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This is a gallery of work specially created for #ThinAir2023. Spend time with writers you love, and discover some new favourites! Ceci est une galerie de travaux spécialement créée pour #ThinAir2023. Passez du temps avec des écrivains que vous aimez et découvrez de nouveaux favoris!Darby Minott Bradford (he/they) is a poet and translator based in Tio’tia:ke (Montreal). Bradford’s debut collection, Dream of No One but Myself (Brick Books, 2021), won the A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry, was longlisted for the Grand Prix du livre de Montréal, and was a finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize, Governor General’s Literary Awards and Gerard Lampert Memorial Award. His work has also appeared in Brick, The Capilano Review, Hazlitt, This Magazine, and elsewhere. House Within a House is his first translation, and Bottom Rail on Top, his second book of poetry, was published by Brick Books in fall 2023.
Interview / Entrevue
Lately I’ve been stuck on a line from Fred Moten’s latest book, perennial fashion presence falling: “the new black art is this: find the self and make a killing.” To me, it’s a prime example of the classic interlacing of meanings Moten is so deadly good at. I was tempted to tack it on to the epigraphs for Bottom Rail on Top. but it wasn’t a fit, just a perfect line! One day, though.
I like to think I strive to be a clean desk person, but admittedly I just want a clean desk so I can clutter it up freely. A cluttered desk reaches maximum capacity. So I inevitably go back and forth, but I feel like I’ve been trending toward getting it back to clean faster than I used to. Maybe? Anyhow, that’s my story.
All the little paperwork and hustle things: grants, taxes, emails (but not nearly as often as it used to be), stuff I need for a project, coordination crap, etc.
I’m increasingly finding that making all kinds of stuff does the best job of keeping me aloft. Getting these silly, messy thoughts and videos together gave me a bit of that—write a bit first thing, then fashion this voiceover for a while, then polish this sound up, figure all this stuff out. It gives a lot of my nervous energy a few extra release valves.
The secret ambition is pretty simple: to be good at all that. Which is to say, to not kid myself with all that. To feel like there’s a lot of shapes and sounds and forms I know how to give to all this stuff I’m turning over. And to know I can make them good vehicles for the writing brain.
