Kevin Young interviewed by Griffin Trustee Ian Williams

“How do we breathe back to life? How do we come back to ourselves?” Griffin Poetry Prize trustee Ian Williams speaks with poet Kevin Young about Night Watch, his shortlisted collection. Moving through Dante, grief, public mourning, visual art, Black spiritual traditions, conjoined twins, midlife, and the afterlives of the dead, Young reflects on poetry as both witness and resurrection. The conversation explores what it means to write through suffering without surrendering hope, and how poems can help us survive “this moment we’re in, where we’re not always good at mourning.” From Rembrandt to the Negro Spirituals, Night Watch becomes a meditation on doubleness, survival, and the difficult work of imagining paradise together.