i recently had the luck of interviewing poet, teacher, connoisseur of abandonment, and lovely badass Aracelis Girmay for the Brooklyn Rail.  We fell very easily into conversation about her newest book-length collection of poems, Kingdom Animalia (2011), which was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle award this year. Here is the result:

http://www.brooklynrail.org/2012/05/books/aracelis-girmay-with-melinda-cardozo-aracelis-girmay-kingdom-animalia-boa-editions-2011