7 — Poet Talk about Trees featuring Farah Ghafoor

In episode seven of Poet Talk, Jody and Sanna are joined by award-winning Toronto poet, Farah Ghafoor, to talk about trees.

Together, the trio explores photos of snails after the rain; the ethos of commas; power and prestige as barriers to poetry; and the practice one creates the feeling of time in a poem. Against the backdrop of the magic and factuality of long poems—and the sharp political and economical analysis of Farah's debut collection, Shadow Price—we ask questions like: why do people love trees? What will we leave behind, rooted in them?

This episode features a litany of poets and writers we admire such as Solmaz Sharif, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Richard Siken, George Jackson, and more.

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🔥 2025 Tkaronto Traditional & Prescribed Burn

🌀 Who's Afraid: Reading Series, curated by Furqan Mohamed

🌱 "Here, Grass" by Farah Ghafoor

🐌 "The Snail" by Farah Ghafoor

📝 "The Near Transitive Properties of the Political and Poetical: Erasure" by Solmaz Sharif

🖊️ Cason Sharpe (RIP Twitter)

📗 War of the Foxes by Richard Siken

🌲 Old Growth Forests

📝“On the Concept of History” by Walter Benjamin

🎙️ Yanyi vs. the Personal (VS Podcast)

📝 "Patronage" by Solmaz Sharif

📝 "Notes on Craft: Writing in the Hour of Genocide" by Fargo Tbakhi

🩸Blood in my Eye by George Jackson

🌳 Finding the Mother Tree by Suzanne Simard

📝 "Most American Literature is the Literature of Empire" by Viet Thanh Nguyen

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We’d like to spotlight Climate Justice TO and the Scarborough Environmental Association. CJTO is a grassroots group across the Greater Toronto Area who seek to build a powerful movement to stop the climate crisis by confronting its root causes. SEA is an organization of local residents; together, their goal is make Toronto's largest borough a kinder, greener place.