Charif Shanahan and Adrian Matejka on the Shifting of Identity, Oneness, and Centering Love

This week, Adrian Matejka sits down with poet and guest editor of the magazine, Charif Shanahan, to talk about oneness, the shifting of identity, and centering love. Born in the Bronx to an Irish-American father and a Moroccan mother, Shanahan’s poems meditate on mixed-race identity, queer desire, time, mortality, and the legacies of anti-Blackness in the US and abroad. Shanahan shares how a class he almost dropped with the poet Linda Gregg changed poetry for him forever, and he reads two poems from his new book, Trace Evidence, which is out next month from Tin House Books.