I had the pleasure of speaking with Darragh Mac AnGhaill—Glasgow-based medievalist, game designer, hurler, bartender, and Irish speaker—to talk about the hottest trend of the summer: Gaelmaxxing.

We cover:

* What’s driving the surge of interest in Irish and other Gaelic languages

* Irish politics today, north and south

* Slaves, coins, cows, Brehon Law, and other common misconceptions about medieval Ireland and Gaelic culture

* The unique cultural and political ties between Ireland and Palestine

* The Fenian invasion of Canada by way of Buffalo

* The meaning of my name

* And much more

To learn more about Darragh and his work, visit:

* Darragh on TikTok: dazzagazza1916

* Darragh on IG: @darraghmacanghaill

* Colún Games

* Madra Teanga

Enjoy!

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The Western New York Book Arts Center recently ended its “Cindy Suffoletto” exhibition. This show featured over 40 mixed media collage works that Cindy produced in the last years of her life. They were never exhibited, and mostly unframed until now. It was the first exhibition of any works by Cindy since her appearance in “Autour de Kolar-Collage” at Galerie Schüppenhauer in Cologne, Germany in 1990.

To close the exhibition, I had a conversation with Nancy Weekly, a friend and champion of Cindy’s husband Andy Topolski and a longtime curator at the Burchfield Penney Art Center in Buffalo. Nancy wrote a wonderful essay for the exhibition catalog; you can read it here.

One way of looking at Cindy’s approach to represent women artists is her composition that incorporates an embroidery hoop. Consider all the anonymous women who expressed themselves for centuries through stitchery, sewing, and quilting because these were the only media approved for their efforts. A small key attached to the hoop either locks the dragonfly woman in or is the means of her escape.

WNYBAC recorded our talk, and those who missed it now can watch and listen on Organizing Isolation.

Where will Cindy’s work appear next?

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I first visited the Ostwall in 2014 (an episode that made it into the book), and I was honored to return in January 2026 for the final stop of my book tour. This was a special event, something that we’ll never be able to repeat. Lucky for you, Berthold Spruch captured most of it on video.

We began with a reading of the book’s prologue. Then the Ostwall screened my documentary, the film version of I Am Here You Are Not I Love You (which is available in the U.S. on Amazon Prime Video). We interrupted the film twice for live interviews with two friends of Andy and Cindy: the Peiting, Bavaria-based artist Peter Mayer and the Köln gallerist Christel Schüppenhauer. Then I read the section of the book that takes place in Dortmund, featuring my friends Steve Coffed, Matthias Spruch, and Sebastian Lindecke.

The final movement of the night was possible only through the inspired support of some of Europe’s finest musicians.

The band Dammnation, featuring Matthias and Sebastian, performed an interpretation of “Navigator,” an intermedia piece by Andy that drew on the history and geography of the Niagara Frontier region of Western New York to determine its composition. They followed this with “Navigator RFR,” an extension of the ideas in the original “Navigator” for the Rhine Ruhr region of Germany, home to Dortmund. Both featured Rachelle, reading a poem from her collection Hell Yeah that we felt harmonized with the rest of the night. And then Dammnation jammed on some of their original tunes.

Full program credits:

* Christina Danick - Curator, Museum Ostwall im Dortmunder U

* Aidan Ryan - Reading, film, interviews

* Peter Mayer - Artist (interviewee)

* Christel Schüppenhauer - Gallerist and curator, Schüppenhauer Art + Projects (interviewee)

For “Navigator”:

* Peter Köcke - Arrangement, conducting, and synthesizer

* Charlotte Ortolf - Tuba

* Julius “Javier Pajaro” Vogol - Trumpet

* Felix Riedel - Trumpet

* Milan Kühn - Tenor saxophone

* David Schwarz - Keyboards

* Max Jäckel - Bass

* Alex Doberman - Guitar

* Matthias Spruch - Guitar

* Sebastian Lindecke - Drums

* Michael Peters-Thöne - Drums

* Rachelle Toarmino - Poetry

The liqueur that fueled the development of our program (visible over my left shoulder in the library):

* Los Malos Pajaros, a limited-release hierbas developed by Dammnation and Krämer Brennerei

So fast as Düörpm!

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Among many other things, we discuss the release of The Spirit of Ani, written with coauthor Lauren Coyle Rosen, which comes out tomorrow (March 3) from Akashic Books. Check it out.

