Freedom and Confinement: An Interview with Etheridge Knight

Freedom and Confinement is a powerful, book-length conversation between poets Elizabeth Gordon McKim and Etheridge Knight, recorded in 1990 as Knight was dying of cancer. The interview traces Knight’s life from his childhood in Paducah, Kentucky, to his time in the Army and his injury in Korea, to his drug addiction and incarceration, and finally, to his poetic rebirth. The dialogue includes a 1984 exchange with McKim’s daughter, Jenifer McKim, offering a rare intergenerational glimpse into Knight’s world. McKim captures the man behind the legend—complex, contradictory, soulful. From prison yards to the Library of Congress, Knight lived and performed poetry across the country. This conversation revives his stories and energies, blending trickster wit with hard-won wisdom, making the mythic poet vividly human once more.