For the first time in its decades of existence, the Washington State-based independent press Empty Bowl has published the work of an Asian American female author.

The work in question is Virga, a full-length book of poetry written before and during the pandemic, and the author is Shin Yu Pai, a writer, photographer, and editor with no shortage of accolades. Virga is Pai’s eleventh collection of work, and her first full-length book of poetry in eight years. It follows and consists of unpublished poems written during the time that Pai assembled her last project ENSO, which was released by Entre Rios Books at the beginning of the pandemic and made Boston Globe’s “Best Books of 2020” list.

For this bonus episode host Hiba Tahir interviews celebrated writer, illustrator, and poet, Jasmin Kaur. They discuss her debut poetry and prose collection, When You Ask Me Where I’m Going, published by HarperCollins.

Poet and writer Hanif Abdurraqib strives to pursue whatever curiosities are in his mind when he sits down to write. The end result this time around is his latest poetry collection A Fortune for Your Disaster, exploring grief, change, heartbreak, history, and moving forward. Fortune, out this month from Tin House Books, is his second poetry collection, following 2016’s The Crown Ain’t Worth Much. 

Poet January Gill O’Neil, author of the fall 2018 release Rewilding, might not believe that poetry is ever necessarily on the side of power— but she does equate the two.

“Poetry is power,” O’Neil insists. “Making the choice to sit down and write or read a poem is power. It’s a choice. It’s self-care. It’s the start of a revolution. It’s change. Like a photo, a poem captures a moment. And that is powerful.” 

The Cave Canem fellow has been published widely to much critical acclaim, including in The New York Times Magazine, the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day series, American Poetry Review, New England Review, Ploughshares and Ecotone, among others. In 2018, she was awarded a Massachusetts Cultural Council grant, and from 2012-2018, she served as executive director of the Massachusetts Poetry Festival.

First, a thought. Or a dream, a happening, an itch, a longing, an aversion, a quickening, a word. Then a poem, and after more time and more poems, maybe one adheres to another, and that to another still, and eventually an idea of poems together. A book.

This is how it happens, a book of poetry. Can happen. Might.