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In this episode Alec and I discuss his legal background and the work of Civil Rights Corps, the size and scope of the U.S. punishment bureaucracy, copaganda’s co-opting of mainstream liberal discourse to support “reforms” like police-worn body cameras, observations from the second Trump administration’s deployment of federal policing forces, and what regular citizens can do to dismantle the punishment bureaucracy and deprogram its entrenched apologists. I hope you enjoy it.

More About Alec Karakatsanis

Alec is the Founder and Executive Director of Civil Rights Corps. He has pioneered constitutional civil rights cases to challenge the size, power, profit, and everyday brutality of the punishment bureaucracy across the United States. These legal challenges have helped to free hundreds of thousands of people from jail, returned tens of millions of dollars to indigent people and families, prevented hundreds of thousands of illegal convictions, prevented the separation of thousands of families, and transformed the way the U.S. criminal punishment bureaucracy handles fines, fees, and bail. Alec has also worked with directly impacted communities across the U.S. to design innovative new legal, advocacy, and narrative strategies for challenging widespread illegal and harmful practices of prosecutors, police, probation officers, judges, and private companies who work with them to profit from the punishment bureaucracy.

Alec graduated from Yale College in 2005 with a degree in Ethics, Politics, & Economics and Harvard Law School in 2008, where he was a Supreme Court Chair of the Harvard Law Review. Before founding Civil Rights Corps, Alec was a civil rights lawyer and public defender with the Special Litigation Division of the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia; a federal public defender in Alabama, representing impoverished people accused of federal crimes; and co-founder of the organization Equal Justice Under Law.

Alec is the author of two books, Usual Cruelty: The Complicity of Lawyers in the Criminal Injustice System (2019) and Copaganda: How Police and the Media Manipulate Our News (2025). He also writes a popular newsletter called Alec’s Copaganda Newsletter and regularly collaborates with visual artists, poets, musicians, and filmmakers to produce art about the punishment bureaucracy.

Important Links

* Copaganda: How Police and The Media Manipulate Our News

* Civil Rights Corps

* Alec Karakatsanis - The Copaganda Newsletter

* “The Body Camera” The Language of Our Dreams”

* Alec on X

* Alec on Bluesky

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Now I’m pleased to share a conversation with Martin recorded just this week. We discuss his background as a CIA analyst, his book, the differences between Trump 1.0 and Trump 2.0, the rise of Mamdani, DOGE, DHS, and more.

We disagree on some points, which makes for a more interesting conversation. (Martin is more skeptical about Mamdani, I’m more skeptical about Big Balls.) But I love that Martin is an uncommonly long-range thinker, always looking beyond the tectonic grinding of the present moment toward what might come next. I hope you enjoy it.

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So I’m releasing the audio as a standalone podcast episode—the shortest yet (and probably ever).

I’ll admit an ulterior motive. On almost every tour stop, someone has asked me why there isn’t an I Am Here audiobook. I have a face for radio, they say. A recording of the footnotes could put the most difficult child to sleep. The people want it; so where is it?

Well, Iowa doesn’t produce audiobooks, and no audiobook producers have come knocking. So consider this proof of concept. If you want to hear the whole thing, send this to your favorite audio publisher.

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Apartment Reading, Berlin, Germany, 17 January 2026

Hosted by Tracy Fuad, readings by Zack Darsee, Amelia Ada, Rachelle Toarmino, and Aidan Ryan, and music by Mary Elizabeth Dubois.

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L’Ours et la Vielle Grille, 9 Rue Larrey, 75005, Paris, France, 15 January 2026

Hosted by Oscar D’Artois. Readings by Lucy K. Shaw, Kristin D. Sanders, Will Mountain Cox, Aidan Ryan, and Rachelle Toarmino.

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We took advantage of some holiday travel to get together and look back on the weird but rewarding road that brought us here. Rachelle took over hosting duties and grilled Steve Coffed, Darren Canham, and me about the circumstances that created Foundlings, the shift from zine to press, our approach to book design and distribution, Foundlings and friendships, and what’s next. (Max was there in spirit, but his physical body was on the 79 to Pittsburgh.)

We also made a shameless plug: Foundlings and Lost Roads Press plan to put out four full-length titles this year and we need help to do it. We launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise $3,000 and fund our print runs. We’re already halfway to our goal. After you listen to the podcast, please consider swinging by Kickstarter to chip in (or just visit our website and place a pre-order.)

