book"from the very beginning?
Most of my poems begin intransit – usually on trains or busses and I hastily note down ideas on my phoneor in a notebook if I’m feeling especially whimsical that day. I then usuallyreceive a burst of energy at around 5am the next day and simply have to wake upand go straight to the desk to write, by hand, until I’ve no more to give tothe page. That can yield pieces of varying length but if I know I’m working ona ‘book’ I collate them and play around with ordering, usually under thesupervision of a mentor or editor, before I take a long break from the work andread with fresher eyes. At the moment I’m working on a novel of around 70,000words and a selection of essays totalling 30,000 words. But part of that isalso to prepare, from the essays, talks and shorter essays to explore the ideasI’m grappling with in greater detail and depth. I’m also thinking of my nextcollection of poetry and am writing some drafts, putting ideas and words down,but this is very embryonic at the moment and nothing feels settled or assured. Ido usually think in constellations, looking towards the temporary containerwords like ‘book’, ‘collection’, ‘sequence’, ‘chapter’ seem to give writers.Often it takes the editor I’m working with (or friend) to show me when to‘stop’ the writing as I always flirt over enthusiastically with that boundaryor edge, where the precision sometimes dissipates into something else that istoo much or ‘too far’. My partner is usually my first reader and she’s got thisgreat knack of telling me when I need to start again or focus more because Ican do better; she hasn’t been wrong thus far!
5 - Arepublic readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sortof writer who enjoys doing readings?
I used to enjoy reading fromdraft work regularly to ‘test’ how they felt in the mouth, how they registeredwith an audience, that sort of thing. But these days I prefer not to givepublic readings of drafts and work quietly and more privately until giving aflurry of public readings and then moving on, going quiet again and gettingback to the work and the study. I do enjoy readings when I do them, though.They’re unique ways of meeting readers. Just this week I was at the Universityof Connecticut and I realised that for many of the students in the audience, Iwas the first poet they’d seen read in person. Some members of the audience hadautistic siblings, like me, and it was a wonderful feeling to know the poems inBoiled Owls that do not exceptionalise but explore care-giving as adaily ritual, almost mundane in its challenges, registered with them or madetheir experiences visible in a new way for them. My work is moving into adifferent kind of reading-performance, mostly influenced by the work I see writerslike Nathaniel Mackey, Fred Moten, Bhanu Kapil, and Sophie Seita doing moreregularly. These performances are much more in keeping with the expansive andcross-cultural aspirations of my current work and I hope to perform not onlywith musicians and artists but to also ‘exhibit’ my poetry in art spaces toplay with their reception, or the scene of their reception, in more dynamicways. Yet even as I type that, there’s something quite unique about a poetrynight in its traditional format, a poet clutching onto a book or loose sheavesas if letting go would end their world, a quivering voice, the wit and levitywe all get from that sociality. As long as I am able to, I don’t see a scenarioin which I don’t read my poetry publicly, it’s a public art that also remakesand realigns publics around this unique art form.
6 - Do youhave any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions areyou trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the currentquestions are?
All my writing carries a strongrelationship to various strands of philosophy and critical theory. My debut wasconcerned with both anticolonialism and critical race theory. It’s also a workthat embraces the movement of the dialectic, moving from ‘racialisation’ fromthe ‘exterior’ back to the interiorisation of race as a measure of value, animbibing of the colonial gaze as part of the conscription to epistemiccoloniality, it’s conditioning of writing. Ergastulum, which won a 2023 Guillénaward with the Caribbean Philosophical Association, embraced more temporal andexistential questions proceeding from the loss of touch during the COVID-19pandemic whilst undergirding those explorations with the metaphysical andquantum questions of matter, the body, and a situated perspective on time asduration. I really was inspired by Lewis Gordon’s Freedom, Justice,Decolonization with that book. Boiled Owls also has many concernsthat might be less theoretical than they are based deeply on lived experienceunder capitalism, the contemporary and recent discourses about addiction andrecovery, and a literary concern with how to move beyond the addiction-recoverybinary. A thesis for the book might sound something like this: If capitalismproduced addiction as the emptying out of consciousness into a vessel for thecommodity’s movement in the world, could recovery offer a socialist resistanceto capitalism? I’m not sure the book necessarily answers that question but itpresents that question through the merging of image, biography, research intothe current issue of cocaine abuse in the UK (which is also a current globalissue). It is also a deeply existential phenomenology of addiction, trying topin down what is happening to the human psyche, spirit and soul, during thattrial. I also see some glimmers of utopian gestures that are imbricated inlife’s quotidian mundanity, episodes of family life or a walk in the park takeon new significances in the midst of the collection’s progression. I’m not surewhat will come next in terms of the theoretical concerns with my nextcollection, I’ve not gotten there yet. My novel and critical writing aregenerally concerned with anti-/ colonialism, late-/modernism and contemporaryiterations of the Avant Garde.
