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2 episodes with poetry daily
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2 episodes with poetry daily
4 episodes with poetry daily
2 episodes with poetry daily
2 episodes with poetry daily
Slushies, we invoke the retelling of a ghostly experience shared by Kathy and Marion at the Hotel Figueroa in California earlier this year partway into this episode. Two poems by Jen Siraganian are at the heart of our discussion, and it's the first of these that puts ghosts into our heads. This poem also causes us to consider at some length the physical form chosen by or for a poem, and how this can utterly enhance the experience of the poem when it's just right. It's also an opportunity for Jason to raise the spectre of the virgule (or slash) once again, and we even pause briefly to recall when WYSIWYG was a useful acronym. We end the episode with an ekphrastic that prompts an on-the-spot tie breaker (thanks to our sound engineer Lillie for saving the day!). https://whitney.org/collection/works/2171 https://www.nga.gov/collection/highlights/gorky-the-artist-and-his-mother.html At the table: Kathleen Volk Miller, Marion Wrenn, Lisa Zerkle, Jason Schneiderman, Dagne Forrest, Jodi Gahn, Lillie Volpe (sound engineer) Jen Siraganian is an Armenian-American writer, educator, and former Poet Laureate of Los Gatos, California. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in AGNI, Barrow Street, Best New Poets, Cortland Review, Poetry Daily, Prairie Schooner, The Rumpus, Smartish Pace, and other journals. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and won the 2024 New Ohio Review Poetry Prize. A former managing director of Litquake: San Francisco's Literary Festival, she is a current Lucas Artist Fellow. jensiraganian.com Social media handles: Facebook @jen.siraganian, Instagram @jsiraganian, Bluesky @jsiraganian.bsky.social, Website
Episode 150: Writing, Play, and the Power of Creative Connection with Michelle Ringle & Alyssa Jewell Have you ever felt the quiet nudge to write something down, even if just for yourself? In this heartwarming and deeply thoughtful episode, I sit down with two gifted educators and writers, Michelle Ringle and Alyssa Jewell, to explore the transformative power of creative writing. This conversation was one I truly looked forward to—and it didn't disappoint. Michelle and Alyssa bring so much depth, honesty, and encouragement to the question so many of us carry: What might open up if we let ourselves write? We cover so much ground: how writing can be a form of self-connection and healing, how creative practice doesn't have to look like rigid daily routines, and how society's productivity obsession often blocks our creative energy before we even begin. Whether you've been writing for years or feel creatively stuck, this one's for you. In this episode, we explore: ✨ Why writing is for everyone—not just “writers”✨ How creative writing can help us heal grief, rage, and burnout✨ What happens when we write with no agenda (and why that's powerful)✨ Why play is essential for adult women—and how Michelle created a whole Secret Society around it✨ Bridging the gap between language learning and creative expression✨ The real reasons many of us feel creatively blocked—and how to unblock✨ The power of story to reconnect us with ourselves and others Meet the Guests: Writers, Educators, & Creative Facilitators Michelle Ringle is a mother, educator, adventure facilitator, and poet currently pursuing her MFA in Poetry at Western Michigan University. With over two decades of teaching experience, Michelle brings her trauma-informed, feminist lens to creative and educational spaces. She's also the founder of the Secret Society of Ladies Uniquely Trying Stuff—a playful initiative encouraging women, especially mothers, to re-engage with physical play and joy. Alyssa Jewell holds a Ph.D. in Creative Writing and Poetry, and her work explores the connection between creative writing and English as a Second Language (ESL) education. She teaches college-level ESL, English composition, and creative writing in Grand Rapids, MI. Alyssa's poetry has appeared in Cherry Tree, Poetry Daily, Virginia Quarterly Review, and more, and she's passionate about using writing to heal and connect across differences. Writing as a Life-Giving Practice For both Michelle and Alyssa, writing is less about producing something for others—and more about tuning into their own inner worlds. Michelle shares how morning pages and nature walks help her process emotions and stay grounded, while Alyssa opens up about writing her grandfather's eulogy and the healing power of naming truth through story. Writing doesn't need to look like publishing a novel. It can be 10 minutes in the morning. It can be one sentence you write down while walking in the woods. It can be a eulogy, a journal entry, or a line of poetry that cracks you open. “Our bodies often know before we do,” Michelle reflects. “Writing gives those feelings space to live.” From Burnout to Creativity: Permission to Choose What's Life-Giving Michelle shared how pursuing an MFA while raising three children was a radical act of reclaiming joy. After years of teaching others how to write, she realized she wasn't making space for her own creative voice—and that needed to change. Alyssa describes the journey of bridging her two worlds—ESL education and poetry—and why giving ESL students space to tell their stories is not just powerful, but essential. “I think we're meant to create,” Alyssa says. “We heal through it. We grow through it. And sometimes, we even find our people through it.” A favorite quote from this episode: “We are in a culture that values logic—and I believe that's a patriarchal ideal. Emotional knowing is just as important, but it takes practice.
Join Julie Murphy and Chicago poet, Christy Prahl, as they read and discuss Kwame Dawes' poem Sea and Rain from his book Nebraska. Then they dive into Christy's We Are Reckless (Cornerstone Press), a gorgeous collection of midwest poems that take a daring look into relationships, identity, pleasure, loss, and more. Sprinkled though the conversation is bits of craft, stories and laughter. The show concludes with an imaginative poem from Christy's new manuscript. Christy Prahl is an Illinois Arts Council grant recipient and the author of the poetry collections We Are Reckless (Cornerstone Press, 2023), With Her Hair on Fire (Roadside Press, forthcoming fall 2025), and Catalog of Labors (Unsolicited Press, forthcoming fall 2026). A Best of the Net and three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has been featured in Poetry Daily as well as many national and international journals, including the Asheville Poetry Review, CALYX, Louisville Review, Penn Review, Sugar House Review, Salt Hill Journal, Tar River Poetry, and others. She splits her time between a small workers' cottage in Chicago and refurbished Quonset hut in rural southwest Michigan.
NB: Brian informs me that Yarvin's interviewer was actually David Marchese, not Michael Barbaro, which might explain why I found him so much less insufferable than usual! Also, male mainstream liberal podcasters sure do all have the same voice, don't they?SLEERICKETS is a podcast about poetry and other intractable problems. My book Midlife now exists. Buy it here, or leave it a rating here or hereFor more SLEERICKETS, check out the SECRET SHOW and join the group chatLeave the show a rating here (actually, just do it on your phone, it's easier). Thanks!Wear SLEERICKETS t-shirts and hoodies. They look good!SLEERICKETS is now on YouTube!Some of the topics mentioned in this episode:– The Daily's interview with Curtis Yarvin– Yarvin's embarrassing thoughts on the Passage Prize– Yarvin's less less embarrassing thoughts on a Poetry Daily poem– Alice's two poems in New Verse Review– Violent Femmes by Nida Sophasarun– My short essay on the 32 Poems website– My poem Melancholia in Ploughshares (just ask if you want to read it)– Poetry Says Ep 186. Sensitive New Right Guy– Poetry Says Ep 294. The American Ecstatic– Sex Elegy by Terence Winch– Tar River Poetry– Nik Prassas' transcriptions of Geoffrey Hill's lectures– Ep 49: Handsome People Can Be Sad, ft. David Kern– What is art? by Leo TolstoyFrequently mentioned names:– Joshua Mehigan– Shane McCrae– A. E. Stallings– Ryan Wilson– Morri Creech– Austin Allen– Jonathan Farmer– Zara Raab– Amit Majmudar– Ethan McGuire– Coleman Glenn– Chris Childers– Alexis Sears– JP Gritton– Alex Pepple– Ernie Hilbert– Joanna PearsonOther Ratbag Poetry Pods:Poetry Says by Alice AllanI Hate Matt Wall by Matt WallVersecraft by Elijah BlumovRatbag Poetics By David Jalal MotamedAlice: Poetry SaysBrian: @BPlatzerCameron: CameronWTC [at] hotmail [dot] comMatthew: sleerickets [at] gmail [dot] comMusic by ETRNLArt by Daniel Alexander Smith
