Due Date with CAConrad
where we ask our favourite WRITERS to fill in a Library Card with the books they have on loan, reserved, lost & found and on their top shelf.
Inspired by library sections and driven by the curiosity to get to know the books behind our favourite writers, tune in every month as we reveal what titles fill their bookshelves. What they’re currently reading, what they’re going to read next, what vintage classic they can’t get out of their heads and what book is their favourite of all time. Find out on DUE DATE.
Introducing CAConrad!
CAConrad has been writing poetry for over 50 years. Their latest book of poems is First Light (Wave Books / UK Penguin, 2027). They received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, a PEN award, a Creative Capital grant, and The Book of Frank is available in a dozen languages, with a forthcoming Korean translation in 2027. They exhibit their poems as sculpture with recent shows in Edinburgh, London, Hamburg, Melbourne, Porto, and Chicago. They teach at Sandberg Art Institute and De Ateliers in Amsterdam. Please visit them at CAConrad.com
ON LOAn: What are you currently reading?
Bird Watching is such an amazing experience for anyone who has been a fan of Eileen Myles! The long opening poem was written in 1978, but is only published in this new book which also has the first three poetry books by Myles. Please see this link for my recent enthusiasm at LitHub.
RESERVED: WHAT ARE YOU excited to read next?
This new book of poems by Joshua Beckman has already caught my attention! He writes, "The cupped hand is a bowl / The pore is a bowl / The tilted mouth, head back, is a bowl / The curled tongue is a bowl ...."
LOST & FOUND: WHAT IS A classic YOU loved reading or HAVE recently rediscovered?
MEMORY is one of my favorite works by a poet where Bernadette Mayer uses photography, other recording equipment, and writing to better explore a month in her life in 1971.
TOP SHELF: What’s your favourite book ever?
FOLDED PURSE by Tessa Berring is pure magic! "There are birds in the side street / and birds in the side room... / and it is hard to tell which birds / belong to the side street / and which to the side room / and they are all invisible."
A masterpiece of innovative poetry, she has a new audience in England and elsewhere, with a US edition of her poems coming out from Winter Editions. "Would you confound—in dual languor / another artifice of sapped inventions, interred smiles // as if the moon miscarried / her inanimate yellow."
