TH: Are you from there?
ML: No. I am from New York City
TH: Describe the poetry scene of your city in one line.
ML: There is a nice mixture of the old and the new. It is alive.
TH: What are a few of your favorite collections or poems to come out of Boston?
ML: 45 Mercy Street by Ann Sexton & I Thought I Was New Here by Gregory Lawless.
TH: What local poets are you most excited for the rest of the country to read?
ML: Greg Lawless, Rob MacDonald, and Kerrin McCadden.
TH: Is there a poem that best describes your city?
ML: “Boom I’m Home” by Sophie Weissbourd
TH: Do you have a favorite local press?
TH: If we were visiting, what reading series would you take us to?
ML: Blacksmith House Poetry Series
TH: If you could choose one poet to move to your city, who would it be?
ML: Michael Morse. He loves to play with language like it is some kind of refined Play Dough. His material is both super crystallized and wonderfully malleable. Morse’s poetry is a poetry of brotherly love, birds, baseball, and, of course, the big human heart that everyone is afraid of and everyone wants a piece of at the same time.
Matthew Lippman is the author of three poetry collections. His latest, AMERICAN CHEW, won The Burnside Review Book Prize (Burnside Review Book Press, 2013), MONKEY BARS (Typecast Publishing, 2010), and THE NEW YEAR OF YELLOW, winner of the Kathryn A. Morton Poetry Prize (Sarabande Books, 2007).