"Words: They give and give and give." Cintia Santana joins the Hive to read from her Northern California Book Award-winning poetry debut, The Disordered Alphabet. Hear several poems and a conversation with Farnaz Fatemi about Cintia's views on words as magic, the paying attention, ekphrasis and more. Cintia Santana teaches literary translation and poetry workshops in Spanish and English at Stanford University. Santana's poems have appeared in Best New Poets 2016 and 2020, 2023 Best of the Net Anthology, Poets.org, Poetry Daily, among many others! Her debut poetry collection, The Disordered Alphabet published by Four Way Books in 2023) was short-listed for the 2023 California Independent Booksellers Alliance “Golden Poppy” Award, received the 2024 IPPY Bronze Medal, the 2023 North American Book Award's Silver Medal, and just this fall won the 43rd Annual Northern California Book Award in Poetry. https://www.cintiasantana.com
The queens have one thing to say: you better werk!Support Breaking Form!Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.Buy our books: Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.SHOW NOTES:Click here to read Philip Levine's "What Work Is"Read more about Philip LevineRead Ada Límon's poem “How We Are Made” dedicated to Levine, who was her teacher. Límon talks about Levine in this interview.Read the iconic and heartbreaking James L. White poem "Making Love to Myself"You can watch Jimmy Merrill read from his 560-page epic poem “The Changing Light at Sandover” in this 12-minute clip.Read more about the Academy of American Poets's Poem-a-Day series here.Read Carl Phillips's Poem-a-Day that James loves: “That Part in the Music” And check out Poetry Daily: https://poems.com
Episode 83: Goodnight, Mary Magdalene first aired in June 2020 and features three poems by Vasiliki Katsarou, a poet and publisher. This time last year, Vasiliki published a new short collection of poetry Three Sea Stones with Solitude Hill Press. It's a great time to revisit Vasiliki's work. Dear Slushies, join the PBQ crew (which includes a freshly-tenured Jason Schneiderman) for a pre-pandemic recording of our discussion of 3 poems by the wonderful Vasiliki Katsarou's work. Be sure to read the poems on the page below as you listen. They'll require your eyes and ears– and “a decoder ring.” The team has a grand old time explicating these artful poems. The muses are sprung and singing in us as we read and decide on this submission. Katsarou's poems teach us to read them without projecting too much of ourselves and our current preoccupations onto them. We're reminded to pay attention to what's happening on the page. But synchronicities abound! Before we know it we're ricocheting off of the poems' images and noting the wonderful convergences the poems trigger – we hear traces of Wallace Stevens “Idea of Order of Key West” or Auden's Musee de Beaux Arts. (But first we check in with each other, cracking each other up in a pre-pandemic moment of serious lightness. We're heard that “Science” shows Arts & Humanities majors make major money in the long run. Kathy reports that “the data on success” shows that participation in Nativity Plays is a marker for career success. Samantha confesses she played Mary Magdalene in a Nativity Play. Marion might have been a Magi. And many of us were reindeer.. Also, Donkeys do better than sheep over time (which may or may not have been claimed on “Wait, wait… don't tell me!”). Editing a Lit Mag shouldn't be this much fun, Slushies. Listen through to the discussion of the 3rd poem's deep magic and craft. And listen to our editors' cats chime in). Addison Davis, Jason Schneiderman, Samantha Neugebauer, Kathleen Volk Miller, Marion Wrenn, and Joe Zang Vasiliki Katsarou grew up Greek American in Jack Kerouac's hometown of Lowell, Massachusetts. She has also lived in Paris, France, and Harvard, Mass. She is the author of a full-length poetry collection, Memento Tsunami, and co-editor of two contemporary poetry anthologies: Eating Her Wedding Dress: A Collection of Clothing Poems and Dark as a Hazel Eye: Coffee & Chocolate Poems. She holds an MFA from Boston University and an AB in comparative literature from Harvard University. She read her poetry at the 2014 Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival, and is a Teaching Artist at Hunterdon Art Museum in Clinton, New Jersey. Her poems have been published widely and internationally, including in NOON: Journal of the Short Poem (Japan), Corbel Stone Press' Contemporary Poetry Series (U.K.), Regime Journal (Australia), as well as in Poetry Daily, Tiferet: A Journal of Spiritual Literature, Wild River Review, wicked alice, Literary Mama, La Vague Journal, Otoliths, and Contemporary American Voices. She wrote and directed an award-winning 35mm short film, Fruitlands 1843, about a Transcendentalist utopian community in Massachusetts. Vasiliki's website: https://onegoldbead.com/, Twitter: https://twitter.com/cineutopia , Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/vasiliki.katsarou, and Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cineutopia/ The Future Arrives as a Redhead They talk of mothers in law but not of outlaw daughters her sun and her moon is our son her cool paleness, reflected in an eye that looks like mine, follows her curves along the shoreline her hair like copper coils from beneath a straw hat a Maisie or Daisy, a woman of Stem for whom we stem talk of servers, thumbprint keys, on an ancient island now we are all code-changers the future arrives as a redhead green, green love lays a glove on us, we no longer count in threes, a quaver sounds, and the future all sharps and flats * Wedding, Key West A stitch in throat saves time Infernal cough speaks through me @ the bride and groom On sand they stand to create a sand souvenir from this empty glass vessel Sunset drips from the lips of the bride As the prey is plucked from the air between her palms In the gulf beyond the photographer's camera, a capsized sailboat, but no one's looking– The Key light bedazzles and defeats us all Mouth tightly shut clench in the solar plexus * Waited you waited with me as the house next door emptied of its guests, then its owners, fairy tale turned animal farm minted with ash and wishes you were my kitchen elf my second thought my echo's echo cocked ear, cracked oasis your absorbent embered orbs that morning of the supermoon setting behind the barn you were quiet, then quieter still white fog settling into the hollows and a thin coat of frost everywhere and this, the simplest death you trained me well, M. I listen for your listening
In Mosab Abu Toha's “Ibrahim Abu Lughod and brother in Yaffa,” two barefoot siblings on a beach sketch out a map of their former home in the sand and argue about what went where. Their longing for return to a place of hospitality, family, memory, friends, and even strangers is alive and tender to the touch.Mosab Abu Toha is a Palestinian poet, scholar, and librarian who was born in Gaza and has spent his life there. He is the founder of the Edward Said Library, Gaza's first English-language library. Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear is his debut book of poems: it won an American Book Award and a 2022 Palestine Book Award, and was named a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry as well as the 2022 Walcott Poetry Prize. His writings from Gaza have appeared in The Nation and Literary Hub, and his poems have been published in Poetry, The Nation, the Academy of American Poets' Poem-a-Day, Poetry Daily, and the New York Review of Books, among others.Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.This is the fourth episode of "Poems as Teachers," a special seven-part miniseries on conflict and the human condition.We're pleased to offer Mosab Abu Toha's poem, and invite you to read Pádraig's weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound book, or listen back to all our episodes.
