How can one write poetry about current political events without resorting to invective or rhetoric? Why is this important? Poetry is a use of language that is capable of a kind of depth of being that rhetoric is not. Rhetoric is opinion, which is centered in the human ego and is part of the vanity project. Poetry at its most potent taps into realms so far beyond rhetoric and opinion, when one has had a taste of them it is hard to go back. Many “poets” stay mired into work that is nothing more than their opinion. These are my convictions, but on June 5, 2025, via Zoom, I caught up with 4 contributors to Winter in America (Again to discuss how they navigate the need to write about the implications of fascism in North America from a place that’s deeper than ego and opinion. The audio version of the interview is linked here. My thanks go out to the Cascadia Poetics Lab Audio Assistant Zach Charles for his work on this interview.
The poets are:
allia abdullah-matta is a poet and Professor of English at CUNY LaGuardia & The Graduate Center/Africana Studies Program. She teaches Africana literature & culture, creative writing, Ethnic Studies and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies courses. She writes about the culture and history of Black women and explores the presence of Black bodies and voices in fine art and poetry. Her chapbook(s) washed clean & blues politico (2021) were published by harlequin creature (hcx) and blackprint was published by THRASH Press (2024). She is a co-editor of Winter in America (Again Poets Respond to the 2024 Election (2025). abdullah-matta has published critical and pedagogical articles and serves on the Radical Teacher and WSQ (Women’s Studies Quarterly) editorial/advisory boards. She lives in Brooklyn.
Dane Cervine’s recent books of poetry include Nine Volt Nirvana (Word Poetry Press), DEEP TRAVEL – At Home in the [Burning] World (Saddle Road Press), The World Is God’s Language (Sixteen Rivers Press), Earth Is a Fickle Dancer (Main Street Rag), and The Gateless Gate – Polishing the Moon Sword (Saddle Road Press). His work appears in The SUN, the Hudson Review, TriQuarterly, Poetry Flash, Catamaran, Miramar, Rattle, Sycamore Review, Pedestal Magazine, among others. Dane lives in Santa Cruz, California. Visit his website at: https://danecervine.typepad.com/ He lives in Santa Cruz.
Jim Dott lives with his family in a 100+ year-old house in Astoria, Oregon above the Columbia River. Since retiring from elementary school teaching he has immersed himself in poetry. Jim’s new book, Touch Wood, was published this year by Watershed Press. These poems are invocations and meditations on trees. His two previous collections are A Glossary of Memory and Another Shore. In addition to writing Jim gardens, hikes, studies natural history, and tries to improve his Spanish. He is a co-host of a monthly poetry open mic, a volunteer programmer/producer at KMUN Community Radio (Children’s Bedtime Stories) and participates in local theater productions both on and off stage. www.jamesdott.com.
Lorin Medley is a counsellor and writer from Comox, BC published in several anthologies including Winter in America (Again, Cascadian Zen: volume two, Drift: Poems and Poets from the Comox Valley, Sweetwater: Poems for the Watersheds, and Refugium: Poems for the Pacific. Her writing can also be found in The New Quarterly magazine, subTerrain, The Puritan, Many Gendered Mothers, and Portal. She won the 2014 Islands Short Fiction Contest, Aislinn Hunter’s 2015 Books Matter poetry prize and was long listed for the 2016 Prism International Poetry Contest. Lorin’s poetry chapbook On the Way to Kluusms is forthcoming from Watershed Press. Lorin lives in Comox, BC.