On today’s show host Ali Muldrow is joined by Black, queer writer and performer, Danez Smith. Their new collection, Bluff, was released in August, and it imagines life in a dissolving world. Danez wrote this collection after two years of artistic silence, during which the world came to a halt due to the COVID-19 pandemic and Minneapolis became the epicenter of protest following the murder of George Floyd. The collection reckons with these events and the poet’s role in them. 
In a raw, honest, and wide-raging conversation, Smith speaks to liberation from a Black, queer perspective that includes solidarity with Palestinian liberation. From the cost of taking a stand to the relationship between land and language, Smith uses poetry as fuel for inspiration and solidarity. Listen to Smith read from two poems: “anti poetica” and “The Slap.”
Smith will be giving a reading of Bluff as part of the Wisconsin Book Festival on Friday, October 18 at 9pm at the Madison Central Library.

Danez Smith is the author of three collections including Bluff, Homie, and Don’t Call Us Dead. They are the winner of the Forward Prize for Best Collection, the Minnesota Book Award in Poetry, the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry among several other honors. Danez’s poetry and prose has been featured in Vanity Fair, The New York Times, The New Yorker, GQ, Best American Poetry and on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert. They live in Minneapolis near their people.
Feature image via Graywolf Press.
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