Elizabeth Gordon McKim on Freedom and Constraint: Interview with Poet Etheridge Knight

Description

University of Pittsburgh Press, paperback

Publication Date: June 30, 2026

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Freedom and Confinement: An Interview with Etheridge Knight is the result of a series of discussions between Elizabeth Gordon McKim and Etheridge Knight that began in the early spring of 1990 in his home in Indianapolis.
Etheridge was dying of lung cancer, a disease that had spread into his liver. McKim lived with him during the last year of his life. They decided to tape these conversations to serve as a basis for an autobiography or as transcripts to publish on their own . The dialogue includes a 1984 exchange with McKim’s daughter, Jenifer McKim, offering a rare intergenerational glimpse into Knight’s world.

This can be read as a companion to Pitt Poetry Series classic The Essential Etheridge Knight or as a standalone conversation between two poets.

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