We didn’t have the ideal recording setup for this one, so you might be tweaking the dial. But I hope you’ll find it an interesting conversation.

Any other questions you wish Rachelle would have asked? Drop a comment!

And thanks for listening.

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Toward the end of this episode I discuss Three Mountains Press publisher William Bird (another Buffalonian!) and his 1925 publication A Draft of XVI. Cantos of Ezra Pound. Photos of a first edition of this publication are below. This one, of course, had Pound’s enthusiastic permission, and in fact Pound once envisioned all of his cantos would get this treatment, in the style of illuminated Medieval manuscripts.

William Augustus Bird IV came from a prominent Buffalo family. His grandfather, William A. Bird II (March 23, 1797 - August 19, 1878) served in the New York state assembly and ran for mayor of Buffalo in 1855. Bird II is interred in Forest Lawn Cemetery, along with his wife Eunice Porter Bird, sister of Peter Buell Porter, who made a fortune portaging goods between Lakes Erie and Ontario, commanded troops alongside Red Jacket in the War of 1812, and served in the U.S. Congress and the John Quincy Adams administration as Secretary of War.

The Bill Bird papers are at Yale. Maybe I’ll visit and find material for another episode. But I promise the next one will have nothing to do with Pound.

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Think of the pictures below as a visual companion to the podcast episode. You might want to follow along here as you listen or just come back to consult it later.

Anonym in the Copyright page of The Cantos of Ezra Pound, New Directions, 1977

This is where the mystery really took off for me. The Buffalo publication of Canto 120 was a myth until the authoritative New Directions collected Cantos confirmed it. But Why did Poetry, The New Yorker, Threshold, and Anonym get this special copyright treatment?

Two Cantos, Niagara Frontier Review (Buffalo), 1962

Drafts of Canto 110 and 116 precede what I believe to be Charles Olson’s oblique confession: Pound did not authorize these publications.

Two Versions of Canto 115: Belfast, 1962 and NYC, 1967

Watch as Canto 115 evolves between 1962 and 1967, in authorized and unauthorized publications.

The Cantos of Ezra Pound, 110-116, F**k You Press (NYC), 1967

Three hundred copies that changed everything, convincing Pound and New Directions publisher James Laughlin to release the remaining “drafts and fragments.”

Anonym Quarterly #4, ed. Mark K. Robison (Buffalo), 1969

Let the gods forgive Mark Robison. Like his model Charles Olson, he took it upon himself to publish a canto from Ezra Pound without the poet’s permission. He couldn’t have known it would be Pound’s last.

Improvised Poetics, 1971

Mark Robison’s further adventures in publishing.

Further Reading

* The Cantos Project

* Penn Sound: Ezra Pound

* Ezra Pound, the Art of Poetry No. 5, The Paris Review (interview by Donald Hall)

* Drafts & Fragments of Cantos CX-CXVII (pdf)

* University of Galway Archives - Threshold Literary Journal

* The F**k You Press Cantos: A Census, by Joshua Kotin

* Allen Ginsberg and Ezra Pound from the Fall of America Journals

* Robert Creeley, The Art of Poetry No. 10, The Paris Review

* Robert Creeley, “A Note on Ezra Pound”

* Joe Brainard, People of the World: Relax!!

* Charles Olson’s Buffalo, by Michael Boughn

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All of our talks involved slideshows; you can view mine here.

Timestamps:

00:00 - Intro

05:13 - Madeline McDonnell

19:00 - Caryl Pagel

30:15 - Aidan Ryan

46:49 - Zach Savich

1:00:00 - Audience Q&A

It was an honor for me to MC the event and conversation, and it was a special night for many reasons—not least because James assured me that his book tour will go no farther north than Buffalo. This is a “poetry town,” sure, but sometimes it can feel like we have a paltry, almost parochial idea of what that can mean. Yesterday’s discussion blew it wide open.

James and Leo read from their extraordinary books, each a significant contribution to Frank Stanford scholarship. As we discussed, those contributions also force a broader reckoning with the accepted narratives and presumptive “schools” and lineages of 20th century American poetry.

After about 30 minutes of reading we embarked on an hour of conversation (see approximate timestamps below). We discussed Stanford’s relationship with his literary contemporaries and the gravitational centers of poetry, from Fayetteville to NYC; the influences of Faulkner, Merton, Bushido, and the blues; the evolution of his relationship with the Lost Cause mythology and attitudes on race; his relationships with C.D. Wright, Ginny Crouch, Lucinda Williams, and other talented women; and his place in (or out of) the “canon” today. Check it out, and head to James’s website or Instagram for upcoming dates in other cities. Maybe you can catch him.

