The Life of a Poet Featuring Celebrated Poet and Librettist Janine Joseph in Conversation with Poet/Editor Kyle Dargan

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Established in 2013, The Life of a Poet is a quarterly series of in-depth literary conversations. The series offers a rare opportunity to consider a writer’s entire career and explore the major events that have shaped their work. Readings from that work are interspersed throughout the conversation. Originally moderated by Washington Post book critic Ron Charles, the series is now helmed by noted poet and editor Kyle Dargan. Over the years featured poets have included Terrance Hayes, Elizabeth Alexander, Ada Limon, Marilyn Chin, Adrian Matejka, and Carl Phillips among many others.

Janine Joseph is a formerly undocumented poet and librettist from the Philippines. She is the author of Decade of the Brain, winner of the 2024 Virginia Literary Award for Poetry, and Driving without a License, winner of the 2014 Kundiman Poetry Prize and finalist for the 2017 Oklahoma Book Award. She is also co-editor of the anthology Here to Stay: Poetry and Prose from the Undocumented Diaspora, now available from Harper Perennial. A Paul & Daisy Soros Fellow and Public Voices Fellow of the OpEd Project, she is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Virginia Tech, where she was previously the inaugural Dean’s Distinguished Visiting Scholar.

Since 2017, Janine has organized for Undocupoets, a nonprofit literary organization that advocates for poets who are currently or who were formerly undocumented in the United States. In 2021, Undocupoets was featured in the children’s book, In the Spirit of a Dream: 13 Stories of American Immigrants of Color. Janine also serves on the Artistic Advisory Panel for Oklahoma Arts Institute at Quartz Mountain.

Her poetry, essays, and critical writings have appeared in numerous venues, including Newsweek, The Nation, The Atlantic, The Georgia Review, Poetry Northwest, The Rumpus, Pleiades, World Literature Today, Poets & Writers, Kenyon Review Online, The Poem’s Country: Place & Poetic Practice, The Asian American Literary Review, VIDA: Women in Literary Arts, the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day series, and the Smithsonian’s “What It Means to Be American” project. A librettist, her commissioned works for Symphony New Hampshire, Washington Master Chorale, and Houston Grand Opera include Extraordinary Motion: Concerto for Electric Harp, The Art of Our Healers, What Wings They Were, ‘On This Muddy Water’: Songs from the Houston Ship Channel, and From My Mother’s Mother. Read more here.

Kyle Dargan is the author of the poetry collection Anagnorisis (TriQuarterly/Northwestern UP, 2018), which was awarded the 2019 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize and longlisted for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in poetry. His four previous collections, Honest Engine (2015), Logorrhea Dementia (2010), Bouquet of Hungers (2007) and The Listening (2003)–were all published by the University of Georgia Press. For his work, he has received the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and grants from the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities. His books have also been finalists for the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and the Eric Hoffer Awards Grand Prize. Dargan has partnered with the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities to produce poetry programming at the White House and Library of Congress. He’s worked with and supports a number of youth writing organizations, such as 826DC, Writopia Lab, Young Writers Workshop and the Dodge Poetry high schools program. He is currently an Associate Professor of literature and Asst. Director of creative writing at American University, as well as the founder and editor of POST NO ILLS magazine. He also works as a Managing Editor for Janelle Monae’s creative company, Wondaland. Originally from Newark, New Jersey, Dargan is a graduate of Saint Benedict’s Prep, The University of Virginia and Indiana University.

East City Bookshop will have books available for sale. A booksigning will follow the conversation. You can watch Kyle Dargan’s October 17th conversation with poet Camonghne Felix below.