Welcome to Off the Bricks poets and poetry lovers! This month's guest is Patricia Clark. Patricia is the author of six volumes of poetry, including The Canopy and, before that, Sunday Rising. She has also published three chapbooks: Deadlifts (New Michigan Press), Wreath for the Red Admiral and Given the Trees. Her work has been featured on Poetry Daily and Verse Daily, and has appeared in The Atlantic, Gettysburg Review, Poetry, Slate, and Stand. She was a scholar at the Bread Loaf Writers Conference and has completed residencies at The MacDowell Colony, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Tyrone Guthrie Center (in County Monaghan (Ireland), and the Ragdale Colony. Awards for her work include a Creative Artist Grant in Michigan, the Mississippi Review Prize, the Gwendolyn Brooks Prize, and co-winner of the Lucille Medwick Prize from the Poetry Society of America. From 2005-2007 she was honored to serve as the poet laureate of Grand Rapids, Michigan. She was Poet-in-Residence and Professor in the Department of Writing at Grand Valley State University in Michigan where she worked for thirty years. you can find her contact info at www.patriciafclark.com. Our Natural moment poem today is The Milky Way, by Kathryn Sadakierski
An American poet and artist, Sally Van Doren is the author of four poetry collections, Sibilance, (LSU Press 2023) Promise, (2017) Possessive, (2012) and Sex at Noon Taxes (2008) which received the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets. Her poems have been featured by NPR, PBS, The Poetry Foundation, American Life in Poetry, and Poetry Daily, and nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her poetry has appeared widely in national and international publications such as American Letters and Commentary, American Poet, Barrow Street, Boulevard, Cincinnati Review, Colorado Review, Crazyhorse, december, Lumina, The Moth, The New Republic, Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry London, Southern Review, Southwest Review, Verse Daily and Western Humanities Review. Her ongoing poetic memoir, The Sense Series, served as the text for a multi-media installation at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis. ------ As a practicing visual artist, Van Doren formalized her training at Hunter College and The School of Visual Arts in New York. She has had solo exhibitions at Furnace Art on Paper Archive and other venues and participates in group shows regularly. Her work is held in distinguished private and corporate collections, including a print commission for each guest room for the Hotel Downstreet in North Adams, MA. Her art appears on the cover of The Difference is Spreading: Fifty Contemporary Poets on Fifty Poems (UPenn Press 2022) and in literary magazines such as The Nashville Review and 2River. ------ A graduate of Princeton University (BA) and University of Missouri-St. Louis (MFA), Van Doren has taught poetry workshops for a variety of educational institutions, among them the 92nd Street Y, the St. Louis Public Schools, Washington University in St. Louis, the St. Louis County Juvenile Detention Center and Scoville Memorial Library. She curated the Sunday Poetry Workshops for the St. Louis Poetry Center and serves on the board of the Five Points Center for the Visual Arts in Torrington, CT. A native St. Louisan, she works from her studio in West Cornwall, CT. -------
Pauletta Hansel is the author of nine collections of poetry, including her latest book Heartbreak Tree. Her work has been featured in Oxford American, Rattle, American Life in Poetry, and Poetry Daily, among others. Hansel was Cincinnati's first Poet Laureate, and she was the 2022 Writer-in-Residence for The Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County. Edna St. Vincent Millay was born in Rockland, Maine in 1892. Along with her many books of poetry, Millay published plays, a libretto called The King's Henchman, and she wrote short stories for popular fiction magazines under the pseudonym Nancy Boyd. She was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize in poetry.Links:Read "I Take My Mother with Me Everywhere" and "After"Read "Postcard from Age 60" at Braided WayRead "Recuerdo" at The Poetry FoundationPauletta HanselPauletta Hansel's website"The Road" at Poetry Daily"The City" at Appalachian Review"May 1, 2020" in The Oxford American"Palindrome" at Still: The JournalVideo: "Meet our 2022 Writer-In-Residence" Cincinnati & Hamilton County Public LibraryEdna St. Vincent MillayBio and poems at The Poetry FoundationBio and poems at Poets.orgThe Millay Society's Audio ArchivesMentioned in this episode:KnoxCountyLibrary.orgThank you for listening and sharing this podcast. Explore life-changing resources and events, sign up for newsletters, follow us on social media, and more through our website, www.knoxcountylibrary.org.Rate & review on Podchaser
Pauletta Hansel is the author of nine collections of poetry, including her latest book Heartbreak Tree. Her work has been featured in Oxford American, Rattle, American Life in Poetry, and Poetry Daily, among others. Hansel was Cincinnati's first Poet Laureate, and she was the 2022 Writer-in-Residence for The Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County. Edna St. Vincent Millay was born in Rockland, Maine in 1892. Along with her many books of poetry, Millay published plays, a libretto called The King's Henchman, and she wrote short stories for popular fiction magazines under the pseudonym Nancy Boyd. She was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize in poetry.Links:Read "I Take My Mother with Me Everywhere" and "After"Read "Postcard from Age 60" at Braided WayRead "Recuerdo" at The Poetry FoundationPauletta HanselPauletta Hansel's website"The Road" at Poetry Daily"The City" at Appalachian Review"May 1, 2020" in The Oxford American"Palindrome" at Still: The JournalVideo: "Meet our 2022 Writer-In-Residence" Cincinnati & Hamilton County Public LibraryEdna St. Vincent MillayBio and poems at The Poetry FoundationBio and poems at Poets.orgThe Millay Society's Audio ArchivesMentioned in this episode:KnoxCountyLibrary.orgThank you for listening and sharing this podcast. Explore life-changing resources and events, sign up for newsletters, follow us on social media, and more through our website, www.knoxcountylibrary.org.Rate & review on Podchaser
Rachelle Scott reads her poem, "Alternate Sources of Light," and Paul Hostovsky reads his poem, "Open." Rachelle Scott is writer, teacher, and editor from central Texas. Her work appears in The Lyric, Adanna, Third Wednesday, Apeiron Review, The Wayfarer, Literary Juice, Anima, Panther City Review, Her Texas, Shot Glass Journal, Red Rock Review, Crack the Spine, r.cv.r.y, Rock & Sling, Ilya's Honey, Red River Review, Figures of Speech, Mudlark, Literary Juice, Gravel, RiverSedge, and Southwestern American Literature. Paul Hostovsky's poems have won a Pushcart Prize, two Best of the Net Awards, the FutureCycle Poetry Book Prize, and have been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, The Writer's Almanac, and Best American Poetry. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/vita-poetica/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/vita-poetica/support
Inner Moonlight is the monthly poetry reading series for the Wild Detectives in Dallas. The in-person show is the second Wednesday of every month in the Wild Detectives backyard. We love our podcast fans, so we release recordings of the live performances every month for y'all! On 7/12/23, we featured poet Mag Gabbert. Mag Gabbert is the author of SEX DEPRESSION ANIMALS (Mad Creek Books, 2023), which was selected by Kathy Fagan as the winner of the 2021 Charles B. Wheeler Prize in Poetry; the chapbook The Breakup, which was selected by Kaveh Akbar as the winner of the 2022 Baltic Writing Residencies Chapbook Award; and the chapbook Minml Poems (Cooper Dillon Books, 2020). She's the recipient of a 2021 Discovery Award from 92NY's Unterberg Poetry Center as well as fellowships from the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, Idyllwild Arts, and Poetry at Round Top. Her work can be found in The American Poetry Review, The Paris Review Daily, Copper Nickel, Guernica, Poetry Daily, and elsewhere. Mag has an MFA from UC Riverside and a PhD from Texas Tech. She lives in Dallas, Texas and teaches at Southern Methodist University. Presented by The Writer's Garret https://writersgarret.org/ www.logencure.com/innermoonlight
Katy Didden is the author of Ore Choir: The Lava on Iceland (Tupelo Press, 2022), and The Glacier's Wake (Pleiades Press, 2013). Her poems, essays, and reviews appear in journals such as Public Books, Poetry Northwest, Ecotone, Diagram, The Kenyon Review, Image, 32 Poems, The Spoon River Poetry Review, The Sewanee Review, and Poetry, and her work has been featured on Verse Daily and Poetry Daily. She has received fellowships and residencies from The Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Sewanee Writers' Conference, the Vermont Studio Center, the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, the Ragdale Foundation, the Hambidge Center, the MacDowell Colony, and the Listhús Residency in Ólafsfjörður, Iceland. She was also a 2013-2014 Hodder Fellow at Princeton University. Collaborating with members of the Banff Research in Culture's Beyond Anthropocene Residency, she co-created Almanac for the Beyond (Tropic Editions, 2019). Katy is an Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing at Ball State University. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/viewlesswings/support
Stephen Massimilla is a poet, professor, painter, and author, most recently of the poetry collection Frank Dark (Barrow Street Press, 2022) and the 2022 co-edited social justice poetry anthology, Stronger Than Fear. His multi-genre, co-authored Cooking with the Muse (Tupelo Press, 2016) won the Eric Hoffer Award and many others. Previous books and honors include The Plague Doctor in His Hull-Shaped Hat (SFASU Press Prize); Forty Floors from Yesterday (Bordighera Prize, CUNY); The Grolier Poetry Prize; the Van Rensselaer Prize, selected by Kenneth Koch; a study of myth in poetry; award-winning translations; etc. His work has been featured recently in hundreds of publications ranging from AGNI to Denver Quarterly to Huffpost to Poetry Daily. Massimilla holds an MFA and a PhD from Columbia University and has taught there and at many other schools, currently The New School. He is also a prolific artist. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/viewlesswings/support
