Interview with CAConrad, Judge of the 2025 Queer Poetry Prize
Celebrating Queer Poetry in the New Age of Heterosexual Violence & Absolute Stupidity!
CAConrad has worked with the ancient technologies of poetry and ritual since 1975. Their latest book is Listen to the Golden Boomerang Return (Wave Books / UK Penguin 2024). They received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, a PEN Josephine Miles Award, a Creative Capital Grant, a Pew Fellowship, and a Lambda Award. The Book of Frank is now available in 13 different languages, and they coedited SUPPLICATION: Selected Poems of John Wieners (Wave Books). They exhibit poems as art objects with recent solo shows in Tucson, Arizona, as well as in Spain and Portugal. They teach at the Sandberg Art Institute in Amsterdam.
Interview with CAConrad
by Marcella Haddad
Marcella Haddad: What have you been bringing your attention to recently in poetry?
CAConrad: 2025 is my 50th anniversary of writing poems, and it is a miracle that I am here to celebrate, considering that I lost half of everyone I loved to AIDS in the 1980s and 90s. I’m developing a new (Soma)tic poetry ritual called Growing Old & Dying: No Interventions. I’m working out the details, but it is inspired by a handful of gay friends in Los Angeles. We are all the same age, but they use Botox and plastic surgery. Last year, they asked me to tell people I’m older when we’re out in public because they think they look younger. To me, they do not look younger, just different, and not in a good way, frankly. I said to them, “We survived, just think of all our beloved friends who died when we were all so young! There are so few of us Generation X queers left alive for Fuck’s Sake! Don’t you see what an incredible odyssey it is to watch our bodies age?” They disagreed, and one of them came into the room while I was sleeping and applied cream to my crow’s feet. I just let him do it, even though it was stupid. I waited until he left with his satisfied grunt and wiped it off. I love them, but they make me sad. I’m celebrating every damned wrinkle and decay of my body for all of our lovely friends and lovers who died many decades ago!
There is a ritual I have been writing with for a couple of years called First Light. I’m going to give a talk about it soon in Amsterdam. Let me share with you the announcement:
FIRST LIGHT: Sunlight and Class Warfare
Drawing on years of writing through (Soma)tic rituals, CAConrad will discuss their latest, titled “First Light,” which is a meditation on sunrise and how that moment of returning light feeds cells, warms bodies, and illuminates the day and also how the impacts of greed have turned the best qualities of our planet’s star against the most vulnerable.
Haddad: What are some of your favorite examples of queer poetry?
CAConrad: A remarkable book from last year that is anti-corporate, anti-national, pro-queer body, and pro-queer sex is called She by my dear old friend Kirby from Knife Fork Book Press. Kirby also lost many friends in the early years of the AIDS crisis, and you can feel the “I’m not taking any shit from anybody” vibe all over these pages! I have read Colin Herd’s You Name It several times, and Andrea Lawlor’s Position Papers. Erica Kaufman is one of my favorite queer poets; I just can’t get enough of her genius, like her books Post Classic and Instant Classic. The poet Nat Raha’s latest book, apparitions (nine), is a power I want everyone to experience! I was honored to coedit Supplication: Selected Poems of John Wieners, and this collection contains the original 1958 edition of his Hotel Wentley Poems that Frank O’Hara fell in love with. The Blue Scar, by Alexandra Grilikhes is a book of poems for my desert island pick! Mark Hyatt’s So Much For Life is one of the most extraordinary collections of poetry I have ever read! Xavier Villaurrutia’s Nostalgia for Death is a classic the world will always need. Eduardo Martínez-Leyva has a fantastic new collection called Cowboy Park. Precious Okoyomon’s latest collection is an overwhelming must-read called But Did You Die? I hope everyone has read Camonghne Felix’s Build Yourself a Boat, but if not, please do so as soon as possible. Please read everything you can find by these trans-superstar poets, Trish Salah, Isadora Neves Marques, Callie Gardner, Jimmy Cooper, Jayson Keery, Jamie Townsend, Amir Rabiyah, So Mayer, Ari Banias, Eileen Myles, TC Tolbert, Ching-In Chen, Faye Chevalier, Oliver Baez Bendorf, kari edwards, Julian Talamantez Brolaski, Taylor Johnson, Imogen Xtian Smith, Levi Bentley, Ryan Cook, Samuel Ace, Davi Nicoll, Emji Saint Spero, Roque Raquel Salas Rivera, Kay Gabriel, Maxe Crandall, Andrea Abi-Karam, Cody-Rose Clevidence, Ely Shipley, David Wolach, Duriel E. Harris, Emerson Whitney, Ariel Goldberg, Zoe Tuck, Cameron Awkward Rich, and Caspar Heinemann! Judy Grahn feels like a High Priestess of queer poetry to me! Also, I know most people do not place Bernadette Mayer as queer, but she did have many loving relationships with women! I suggest starting with her book MIDWINTER DAY, a 128-page epic poem she wrote in one day on December 22nd, 1978. This book changed me forever, and made me want to read everything that she had ever published! Please read my memorial letter to Bernadette Mayer for The Poetry Project Newsletter at this link.
