Once I noticed this pattern, I started thinking of the manuscript I was compiling as a series of dispatches: dispatches from my bedroom, dispatches from Ralph Ellison’s invisible narrator’s hole, dispatches from behind the Du Boisian veil. For that reason, I think, I found myself writing dozens of direct address poems-to my sister, my mother, ex-loves, strangers-because from all of that loneliness, all of that I I I, I was trying to feel a part of some kind of we. Much of Dispatch was written during a time when I felt very alone, very cut off from the world of other people. Could you talk about little bit about the title and how it emerged in your process?Ĭameron Awkward-Rich: Honestly, the title of the collection-like many of my titles-began as a joke with myself. There’s a sense of urgency and response or sending off. Robin Gow: Thinking about the title, “Dispatch,” I get a lot of different connotations of the word that you pick up in the poems. Currently, he is working on a book about maladjustment in trans literature and theory.

He is a Cave Canem fellow, a poetry editor for Muzzle Magazine, and his second collection of poetry, Dispatch, published by Persea Books came out in December 2019. Also a critic, Cameron earned his PhD from Stanford University’s program in Modern Thought & Literature, and he is an assistant professor of Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Cameron Awkward-Rich is the author of Sympathetic Little Monster (Ricochet Editions, 2016), which was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award.

Dispatch by Cameron Awkward-Rich