An Intense Kind of Listening: An Art Talk with Poet and NEA Literature Fellow Hadara Bar-Nadav

Whether taking on the persona of the sun to muse on mortality, or exploring the thumb as a microcosm of the range of human emotions, or exploring “Americanness” in an erasure poem made from the package insert of a prescription medicine, poet and NEA Literature Fellow Hadara Bar-Nadav’s work asks what it is to bear witness, what it is to grieve, what it means to remember, and ultimately, what it is to be human at a particular moment in history.

These questions seem even more urgent in these uncertain times, but Bar-Nadav assures us that rather than causing us to despair, reckoning with these essential questions through the vehicle of poetry, of the arts, can actually open us up to deeper and more profound connections with one another even amidst the turmoil. As she asserts in this interview, “This is what poetry [can] do.”

(Photo of Hadara Bar-Nadav by Sharon Gottula)