Podcast Summary: Farah Ghafoor, "Shadow Price: Poems" (House of Anansi, 2025)
Podcast: New Books Network
Host: Holly Gaddery
Guest: Farah Ghafoor
Date: October 8, 2025
Main Theme
This episode centers on poet Farah Ghafoor and her debut collection "Shadow Price," published by House of Anansi. The conversation explores how Ghafoor employs the language of economics, climate crisis, hope and despair, humor, and accessibility to create poetry that deeply personalizes global issues. The host and guest dissect how economic frameworks intersect with poetic thinking, and how Ghafoor makes these seemingly complex topics intimate, relatable, and even occasionally funny.
Key Discussion Points & Insights
What Is a "Shadow Price?" (03:01)
- Definition: Ghafoor elaborates that a "shadow price" is “an economic term that means the estimated price for a good or service for which no market price exists.” (03:01, Farah Ghafoor)
- Relevance to Poetry: She relates the idea of shadow pricing to how we value things in life that aren’t captured monetarily—reflecting the themes of unmeasured costs in her poetry.
Navigating Hope and Despair (04:05, 05:14)
- Movement Between Extremes: The host observes a pendulum between “hope and despair” in the collection, asking about Ghafoor's technique for maintaining this dynamic.
- Ghafoor’s Intent: “I try to make these poems in a way that people of different backgrounds ... can read them and ... feel everything I'm trying to put in these poems, whether it’s hope or despair.” (05:14, Farah Ghafoor)
- Accessibility: Ghafoor strives to “create enough hope in those pockets of positivity and optimism and action throughout the book so the reader would honestly be compelled to keep reading.” (05:14)
Personalization of Global Issues (09:19)
- Intimacy in Voice: Ghafoor uses the first-person “I” to avoid making poems accusatory. This brings “the climate down to the personal,” allowing readers to see themselves implicated and involved.
- “Using the pronoun I … When you use you or we, it immediately becomes impersonal and sometimes accusatory.” (09:19, Farah Ghafoor)
- Internal Argument: She often includes self-checks and arguments within the poems, illustrating internal struggle and connecting with readers’ similar concerns.
Humor and Satire as Literary Tools (13:30)
- Role of Humor: Ghafoor employs “humor and kind of like sometimes satire or a sarcastic voice because I feel like it also humanizes the speaker and the poet to the reader."
- “I’ve always loved to make people laugh as much as I like to make people cry, especially through my work.” (13:30, Farah Ghafoor)
- Dark Humor: The “inside joke” quality in some poems serves to both build intimacy and offer relief from heavy topics.
Interplay between Economics and Poetics (27:14)
- Economic Knowledge as Resource: Ghafoor explains, “Economics to me is another resource that I pull from when I’m trying to make sense of the world. … It’s the foundation of our lives as long as we live here.”
- Poetry as Investigation: Poetry functions as a method for “figuring out the truth,” where economics, memory, and politics can be equal sources.
- Making Economics Accessible: “What I’m trying to do in my work is make economics more accessible to people. And that’s what I’m really interested in.” (30:35, Farah Ghafoor)
Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments
On The Book’s Impact
- “Instead of just talking at people and using buzzy words... what I felt was something so deeply human and so deeply introspective. And I thought that was such a gorgeous way to incite awareness and action.” (08:45, Holly Gaddery)
On Internalizing Climate Crisis
- “Bringing the cr... bringing the climate down to the personal, that was how I started to understand my place in the world and my place in, like, this movement.” (09:19, Farah Ghafoor)
On Humor in Poetry
- “Bringing the reader closer inward to the thoughts and the emotions of the speaker, as funny as they are, was also one of my goals.” (13:30, Farah Ghafoor)
On Economic Language as Barrier
- “As long as economics is prioritized over ethics... that's what contributes to the inaccessibility of that language. ...From a distance, they think, oh, it’s too intimidating because I don’t immediately understand it.” (30:35, Farah Ghafoor)
On Making the Complex Understandable
- “Your book did... pulled it out—instead of a hole, what came out was like rainbows and leaves and vines and life and everything and a baby crying and birds.” (29:20, Holly Gaddery)
Key Timestamps & Segments
| Timestamp | Segment | |-----------|----------------------------------------------------------| | 03:01 | Definition and significance of "shadow price" | | 05:14 | Navigating hope and despair in climate poetry | | 09:19 | Personalization and first-person voice in climate issues | | 13:30 | Use of humor, satire, and sarcasm | | 17:05 | Poetry reading: "Bigfoot, Mayor of Carbon Land" and "Shadow Price" | | 27:14 | Economics as resource for poetry; poetics and power | | 30:35 | Accessibility in economic language and poetry | | 33:53 | Upcoming work: Ghafoor's next poetry collection |
Readings
“Bigfoot, Mayor of Carbon Land” and "Shadow Price" (17:05–25:42)
- Ghafoor’s reading brings out the tone and layered irony of her eco-political critique, balancing satirical imagery with piercing vulnerability.
- Notable Imagery: “When the children, eyes dried to sand by the teething heat, crashed their Bigfoot cars, his engineers kindly installed extra mirror.” (18:40, Farah Ghafoor)
- Philosophical Reflection: “A market value that is inferred and not directly observed is called the shadow price... The median estimate of a statistical value of a Life is about $4.9 million. I’m not tested on this, so I forget it.” (21:40, Farah Ghafoor)
Closing & What's Next
- Ghafoor shares she is beginning work on a second poetry collection, intending to delve “even harder into economics” (33:53), emphasizing ongoing engagement with questions of value, power, and accessibility.
Tone and Takeaways
The episode maintains a thoughtful, inviting, and occasionally playful tone amid urgent topics. Ghafoor and Gaddery emphasize connection—between poet and reader, the personal and political, and the often-rigid world of economics and the flexible, empathetic realm of poetry. Listeners come away with not just an understanding of "Shadow Price" as a book, but an invitation to view systems like economics—and the climate—in more personal, transformative ways.