7 – What doyou see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they evenhave one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
I’m sceptical of writers beingprescribed roles – it really depends on what we mean by ‘larger culture’. If wesee culture as an exclusive by-product of that peculiar nexus betweencapitalism and fascism which people euphemistically call ‘nationalism’ then Ireally see no role for the writer other than that of a boot licker – and thereare many who take that kind of role extremely seriously! It also comes throughthe unfortunate frameworks we are taught to use to parcellate literature off,which makes sense for academic study and the good standards of research thatmost universities generally ascribe to, but, for instance, the idea of‘English’ Literature or ‘French’ or any other language however endangered,tends to forge an inward looking culture. I’ve always been interested inthresholds between different cultural zones, larger culture could here mean anenlarged conception of culture, the cross-cultural matrix Wilson Harris has soeloquently written about. In that sense, the writer’s role is perhaps to do thework of tuning into this long and beautiful song, a song we know as a thepoetic tradition in its various forms. I often ask students not only if they’refit to write but if they’re fit to read. What I mean by that is: are you readyto be taken by this tradition and not let go of it but continue seeking for therest of your life? Because that is the kind of commitment I’ve made to all ofthis if I’m being honest and it’s a commitment infused with radical politics,revolutionary thought, communist and socialist organising. But it’s not acommitment premised on tasks – I will never be done reading or writing but I alsodon’t think writers should shun the hard pragmatic work of helping imagine andcreate the better world we all could be living in. Some of that involves makingyour work with the view that it can assist those dreams in coming to reality,but there’s just so much you could do with that. For example, I’m donating myfirst royalty payments to mutual aid causes in support of Palestine. I’ll begiving half the total amount to Makan Rights, a Palestinian-led educationalorganisation, and the other half will go to the European Legal Support Centreso they can continue their important work defending activists from censorship,prison, etc. I say that not with ego, but just to give an example, because I’venever met a writer living and thriving exclusively off of royalties. Most ofthe writers I know do other work, scholarship, educational, and a host of otherthings all the way from construction to curation. Most of the writers I knowand love are not boot-licking national celebrities, in other words. A writer’ssole role, in the only sense I can conceive of it, is to read and write andcontinue the tradition – but often the writers who are held up as celebritywriters are doing the opposite, they’re just so flagrantly capitalistic,identity reductionist, and they speak in this strange coded language thatsounds less and less like literature and more and more like bad television orwellness/travel blog. In a landscape, a global landscape, where our freedomsand our commons are facing a heightened period of erosion, erasure, anderadication, writers really do have the responsibility of pushing theboundaries of language to open up the political horizon. I was recentlyinterrupted by a student on tour who was gregarious, well-intentioned, butquickly revealed an awful truth: he asked me why someone would write a book letalone read a book because he felt he’d prefer to just look up the summary and,in his words, ‘download the information’. This is exactly the sort of idiocythat our current era of global capitalism is actively nurturing and if we, aswriters, do not use our voices and our words to be in service of the people, wewill all be left without healthcare, education, public transport, socialhousing and a habitable planet. But our contribution can’t come from writingalone, we need to be with people right now with more than our words. We need tobe in the street not on substack or twitter – those platforms have their usesbut it’s quite clear that it’s a very undemocratic way of looking at culturalproduction and one that is more in assistance to the cult of celebrity than itis to democratising the arts etc. The reason it’s undemocratic is because Idon’t believe undermining good standards in the world of letters equates to‘socialisation’ in whatever sense the post-internet defenders conceive of it.The writer should connect the reader with the social world of existence on thisplanet, root the reader and position them in the difficult nuances we face as acollective at this dire moment in a long interregnum, and then, and only then,can we try and steer the reader towards an expanded political horizon, if theyhaven’t gotten their already by themselves. Part of that means encouraging goodand rigorous scholarship, the pursuit of knowledge, a craft talk abouteditorial and ethics instead of networking or the over valorisation ofprovisional and provincial projects. A writer’s role is certainly not aboutpursuing the art for an award, worrying about followers, practising envy,jealousy, and all the other kinds of isolating bigotry that so many writingcommunities suffer from. But neither is a resistance to all things writerly thebest way to proceed, as if all one really desires is a very literalecho-chamber, a pub reading with the same usual suspects all circulating thesame long-arm stapler made pamphlets. There are enough independent publishersin this world ready to support new (and old) authors in the literary commons.It saddens me to see left-wing writing circles become so stubbornly insulatedfrom those important developments in the ‘industry’ which are trying to makereal concrete changes in the ways in which literature is circulated, forexample: publishers who are actively socialising the industry or campaigns todivest publishing from fossil fuels or the arms trade. We really need thoseinitiatives to be successful if we want more democratic literary cultures toemerge. We all need to stop internalising the literature qua an industrialcomplex and focus on lifting one another up, setting up initiatives and buildingcollective infrastructures be they unions, distribution channels, new forms ofaward-giving. It’s not only our role to change the language, but also to movethe tradition along whilst paying homage to those who came before us. We haveno meaning alone.
