Joseph Lease’s critically acclaimed books of poetry include The Body Ghost, Testify, Broken World, and Human Rights. His poem “Broken World (for James Assatly)” was selected for The Best American Poetry 2002, edited by Robert Creeley and David Lehman. His work has also been featured on NPR and published in The AGNI 30th Anniversary Poetry Anthology, Bay Poetics, No Gender, Denver Quarterly, Colorado Review, Fence, The Paris Review, Talisman Magazine, to name a few. Joseph Lease lives and works in Oakland, CA.
His latest book is Fire Season, published by Chax Press. City Lights will be celebrating this publication with a virtual conversation and reading with Joseph Lease on Tuesday, November 14, 2023 at 6pm PT. Register here!
Where are you writing to us from?
The living room of the Oakland apartment I share with my wife, the poet Donna de la Perrière, and our cat, Emily Dickinson.
What is bringing you joy right now, personally/artistically/habitually?
Coffee, friendships, my family, my students, books, cats, October light.
Which writers, artists, and others influence your work in general, and this book, specifically?
This book is informed by the work of so many writers and thinkers: Giorgio Agamben, Charles Alexander, Kate Aronoff, Roland Barthes, Dodie Bellamy, Jem Bendell, Octavia E. Butler, Robert Creeley, Donna de la Perrière, Emily Dickinson, Amitav Ghosh, Allen Ginsberg, Roland Greene, James Hansen, Donna Haraway, Stefano Harney and Fred Moten, Bob Kaufman, Jamaica Kincaid, Naomi Klein, Elizabeth Kolbert, Hank Lazer, Andreas Malm, George Monbiot, Toni Morrison, Anahid Nersessian, Akilah Oliver, Cynthia Ozick, Donald Revell, Adrienne Rich, David Shapiro, Ayisha Siddiqa, Rebecca Solnit, Juliana Spahr, Mark Statman, Greta Thunberg, David Wallace-Wells, Lisa Wells, Kathryn Yusoff, and many, many others.
It’s also informed by both ongoing events, like environmental devastation and the global movement toward fascism, and personal ones, like the deaths of my mother and father.
What books are you reading right now and would you recommend any to others?
I just read Charles Alexander’s brilliant new book, Time Being, and I’m re-reading an old favorite, Toni Morrison’s Beloved. I would recommend both to everyone.
If you opened a bookstore, where would it be located, what would it be called, and what would your bestseller be?
It would be located in downtown Oakland. Its name would be “The Language,” after Robert Creeley’s great poem. And its bestsellers would be poetry — all poetry, all the time.
