The Air/Light Podcast

"A Dreadful Consolation," written by by Christos Ikonomou and translated from the Greek by Karen Emmerich: https://airlightmagazine.org/airlight/issue-5/a-terrible-consolation/

Vickie Vértiz, "Little Earthquakes": https://airlightmagazine.org/airlight/fall2020/little-earthquakes-on-fear-and-family-violence/Alex Espinoza, "Lit": https://airlightmagazine.org/authors/alex-espinoza/

Lilliam Rivera, "The Undercurrent": https://airlightmagazine.org/airlight/fall2020/the-undercurrent/Mark Haber: "Tegucigalpa": https://airlightmagazine.org/airlight/issue-3/tegucigalpa/

Read and listen to "Reach" in Air/Light here: https://airlightmagazine.org/airlight/winter-2021/reach/Other music, essays, and performances mentioned by Michi and Jonathan include:The Tyshawn Sorey performance Michi mentioned will soon be archived and/or uploaded by Harvard's New Music Ensemble. Jonathan's interview with Tyshawn Sorey can be found here:  https://www.sfcv.org/articles/artist-spotlight/decorating-time-tyshawn-sorey) Matana Roberts:  https://matana-roberts.bandcamp.com/album/coin-coin-chapter-four-memphisFreedom, by Yvette Jackson https://yvettejaninejackson.bandcamp.com/album/freedomHaruna Lee:  https://www.harunalee.com/haruna-leeWriting on Pauline Oliveros:  https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/listening-as-activism-the-sonic-meditations-of-pauline-oliveros

bridgette bianca: https://www.bridgettebianca.com/MICHAEL CHANG: https://bateaupress.org/index.php/2021/02/27/drakkar-noir-by-michael-chang/

We host a conversation with two incredible poets: Diane Mehta and Jordan Smith, whose poems were published in Air/Light Issue 3.Diane was a student at Union College, where Jordan teaches, and even though they were never in the classroom together the resonance between their work is obvious. Both are poets of the particular, of the moment; the world around them provides entryways into deep memories both personal and historical. Diane and Jordan write poems that bend time and space and the ancient world is a constant presence in the now--in Jordan's poem “Good Morning,” burnt coffee in Schenectady sits alongside the ferry to Piraeus in classical Athens. Tree trimming, in Diane's “Rock Garden,” connects us to the Iliad and the blood sacrifices of early religion.  Jordan Smith is the author of eight full-length books of poems, most recently Little Black Train, winner of the Three Mile Harbor Press Prize, Clare's Empire (The Hydroelectric Press), a fantasia on the life and work of John Clare, and The Light in the Film (University of Tampa Press). He has also worked on several collaborations with artist Walter Hatke including What Came Home and Hat & Key. The recipient of grants from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Ingram Merrill Foundation, he lives with his wife, Malie, in upstate New York, where he is the Edward Everett Hale Jr., Professor of English at Union College.Diane Mehta is the author of the poetry collection Forest with Castanets (Four Way Books). She received a 2020 Spring Literature Grant from the Café Royal Cultural Foundation for her nonfiction writing. Her poems and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Agni, American Poetry Review, The Common, Harvard Review, and Southern Humanities Review. She's completing an essay collection and a novel set in 1946 India. Diane Mehta's poems in Air/Light: https://airlightmagazine.org/airlight/issue-3/rock-garden-in-the-back-yard-with-a-ghost-tree-and-an-evergreen-stay-disappearing-act/Jordan Smith's poems in Air/Light: https://airlightmagazine.org/airlight/issue-3/good-morning-wrong-question/

Music by Ina Cariño. Ina Cariño is a poet, musician, and artist with an MFA in creative writing from North Carolina State University. Their poetry appears or is forthcoming in Poetry Magazine, Waxwing, New England Review, Tupelo Quarterly, and elsewhere. Ina is a Kundiman fellow, a Best of the Net finalist, a Pushcart Prize nominee, and a recipient of a fellowship from the Vermont Studio Center. They are the winner of the 2021 Alice James Award for their manuscript Feast, forthcoming from Alice James Books in March 2023. Most recently, Ina was selected as one of the four winners of the 2021 92Y Discovery Poetry Prize.

A discussion of the life and career of poet Marvin Bell with Christopher Merril and David St. John.

Victoria Chang's poems encapsulate something that makes poetry unique among literature: they capture a fleeting moment and render it into a form that's frozen in time yet dynamic. Her work is precise, with an attention to detail at a granular level; at the same time, Chang's poetry casts a view on the larger, more universal qualities of a subject. Chang's lemons and peaches are both singular pieces of fruit while also pointing us toward greater symbolic resonances. Impermanence and the ephemerality of material objects--including the body--are persistent themes throughout her writing. Chang's poetry deftly balances two opposing registers of scale, the micro and the macro, the particular and the universal, the individual and the collective. In Chang's poems, there's an inbuilt tension that makes them exciting, energetic, open, and present. Victoria Chang is the author of numerous volumes of poetry including, Barbie Chang, The Boss, Salvinia Molesta, and Circle. Her children's books include Is Mommy?, illustrated by Marla Frazee, and Love, Love, a middle grade novel. She serves as program chair of Antioch's low-residency MFA program.Her most recent book of poetry, OBIT, out from Copper Canyon Press, was longlisted for the 2020 National Book Award and the 2021 PEN America Literary Award, and was included on the New York Times list of 100 Notable Books of 2020. We are thrilled to have Victoria on the The Air/Light Podcast.

