Forum From the Archives: In 'Stereo(TYPE),' poet Jonah Mixon-Webster Analyzes Identity and His Hometown Flint, Michigan

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KQED

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4.2 • 727 Ratings

🗓️ 29 December 2021

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

"It is 2020 and the City of Flint Says, / 'Don't boil the water' / And I refuse to drink a single drop / from any tap or bottle now. I've stopped / bathing completely, waiting for rain to slick / my skin back on. So begins Jonah Mixon-Webster's poem "Incubation," featured in his debut poetry collection, Stereo(TYPE). Initially published by Ahsahta Press in 2018 and re-published by Knopf Doubleday this month, "Stereo(TYPE)" describes Mixon-Webster's experiences and traumas endured as a Black queer man and criticizes the governmental neglect and treatment of his hometown, Flint, Michigan. In poems that vary in form and use words that overlap and span pages, balancing harshness with tenderness, Mixon-Webster's poetry collection explores what it means to tell one's story - and the story of one's community - through experiments in language. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for KQED Podcasts comes from Landmark College, commemorating 40 years of educating people who learn differently, with programs on campus and online for both students and professionals.
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0:31.0	From KQED.
0:33.7	Welcome back to Forum.
0:35.1	I'm Mina Kim.
0:36.6	Jonah Nixon-Webster is a poet and a conceptual and sound artist from Flint, Michigan.
0:42.4	And listening to him read and performance poetry is an experience. His debut poetry collection is titled Stereotype.
0:51.1	Jonah Mixon Webster, welcome to Forum.
0:55.5	Hello, thank you so much for having me. Thank you so much.
0:58.4	We're so glad to have you here, and I'm so excited to learn that you prepared to read a poem for us,
1:04.8	the poem incubation, a five-minute meditation on Flint's water crisis. Did you want to say anything about the poem first or just go right into it?
1:15.9	I think I'll just go right into it and then maybe we can talk about it. Yeah, that sounds great.
1:20.7	All right, perfect. Incubation. It is 2020 and the city of Flint says, don't boil the water.
1:30.7	And I refuse to drink a single drop from any tap or bottle now.
1:35.9	I've stopped bathing completely, waiting for rain to slick my skin back on.
	...

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