Jennifer Givhan knows the power of cultural storytelling. In her latest novel, River Woman, River Demon, she draws heavily from her and her husband's own Latina, Indigenous, and Black heritage to create a thrilling mystery infused with organic, emotional experiences. Jennifer is the award-winning author of novels like Trinity Sight and Jubilee and an accomplished poet. To purchase River Woman, River Demon, follow the link below. From Amazon.com: Jennifer Givhan, a National Endowment for the Arts and PEN/Rosenthal Emerging Voices Fellow, is a Mexican-American writer and activist from the Southwestern desert and the author of four full-length poetry collections: Landscape with Headless Mama (2015 Pleiades Editors' Prize), Protection Spell (2016 Miller Williams Poetry Prize Series chosen by Billy Collins), Girl with Death Mask (2017 Blue Light Books Prize chosen by Ross Gay), and Rosa's Einstein (Camino del Sol Poetry Series, University of Arizona Press 2019). Her novels include Trinity Sight (2019) and Jubilee (forthcoming) from Blackstone Publishing. Her other honors include the Frost Place Latinx scholarship, a National Latinx Writers' Conference scholarship, the Lascaux Review Poetry Prize, Phoebe Journal's Greg Grummer Poetry Prize, the Pinch Poetry Prize, and the Joy Harjo Poetry Prize 2nd place. Her work has appeared in Best of the Net, Best New Poets, Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, The New Republic, Ploughshares, POETRY, The Rumpus, TriQuarterly, Boston Review, AGNI, Crazyhorse, Witness, Southern Humanities Review, Missouri Review, The Kenyon Review, and many others. She lives in New Mexico with her family near the Sleeping Sister Volcanoes. In this episode, you'll discover: Why writing about magic is so important How being a mother enriches your writing How to use unreliable narration Jennifer's writing process --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/writersink/support
Michael Mark is the author of Visiting Her in Queens is More Enlightening than a Month in a Monastery in Tibet which won the Rattle Chapbook prize and will be published in 2022. His poetry has been published in Alaska Quarterly Review, The Arkansas International, Copper Nickel, Grist, Michigan Quarterly Review, Pleiades, Ploughshares, Poetry Daily, Poetry Northwest, Rattle, River Styx, The Southern Review, The New York Times, The Sun, Verse Daily, Waxwing, The Poetry Foundation's American Life in Poetry and other places. He was the recipient of the Anthony Hecht Scholarship at the Sewanee Writers' Conference. He's the author of two books of stories, Toba and At the Hands of a Thief (Atheneum). He lives with his wife, Lois, a journalist, in San Diego. Visit him at michaeljmark.com https://twitter.com/michaelgrow https://www.facebook.com/michael.mark1 https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelmark/ https://www.rattle.com/product/visiting-her-in-queens-is-more-enlightening-than-a-month-in-a-monastery-in-tibet/?fbclid=IwAR0g-e0GOfTpNEJHJqmtFA0j_fqLTSpsC2UsnpUvn_4wAR9YimewSGnQREU
Hosted by Andrew Keen, Keen On features conversations with some of the world's leading thinkers and writers about the economic, political, and technological issues being discussed in the news, right now. In this episode, Andrew is joined by Lynn Melnick, author of I've Had to Think Up a Way to Survive: On Trauma, Persistence, and Dolly Parton. Lynn Melnick is the author of three books of poetry and a contributor to Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture. Her poems have appeared in the New Republic, the New Yorker, and the Paris Review; her essays have appeared in Jewish Currents, LA Review of Books, and Poetry Daily. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The queens spin into a frosty finish with poet and figure-skating stan Jacques J. Rancourt! What a way to celebrate our 50th episode!Please support the poets mentioned in today's episode by buying their books. Shop indie if you can; we recommend Loyalty Bookstores, a Black-owned bookseller in DC. You can buy Jacques's Brocken Spectre here. Find Jacques J. Rancourt's website here. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram @jj_rancourt. Read Jacques's “Golden Gate Park” from Brocken Spectre on Poetry Daily here. Writing for the Los Angeles Review Erica Charis-Molling says this of Rancourt's Brocken Spectre: “Much like the phenomenon after which the collection is titled, the search for answers is part ghost hunt and part investigation of an illusion. Through the eyes of these post-AIDS-epidemic poems, we thoughtfully look at the ways the virus is both a thing of the past and very much present.” Read the whole review here. If you want to know more about what Tonya Harding (who was banned for life from the US Figure Skating Association) is up to these days, here's a pretty great article. Short answer: she's chopping wood, sending Cameo vids, and raising a son with her 3rd husband. Watch Harding become the 2nd woman (and first American) to land a triple axel in competition (1991 US Nationals) here around the 0:50 mark. You can read several poems by Adélia Prado here, courtesy of the Boutelle-Day Poetry Center at Smith College.If you're into incredible jumps, you've got to see Surya Bonali's infamous backflip at the Nagano Olympics. (3:45 mark)Geri Doran's first book, Resin, won the Walt Whitman Award and was published in 2005 by LSU. Her second book, Sanderlings, was published by Tupelo in 2011. Doran's third book, Epistle, Osprey was published in 2019 (also by Tupelo) -- and we are sorry not to have gotten that right before the fact check! (Thanks, Katy Didden, for the help!) Read "Tonight is a Night Without Birds" from Resin here. Watch Carolina Kostner's 2014 spellbinding “Ave Maria” performance here. James's favorite Lucie Brock-Broido book is Trouble in Mind. Read "Leaflet on Wooing" from that book here. Watch Brock-Broido read "Freedom of Speech" here, dedicated to Liam Rector.Hear Lisel Mueller (1924-2020) read "Monet Refuses the Operation" here (~2.5 min).Check out Aaron Smith's latest book of poems, The Book of Daniel, and James Allen Hall's book of lyric essays, I Liked You Better Before I Knew You So Well. Because it's Breaking Form, we'd be remiss if we didn't include at least one scholarly resource. Here's this article titled “Shirtless Figure Skaters: 14 Hot Hunky Men on Ice.”
Join Šari Dale this week in Prince George. In this episode we talk about Šari's debut poetry book, Para-Social Butterfly, in which the narrator, a young woman disillusioned with her life, decides to live in a digital space called The Ultra-Glam, blurring the lines between the reality experienced in physical and digital spaces. Šari also talks about how her work as a copywriter plays into the writing of her poetry, as well as early experiences in internet chat rooms and current experiences in social media. We discuss persona and influence, her obsession with reality TV, and her current work which draws from the influence of nature and of monster trucks. Šari Dale writes from Prince George, BC on unceded ancestral lands of the Lheidli T'enneh. She holds a B.A. in English and Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia, where she was the recipient of The Creative Writing Prize. Her poetry has been published in Arc, Grain, and The Malahat Review among others and anthologized in Best Canadian Poetry 2021 and Poetry Daily. Order Para-Social Butterfly: https://www.metatron.press/work/para-social-butterfly/
Ella Frears is a poet and visual artist based in south-east London. She has had poetry published in the LRB, Poetry London, Ambit, The Rialto, Poetry Daily, POEM, and the Moth among others. Her pamphlet Passivity, Electricity, Acclivity was published by Goldsmiths Press 2018. Her debut collection, Shine, Darling is published by Offord Road Books, and came out in April, 2020. Suzannah V Evans spoke with Ella Frears at the StAnza Poetry Festival in 2019. Frears reads her poems and discusses sand, vintage porn, and the interplay between her roles as a writer and visual artist.
又到了每个月阅读总结的时间。这一期我们一起聊一聊六月份读过的书以及有什么可以推荐的书。大家六月读了什么呢？欢迎给我们留言。 时间节点： 05:55 White Smoke, by Tiffany D. Jackson 08:47 When No One Is Watching, by Alyssa Cole 15:22 短篇《伊尔的维纳斯铜像》，[法] 梅里美 18:30 《爱，死亡和机器人 1》 20:34 《裂隙之外》，[英] 阿拉斯泰尔·雷诺兹 23:52 Saint Sebastian's Abyss, by Mark Haber 28:30 《我要活下去》，金琸桓 31:50 Sister Outsider, by Audre Lorde 36:26 I Like To Watch, by Emily Nussbaum 38:47 Shit, Actually, by Lindy West 43:41 《白发阿娥及其他》，西西 47:55 《鱼翅与花椒》，[英] 扶霞·邓洛普 52:58 免费短篇小说在线阅读：tor.com 53:41 Brimstone And Marmalade, by Aaron Corwin 54:48 Bakkhai, by Euripides & Anne Carson 57:52 Nox, by Anne Carson 59:32 Whereas, by Layli Long Soldier 1:01:07 Postcolonial Love Poem, by Natalie Diaz 1:02:15 可以从以下网站订阅每日一首诗歌：Poetry Daily, Poetry Foundation 1:02:56 Open Water, by Caleb Azumah Nelson 1:05:00 《在自己的世界闪闪发光》，[日] 津津井 提到的书或短篇： 《邪屋》，《摸彩》，《她只说“是的”》，雪莉·杰克逊； 《素人之乱》，松本哉； 《2666》，[智利] 罗贝托·波拉尼奥； Woman, Eating, by Claire Kohda； Every Grain of Rice, by Fuchsia Dunlop; As Good As New, by Charlie Jane Anders; The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere, by John Chu; Antigonick, by Anne Carson; 《偶像失格》，《くるまの娘》，[日] 宇佐见铃。 提到的影音及其他： 电影或电视剧集：逃出绝命镇，爱、死亡和机器人，吸血鬼猎人巴菲，黑道家族，欲望都市，女孩们，吉尔莫女孩，侦探，了不起的麦瑟尔夫人，真爱至上，哈利波特系列，月光男孩。
James Hannon reads his poem, "Satsang with Guruji," and Julie L. Moore reads her poem, "The False Prophetess Noadiah," both from our Winter 2022 issue. James Hannon is a psychotherapist in Massachusetts, where he accompanies adolescents and adults recovering from addictions, disappointments, and deceptions. His poems have appeared in Blue Lake Review, Blue River, Cold Mountain Review, and other journals, and in Gathered: Contemporary Quaker Poets. His second collection, To My Children at Christmas, will be published in 2022 by Kelsay Books. A Best of the Net and seven-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Julie L. Moore is the author of four poetry collections, including, most recently, Full Worm Moon, which won a 2018 Woodrow Hall Top Shelf Award and received honorable mention for the Conference on Christianity and Literature's 2018 Book of the Year Award. Her poetry has appeared in African American Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Image, New Ohio Review, Poetry Daily, Prairie Schooner, The Southern Review, and Verse Daily. She is the Writing Center Director at Taylor University, where she is also the poetry editor for Relief Journal. Learn more about her work at julielmoore.com. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/vita-poetica/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/vita-poetica/support
Michael Frazier and I talk about the humbling path of following a calling, the power of mentorship, and surrendering our desires by naming them. Michael is an award-winning poet & educator living in central Japan. He graduated from NYU, where he was the 2017 poet commencement speaker & a co-champion of CUPSI. He's performed at Nuyorican Poets Café, Lincoln Center, Gallatin Arts Festival, & other venues. His poems appear, or are forthcoming, in Poetry Daily, The Offing, Cream City Review, RHINO, Visible Poetry Project, & elsewhere. He facilitates a zoom poetry book club open to the public. He also volunteers as a Youth Leader at a small cafe in Kanazawa City that's on fire for Christ (Hope House), and he's working on poetry collection(s) about oyakodon, his hilarious mother, and being black in Japan. He's uber passionate about anime, bubble tea, and, most importantly, the power of Christ to change lives. You can connect with Michael on Instagram and Twitter @fraziermichael or on his website, fraziermichael.com. If you're enjoying the show, please take a minute to rate and review. To stay up to date on all things Unsuitable, follow me on Instagram @ maryb.safrit or subscribe to my weekly newsletter at marybsafrit.com.
Andrea Carter Brown's new collection of award-winning poetry, September 12, was published for the 20th anniversary of 9/11 Her previous collections are Domestic Karma, The Disheveled Bed, and Brook & Rainbow (winner of the 2001 Sow's Ear Press Chapbook Prize) Her poems have won awards from Five Points, River Styx, The MacGuffin, and the Poetry Society of America. They are cited in the Library of Congress Online Guide to the Poetry of 9/11, and have been featured on NPR, Poetry Daily, and as Split This Rock Poem of the Week, A Founding Editor of Barrow Street and Managing Editor of The Emily Dickinson Journal, she has been Series Editor of The Word Works Washington Prize since 2017. An avid birder, she lives in Los Angeles, where she grows lemons, limes, oranges, and tangerines in her back yard. Some key points from our interview · How her sister's called saved her life when she phoned to ask if she was ok as the Twin Towers had been hit· How when she returned to her apartment, she was aware that the dust contained ashes of thousands who vanished four mornings ago· How she has so much gratitude to all the people and strangers that helped her along the way and believes she survived because of them· How writing “September 12” impelled her to bear witness to that day and its aftermath· How she also believes in the power of sharing stories· How she feels that her book, which took twenty years to write, is the evidence of being Unbroken by 9/11 You can get more info about Andrea here:https://www.andreacarterbrown.com * * * *"Unbroken: Healing Through Storytelling" features individuals who have all triumphed after adversity and have not just bounced back in life, but forward and are now making a difference for others.Hosted by Madeleine Black, the show will share stories of all the amazing people Madeleine has met on her own journey as an author/speaker and these stories will heal, motivate, inspire and bring hope when they share their wisdom and knowledge with her.She really believes in the power that comes when we share our stories, that in fact we are not story tellers but story healers. Tune in to discover what helped them to stay unbroken and together we will discover that none of us are broken beyond repair.You can find out more about Madeleine, her story and her memoir, Unbroken, from her website: https://madeleineblack.co.uk/Watch via YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/c/MadeleineBlackUnbroken
Zilka Joseph was awarded a Zell Fellowship and the Elsie Choy Lee Scholarship from the University of Michigan. Her work has appeared in Poetry, Poetry Daily, The Writers' Chronicle, Frontier Poetry, Kenyon Review Online, and other publications. Sharp Blue Search of Flame, her book of poems published by Wayne State University Press, was a finalist for the Foreword INDIES Book Award. In Our Beautiful Bones, her most recent book, has had been nominated for a Pushcart, A PEN, and a Michigan Notable Book Award. She was born in Mumbai, lived in Kolkata, and now lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Her work is influenced by Eastern and Western cultures and by her Bene Israel roots. She teaches creative writing workshops, and is a freelance editor and manuscript advisor. She is dedicated to coaching, lifting up every writer she works with, and creating a unique community of writers/students wherever she lives and teaches. Find Zilka's books and more at: http://www.zilkajoseph.com/ As always, we'll also include live open lines for responses to our weekly prompt or any other poems you'd like to share. For details on how to participate, either via Skype or by phone, go to: https://www.rattle.com/rattlecast/ This Week's Prompt: Write a poem about an act of rebellion. Next Week's Prompt: Write a poem about one of your ancestors. The Rattlecast livestreams on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, then becomes an audio podcast. Find it on iTunes, Spotify, or anywhere else you get your podcasts.
SummaryThis week on the Tragedy Academy podcast, Jay rolls out a very big welcome for the talented multi-disciplinary artist, Katie Chonacas (aka KYRIAKI). Not only has Katie acted in numerous productions with A-list stars, but she also recently released a book of poetry and her debut album, Dreamland 1111. Jay and Katie dive deep into her musical inspirations, her revolutionary work creating NFTs and the future of art in the blockchain. Be sure you don't miss out on this episode, and don't forget to check out Katie's podcast, She's All Over The Place!Key Points
Pauletta Hansel- SOREN LIT 2022 Pauletta Hansel's books include Friend, Coal Town Photograph and Palindrome, winner of the 2017 Weatherford Award for Appalachian poetry; Heartbreak Tree is forthcoming from Madville Publishing. Her writing was featured in Oxford American, Verse Daily and Poetry Daily. Pauletta was Cincinnati's first Poet Laureate and past managing editor of Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel. https://paulettahansel.wordpress.com/. SOREN LIT Producer and Founding Editor: Melodie J. Rodgers www.sorenlit.com --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/melodie-rodgers/message
In this episode of the Get Lit Minute, your weekly poetry podcast, we spotlight the life and work of poet, Traci Brimhall. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, and New England Review, among others. Some of her work has also been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, Best of the Net, PBS Newshour, and Best American Poetry 2013 & 2014. Source This episode includes a reading of her poem, "Oh Wonder", featured in our 2021 Get Lit Anthology."Oh Wonder"It's the garden spider who eats her mistakesat the end of day so she can billow in the lungof night, dangling from an insecure branch or caught on the coral spur of a dove's footand sleep, her spinnerets trailing radials likeungathered hair. It's a million pound cumulus. It's the stratosphere, holding it, miraculous. It'sa mammatus rolling her weight through duskwaiting to unhook and shake free the hail. Sometimes it's so ordinary it escapes your notice—pothos reaching for windows, ease of an avocadoslipping its skin. A porcelain boy with lamp-black eyes told me most mammals have the same averagenumber of heartbeats in a lifetime. It is the mouseengine that hums too hot to last. It is the blue whale's slow electricity—six pumps per minute is the wayto live centuries. I think it's also the hummingbirdI saw in a video lifted off a cement floor by firefighters and fed sugar water until she was again a tempest.It wasn't when my mother lay on the garage floorand my brother lifted her while I tried to shout louder than her sobs. But it was her heart, a washable ink.It was her dark's genius, how it moaned slow enoughto outlive her. It is the orca who pushes her dead calf a thousand miles before she drops it or it falls apart.And it is also when she plays with her pod the dayafter. It is the night my son tugs at his pajama collar and cries: The sad is so big I can't get it all out,and I behold him, astonished, his sadness as cleanand abundant as spring. His thunder-heart, a marvel I refuse to invade with empathy. And outside, cloudsgroan like gods, a garden spider consumes her home.It's knowing she can weave it tomorrow between citrus leaves and earth. It's her chamberless heartcleaving the length of her body. It is lifting my soninto my lap to witness the birth of his grieving.Support the show (https://getlit.org/donate/)
José A. Alcántara lives in western Colorado. He has worked as a bookseller, mailman, commercial fisherman, baker, carpenter, studio photographer, door-to-door salesman, and math teacher. His poems have appeared in Poetry Daily, The Southern Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Spillway, Rattle, RHINO, The American Journal of Poetry, and the anthologies, 99 Poems for the 99%, and America, We Call Your Name: Poems of Resistance and Resilience. The Bitten World, his first poetry collection, has just been published by Tebot Bach. As always, we'll also include live open lines for responses to our weekly prompt or any other poems you'd like to share. For details on how to participate, either via Skype or by phone, go to: https://www.rattle.com/rattlecast/ Find the book: http://tebotbach.org/ This Week's Prompt: Write a poem about the winter solstice. Next Week's Prompt: Write a poem about a moment of 2021 you'll never forget. The Rattlecast livestreams on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, then becomes an audio podcast. Find it on iTunes, Spotify, or anywhere else you get your podcasts.