And please buy the books! One lucky reader walked away with a rare unbound cover from the first edition of Stanford’s epic, The Battlefield Where The Moon Says I Love You. Want your own? They’re available here—while they last.

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Timestamps:

* 00:02:30 - Leo Lensing reads from Subiaco’s Unofficial Poet Laureate

* 00:19:37 - James McWilliams reads the prologue of The Life and Poetry of Frank Stanford

* 00:33:40 - Conversation

Though I was born and raised and currently live in Western New York, I’ve never been to Lake Chautauqua. From what I’ve heard, though, Monteagle is a bit different.

To pass through the wooden boom gate, which a teenager in a guard both operates by hand, is to pass back in time—into an old-growth forest punctuated by Victorian cottages, log cabins, and the most impressive porches I’ve ever seen. Like “The Mothership” up north, the Assembly is organized around a summer-long program of creative and intellectual inquiry: my program for I Am Here You Are Not I Love You followed a lecture on planetology and preceded a briefing on the latest news from Pompeii and Herculaneum. But I competed for attention with tennis and pickleball tournaments, a farmer’s market and craft fair, and a four-day wilderness immersion for the teenagers. Cats, dogs, and kids rollick down the gravel roads and deep glens of the Assembly grounds; frequently I came across what seemed like hundreds of abandoned bicycles in the middle of a clearing or at the edge of one of the Assembly’s 140 year-old bridges, indicating the latest location of their traveling woodland carnival.

The children I did meet were uncommonly self-possessed: they introduce themselves, shake your hand, say goodbye to everyone present before they leave an Assembly porch for their next adventure. The parents and grandparents displayed the same politeness, and as I got to know more of them I learned to ask more probing questions, realizing the variety of the paths that had brought them here. There were plenty of investors and lawyers, sure—but I also met a couple who had started their own one-room schoolhouse; the chief author of the AP Latin exam; an author of hunting and fishing tales; an acoustic designer for music venues; and the founder of an alt-weekly magazine. They welcomed me immediately: I spent the night after my lecture celebrating a resident’s 49th birthday with a back porch game of giant jenga, Tennessee liquor flowing, deep cuts from run DMC filling the otherwise silent night. I could see why a family might keep coming here for seven generations.

I spoke on Thursday morning in the Assembly’s Warren Chapel. I’ve done my best to tailor each of these readings and talks to the audience, so for the Assembly, I focused on artistic and intellectual community and companionship. I read a few sections of the book for the first time—including one capturing and amusing exchange between the artists Bob Gulley and Jean-Michel Basquiat and another from the very end of the book, where I explain why I attempted the project and what “artistic community” means to me now. Check it out at the top of this post.

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Mark then took me for a tour of Sewanee University, where the annual writers conference was just wrapping up. It was cool to see my book stocked with titles from the other visiting writers—good company.

After a nap (the atmosphere demanded it) I rallied for a cocktail party at the Floyd cottage followed by a screening of the documentary in the Assembly auditorium. The space was huge, with the sounds of the night coming in from moveable wooden baffles on the sides of the building and bats occasionally flying across the screen.

Reminder: if you haven’t seen the film, you can rent or buy it on Amazon.

Next stop, I think, is the Cleveland Inkubator festival where I’ll be on a panel with Zach Savich, Caryl Pagel, and Madeline McDonnell—that’s Saturday September 13.

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I met Gabe in Buffalo in 2019. Our convenient location on the I-90 and rents that matched his first advance made Buffalo an attractive home, in between his roots in Chicago and Western Massachusetts, where he had recently completed his MFA. We went to the same poetry and art parties and traded thoughts on fiction and hip-hop, before he went south for a job teaching at the University of North Carolina and I went east to his old stomping grounds in the Valley. When I was putting together the tour for this book and learned that Gabe was headed back to UMass, I knew we had to meet up somewhere. I’m so grateful that he joined me for a reading and conversation at Unnameable Books in Turners Falls.

I opened the reading with a poem by Alice Notley, “One of the Longest Times,” which I felt marked an intersection between my project and some of Notley’s lifelong interests—communion with the dead, the making and remaking of personhood, the persistence of identities, experiences, and relationships across geological time. Then I read two sections from I Am Here You Are Not I Love You that I hadn’t spoken aloud since my final round of edits—never before an audience.

