AWP21—Farid Matuk

Farid Matuk’s poetry, essays, and translations from Spanish appear in a wide range of publications and anthologies. He is the author of the poetry collection, This Isa Nice Neighborhood (Letter Machine), several chapbooks including My Daughter La Chola (Ahsahta), and The Real Horse (2018). He teaches in the MFA program at University of Arizona, where he is poetry editor for Fence, and serves on the editorial board for the book series Research in Creative Writing at Bloomsbury.

In this episode, we talk about Matuk’s newest collection of poetry, The Real Horse, and his intention behind not using punctuation throughout the book. Matuk passes on life-changing writing advice that he received about filling the negative space of a page and writing into the “weaving of self and other that’s always around us.” During his time as a professor at the University of Arizona, he was able to publish his poetry with the university press there. That’s also where he experienced, for the first time, the helpful process of the blind peer review. As we spoke about Matuk’s work at Fence, the phrase “mutual entanglement” came up to describe the work being done there. Matuk leaves us with the question, “Which phrases and ways of naming the world that feel really powerful today will end up with quotation marks around them?”

Honorable Mentions:

• University of Arizona Press

• Fence

• Fence founder and editor, Rebecca Wolff

• Visual Artist, Nancy Friedemann-Sanchez and her paintings of lace.

• Poet, Jorie Graham

• Poet, John Ashbery