January 20th, 2026 — Kaveh Akbar (CRF 2021) and Jamila Woods (CRF 2023) took the stage of the historic Metro venue in Chicago on November 25th, 2025 for a live collaboration as part of SongWriter, a long-running podcast and live series created by musician and author Ben Arthur. Previous guests have included Questlove, George Saunders, Susan Orlean and David Sedaris. The show has been released today on the podcast, available to listen to for free at songwriterpodcast.com.
At the show, Kaveh read a new poem that he wrote for Jamila. “All of It” is about empathy, and our conflicting sense of helplessness and responsibility in the face of the suffering in Gaza, Sudan, Ukraine, and at home in the US. “That sense of ‘How could you allow this?’ Kaveh said, “like we are all, at this moment, allowing it.” Like the main character in his novel Martyr!, Kaveh struggles with guilt and has been clear that art is not a sufficient response to suffering, but that it can help inform and grow our empathy.
“I do think that if one imagines empathy as a function of the imagination,” Kaveh said, “art can play a role in that imagination-expanding, giving us the reps we need to remember that every one of those numbers we were talking about was a human being who has a heart that could fit in your chest.”
At the show, which benefited local non-profit A Long Walk Home, Jamila performed a new song she wrote in response to Kaveh’s poem, and described her own struggle making art in response to profound suffering.
“I realized…I’m more looking into my own eyes in the mirror, looking at people around me, looking at humanity. Kind of: ‘What can we do here?’” She continued by saying, “Finding a way to write about [what’s happening], that is not just re-representing the violence I am trying to grapple with is something that I think is a little bit, not easier in poetry,” Jamila said. “[But] I don’t have to consider the sound of it in the same way.”
Dr. Eman Abdelhadi, who studies empathy at the University of Chicago, provided foundational context in the discussion. Dr. Abdelhadi said she understood Kaveh’s poem as addressing the sociological concept of alienation. When an audience member asked about holding on to empathy in the face of hate, Dr Abdelhadi encouraged people to see corrosive social structures, not people, as the enemy.
“Society is more than the sum of the individuals within it,” Dr. Abdelhadi said. “We exist in social structures. These structures exist independent of the individuals in them. So I think there’s a way to condemn the system and focus on changing these structures, while retaining as much empathy as we can for individual people. And understanding that people can be different in different circumstances. The enemy is the system that produces ICE, and it’s that enemy that we should be fighting.”
Listen to the full taping of the show on the podcast now at songwriterpodcast.com.
