Arts

Sheryl welcomes Jessica Harris in this episode. She's professor of English at Queens College-CUNY, Scholar in residence in the Ray Charles Chair in African American culture at Dillard University in New Orleans, linguist, writer and culinary historian. Her latest book, "High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America" has just been published by Bloomsbury. Journalist Sheryl McCarthy talks with newsmakers about their sources of inspiration. She has private conversations about public affairs issues with the people who report on them and those who ARE the story. The subjects range from global warming issues to domestic ones. Watch more at www.cuny.tv/series/onetoone

“I like to think that the poem, itself, dictates what sort of shape it wants to have in the world,” says Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon. “The only thing that carries weight is whether the poem is any good — at some level grabs you, changes how you view the world.” At an event sponsored by the Irish Studies Department at Queens College, Muldoon, a native of Northern Ireland, read selections from his works and discussed his influences, including fellow Irish poets. Muldoon currently chairs Princeton University’s Center for the Creative and Performing Arts.

Before appearing on the big screen, Irish actor Stephen Rea acted on stage, something he says all actors should experience. “In theater, you learn how to act properly,” says Rea, who trained at the venerable Abbey Theater in Dublin. “It’s hard to learn how to act on film because you do so little acting — in a day’s work, you might act for five minutes.” Rea has appeared in nearly 40 films and received an Oscar nomination for his lead role in Neil Jordan’s critically acclaimed “The Crying Game.” In October, as an artist-in-residence at Queens College, he coached students in the college’s production of the J. M. Synge classic “The Playboy of the Western World.’” After the play, Rea was interviewed by Prof. Kevin Whelan of Notre Dame University, Dublin.

As a speechwriter for New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, Jericho Brown found that he was drawn to poetry as a way to ask, rather than answer, questions. “When you’re writing speeches, you’re writing a message,” said Brown, now an English professor at the University of San Diego. “Speeches don’t allow for people to be unsure…(the way) poems do.” At an event co-sponsored by the Poetry Society of America (PSA) and Queens College’s MFA Program in Creative Writing and Literary Translation, Prof. Brown discussed his work with Robert Casper, programs director at PSA, and read from his first book of poetry, “Please.”

Her muse is the group of childhood photos of herself that she keeps on her desk. “There is something about that little girl within (me) that I felt I could never disappoint,” said Hettie Cohen Jones, whose first poetry collection, “Drive,” was honored by the Poetry Society of America in 1997. The author of “How I Became Hettie Jones,” (1990), a memoir of the Greenwich Village beat scene of the 1950s and 1960s when she was married to the poet LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka), discussed her life and read her poetry at an event co-sponsored by the Poetry Society of America and the Queens College MFA Program in Creative Writing and Literary Translation.