8 - Do youfind the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (orboth)?
Difficult and essential.Difficult because any writer who has gone through an editorial knows what itmeans to feel bruised but often for the better, like after an intense deeptissue massage. Essential because, my word, the publishing industry is reallywild right now and most of it is all marketing, whatever nonsense ‘BookTok’ is,lots of boozy lunches and ultimately just a ruthless pursuit of profit forprofit’s sake. Big publishers don’t actually care about the quality ofliterature or the tradition or representation or equity. That’s why the spacefor editorial is shrinking and writers are being judged on how photogenic theyare rather than how they write. Book Tok is just diabolical. Go and talk to abook seller or a librarian for recommendations. Following this algorithmiccolonisation of literature is really soul destroying. Anyway, yes, editorial!Be in that space. Marketing is the easy bit. Editorial on the other hand islike a dojo, you’ve got to go and train, rehearse the same sequences over andover, argue, stretch, find flexibility, pliability in your work, and mostimportantly, build a relationship on the mutual trust that the writer andeditor are there for the express and exclusive purpose of making the work abetter contribution to the life of letters. Editorial is a bit like an anvil,you have to let someone else hammer out all the imperfections until your workreaches its final form. But if you’re not really up for that kind of processthen maybe think about why that is? We all go through moments of sublimearrogance, it’s a very human feeling, to think one knows best, to have thatdesire, after months or years, of being and feeling ‘in control’ of thelanguage, to then take that effort seriously until the point of critique,critique made by someone else with the intention of helping you bring out itsmerit. I love the language we use in editorials, too, for example, the verb ‘topolish’ takes on this wonderful meaning. A little more polish to be had on thatline, might be a note you’ll receive, and then you go and think about what itmeans to apply polish to a poem. Is a poem like a shoe? Is polishing here thesame as polishing there, a form of caring for the object, for ensuring its bestqualities, tones, and textures are brought to light? How about the word‘quicken’ – I’ve often been told to ‘quicken’ up my lines. I find that onehilarious as an ex drug addict! But it does, however, make a lot of sense!Sometimes I’m writing poetry and prose simultaneously, working on differentprojects, and there’s always a little bleed – the poetry seeps into the proseand vice versa. A good and patient editor (such that I’ve been blessed with atboth Nightboat and Out Spoken) knows when to point that out, when the languagecan fall loose, when it needs to be firmer. All of those rapidly accumulatingwords about the material qualities of language also attest to the fact thateditorial is a world of substance whereas marketing is a shallow and twodimensional world of advertisement. The reason I oppose the two is because ofmy experience as a publisher and as a poet – I really value strong editorial.It’s what shapes writers but the difficulties involved with it are alsonecessary for a good process. Forming a bond build on trust and the freedom tochallenge is a difficult endeavour but one we should cherish and speak aboutmore.
9 - What isthe best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
If you’re struggling to write:shut up, sit down, and write.
If you’re juggling too muchwriting: slow down; slow the fuck down.
If you’re feeling isolated,undervalued, or patronised: delete the apps and go to the library.
10 - Whatkind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How doesa typical day (for you) begin?
Honestly I don’t have a regularwriting routine, I usually adjust what I’m doing to meet the demands of thework, the deadline, the feeling. I like to rise early, do some meditation andmy usual 12 steps routine after a cigarette and a coffee.
