Drunken Boat #13 - Douglas Kearney

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Douglas Kearney

Poet/performer/librettist/educator Douglas Kearney’s first full-length collection of poems, Fear, Some, was published in 2006 (Red Hen Press). Catherine Wagner chose his second, The Black Automaton Fence Books 2009), for the National Poetry Series. Automaton was also a finalist for the Pen Center USA Award (2010). A Whiting Writers’ Award recipient and Cave Canem fellow, Kearney has performed his poetry at the Public Theatre, Orpheum, and The World Stage. His poems have appeared in Callaloo, jubilant, nocturnes, Ninth Letter, Southampton Review, Washington Square, Ploughshares, and Gulf Coast. He teaches at CalArts and Antioch.

I’ve said that The Black Automaton was my attempt to write a book that would feel like Sly and the Family Stone’s There’s A Riot Goin’ On and Radiohead’s Kid A. I don’t know if I managed the former’s mess and murk but I feel like I got closer to the latter’s careful austerity. What I did get from Riot is a rootsiness beneath the experimental decay. The “Black Automaton” poems are modeled after early De La Soul albums, the one’s Prince Paul produced. I think I got those. Anyway, here’s the playlist in no particular order—it includes tracks that I quote in some of the poems, songs with textures/composition strategies I tried to synthesize, songs that inspired whole poems and artists who give me fuel. I limited it to one track per artist.