Valzhyna Mort II

Poet and Lannan Fellow Valzhyna Mort, whose work gives insight into her native Belarus, reads from her 2011 book, Collected Body. She talks about the inspiration of her grandmother and her themes of migration, movement and the exiled body. Mort also discusses family, nature, and various landscapes—from her own landlocked place of origin to the Caribbean islands of poet Ishion Hutchinson. She also discusses her Sylt poems, that were published with this interview in New Letters magazine (Vol. 79, No. 2) and published in 2014 Best American Poetry. Fall 2020 marks the release of her next poetry collection, Music for the Dead and Resurrected with a preview recording in The New Yorker. Part One of this conversation before the 2012 Midwest Poets Series features her earlier book, Factory of Tears.