“One of the things I love about the novel is that it is a curatorial form; you can dramatize encounters with poems, and you can dramatize encounters with works of visual art. So, I wrote a novel because it gave me a vantage from which to explore ideas of poetry and poetics. I am not in control of what genre I work in. You have to write what is given to you to write.”

“Genres are different kinds of laboratories where you can test ideas, but also you can work against yourself and pretend you are not doing what you are doing. I get a lot of writing done when I am not writing.”

“In ‘the Topeka School’ I was interested in the theatres of extreme speech and how I could see them in relation to one another.

Ben Lerner (born 1979) is an American poet, novelist, essayist, and critic. Born and raised in Topeka, Kansas he has a BA in political science and an MFA in creative writing from Brown University. He has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, a finalist for the National Book Award, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and has received many honors, including being a Guggenheim Fellow and a MacArthur Fellow. Lerner’s novels include ‘The Topeka School’ (2019), ‘10:04’ (2014), and ‘Leaving the Atocha Station’ (2011). His poetry collections, include ‘No Art’ (2016), ‘Mean Free Path’ (2010) and ‘Angle of Yaw’ (2006). Ben Lerner’s monograph, ‘The Hatred of Poetry’, was published in 2016. Lerner teaches at Brooklyn College, where he was named a Distinguished Professor of English in 2016

Ben Lerner was interviewed by his Danish translator Tonny Vorm in connection with the Louisiana Literature festival in August 2022 at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark.

Camera: Rasmus Quistgaard

Edit: Signe Boe Pedersen

Produced by Christian Lund

Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2022.

Louisiana Channel is supported by Den A.P. Møllerske Støttefond, Ny Carlsbergfondet, C.L. Davids Fond og Samling, and Fritz Hansen.