Gabe and I then had a wide-ranging conversation. I’m still still blown away by his sensitive reading and exciting questions—which I think you can hear in my voice on the recording. We talked about our relationship with Buffalo and ideas of “home,” success and celebrity, and how to persist as an artist, touching on the obvious examples of Andy and Cindy, our mutual friend Mickey Harmon, the extended Griselda universe, and our own experiences as writers. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

A tour is also a great excuse to make new friends. Rachelle and I recently met the photographer Nafis Azad at a wedding in Maine (thanks Meagan and Nigel), and he generously invited us to his studio in Whately near Turners Falls to see his studio and massive vintage Polaroid, a demo model that never went into commercial production. His portrait is below.

Sending my thanks out to Gabe, Nafis, Adam Tobin at Unnameable, and everyone who came to the reading.

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We spoke about our various projects, I read a little from the book, and we discussed our experiences, observations, and gripes as working writers and artists. The loose conversation took some interesting turns—we covered the who’s who of various named movements of the last century; public funding in the arts; the interplay of talent, charisma, and changeability; and Buffalo’s Vincent Gallo.

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I know many readers are eager for a readout from Buffalo, too. I’m cooking up something special to commemorate that night (with help from a friend)—so hang tight.

Next stop: Unnameable Books in Turners Falls, Massachusetts, 7pm on Saturday May 24, with my friend Gabriel Bump. If you’re in the Valley or the Hills, I’d love to see you there!

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Because of her help, I was able to open my KGB reading with three poems: my long poem that appears in Best New Poets 2019 and two new poems. All three, as it turns out, are about Rachelle. I did not beat the wife guy allegations.

After the poems, though, I read the prologue of I Am Here You Are Not I Love You, just two and a half pages. If you want to hear more, you’ll have to come see me at the official NYC launch, May 17 at Unnameable Books in Brooklyn.

My guests that night will be Howard Fishman and Charlie Clough. My companions tonight were my dear friends Ata Moharreri, Shelagh Dolan, and Julianne Neely.

As I listen to the first few seconds of my voice on this recording, I’m struck by the strength of the Buffalo accent. The irrepressible “āẽyhh.” I don’t have anything profound to say about this—just, wow. It’s stronger than I realized.

Thanks to Ata for setting this up, to John for the generous introduction, to Grace and Selena for all their work to keep this series going.

I’m looking forward to May 17 at Unnameable …

And then back to KGB for Rachelle’s Hell Yeah reading on October 20!

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Panel discussion recorded live at the New Orleans Poetry Festival and Small Press Book Fair, Sunday, April 13, 2025.

From the NOPF website:

This roundtable will explore the life and legacy of the poet Frank Stanford (1948-1978). Drawing on the unique expertise of each panelist, it will do so through several perspectives. James McWilliams, author of the first Frank Stanford biography (due out in the summer of 2025 with the University of Arkansas Press), will survey Stanford's early upbringing in Greenville, Mississippi; Memphis, Tennessee; Snow Lake, Arkansas; Mountain Home, Arkansas; and Subiaco, Arkansas. A. P. Walton, whose edited collection of Stanford's letters is also forthcoming from the University of Arkansas Press, will examine not only the intricate and deeply personal nature of Stanford's copious correspondence, but also how Stanford crafted those letters into a form of art that complemented his poems as he moved across various geographies in northwest Arkansas (Fayetteville, Rogers, Eureka Springs, Busch) and relationships. Poet Canese Jarboe will explore Stanford's poetics, giving special consideration to the rural and backcountry registers in Stanford's work, as well as the ongoing interplay between death and sexuality that animates so much of his poetry. Aidan Ryan, whose Foundlings Press has long promoted Stanford, will discuss the challenges involved in introducing a long neglected/overlooked poet to a larger audience of readers. As a filmmaker, Ryan can also comment on the cinematic nature of Stanford's writing. Finally, as poets who knew Stanford personally, Bill Willett and Ralph Adamo are in a unique position to discern the mythical Stanford from the actual Stanford, noting how Stanford negotiated his identity to craft a life that was dramatic, heroic, prolific, brilliant, and tragic.

* A. P. Walton

* Canese Jarboe

* James McWilliams

* Ralph Adamo

* Aidan Ryan

If you prefer, watch the video here: