Podcasts about new century contemporary poetry

On February 25, 2020, the Lannan Center presented a reading and talk featuring poets John Murillo and Tina Chang. Introduction by Patricia Guzman.John Murillo is the author of the poetry collections Up Jump the Boogie (2010), which was a finalist for both the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and the PEN Open Book Award, and Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry, forthcoming from Four Way Books in 2020. His work has appeared in Callaloo, Court Green, Ninth Letter, and Ploughshares, and is forthcoming in Angles of Ascent: A Norton Anthology of African-American Poetry. A graduate of New York University’s MFA program in creative writing, he is an assistant professor of English at Wesleyan University and teaches in the low-residency MFA program at Sierra Nevada College.Tina Chang is the author of the poetry collections Hybrida (2019), Of Gods & Strangers (2011), and Half-Lit Houses (2004). She is co-editor of the anthology Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia and Beyond (2008). Her poems have appeared in American Poet, McSweeney’s, Ploughshares, and The New York Times and anthologized in Identity Lessons, Poetry Nation, Asian American Literature, and Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation, among others. She has received awards from the Academy of American Poets, the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, Poets & Writers, and the Van Lier Foundation. Chang is the Poet Laureate of Brooklyn, the first woman named to this position, and she currently teaches poetry at Sarah Lawrence College.Music: Quantum Jazz — "Orbiting A Distant Planet" — Provided by Jamendo.

Vahni Capildeo writes both poetry and prose. Her fourth book, Dark & Unaccustomed Words, is due out this year. She is a Lecturer at Kingston University (UK) and Contributing Editor for the Caribbean Review of Books. Vivek Narayanan’s first book, Universal Beach, will be published by ingirumimusnocteetconsumimurigni this spring; his second, Mr. Subramanian, is forthcoming. Narayanan is co-editor of Almost Island, and was a coordinator of the fellowship network at Sarai. His work appears in The Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poetry and Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond. He lives in Delhi. Special thanks to Michael for getting this recording from the Poetry Project! Best of luck in India! if you have any recordings you want to contribute to the show send them in! (of yourself, of other poets, of yourself reading other poets, etc) @mathildork // @prolesound

Tina Chang was raised in New York City. She is the first female to be named Poet Laureate of Brooklyn and is the author of the collections of poetry Hybrida, Of Gods & Strangers, and Half-Lit Houses. She is also the co-editor of the W.W. Norton anthology Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Poet and educator Andy Young joins us for this segment of Figure of Speech to read from her latest chapbook, JOHN SWENSON DYNAMICRON, as well as from another project currently in progress. Andy Young is the author of four chapbooks, including John Swenson Dynamicron, just out from Dancing Girl Press, and a full-length poetry collection, All Night It Is Morning (Diálogos Press, 2014). She teaches at New Orleans Center for Creative Arts. Her work has recently appeared, or is forthcoming, in Waxwing, Southern Review, Ecotone, and Prairie Schooner. Her translations, with Khaled Hegazzi, are featured in the Norton Anthology Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia & Beyond. Originally aired on May 25th 2019.

Nathalie Handal and Robin Robertson read their poems. They are introduced by Dan Chiasson, Associate Professor of English at Wellesley College. The event took place on October 27, 2014. Nathalie Handal was raised in Latin America, France and the Arab world. Her most recent books include the critically acclaimed Poet in Andalucía, which Alice Walker lauds as “poems of depth and weight and the sorrowing song of longing and resolve,” and Love and Strange Horses, winner of the 2011 Gold Medal Independent Publisher Book Award, which The New York Times says is “a book that trembles with belonging (and longing).” Handal is the editor of the groundbreaking classic The Poetry of Arab Women: A Contemporary Anthology, winner of the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Book Award, and co-editor of the W.W. Norton landmark anthology Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia & Beyond, both Academy of American Poets bestsellers. Her most recent plays have been produced at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Bush Theatre and Westminster Abbey, London. Her work has appeared in numerous publications including Vanity Fair, Guernica Magazine, The Guardian, The Nation, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Ploughshares. Handal is a Lannan Foundation Fellow, winner of the 2011 Alejo Zuloaga Order in Literature, and Honored Finalist for the Gift of Freedom Award, among other honors. She is a professor at Columbia University and part of the Low-Residency MFA Faculty at Sierra Nevada College. Robin Robertson is from the Northeast coast of Scotland. He has published five collections of poetry–most recently Hill of Doors–and received a number of accolades, including the Petrarch Prize, the E.M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Cholmondeley Award, and all three Forward Prizes. He has also edited a collection of essays, Mortification: Writers’ Stories of Their Public Shame; translated two plays of Euripides, Medea and theBacchae; and, in 2006, published The Deleted World, a selection of free English versions of poems by the Nobel laureate Tomas Tranströmer. His selected poems, Sailing the Forest, will be out from FGS in Fall 2014.

Ravi Shankar is an associate professor of English and Poet in Residence at Central Connecticut State University. He is the founding editor and Executive Director of Drunken Boat, one of the world's oldest electronic journals of the arts. He has published or edited seven books and chapbooks of poetry, including the 2011 National Poetry Review Prize winner, Deepening Groove. He co-edited Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from Asia, the Middle East & Beyond. He has won a Pushcart Prize, been featured in The New York Times and the Chronicle of Higher Education, and on the BBC and NPR.

SAJA presents a webcast on Wednesday about contemporary South Asian poetry, from the Diaspora and around the world. Join acclaimed poets and editors Ravi Shankar, Pireeni Sundaralingam, Patrick Rosal, Carolyne Wright, Kazim Ali and literary agent Sarah Jane Freymann to discuss the conception and shaping of the extraordinary anthology, "Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from Asia, the Middle East and Beyond." Hailed by Nobel Laureate Nadine Gordimer as "a beautiful achievement for world literature," two of the co-editors will discuss the project with their agent and a contributor. The collection includes poets from 61 different countries writing in over 40 different languages and include poets such as Vikram Seth, Taslima Nasrin, Michael Ondaatje, Meena Alexander, Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Jeet Thayil. Please join us with your questions and comments.