Lay It Bare: Joy Baglio Interviews Anders Carlson-Wee

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ANDERS CARLSON-WEE‘s 
Disease of Kings showcases a mastery of tone and voice, an uncanny ability to talk to you (reader) like a friend and confidant, while telling you the hardest truths— truths that might actually change your life, truths the world doesn’t necessarily want you to know. These poems are urgent without being demanding, confessional without being sensational, and indirectly lead us to reconsider the nuances of relationships, how our lives are structured, and ultimately the big questions of what matters most. Disease of Kings tells a fierce, uncompromising narrative, yet also manages to be deeply vulnerable and do away with pretense and artifice, embracing a primal need to “Lay It Bare,” as one of the poems is aptly titled.

JOY BAGLIO sat down with Anders to discuss Disease of Kings, touching on his impulse toward narrative, crafting vivid imagery, honing voice, and more. 

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Lay It Bare: Joy Baglio Interviews Anders Carlson-Wee
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Issue 26 Launch Party in Amherst [VIDEO]

This event has passed, but you can watch a recording below! (Closed captions are included; download a transcript here.)


 

Issue 26 cover: light pink background with a turnip and greens

The Common Fall Launch Party
Thursday, November 9, 2023, 6pm
Friendly Reading Room, Frost Library
Amherst College, Amherst, MA

Free and open to the public, wine and food from La Veracruzana provided.

 
Join us to celebrate the launch of Issue 26, with three contributors to our portfolio of writing from the farmworker community!

We welcome portfolio co-editor Miguel M. Morales, poet Julián David Bañuelos, and prose writer Nora Rodriguez Camagna for brief readings and conversation about place, immigration, writing, farmwork, and family. All three of our guests grew up doing seasonal farmwork with their families. The event will be hosted by the magazine’s managing editor Emily Everett.

Pioneer Valley Workers Center logo (tractor wheel with sheaf of wheat)
Issue 26 Launch Party in Amherst [VIDEO]
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Translation: Five Poems by Serbian Poet Milena Marković

Poems by MILENA MARKOVIĆ, translated from the Serbian by STEVEN and MAJA TEREF.

 

Translators’ Note

As translators, we have multiple ways in which we interact as a translator couple. Oftentimes, we will sit side by side and take turns translating and transcribing as we work our way through a text. Sometimes though, one of us may translate a poem and later have the other check it. The poem “little lambs” is an example whereby Maja wrote out her translation in a notebook, which Steven later typed up and checked against the original. In the middle of the poem where “a band of clouds cross above my son,” Maja had followed the line with “while he squatted in the shallows,” yet Steven misread “shallows” as “shadows.”

Translation: Five Poems by Serbian Poet Milena Marković
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Bless These Backs

By MICHELLE CASTLEBERRY

This feature is part of our print and online portfolio of writing from the immigrant farmworker community. Read more online or in Issue 26.

Buckets of freshly picked apples

Part of a day’s harvest, 1985.


Bradley County, Arkansas
 

I stood behind the orthopedic specialist and watched the giant monitor where my MRI reports glowed. He traced the contours of my spine, his index finger waving back and forth down the screen. I had gotten his name after a months-long battle with neck and back pain. What started as fire and numbness in my right arm grew into a welter of spasm and neuropathy. This doctor was known as an oracle of back pain. He bragged of being able to guess how people used their bodies just from reading his screens.

The exhaustion of having a nameless, and, therefore, untreatable problem was eroding my spirit. I needed him to find the answer. As he squinted, he rattled off his wins, spotting the bone-wear patterns of golfers, softball players, fiddlers, and software developers. He stopped to identify the small bumps on each vertebra: bone spurs. It felt like he was stalling. Had I stumped him?           

Bless These Backs
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Podcast: Jake Lancaster on “Grace’s Folly”

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Listen on Apple Podcasts.

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Listen on Spotify.

 

Transcript: Jake Lancaster Podcast

Jake Lancaster speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about his story “Grace’s Folly,” which appears in The Common’s most recent issue. Jake talks about writing stories that lean into the offbeat, uncomfortable, and sometimes grotesque parts of his characters and their lives. He also discusses his writing and revision process—carving away at long first drafts until all that’s left is essential—and his work teaching writing at the University of Minnesota.

portrait image of jake lancaster and issue 25
Podcast: Jake Lancaster on “Grace’s Folly”
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Beyond Their Labor: Manuel Muñoz and Helena María Viramontes on Writing the Lives of Farmworkers

 

Manuel Muñoz

Photos L-R courtesy of Manuel Muñoz and Lindsay France/Cornell University.

Helena María Viramontes

 

Acclaimed writers MANUEL MUÑOZ and HELENA MARÍA VIRAMONTES met almost three decades ago: Muñoz was obtaining his MFA in Creative Writing from Cornell University, and Viramontes was his mentor. Many novels and story collections later, the pair are still close friends. They sat down recently to talk, for the first time, specifically about their roots in farmwork. They discussed the poor working conditions and hardships, but also the ways that farmworkers find love and joy in their families. As writers, they connected over the desire to honor the wholeness and complexity of these lives in their work. 

Beyond Their Labor: Manuel Muñoz and Helena María Viramontes on Writing the Lives of Farmworkers
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Poetry Feature: Poems from the Immigrant Farmworker Community

Poems by JORDAN ESCOBAR, OSWALDO VARGAS, ARTURO CASTELLANOS JR., and MIGUEL M. MORALES.

This fall, half of The Common’s new issue will be dedicated to a portfolio of writing and art from the farmworker community: over a hundred pages filled with the stories, essays, poems, and artwork of immigrant agricultural workers. The portfolio, co-edited by Miguel M. Morales, highlights the work of twenty-seven contributors with roots in this community.

An online portfolio will also accompany the print issue, giving more space for these important perspectives. This feature is the first of several that will publish throughout the fall. Click the FARMWORKER tag at the bottom of the page to read more, as pieces are added.

Poetry Feature: Poems from the Immigrant Farmworker Community
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The Bee-Eaters

By GEORGINA PARFITT

Liverpool

The teeth of the excavator are wet. The cage opens, hovers, and grips a mouthful—some floor, some outer wall, some window frame, the glass disappearing with a tiny, tinkling sound.

Now, suddenly, the bedroom of the upstairs flat is revealed. A ragged cut-away, leaving just one perfect wall, wallpapered. Poppies on a purple field. The room, when it was a room, was probably small and ordinary; now, illuminated, it is the envy of all other rooms, the ultimate mezzanine. Light pours in from everywhere and the window frames blue sky.

The Bee-Eaters
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