In this episode Tish and Adam talk to the poet Richard Hamilton about his new book, Rest of Us (Recenter Press, 2021) and Hamilton shares a number of his poems. We also discuss, among other things, the relationship of the social and the subjective, absurdist aesthetic strategies, the afterlife of slavery, remixing time, the “MFA industry” and the Kenneth Goldsmith controversy, what it means to write or make art for the working-class and oppressed, the relationship of visual art to poetry, and the discordant will of the revolutionary subject.
Poems read and discussed include Hamilton’s “Alabama Inmate Notes,” “Revolting Shadows,” “Black and White (Ode to the Haitian Revolution),” “In Four,” “Palimpsest: Black Out” and “White Narratives.”
We also touch on AfroSurrealism, Amiri Baraka’s “The Politics of Rich Painters” (1963), Federico Garcia Lorca’s “Sleepwalking Ballad,” Aimé Césaire’s Discourses on Colonialism (1950), the work of the artists Ronald Williams and Emory Douglas, and more.
Locust Radio is hosted by Tish Turl and Adam Turl. Locust Radio is produced by Drew Franzblau. Music is by Omnia Sol.
Subscribe to Locust Review for as little as $1 a month.
Submit work to Locust Review by e-mailing us at locust.review@gmail.com.