Editor’s Note: Tess Taylor is the author of five collections of poetry, including Work & Days and Rift Zone. She is releasing the anthology Leaning Toward Light: Poems For Gardens and The Hands That Tend Them this coming August. The views expressed here are her own. Read more opinion on CNN.
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Last year, Adrian Matejka took the helm of Poetry Magazine, a venerable magazine that turned 110 years old on his watch. Matejka, who was born in Germany as part of a military family and grew up in Indianapolis, Indiana, became the first Black person ever to edit the magazine. For National Poetry Month this year, he talked with Tess Taylor about rap, public service, writing a graphic novel – “Last On His Feet: Jack Johnson and the Battle of the Century,” – community gardening and building a big tent for art, as well as what it means to take over a storied literary institution and build it for the present.
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
Tess Taylor: How did you come to poetry?
Adrian Matejka: You know, I wanted to be a rapper, but I was terrible at it. No rhythm, no flow, so I gave it up. Then I heard Yusef Komunyakaa read. And when I heard him, I was just like, you gotta be kidding me. It sounded like making music. I knew I wanted to do what he was doing. I had no idea how hard it actually is to make a poem…. No idea. I just knew I wanted to engage. This was in Bloomington, Indiana, in college. I don’t think I’d even read a poem before then. And Yusef was doing a fundraiser for a coffee shop that he liked to write in. The only coffee shop in Bloomington at the time, Runcible Spoon. It’s still there. They have amazing blueberry pancakes. And this one day Yusef was in a corner with — you remember Mr. Microphone? The little speaker and amplifiers? Something like that, just in a corner. I had never heard anything like that. I hate to be dramatic about it. But I felt like my life changed when I heard him read.
Taylor: You’ve taken over a magazine that turned 110 years old and is deeply storied. What’s it like to step into that history?
Matejka: You know, it’s pretty heavy. When you think about 110 years, and I’m the first Black lead editor? There’s only been one woman as lead editor, Harriet Monroe, and she founded the magazine. In between, some of the most famous poets to walk the earth have appeared in the pages. On the one hand, we have this beautiful artistic history, part of the history of our art in America. On the other hand, we’ve got spaces, gaps and absences in that history that need to be attended to. I’m really proud of the work we’ve been doing since I came into the building. But it’s also, like I said, a heavy history. It’s not easy to untangle the politics and aesthetic challenges that have taken place from one decade to the next for 110 years.
Taylor: What are some of your new moves?
Matejka: We’ve been doing these folios — deep selections of 20-30 pages — of people who haven’t appeared in the magazine previously but who should have. My very first issue had one dedicated to Carolyn M. Rogers, who was a finalist for the National Book Award and a citizen of Chicago, you know, co-founder of the oldest independent Black press, Third World Books. She was never in the magazine. After that, Will Alexander, Diana Solís, Bert Meyers and more. Over the years, there were many, many poets from marginalized communities who never had space made for them. That’s part of our mission: to try to make that room in the contemporary version of Poetry.
Taylor: We talked a lot about casting a wide net and inviting people in, being a big tent for poetry. Tell me what that means to you.
Matejka: Recently, I realized I don’t really think of myself as an editor, I think of myself as a convener — hopefully of an editorial space that is inviting and capacious enough to hold the wide range of aesthetics of contemporary poetry. As you know, more people are writing poetry right now than ever before. Their wants and their desires for what’s on the page change with geography, change with nation, with identity. But there is a deep desire to connect, to listen and to be heard. And so being able to create a space that can hold all of those wants without judgment or hierarchical construction is a challenge, but it’s what the editorial team and I have been trying to do. We want to make room for everybody without losing rigor. To be inviting, to be welcoming, but also to…
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