Pam Houston writes about nature and the environment the way that Dickens writes about London or Tolstoy writes military history–not as an object in and of itself but as a terrain for understanding the human condition. Houston is a pivotal figure in feminist and environmental writing, and a master of the short story, novel, and essay form. From her first, acclaimed book of short stories Cowboys are My Weakness, across novels such as Contents May Have Shifted and Sight Hound, and up to the essays gathered in her recent memoir Deep Creek, Houston portrays women and men in perilous situations, whether it's from the natural, social, or emotional environment. Air/Light was honored to publish Houston's “Postcards from the West” in our first issue. This piece combines photographs taken by Houston of her 120 acre ranch in the Colorado Rockies with occasional essays about the last tumultuous year that included the pandemic, protests for racial justice, wild fires, and the end of the Trump presidency. Pam joins us on the Air/Light podcast to talk about “Postcards from the West”, as well as teaching, writing, the prospects of political activism after Trump, and her new book, Air Mail: Letters on Politics, Pandemic, and Place, co-written with Amy Irvine.

As the first installment of the Air/Light Podcast, we're thrilled to present a conversation between choreographer Andre Tyson and Douglas Kearney about their performance, Code~dIsSoNaNcE~REVERIE. The conversation was hosted by Air/Light editor David L. Ulin. It was recorded on October 20, 2020.

With the election coming up in a few days, we here at Air/Light wanted to help you not make a choice, but to make the right choice. We're thrilled to present a conversation with Tracy Jeanne Rosenthal, a writer, artist, and co-founder of the Los Angeles Tenants Union. Tracy's Two Evils voting guide is informed, impeccably researched, opinionated, and unabashedly radical. And hilarious. You'll LOL as you burn with righteous rage. Tracy's guide, and our interview with her, will make you want to get out there and vote and also join the LA Tenants Union, your local mutual aid network, your local labor struggle, and just take to the streets to demand justice. We hope you enjoy the conversation!

In this episode of the Air/Light Podcast, we're interviewing Mónica de la Torre and Alex Balgiu, the editors of the new anthology, Women in Concrete Poetry: 1959-1979, out now from Primary Information press. Concrete poetry was one of the most important post-war avant-garde literary movements. It was truly international in scope, with major practitioners and groups located in Brazil, Argentina, Western Europe, the Soviet Bloc countries, and North America. Across the globe, concrete poets created art objects composed of words, letters, colors, and typefaces, in which graphic space plays a central role in both design and meaning. Women in Concrete Poetry is the first volume ever to focus solely on concrete poetry created by women. De la Torre and Balgiu take as their starting point Materializzazione del linguaggio—the groundbreaking exhibition of visual and concrete poetry by women curated by Italian feminist artist Mirella Bentivoglio for the Venice Biennale in 1978. The volume features work by Lenora de Barros, Ana Bella Geiger, and Mira Schendel from Brazil; Mirella Bentivoglio, Tomaso Binga, Liliana Landi, Anna Oberto, and Giovanna Sandri from Italy; Amanda Berenguer from Uruguay; Suzanne Bernard and Ilse Garnier from France; and many, many more. We spoke with de la Torre and Balgiu about the challenges of creating an archival anthology during a pandemic, the importance of feminist recovery projects, and the politics of experimenting with language.

If literature is an ecosystem, then bookstores are its foundation. They're where literature intersects with community. They introduce people to new and idiosyncratic books while hosting events to support authors. Through it all, they serve as neighborhood community centers for readers and book lovers. But the pandemic has been hard on independent bookstores. Many have had to make direct appeals to their customers through GoFundMe and other crowdsourced campaigns. Local bookstores are facing what Dorany Pineda of the Los Angeles Times calls an “existential crossroads.” Losing our independent bookstores would be a truly devastating blow to the literary community and would only entrench the dominance of Amazon. A world without brick-and-mortar indie bookstores is not a world we want to live in. So Air/Light wants to help in our own small way. In a series of podcasts, we talk with the owners and workers at independent bookstores around Los Angeles to explore how they're moving forward during COVID, what they're looking forward to, what people are buying and reading, and more. Through this series we explore the art of bookselling. It's also our hope that after you listen to these interviews, you'll go online or in person—masked up and socially distant, of course—and support your local indie bookstore. In the first episode, Air/Light's Katarina Dames speaks with Josh Spencer, owner and operator of The Last Bookstore in Downtown Los Angeles. Listen to the interview and then go do some holiday shopping…locally and independently!

Since it opened in 1996, Skylight Books has become a fixture in the Los Feliz and a center of the neighborhood's literary community by hosting readings, book clubs, and launch parties. In the second installment of our “Art of Bookselling” podcast series, Air/Light‘s Claire Robertson talks to Mary Williams, the general manager of Skylight. Mary tells us about her favorite book of the year, comfort book buying in the run-up to the first lockdown, and how their customers are helping support the store throughout the pandemic. And remember: after you've listened, visit Skylight (or your own local bookshop) in person or online and buy a book or two. If you missed it, be sure to check out the first episode in the “Art of Bookselling” featuring Josh Spencer of Los Angeles' The Last Bookstore.

Vroman's in Pasadena and Book Soup in West Hollywood are two of Southern California's most iconic bookstores. Though they're in very different communities, each one plays a central role in the life of the city. Which is why, in late September, Vroman's sent a shudder through the world of Southern California's readers when the 126 year old bookstore announced it was at risk of closing due to the effects of the pandemic. In an extraordinary bit of outreach, Vroman's asked its community to shop early and often for the holidays and to recommend the store by word of mouth. The situation has since stabilized, but the risk remains. In the third part of our "Art of Bookselling" series, Air/Light editor David L. Ulin talks to Julia Cowlishaw, the CEO of Vroman's and Book Soup. Cowlishaw and Ulin discuss the issues facing independent booksellers in the world of COVID-19, how she approaches managing two very different bookstores, and more.