You're listening to the New Yorker Poetry Podcast.

I'm Kevin Young, poetry editor of the New Yorker magazine.

On this program, as you may recall, we ask poets to select a poem in the New Yorker

archive to read and discuss, along with one of their own poems that's been published

in the magazine.

My guest today is Sophia Sinclair, whose honors include a Whiting Award,

a Medcoff Award for the American Academy of Arts and Letters,

an O.C.M. Bokas Prize for Caribbean Poetry,

and a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation.

Thank you for joining us today.

Thanks for having me.

So, Sophia, the poem you've decided to read for us is from the desire field by Natalie Diaz,

which was published as part of Envelopes of Air, our online feature by Natalie Diaz and Ada

Limo.

It was our first interactive poetry feature at New Yorker.com.

Tell us what drew you to this particular poem as you were perusing the archives.

This poem is, to me, so magical in its imagery, in its texture, and the way she builds not just a system of imagery,

but returning to this refrain of green and desire.

Let's hear it.

Here's Sophia Sinclair reading from The Desire Field by Natalie Diaz.

From the desire field.

I don't call it sleep anymore.

...