If I need to write I tend toblock of days from my day job as the moment I open the Gmail app on my phoneit’s curtains! I’ll end up sucked into the relentlessness of admin and it isnigh on impossible for me to be associative-minded, which is a way I’m thinkingabout creative poetics at the moment. If I approach writing as a task and notas a process, I’m absolutely not doing any writing. It’ll get to that stagewhen I want to write but I’m frustrated because something feels blocked.
I also recently took upmentoring with my old professor Dr Ruth Charnock who has such a wonderful,warm, and welcoming writing mentorship programme now. Ruth is brilliant and hasreally helped me tune into a practice of writing that meets the demands of mylife as it has moved into realms at once sober, spiritual, and social, oftensimply by holding space and gently guiding my thoughts to often perplexinglygenerative insights. We recently did this exercise where we read tarot for mynovel’s characters so I could figure out how they’d interact based on thearchetypical projections tarot offers as a way of making sense of the world. Ithink working with Ruth has opened me up to being less, how to say, rigid aboutmy own writing, less immediately brutally critical of it, more compassionate tothe process.
11 - Whenyour writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of abetter word) inspiration?
If I’m stuck with my novel Ire-read James Joyce’s Ulysses. If I’m stuck with poetry I read J H Prynne. If I’m stuck with critical writing I often turn back to NathanielMackey’s Discrepant Engagement or Sara Crangle’s Prosaic Desires.If I’m stuck due to a lack of imagination – Wilson Harris or China Mieville. IfI’m stuck because of a lack of motivation – Lewis R. Gordon. If I need to getmore clarity I love Jane Anna Gordon’s writing, it’s so lucid andauthoritative. On tour I’ve found it really hard to connect with my readingpractice but I picked up Lyn Hejinian’s The Language of Enquiry and Ifeel like this text will be with me in a similar vein, a text I’ll return tomany times. I also think it’s about finding what ‘feeds’ the writing, you know,like what type of text do you as a writer need to read or be reading, in orderto hold onto that energy and persistence with the page. For me there’s suchstrong evidence that the best writing I’ve produced has always been when I’vebeen reading a lot of critical theory and philosophy. For other poets, readingother poetry is enough, for me it just isn’t. I need that breadth to what I’mabsorbing, that nutritional diversity!
12 - Whatfragrance reminds you of home?
I could really sound like acliché diaspora poet here but: ghee. Hot ghee in a pan. Mmmmm!
13 - DavidW. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other formsthat influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?
All of that and more! Right now:Nature = grief. Music = elation. Science = information. Visual art =meditation. Of those examples, though, Nature, Music, and Visual Art are thethree that stand out as consistent influences. Science does interest me, butI’m usually unable to separate it from ‘nature’ because so much of what wethink of as the natural world is mediated through science.
14 - Whatother writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your lifeoutside of your work?
The poetry of Bhanu Kapil and ofAnthony Ezekiel Vahni Capildeo. I’d be lost without their magic, theirfriendships, and their sage wisdom. The only other books I’d place close totheirs would be The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous and The Holy Qu’ran.
15 - What wouldyou like to do that you haven't yet done?
There’s so much of this world Ihaven’t seen, I’d love to travel more and meet new people, perhaps without theexpectation of poetry. I’d love to teach at a university and help withinstitution building in that way. Right now, I’m at peace with the wonderfullife I’m leading with an openness and excitement around what’s coming aroundthe corner.
16 - If youcould pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately,what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
I’d join the Communist Party andrun for office or build with the movement or become a plumber.
17 - Whatmade you write, as opposed to doing something else?
Being in the right place at the righttime, luck, fortune, stubbornness.
18 - Whatwas the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
Nathaniel Mackey’s DoubleTrio remains the most singular poetry achievement I can recall by anyliving poet in a long time – I’ve read a lot of great poetry books on tour,debuts by Jaqueline Baldarrama, Susan Nguyen, and I’ve been doing a deeper diveinto Ed Dorn’s selected. I’m also about to read a book by Devonya N. Haviscalled Creating a Black Vernacular Philosophy which I’m really excitedabout. The last great film I watched was American Fiction – based on another wonderful book by the indomitable Percival Everett.
19 - Whatare you currently working on?
A lecture for the Caribbean Philosophical Association’s Summer School inJune on Late Modernist Poetics of Time and Subjectivity which is essentially anepistolary review of Oscar Guardiola-Rivera’s first two books in his Night ofthe World trilogy with the87press.
