First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing is a literary podcast produced and hosted by Mitzi Rapkin. Each week the podcast features an in-depth interview with a fiction, non-fiction, essay, or poetry writer. The show is equal parts investigation into the craft of writing and conversation about the topics of an author’s work. Reginald Dwayne Betts is a poet and lawyer. A 2021 MacArthur Fellow, he is the Executive Director of freedom reads, a not-for-profit organization that is radically transforming the access to literature in prisons through the installation of Freedom Libraries in prisons across this country. Doggerel is a majestic new volume of poetry that marks a transformative stage in his life and career. This resplendent tableau ruminates on dogs and the ostensibly trivial joys that transform us—peonies blooming, a “symphony” of wine glasses, father-son bike rides, basketball, seeing and being seen, surrendering to a lover’s touch.