This month, Group 2 Fellow Divya Victor (CRF 2023) is the guest editor for the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day series, which publishes new work by contemporary poets. In an interview with Poets.org, Divya spoke of happy hours reading in the Castle library and said her time at Civitella allowed her “to focus on a new collection of essays, prose poems, and ephemeral or transitory genres that take pleasure in understanding touch, curiosity, bliss, and frisson in literature, visual arts, film, and architecture” — a collection focused on the South Asian diaspora’s contribution to these fields.
Divya said her a Poem-a–Day choices would have an international bent. “I curated work from poets who wrestle with language as a localized act, as material speech that’s situated in nameable instances that hail us as marked subjects. I chose poems that may look harder, think in new shapes, demand more questions, and especially, I chose poems that go beyond seeking affirming, epiphanic assent.”
Read the full interview and tune in for Victor’s daily poetry picks here.