Honora Ankong and Bessie Flores Zaldívar are MFA candidates at Virginia Tech and hosts of the MFAngle podcast. They joined Kira and Joe in the studio to discuss new episodes, their own writing, and the future of the podcast. MFAngle is produced in affiliation with Virginia Tech Publishing and the Virginia Tech University Libraries Athenaeum. Honora Ankong is a queer Cameroonian American poet, writer, and 2020 Pushcart prize nominee who has been featured by Poetry Daily. Her works exist to complicate and expand narratives of Blackness, immigration, displacement, and queer identity. Her chapbook our gods are hungry for elegies was selected as a winner of the 2021 Glass Poetry Press chapbook contest and will be forthcoming in 2022. Her other words can be found at Lolwe, Mineral Lit, Glass, The Maine Review, storySouth, and elsewhere. Bessie Flores Zaldívar is a writer and poet from Tegucigalpa, Honduras. She is a Tin House YA 2021 alumni and her work has been nominated for Best New Poets and selected for Best of the Net 2020. Bessie's new chapbook, Rain Revolutions, is out now with Long Day Press. She will be reading from Rain Revolutions around Blacksburg next month including at this event. Stacks on Stacks: The Interviews is a collection of guest interviews that aired during the regular broadcast of the program on Tuesdays from 3:30 until 5pm, over 90.7 FM WUVT, Radio for Everyone. Season Two: The Hopeful Return is a collection of all the interview segments recorded for live broadcast during the Stacks on Stacks radio program in the Fall 2020.
Read: Jessica's poem "The Ballad of the Red Wisteria"Jessica Q. Stark is a California-native, Vietnamese American poet, editor, and educator that lives in Jacksonville, Florida. She holds a BA from UC Berkeley and dual MA Degrees in English Literature and Cultural Studies from Saint Louis University's Madrid Campus. She received her PhD in English from Duke University. She has published scholarly articles on poetry and comics studies and teaches writing at the University of North Florida.Her poetry has most recently appeared or is forthcoming in Poetry Society of America, Pleiades, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Carolina Quarterly, Poetry Daily, The Boiler, The Southeast Review, Hobart Pulp, Verse Daily, Tupelo Quarterly, Potluck, and for the Glass Poetry Journal: Poets Resist series. Her first poetry manuscript, The Liminal Parade, was selected by Dorothea Lasky for the Double Take Grand Prize in 2016 and was published by Heavy Feather Review. She is the author of four poetry chapbooks, including her most recent titled INNANET (The Offending Adam, 2021). Her full-length poetry collection, Savage Pageant, which was a finalist for the Cleveland State University Poetry Center Book Prize, the 42 Miles Press Book Prize, and the Rose Metal Press Hybrid Book Prize, was published by Birds, LLC in March 2020. Savage Pageant was named one of the “Best Books of 2020” in The Boston Globe and in Hyperallergic. Her third poetry manuscript, Buffalo Girl, explores a short time in her mother's life, Vietnamese-diasporic wolves, and different iterations of Little Red Riding Hood. She occasionally writes poetry reviews for Carolina Quarterly and is currently a Poetry Editor for AGNI and the Comics Editor for Honey Literary. She has lived in several cities across the globe, including Seoul, South Korea, Madrid, Spain, and for a short time in Zihuatanejo, Mexico, where she ran a backpackers' hostel with her partner and learned how to crack a coconut with a machete. In her free time, she is a cat-lover and has been trained as a Level Two Reiki practitioner. Purchase Jessica Q. Stark's Savage Pageant (Birds LLC, 2020).
Brendan Constantine was born in Los Angeles, the second child of actors Michael Constantine and Julianna McCarthy. An ardent supporter of Southern California's poetry communities and one of its most recognized poets, he has served as a teacher of poetry in local schools and colleges since 1995. His first collection, Letters to Guns, was released in February 2009 from Red Hen Press to wide acclaim. This was followed in 2011 by Birthday Girl With Possum, under the performance based publisher Write Bloody, and established Mr. Constantine as a poet equally at home on the page and the stage. His work can be found in many of the nation's standards, including Poetry, Tin House, Best American Poetry, Poem-a-Day, Virginia Quarterly, Rattle, Prairie Schooner, Field, Chautauqua, and Poetry Daily. His most recent collections are Dementia, My Darling (2016) from Red Hen Press and Bouncy Bounce (2018), a chapbook from Blue Horse Press. He currently teaches creative writing at the Windward School. In addition, he brings poetry workshops to veterans, hospitals, foster care centers, & shelters for the homeless. He is also very proud of his work with the Alzheimer's Poetry Project. Since 2017, he has been working with speech pathologist Michael Biel to develop the first poetry workshop for people dealing with Aphasia. Brendan has appeared in four issues of Rattle and was interviewed in issue #52. Find more info and all the books here: https://brendanconstantine.com/ As always, we'll also include live open lines for responses to our weekly prompt or any other poems you'd like to share. For details on how to participate, either via Skype or by phone, go to: https://www.rattle.com/rattlecast/ This Week's Prompt: A portmanteau is a blend of two words that combines their meaning. For example, brunch, spork, and sitcom are portmanteaus. Write a poem containing one or more portmanteaus. (Feel free to make up your own!) Next Week's Prompt: Write a poem set in a time period of at least one hundred years ago. The Rattlecast livestreams on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, then becomes an audio podcast. Find it on iTunes, Spotify, or anywhere else you get your podcasts.
Welcome to the Aphasia Access Conversations Podcast. I'm Jerry Hoepner, a faculty member in the department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at the University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire. I am privileged to introduce today's guest, Brendan Constantine. I'm excited to have a conversation with Brendan about his work with poetry for individuals with aphasia and related disorders. Brendan Constantine is a poet based in Los Angeles. His work has appeared in many of the nation's standards, including Poetry, Best American Poetry, Prairie Schooner, Poetry Daily, Tin House, Ploughshares, Field, Virginia Quarterly, and Poem-a-Day. His most recent collections are ‘Dementia, My Darling' (2016) from Red Hen Press and ‘Bouncy Bounce' (2018), a chapbook from Blue Horse Press. A new book, ‘The Opposites Game,' is on the way. He has received support and commissions from the Getty Museum, James Irvine Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. A popular performer, Constantine has presented his work to audiences throughout the U.S. and Europe, also appearing on TED ED, NPR's All Things Considered, numerous podcasts, and YouTube. He holds an MFA in poetry from Vermont College of Fine Arts and currently teaches at the Windward School. Since 2017 he has been working with speech pathologist Michael Biel to develop poetry workshops for people with Aphasia and Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). Take aways: Learn about Brendan's poetry workshops for individuals with aphasia and traumatic brain injuries. Hear about the work he has done with Michael Biel's poetry group, the Chippewa Valley Aphasia Camp, and the Blugold Thursday Poetry Guild. Learn how poetry can reveal competence, self-efficacy, confidence, and self-worth for poets with aphasia and brain injuries. Hear examples of some of the poetry writing prompts and supports needed to facilitate successful outcomes. Learn how poetry fits into the life participation approach. Hear a few of the perceived outcomes from poets with aphasia and brain injuries. Interview Transcript: Note – a person with aphasia in the group calls Jerry “The Professor” and Brendan the “California Guy”, so we decided to keep it that way in the transcript. The Professor: All right, well hi Brendan good to see you. I'd say nice to see you again, but we just had poetry class together a few moments ago, so great to see you again five minutes ago. Yeah, we're glad to have you. California Guy: So, yes, it's wonderful it's wonderful to see you again and yeah, we did just have a great class. The Professor: Yeah, it's been a real treat and a real privilege to be a part of the poetry group so I'm excited to talk about that a little bit tonight and about some of your work and other poetry classes and workshops as well. So, shall we dive into it? California Guy: yeah, absolutely okay. The Professor: sounds good, well, maybe, before we start, I know you but not everyone does. Can you share a little bit about yourself, about your poetry about your teaching. That kind of stuff. California Guy: I'm a poet, based in Los Angeles California born and raised and for roughly the last 25 to 26 years I've been making my living here as a poet, and the teacher identified as a poet first and the teacher second maybe because even though I've been doing it for a long time teaching still scares me, and I think of it is something that I do, in addition to writing permanently I've got or a collections of poetry in print and based on the way and a lot of publications in in national journals and I've been fortunate enough to have my work adapted for the screen and I'm doing I'm doing pretty well for a poet these days and trying to think what else I. I've been fortunate enough also that my work has been proven useful. That is to say that my poetry is taught in a lot of places and because it seems so conducive to teaching that's really how I got started with teaching was that began with people reaching out and asking if they could use phones in the classroom and then asking if I would come and visit their classrooms and now I'm not only a full-time teacher at a local high school or high school, I should point out, incidentally, that rejected me as a student back in ‘78. But I also I also get to work with different groups I work with adults who have been away from writing and are just coming back I work with I frequently work with pick an elementary school and lecture at the local colleges a few times a year. And then there are groups like ours, and some of the some of the classes, that I would say, are more specialized. I think a long ago with some around 2009 I met a man named Gary Glaser who had developed a series of poetry workshops for people with Alzheimer's he created a really interesting series called the old timers poetry project and, on the strength of that and working with him. I started working with the facial book Club in Los Angeles, and then ultimately got to work with got to meet and work with you. The Professor: I think that's a terrific answer and I, and I appreciate that you said. Your poetry is useful because I'm interested in diving into that what's useful about it, I kind of phrase, the question I'm not really sure how to address this but is it something about the power of poetry transcendence this ability for people to express things that they can't express other ways, you have ideas about that. California Guy: yeah and the only thing I'm struggling with right now is making sure that my answer doesn't dominate the rest of our time together because it's so loaded. When I first started