Sens. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock are asking Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem for answers after more than a dozen people died in immigration detention, as the department rushes to expand.

It's feeling more and more important to be able to gather together in physical space, hope I get to see some of you! 9/26 NYC (McNally Jackson Seaport) 10/4 ATL (Decatur Book Festival) 10/16 Sarah Lawrence 10/30 Hollins University

they’re putting Kimmel back on the air. I would now like to see the same amount of outrage for the firing of professors for their statements

Today’s poem is selected by Heather Christle (@heatherchristle.bsky.social) as part of the 20th anniversary of Read A Little Poetry.

Today’s poem: Heather Christle, “I know what I’m talking about” #lunchpoems

Researching and writing this was a joy. I began in an attitude of skepticism and ended elsewhere.

If you memorize a poem you will have it with you in an emergency. You could add that to your list.

We have been shadowbanned on this event and yet we are nearly sold out…come help us sell out and show your love and support for Palestine and Gaza. www.ticketmaster.com/voices-for-g...

I am going to be reading/talking in these places this month: 9/2 Memoiring Book Club (online) 9/4 The Writer's Center (online) 9/11 Amherst Books (Amherst, MA) 9/17 & 9/18 Emory University (Atlanta, GA) 9/26 McNally Jackson Books Seaport (NYC) More details below!

Managed to write a thousand words about poetry without (I am almost certain) lying.

Unraveling of federal arts funding infrastructure continues. Hard to describe the decades of debates & advocacy invested in sustaining the CW fellowships at the NEA. Now, wiped out.

Our fall issue is coming! We have essays by @heatherchristle.bsky.social, Oliver Egger, and Ash Sanders; interviews with Laura van den Berg, @blondieband.bsky.social, and Richard Ayoade, conducted by @rokwon.bsky.social, Emma Ingrisani, and Wallace Shawn; poetry, reviews, and more.

Reading about neuroscience leads me to reconfirm that a fundamental quality I value in poetry is its ability to "perturb those restless proactive seas." Poetry loves to get in the way.

This is true of so many phrases. Every word is a choice: Which actions are we naming? Which are we hiding?

Pretty sure this diagram is making fun of me.

How the word “breaking” appears again and again on posts announcing the IDF killing people in Gaza.

"Reading through a stack of the summer’s new books, I’ve found plenty of poetry as funny as written-down stand-up comedy: poems to be laughed at, in only the most affirmative senses."

The past 8 days have included a spouse with Covid, an unexpected flight to Washington, evacuating a harborside hotel bc of a tsunami advisory, and eating fresh blackcurrants for I think the first time in my life.

Banger opening poem in @heatherchristle.bsky.social ‘s new book PAPER CROWNS

This might be the happiest sensation I’ve had in relation to Paper Crown so far—watching Elliot move the opening poem through his body and the ways it changes his face as he goes. This feels so good. Thank you @1t2ls.bsky.social!!

“Working-class people can’t think, but should be allowed to become knowledge workers by using machines to think for them” is about the most “the author of this argument works for Microsoft” version of cosplay progressivism I could possibly imagine. (The author of this argument works for Microsoft.)

Any other poet-ish people reading this? Only 1/4 through but am finding it to be the most helpful text on the subject I have encountered so far.

Heather Christle, wrecking me in 16 lines @heatherchristle.bsky.social @weslpress.bsky.social

FLAMINGOS FLAMINGOS FLAMINGOS (Also my first poetry collection in ten years lol)

Join us tonight at 7 pm for a reading by @heatherchristle.bsky.social and conversation with @kavehakbar.bsky.social !

Kaveh Akbar talks with Heather Christle about her new memoir “In the Rhododendrons” and changing the narrative around violence against women buff.ly/aXYxypS

This week, I talked with @silkys13.bsky.social about immigration raids, rising authoritarianism, mass protest, innocence narratives, and what it means to organize effectively in this moment. Given everything that's happening, I highly recommend checking this one out.

as expected, this collection is incredible (US & UK covers)

Heather Christle @heatherchristle.bsky.social @weslpress.bsky.social

governor rhodes who sent the NG to kent, also sent the national guard into Elyria, Ohio when a white cop killed an unarmed black man in 1975, five years *after* the kent state shooting. white men with absolute power are not to be trusted. ever.

I’ll be in conversation with my friend @lewispants.bsky.social on June 12 at the Critical Pedagogy Symposium: criticalpedagogysymposium.org/closing-keyn...

Hey Chicago let’s hang out

I talked with @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social about protest, why large “awareness-raising” events will not defeat Trump, and the kind of actions and formations we need in these times.

"Sir, it is a hole." Thank you to @heatherchristle.bsky.social for this, and for the absolute banger, "The Crying Book", from whence it came

This is really the perfect use of generative AI: to create a report whose purpose is solely to exist as A Report, which no one is supposed to read because no one involved in its creation even pretends to have the slightest genuine interest in the actual facts at issue.

There is an AI company that describes itself as inspired by "daddy's quest for immortality." I would like to go somewhere else now.

There’s maybe no better demonstration of how centrism works than a guy tanking any kind of positive agenda and his own personal likability to move from -77 to -76 approval from the center-right party

PLEASE SHARE! I am raising funds for a dear friend and member of the literary as well as arts communities. $5 and $10 goes a long way! Reshares even further! We are just $800 from our goal and my hope is bluesky can take us the rest of the way. 💛💛💛 chuffed.org/project/1299...

Wrote this review of @heatherchristle.bsky.social's exquisite new memoir, IN THE RHODODENDRONS. Simultaneously harrowing and hilarious. For Fans Of: Virginia Woolf, flaneuses, and attempting to carry on satisfying relationships with other human beings.

Did you know writers who are alive can teach you did you know you can learn from the dead by reading did you know did you know

I hope the AI Agatha Christie abruptly and unaccountably goes missing

If you can’t figure out the mechanics of Agatha Christie novels by reading them, writing is not for you

Kimberly Belflower’s play JOHN PROCTOR IS THE VILLAIN has been met with much-deserved critical rapture (and audience adoration) and I am SOOO excited to talk with her tonight. NYC people—get tickets here: www.eventbrite.com/e/in-store-h...

There is a story I like to tell about Jericho Brown, because it demonstrates (I think) that his superstardom (which brings me GREAT joy) is rooted not just in his remarkable poetry, but his ways of being in the world, of attending to it.

Unexpected full page in today's Observer on yesterday's protests and it doesn't interview a single GC for 'balance'

Writing poems as safe-cracking: not figuring out the numbers or code, but rather feeling the resistance or glide of the dial against fingertips, placing one’s ear to the door to hear the whirr and the click, working without foreknowledge of what is inside.

In Mahmoud Khalil's letter from ICE detention in Louisiana, he cites Japanese American incarceration and Mitsuye Endo, who was incarcerated in the Tule Lake concentration camp, and whose case before the Supreme Court led to the closing of the camps. Read his letter here: t.ly/A04cc

Flight attendant is reading a book called The Crash and I would prefer not to.

On a plane after 3 hours sleep but who cares—there’s this beautiful first UK review