Other queer poetry collections I have read multiple times include Mature Themes, by Andrew Durbin, Instructions for The Lovers, by Dawn Lundy Martin, Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers, by Jake Skeets, The Tennis Court Oath, by John Ashbery, Your Silence Will Not Protect You, by Audre Lorde, Night Sky with Exit Wounds, by Ocean Vuong, Companion Animal, by Magdalena Zurawski, Sir, by HR Hegnauer, Soho, by Richard Scott, Genesis, by Crisosto Apache, What to Carry Into the Future, by Sue Landers, Mannequin in the Nude, by Logan February, Gutter Ball, by Allie McKean, Fall Garment, by Paul Cunningham, Slingshot, by Cyrée Jarelle Johnson, Trace Evidence, by Charif Shanahan, Pig, by Sam Sax, The Length of This Gap, by Kristen Nelson, I’m a Pretty Circler, by Iain Morrison, Transitory, by Crystal Bacon, and Sekxphrastiks, by Jane Goldman! And always read Cedar Sigo! I heard Cedar give a brilliant and moving talk last year at Bard College, where he discussed the often-harsh complexities of being both Native American and queer in American poetry. There are so many others, but let me mention one more. Legendary and inimitable queer writer Michelle Tea asked me to blurb a book about to be published by her Dopamine Press in 2025 called Self-Romancing, by L Scully. Here’s what I wrote: To those who have never believed poetry can be a page-turner, may you get to turning! The addictive reading of this brilliant poetry collection is a testament to the ears and breath aligned with the music L Scully joins for us at every corner of our imaginations. This book is like dreaming alongside a giant who is a farmer who used to be a flower who used to be a stack of typed pages. Dream and turn onward! I’m a fan of this colossal opening the poems make around the heart so it may grow, and much gratitude Dear Poet!
Haddad: What is the most important skill for an aspiring poet to develop?
CAConrad: Love of poetry. In the 50 years I have been writing, more than 95% of all the poets I met stopped writing. The payoff for poetry must be your absolute love of it; in other words, not awards, not publication, because without love, you will likely stop. We must treat our creativity as a vital organ in our bodies. I have been asked to choose a winner for this contest, but I want everyone who enters to understand how valuable their poetry is for so many reasons.
Haddad: For any poets who are struggling to write, where should they go for inspiration?
CAConrad: Don’t go anywhere; look around you wherever you are. Poetry doesn’t need exceptional circumstances or geographies. Falling in love with poetry and making it the center of your life allows you to deeply observe the world and see the creative viability in everything around you.
Haddad: Do you have a revision process?
CAConrad: I remove words until it is offering corresponding ideas rather than a thread. Allowing space for the reader to cocreate with us means they get to see how they are also poets.
Haddad: How do you know when a poem is finished?
CAConrad: Oh, they’re never finished, they are abandoned. Just trust yourself to know when it is time to abandon the poem and move on to the next.
Haddad: Is there a difference between poetry that you write for yourself, and poetry that you publish?
CAConrad: Is this a real thing? If I separated the poetry that comes from the body like you say, I would not bother writing.
Haddad: How has your poetry changed over the years?
CAConrad: Fewer words, just enough words. I’m not a prose writer; I’m a poet, and I want to make room for the reader’s imagination.
Haddad: What is your current writing, poetry, or career goal?
CAConrad: To continue loving it and honoring the spirits who help me write.
Haddad: What are you most excited to see in submissions for The Queer Poetry Prize?
CAConrad: Poems that make me see the world in new ways because, for me, that is the best thing poems can do.