Last May, Kelly Hoffer, poet, educator, and alum of the Literatures in English PhD program here at Cornell, released her debut collection, Undershore (Lightscatter Press, 2023). I was fortunate to attend her book launch at Buffalo Street Books, where she read to a packed room and shared the cyanotype quilt and textile book that accompany the collection. Vivid, sonic, and sensory, Undershore probes the indelible linkages between mother and child, remapping how relationships continue, even after death. Far from a memorial, Undershore enacts the work of reconstructing a self in the wake of life-altering loss. When I spoke with Kelly in September, we talked about getting out of the poem’s way, the particularities of grief, and conspiring with the dictionary.

Last fall, Solmaz Sharif visited Cornell for the Barbara & David Zalaznick Reading Series. In addition to reading to a packed auditorium from her two books of poetry Look and Customs, and having lunch with current MFA students, she generously agreed to be interviewed for the EPOCH blog. We spoke in September, days after the police killing of Mahsa Amini and the ensuing protests in Iran. Our conversation was wide ranging, covering ideas of lineage, to the challenges of literary production, and how the loss and transformation of desire impact language.