writing poetry in earnest our tree was experiencing as it does, I kind of, there was a wave of interest in popularity that was that was cresting in the middle nine days. And we were seeing a lot of poetry, at least, out of here, I was aware that poetry was starting to appear on the radio, you were hearing it on you know, on NPR and prairie home companion, and things like that and Things more people were getting gift anthologies of poetry and poetry was starting to enjoy an interesting higher profile slam poetry was also coming into its own and right at that time, the word accessibility started to become a bad word. At least among poets, a lot of poets felt that there were there was too much work out there, that was playing to the audience that wanted to be like. As often happens when anything becomes popular you know, a certain group or sunset identifies everything that makes it popular and immediately begin to disdain it. And likewise in poetry circles, you heard you know lots of folks going well you know. There were a lot of what they called make poetry, it seemed that just poetry was you know, was coming up through the floor and that there was you know, there was tons of it and it wasn't very good work was happy or it seems to have lots of buzzwords and then, once I take accessibility became sort of a bad word efforts paying attention to that I was mostly because I I'm sort of amused by it seemed like a fake issue. It seemed like a fake problem I look at people are reading phones and being moved by. You know why, would you even bother to criticize that you know why, would you bother to say Oh well, there's so much sameness. I think that sometimes people are afraid that work of quality will be drowned out or somehow muffled by an abundance of lesser work but I, I firmly believe that you know, a it's in the eye of the beholder and be only the future nose art. And with all of this sort of swirling around in my head, I have saw instead of accessibility, I saw usefulness, you know, I think that I think that people's attention is a very valuable commodity, and I think it only gets more valuable it only gets more precious because so much competing for attention so much that is worthy is competing for attention the easy observation is that with social media and the phenomenon is celebrity that there's a lot of stuff that is worthless that it's competing for attention, I also think there's a great deal of very important stuff that competes for our attention. And for me to ask for your attention. As a poet I'm asking something serious from you, you know why should you pay attention to me I better have something interesting and useful to say you know. You know if all I'm going to do is shake my fist at you, or just try to make you feel good, then you know. There may be merits to that, but I feel like I would like there to be something useful something that you can take away, something that will clarify something or allow us to identify with each other and so that is the kind of usefulness, I mean then there's the other, there is another kind of usefulness now, which is I believe that as a poet, you know if you are not going to take some responsibility for the excitement then you're going to be complicit in the boredom, and that means I need to look at the work of my contemporaries I need to look at the work of people around me and make noise about it when one thing that I think and share it and put it out there and I also need to help raise the voices of the people around which is one of the big reasons that I teach. And, and that too is another kind of usefulness take the skills of poetry of the things that we use to identify a poem as upon rhythm meter similarly metaphor image personification hyperbole citation all of these things are useful and practical. You know, I believe that metaphor is in fact a gateway to compassion. You know if on a you know spending my days wondering how the light shields, as it falls into the room and how the Chair feels you know I when I luxuriate into it, if I'm wondering about how everything around me feels then it's going to be a lot easier for me to remember to remember how you feel or you know or ask how you feel. And, and I think these are just you know, some of the uses that I'm referring to. The Professor: that's terrific and just to reiterate a couple of those points I think I'm right in saying that it's useful for the people who consume it and useful for the people that produce it right yeah and then that idea of raising up those voices I think it's really powerful as we think about you know, using poetry, with people with stroke and brain injury and dementia, as you said, yeah. California Guy: And a way to segue into that and again I'm hoping your editors will help us cut to the chase well I say I'm a lot I think poetry emerges from culture to culture, for you know, a very simple reason, and that is that. Most of life, he is in fact indescribable that life is you know is characterized by things that just seem impossible to relate things that either are very minute and subtle or things that are huge and breathtaking. And that vein what it's like to be alive and any moments to convey mortal self consciousness to another person it's an almost impossible task, and so we try to come up with other ways to stay the unsayable music is a big one dance is another painting drawing sculpture. You know plays theater movies, these are all an effort to sort of brands like what it's like to be alive and conscious and reacting to things in a mode and perhaps the most perverse of all. Are those of us trying to attempt, the unsayable with language. Because right away the deck seems to be stacked against us, if I just tell you that I'm having a good day or a bad day you will never feel it with me. If I get into a little more detail if I say it was a rough day at work or I felt that nobody was listening to what I was saying, or there was a great deal of traffic again you'll have information, but you won't feel it with me. But if I can give you something that it was like, if I can give you a simile or a metaphor, that I can give you the subtle textures colors sounds and shapes I can give you an image to see in your mind then maybe you and I can start to have higher communication, you will start to know more closely how I felt and as a poet, I know that once I except as my goal as just trying to translate a feeling to you, then I can use just about anything to get there and it has been most wonderful reeducation. The tools of poetry are the characteristics or three are working with people that have traumatic brain injuries and us and language processing disorders, people with like aphasia. Because. In poetry, because feeling is first there's a lot more room for how to use the language and when I encounter a new writer who's dealing with aphasia and they begin to understand that they really can you know work with whatever words are coming to mind, even if they feel like the wrong word, you know that poetry, you know that all poetry suffers from a great deal of inaccuracy and then every poet or the history of poet poetry. You know feels like they got it wrong and they didn't quite choose the right word that there was probably a better word out there, that also most of the word rules of language don't necessarily have to apply, I can write a poem using perfect grammar but I don't have to I can, if I need to abandon subject verb agreement and just put my emphasis on cultivating images and communicate by just relaying to another person, you know, in very what we call in poetry compressed language. You know the bare bones of my sensory memory, you know I touches taste sound smell, you know textures these. That this may be, all I need to create an emotional experience and the reader or the listener. You know, and that it will be its own thing that it will be viable it'll be upon. You know, it will have magnitude. And you know, working with people that have aphasia working with people that have traumatic brain injury folks, that is to say folks that you know. Or you know just putting together a simple sentence might be a challenge it's been amazing to watch what happens. When you just change the focus a little bit instead of saying tell me how you, you know about your day or write me a story about your day if they know going in that they're working with poetry. And then every single word that they choose, will mean potentially more of an itself, you know. But every word that they that they managed to come up with will have a greater currency, you know or for any audience, because, of course, when we experience poetry if we read poetry listen to poetry, we paint we attend it differently than we attend the other things don't like I mean if you know you're reading a problem you're going to read it differently to yourself. Then you would then you would read a story it's a different act of attention and we know that you know that going into it, that there is a kind of preciousness to every word that we might not attribute with just a prose narrative story, and I have found that this has only been empowering people with aphasia and traumatic brain injury. The Professor: I just gotta say I one of the things I love most about working with you on this is your ability to acknowledge competence, you may know not know the but the nerdy speech language pathologists that listen to this will know the term acknowledging competence, this idea that we convey through our words through our actions through our non verbals that someone has the capability and that expectation for competent performance. And I think what you just talked about is really important, if someone's thinking. Oh, I want to run a poetry group, but I don't have Brendan Constantine I think the key is really this idea that you said poetry, you know it is really a heavy lift in that you're trying to explain the unexplainable and you're trying to do it with words and yet we're asking people who have trouble with words doing this, I think your flip of saying, but the angle at this, is that you can use any words and you can use the words that are at your disposal, and you don't have to use them correctly and you can still be really successful and as we've learned really moving in and how you use those words. I just think that's the most remarkable thing about the poetry groups that I've been a part of. California Guy: Thank you, the therapies that I have encountered for people that are dealing with language processing disorders, they tend to be very corrective predictive therapies, you know the example that comes to mind is. Where, for instance, someone will be presented with a worksheet that has a drawing of a bed. And then there'll be an incomplete sentence at the bottom and it'll say when I'm tired I get in my blank and the person with aphasia or TBI is being guided to you know. To finish the sentence in a very predictable way because the emphasis is you know, we need to help them get you know back in the habit of simple communication and being to identify their needs, and this is, this is a very necessary kind of therapy, but. When it comes to poetry what's interesting you know poetry and creative writing in general is we're not interested in the next expected word. You know of you know we're interested in the word that will be emotionally true, and that may be a very unpredictable thing I've found you know witnessing a lot of paraphrases you know word displacement word substitution. You know, you know the