SARETTA MORGAN interviews MURIEL LEUNG
In this month’s interview, Saretta Morgan talks with poet, editor, and academic Muriel Leung about her poetry collection Bone Confetti; queer love; how loss can activate political consciousness; Hortense Spillers; and writing in a state of transition. Bone Confetti was released by Noemi Press in 2016.
SARETTA MORGAN interviews YOUMNA CHLALA
Youmna Chlala was born in Beirut and is currently based in New York City. Her work investigates the relationship between fate and architecture through video, drawing, books, installation, and performance. She was recently an Open Sessions artist at The Drawing Center and a resident artist at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Center’s Process Space. Her work has been widely exhibited at spaces that include Art Dubai Projects; Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; Rotterdam International Film Festival; Camera Austria; Art in General, New York; and San Jose Museum of Art. Her writing has appeared in numerous journals. Chlala is the Founding Editor of Eleven Eleven {1111} Journal of Literature and Art and recipient of a Joseph Henry Jackson Award. Her poetry book, The Paper Camera, will be published by Litmus Press in 2017.
Saretta Morgan met with Chlala at McNally Jackson Books in SoHo, New York City, in the late spring of 2016 to talk about relationships, speculation and space.
SARETTA MORGAN interviews MAURICE EMERSON DECAUL
Maurice Emerson Decaul is a poet, essayist, playwright, and librettist, whose work has appeared in The Common, The New York Times, The Daily Beast, Narrative, Callaloo, and Holding it Down: The Veterans’ Dreams Project, among others. A graduate of Columbia and New York Universities, he is currently working toward his MFA at Brown University.
Saretta Morgan corresponded with Decaul over several weeks by email, in person, and on the phone during the winter of 2015–2016. Both poets and military veterans, Morgan and Decaul talked about New Orleans, theater, race, and the military, as their conversation moved between themes of structure, dreams, and collectivity.
SARETTA MORGAN interviews RACHEL ELIZA GRIFFITHS
Rachel Eliza Griffiths is a poet and visual artist. Her most recent collection of poetry, Lighting the Shadow (Four Way Books), was published in April. Griffiths teaches creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College and the Institute of American Indian Arts, and lives in Brooklyn, NY. Saretta Morgan corresponded with Griffiths via email over the course of four weeks this summer, during which time they each traversed several locales—Upstate New York, Mexico, Colorado, Vermont and Washington, D.C.—as they discussed form, representation, and the risks of opening oneself up artistically.
Saretta Morgan (SM): Your fourth book of poems came out this year, and you’re very close to completing your first book of photographs and your first novel. You also work in photography and video. Could you share a little bit about your relationship to these modalities? What complications and limitations do you find in each?
Don’t miss an issue! Subscribe to The Common.