Interview: Willie Perdomo
Thursday, August 30, 2007 
Willie Perdomo is the author of Where a Nickel Costs a Dime (Norton, 1996) and Smoking Lovely (Rattapallax, 2003), which won the 2004 PEN American Beyond Margins Award. His work has been included in several anthologies including Poems of New York, The Harlem Reader and Metropolis Found. His work has also appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Bomb, and PEN America: A Journal for Writers and Readers. He is also the author of Visiting Langston, a Coretta Scott King Honor Book for Children, illustrated by Bryan Collier. He has been featured on several PBS documentaries including Words in Your Face and The United States of Poetry and has appeared on HBO's "Def Poetry Jam" and BET’s "Hughes’ Dream Harlem." Perdomo is the recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts Fiction and Poetry Fellowships. He currently teaches at Friends Seminary and Bronx Academy of Letters.
Perdomo read in Cornell's Goldwin Smith Hall on August 30, 2007. This interview took place earlier the same day.
CLICK HERE TO LISTEN (18MB MP3)
Reader Comments (4)
Willie Perdomo is a great poet and teacher. He left me still questioning the nuanced definition(s) of spoken word, thus keeping the evolution of poetics in America an ever relevant topic, especially for the masses. Thanks for the interview!
His reading here was great! Despite his stated dedication to the written word, he really does give a superb performance. Thank you for listening!
why does this interviewer keep pidgeon-holing poetry as spoken word- i say stop commodifying experience. What is spoken has to be written in the mind before it is communicated. Always love what Perdomo does with language and music...and speech (dialect)...reminds me of Duke Ellington.
Unfortunately he did not mention about Willie Perdomo grew up in predominantly Spanish East Harlem, New York. His father emigrated from Puerto Rico in his early twenties.
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