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CAConrad has been working with the ancient technologies of poetry and ritual since 1975. Their latest book is Listen to the Golden Boomerang Return (Wave Books, 2024) AMANDA PARADISE: Resurrect Extinct Vibration (Wave Books, 2021). The Book of Frank is now available in nine different languages. Other titles include While Standing in the Line for Death, ECODEVIANCE: (Soma)tic for the Future Wilderness, and A Beautiful Marsupial Afternoon: New (Soma)tics. They received a Creative Capital grant, a Pew Fellowship, a Lambda Literary Award, and a Believer Magazine Book Award. With Robert Dewhurst and Joshua Beckman, they co-edited Supplication: Selected Poems of John Wieners. In 2022 Augusto Cascales made a film of their play The Obituary Show. They recently had their first solo exhibition at Fluent Gallery in Santander, Spain, titled 13 Moons: Listen to the Golden Boomerang Return. They teach at Columbia University in New York City and Sandberg Art Institute in Amsterdam. Please visit them online at https://linktr.ee/CAConrad88.
Photo credit: Augusto Cascales -
Reviews
CAConrad’s aim is to unplug from the corporate machine and reconnect themselves and their readers with the earth and animals and other people. This is poetry with real ambition that wants to hug us – it’s big, it’s queer and, like paprika, you can never have enough of it.
Philip Terry, The Guardian
CAConrad does an excellent job of fusing their innovative, but very much down-to-earth poetic technique with their politically-engaged sensibilities to create work that speaks to the aesthetic and political concerns of the contemporary moment.
Andrea Syzdek, Against the Grain
CAConrad always argues (from the inside of their poems) for a poetry of radical inclusivity while keeping a very queer shoulder to the wheel. Their kind of queerness strikes me as nonpolarizing, not intentionally but because of the fullness of their exposition, a kind of gigantism that seems to me to be most deeply informed by love, and a tenderness for the ravages and tumult of existence.
Eileen Myles
At a time when I don’t always know how to make sense of what’s going on, CAConrad serves as a cleareyed seer.
Jillian Steinhauer, New York Times
It’s very possible that CAConrad is the most interesting poet currently working in the United States.
Kevin O'Rourke, Michigan Quarterly Review
There was a time some of us believed poetry and poets could save the world; CAConrad never stopped believing it—and in that belief, and in poems produced under the sign of belief, we can witness an extroverted existentialism that just may be the last best hope for poets and non-poets alike.
Seth Abramson, The Huffington Post
Conrad must be one of the most original practitioners of poetry forging new territory.
Sean Singer, The Rumpus
His books are filled with alluringly odd and dark images that could rival William S. Burroughs. Conrad, an out-and-proud gay activist, fills his poems with his own brand of spirituality and loving gay sexuality.
A.D. Amorosi, Philadelphia Inquirer
It is rare to find a poet who can admit, without losing face, that the voice of the world is often their own. It is still more rare to find one who can do so without losing our interest. CAConrad is one such poet.
Mary Wilson, Make Magazine
Conrad isn’t interested in that sort of perfection; it’s the messy business of being in the world that Conrad is after, and which allows him to reach for “seismic levels of wildness.”
Abraham Avnisan, Rain Taxi
Reviews of books by CAConrad
LISTEN TO THE GOLDEN BOOMERANG RETURN
AMANDA PARADISE: Resurrect Extinct Vibration
While Standing in Line for Death
ECODEVIANCE
A Beautiful Marsupial Afternoon
The Book of Frank -
- CAConrad’s blog
- CAConrad’s (Soma)tic Poetry Exercises blog
Poems
- Venus.3 (at The American Poetry Review)
- Several poems (at The Poetry Foundation)
- Several poems (on Poets.org)
- Two poems (in Everyday Genius)
- Two poems (in Dusie)
- “rehab saved his life but drugs saved mine at the blue HOUR” (in Coconut)
- “I Loved Earth Years Ago” (in PEN America)
- Five Poems (in The Brooklyn Rail)
- “act like a polka dot on minnie mouse's skirt” (in THEthe Poetry)
Exercises
- “Poetry & Ritual” (on Lit Hub)
- “Aphrodisios” (in Bomb)
- “Confetti Allegiance” (in The Academy of American Poets)
- “Suffering Makes No Home Alone” (in Broken Toujours)
- “You Don't Have What It Takes To Be My Nemesis” (in Diode)
Interviews
- Neonpajamas, with Ben Niespodziany
- Poetry London, with Sophie Robinson
- Interview with Thom Donovan, excerpted from A Beautiful Marsupial Afternoon, at Poets.org
- The Poetry Foundation, with Eileen Myles
- The Philadelphia Inquirer, with A.D. Amorosi
- The Poetry Society of America
- BOMBLOG, with Luke Degnan
- Bookslut, with John Zuarino
- The The Poetry, with Lisa Marie Basile
- The Wild, with Brenda Iijima
- The Rumpus, with Tara Murtha
- Coldfront, with Steven Karl
- The Huffington Post, with Jonathan Hobratsch
- Feelings
- Lambda Literary, with Christopher Soto -
Audio
- Reading on the Poetry Magazine podcast
- CAConrad's page on PennSound
- Reading with Frank Sherlock at Small Press Traffic
- CABINET reading with Maggie Nelson, Eileen Myles, Wayne Koestenbaum and others
- Talking about Anne Sexton’s landscapes of grief in her poem “Portrait of an Old Woman on the College Tavern Wall” at the Poetry Foundation
- Reading from The Book of Frank at The Poetry Project
- Interview with Joseph Milford
- Conversation with David Naimon on Between the Covers podcast
-KCRW's Bookworm feature episode on Supplication: Selected Poems of John Wieners featuring editors Joshua Beckman,CAConrad and Robert Dewhurst.
Video
-CAConrad reads for the Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation. Directed by Matthew Thompson:
- David Buuck tries out some of CAConrad’s (Soma)tic Poetry Exercises at the Poetry Foundation
- Reading from The Book of Frank, A Beautiful Marsupial Afternoon, and more at the University of Arizona Poetry Center
Reading for Poeteevee:
Reading from The Book of Frank for The Machine Project:
CAConrad discusses their (Soma)tic exercises which inspired A Beautiful Marsupial Afternoon:
BBC recording of CAConrad reading for the Southbank Centre Festival: