On this episode of Awakeners, Lena chats with poets Adrian Matejka and Austin Araujo. Austin was already a huge fan of Adrian’s work—especially his collection The Big Smoke, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize—when he applied to study with him at Indiana University’s MFA program. Austin assisted Adrian with an undergrad class on the poetics of rap, and Adrian served on Austin’s thesis committee, where he helped shape an early “prototype” of what would become Austin’s debut collection: At the Park on the Edge of the Country, out next month from the Ohio State University Press.
We discuss how to preserve your past self when revising old poems, why it’s important to embed your work in a specific place, what Adrian learned from Yusef Komunyakaa, what Austin learned from Louise Glück, and how it felt for both of them when Austin placed a poem with Poetry Magazine, where Adrian now serves as editor.
In the second half of the episode, we put Austin’s and Adrian’s poems from their latest books into conversation with one another. We also cover “internal antagonists,” rap music, Prince, boxing champion Jack Johnson, why polysyllabic words make the best rhymes, and how we might claw through awe into truth when writing about our pop culture heroes.
Austin Araujo is a writer from northwest Arkansas. He is the recipient of a Wallace Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University and his poems have recently appeared in Poetry, TriQuarterly, and Gulf Coast. His debut collection, At the Park on the Edge of the Country, won the 2023 The Journal Charles B. Wheeler Prize and is forthcoming from Mad Creek Books in 2025.
Adrian Matejka is the author of seven books, most recently a graphic novel Last On His Feet (Liveright, 2023), which was a finalist for the Eisner Award and was selected by the New York Public Library as one of the 10 best books of 2023. His last collection of poems Somebody Else Sold the World (Penguin, 2021), was a finalist for 2022 UNT Rilke Prize and the 2022 Indiana Authors Award. He served as Poet Laureate of the state of Indiana in 2018-19 and is Editor-in-Chief of Poetry magazine.
Subscribe and connect with us on our website: awakenerspodcast.com.
More Austin: austinaraujo.com
More Adrian: https://www.adrianmatejka.com/about
Preorder Austin’s debut collection: https://ohiostatepress.org/books/titles/9780814259368.html
Austin’s poem in Poetry Magazine, “In Body Sweet”: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/158807/in-body-sweet
Mentioned in the episode: Eduardo C. Corral’s Slow Lightning, Louise Glück, Yusef Komunyakaa, Terrance Hayes, A. Van Jordan, Gwendolyn Brooks, Adam Bradley’s Book of Rhymes, Shea Serrano’s Rap Yearbook, Larry Levis, Ben Okri, Hanif Abdurraqib’s Go Ahead in the Rain
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