þ thorns þ

Naz Cuguoğlu & Steve Dickison

þ thorns þ

Show Notes

This episode is a conversation between Naz Cuguoğlu and Steve Dickison. Steve directed The Poetry Center & American Poetry Archives at San Francisco State University from 1999 to 2024, and is a writer whose work engages deeply with poetry, criticism, and conversation. Naz is a curator of contemporary art, currently working at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, whose practice unfolds across exhibitions, research, and collaborative formats.

In this episode, Steve and Naz come together around Etel Adnan’s The Arab Apocalypse, whose work sits at the heart of this conversation. Reflecting on poetry, sound, translation and the presence of “the hidden.” They speak of pausing, of breathing with the times we live in, and of calling Etel in—holding space for her work through friendship, care, and attention. The depth of their love for Etel and her work resonates throughout the conversation, carrying something that moves beyond language.

To find a full transcript of this episode, and resources mentioned, visit our website.

This episode is part of a mini-series,Choreographing the Apocalypse, which is guest curated by Mine Kaplangı, a Folkestone-based curator and art mediator from Istanbul. It forms part of their ongoing research into queer and trans imaginaries of the apocalypse(s). They will be inviting artists, thinkers, and somatic practitioners to explore apocalyptic thinking through speculative world-building and radically intimate frameworks. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

More from þ thorns þ

Sep 30, 2026

In this episode Jamie Stewart is in conversation with Martin Hargreaves, head of the Rose Choreographic School. Jamie Stewart is a musician and the founder of Xiu Xiu, an experimental group they began in 2002. Across more than two decades, Xiu Xiu's music has moved through noise, tenderness, violence, desire, grief, politics, and intimacy. Martin Hargreaves is a dramaturg and writer whose interests, in his own words, "vacillate between boredom and hysteria." Their research moves across performance and performativity, recent histories of contemporary dance, queering practices, and camp misunderstandings.

Jul 1, 2026

This episode is a conversation between jee chan, Jelena Golubović and Bilawa Ade Respati.

May 13, 2026

This episode is a conversation with Black Quantum Futurism, an interdisciplinary practice founded by Rasheedah Phillips and Camae Ayewa (Moor Mother). Their work brings together quantum physics with Afrodiasporic understandings of time, space, ritual, text, and sound, creating frameworks for counter-histories and alternative futures. Rasheedah is a writer, artist, and housing advocate whose work explores temporalities and community futurisms through a Black futurist lens. Camae, also known as Moor Mother, is a musician, poet, and visual artist whose practice moves across sound, performance, and collaboration.

Apr 15, 2026

This forms part of a mini-series, Dreaming Communities, curated by performing arts researcher, Victoria Pérez Royo. She defines the series as "a group of people having conversations around what we call the dreaming substance, meaning all the work developed around images that do not appear on a material surface outside of the body".

Feb 25, 2026

This forms part of a mini-series, Dreaming Communities, curated by performing arts researcher, Victoria Pérez Royo. She defines the series as "a group of people having conversations around what we call the dreaming substance, meaning all the work developed around images that do not appear on a material surface outside of the body".

See all episodes →