Hoard – S. Erin Batiste

2021 Jack Straw writer S. Erin Batiste’s full-length poetry collection, Hoard, deals with the complexity of memory and the ways in which we collect possessions and stories. In her conversation with curator E.J. Koh, they discuss confessional poetry, mall culture of the 1980s and ‘90s, and the intersection of privilege and minimalism. “I think for me the minimalism, especially the trendiness of it, reads as whiteness, and erasure . . . and a privilege to be able to strip everything in ways where a lot of us are having to sit with our histories, especially people who . . . are in this country who were othered.”

Music by Andrew Weathers, produced in part through the Jack Straw Artist Support Program.