The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Talks to Malcolm Tariq

At The Rumpus, Malcolm Tariq talks to Brian Spears and other members of the Rumpus Poetry Book Club about his new collection, Heed the Hollow (Graywolf Press, November 2019). From their conversation:

Liz: Malcolm, my copy of the book is basically one long blur of my underlinings and notes. I don’t even know where to start with a particular poem or line, because over and over again I was challenged and fascinated and smiling at your playful inventiveness. But one of my absolute favorites was “Common Feast.” “Intimacy is not a clean thing.” The way you shifted from food to sex, innards of pigs, and the several meanings of “cheeks”—remarkable…

Malcolm Tariq: Ahhhh, that poem. One of my friends recently asked me why there were so many references to food in the collection. Which I hadn’t really thought about it! Cooking is one of my passions, but I didn’t think about it a lot as I was writing. Kind of funny how that happened.

Liz: Structuring the poem around who you would tell secrets to, including telling the reader what you would tell “no one”—you create such an intimacy with the reader.

Malcolm Tariq: I have also never had chitlins, but the concept has always been intriguing to me.

Liz: I am actually laughing out loud about the chitlins.

Brian S: Eating is also, at least in the part of the South where I grew up, very much a communal experience. The cooking can be as well, though you better know what you’re doing or you’ll get chased out of the kitchen.

What’s the food from home that you can’t get in Brooklyn unless you make it yourself?

Malcolm Tariq: So many things...