substitution of you know, words that are genetically similar to the word that the person wants to use that quite often even when you know, a person with aphasia feels toward it in the act of trying to say something very simple and chooses the wrong word. That goes quote unquote wrong words. Nearly often actually are emotionally compatible with what they are trying to say, you know that you know if they're the wrong words they're only wrong by so much there inexact and that's different. And, and you know many, as I say, it's exactitude that a lot of therapies are trying to produce, but in poetry we're not really interested in exactitude largely because we know it's impossible. I mean great, I mean you know, working with metaphor trying to write this way to communicate through poetry is a lot like you know I liken it to the way diamonds are graded you know if you go to a jeweler and buy a diamond. The scale he's working with has at one end a concept of a perfect diamond but a perfect diamond is, in fact, impossible to possess because on their scale a perfect diamond would be composed entirely of light. And then seems to be, you know that seems to be a perfect own would be as it Lucy when you know you know we're trying for something that you know we know we're never going to get all the way there we're going to get close you know and so. You know. Your employer poetry, you know it's you know. As I said, it is different to the rules, and I find that it does tend to accommodate you know people that have these constrained communicative challenges and to mention that you know quite often, you know. Another thing that that I think you know it's just such a simple fix you know if somebody is interested in creating a poetry workshop. A lot of your you know for people that that have aphasia or people that have traumatic brain injury the standard model of any creative writing workshop is that everybody gets together and ranks. You know, and we do some of that in in the group that you and I shared but if you're willing to just change focus a little bit and give your students time to work on stuff on their own. And instead of putting an emphasis on producing writing right there in the workshop that the workshop is the place where the writing happened. But instead put an emphasis in your workshop on you know communicating about what you like about poetry what you notice about you know a poem that you like and how it works and extracting from that things that you would like to try, with the group and say okay. You know, we looked at this kind of home and this kind of home seems to work by doing this either, it has repetition in it for its shaped a particular way or use a certain kinds of words okay now we're all going to try that and we'll meet again in a week and you give everybody plenty of time to work. Just that you know just that little difference can produce huge results, the pressures off nobody staring over their shoulder nobody's you know they get enough of that you know, but if they have time to say I'm just writing this for me I'm just feeling he's to work on. You know, then get ready for some really interesting results you know and that seems to have been the case with our class is you know they have a week in between sessions, and you know plenty of time to be comfortable with you know with whatever words. The Professor: Yeah agreed and I've been really so we've been doing this, since November and I've been really surprised, but I shouldn't be surprised at how much kind of I'll call it poetry theory poetry approaches that people have just kind of adapted and really understand in terms of the way that they talk about poetry now versus how they talked about poetry before you know, tonight we had one of our Members share a poem about writing poems and it had all of those pieces in it right. You know about using imagery and about using metaphor, and about and was able to kind of talk about those things in a sophisticated way and how much of that that people can really learn and apply is really remarkable. California Guy: From what I've seen there's and it's interesting because we do have some some folks in the class that are dealing with you know different degrees of challenge and I have found in particular, you know, am I allowed to say the names of anyone in the class. The Professor: I that's a good question um I think it's probably okay to say a first name that's fine okay. California Guy: Well, today we have you know we have we had a student named reached out to I think of the folks that we work with has perhaps one of the most extreme. Challenges and what has happened, has been really remarkable because you know, because the pressure has been taken off of her to find the exact words that in fact. She seems to have embodied the principle that, if I can describe for you all the things around the thing that I want to talk to you about. You know I mean Sometimes I feel as though there are very specific words that she cannot some. And so, she gives us all the nouns that exists around that particular now literally like you know case in point, if I couldn't you know, think of the word bed, you know and instead describing everything else in that room or naming all of the things that are on the path. And of course, her poetry that's only going to make the he's more vivid, so you know. If she tells us about going on a trip. She mentioned, you know. The sunlight, you know, on grass and ducks in a pond and the thousands of people getting in and out of their cars. And the wind and her ears and all of these things come up and she does it in one or two words and it's not in complete sentences, but you never miss a beat and these incredible rhythm. You know and it's really pretty stunning, you know, and she knows that she can she can move from image to image to image to image and take us through the course of a day at a lake you know and it's you know it's really quite exciting, this is, you know this is more than once I've you know. I've got my thoughts myself, you know I, you know as her family aware of this or that story that she's you know anything at this, you know. In a home, you know she'll make reference to you know, surely you know, surely to talk about a perfect day or so throwing a memory from childhood and I think. You know this whole sounds like stuff that's coming out here for the first time, you know I mean you know and endeavored to just talk about those things directly would never have done so with this depth of feeling. The Professor: Yeah agreed, you know when you were talking about this, we had a conversation about this tonight in group, one of the most popular or common phrases that our group Members say may become a title for one of our publications about the poems. Which is, I don't think I did this right. California Guy: That's right. We here at every assignment, you know when we meet up again yeah I don't think I did this right and of course that's become my new favorite thing to hear. Because you know it means they're about to blow me away, it means they're about to do something totally unexpected with the prompt. that's another thing for anybody that might listen to this and is interested in putting together a workout. And you want to give your you know your students. Challenges you know I find don't try to you know, don't give them exercises where you know what the poem is going to look like when it's done don't have to fix an idea of what the finished product should look like, in fact, ideally, probably have no idea what the finished product is supposed to look like. You know the this you know, because the class is going to take it in their own direction anyway, you know and so long as they have the freedom to take it in their own direction. You know, it tends to get really exciting, because they will invariably show you things that you just did not see coming you know and I have seen that happen, you know from time to time, where you know, a workshop instructor will give an assignment with very specific instructions and the writer gets a better idea, and you know along the way the prompt inspires them, and you know, which is what you're hoping for, but then they sort of deviate from the rules of the project and take it in some new direction. You know and I've seen it happen, where, then the workshop leaders say, well, you did it wrong. And they didn't they did it right it's a creative writing class. They should be writing creatively, it would be, it would be an amazing if the one thing that got in their way was the assignment, you know. Hopefully we're just you know I mean any good prompt really should just be a means to get you started. yeah, just you know, because you know once the poet has some momentum, you know, let him go yeah. The Professor: Again, that comes back to that principle of acknowledging competence and having that expectation that people are going to produce something that will blow you away I'm kind of jealous for your high school students, because my high school poetry was never that good. So maybe we can talk a little bit about some of the other poetry workshops and classes that you've run so you talked a little bit about the poetry work that you did with individuals with dementia. And I know that you've done some work with Mike Biel maybe that's a good place to start and a lot of our listeners will know Mike. California Guy: It was really interesting experience back in 2017 I got a letter from Michael Biel I believe he wrote to me through my website and I. He may remember this differently, but I recall that he had heard my name associated with the Alzheimer's poetry project, and he reached out and said look I run a book club for people with aphasia here in Los Angeles. And we've noticed a curious thing we look at all kinds of books, sometimes we read you know novels and sometimes we read you know, you know, a memoir and sometimes we do books of poetry, and whenever we do poetry group discussions become much more animated and engaged. And he said I wonder if it would be possible to lead a poetry writing workshop for people with aphasia I said, well, I you know I don't know how to. You know, work with people with aphasia so I'm just going to teach a workshop for writers and see what happens and if that's good with you will, will you know we'll see if this works, and so I came in and I started with you know lots of very basic prompts. Because I had some experience working with children. I was used to you know it's actually or what I should say I should back up and start with point over I'm fortunate enough that a lot of how I learned to teach started with kids because it affected how I work with adult. When I'm teaching writing workshops with adults, I will quite often bring in props and toys. I'll bring in games and things to sort of simulate creative fun, and so it occurred to me that if I was going to be in a room full of people who were having trouble thinking of words. That it might be smart to bring object, it might be straight, you know, in addition to bringing writing materials and examples of poems that I should bring you know seashells and bones and and uh you know pocket watches campuses you know can be just about us, you know anything I'm going I was bringing in rubber toys, in addition to simple poetry games and toys like magnetic poetry or Taylor molly's wonderful invention metaphor dice. And there's a bunch of these devices out there and I also spent an afternoon just writing random words on index cards. And I just brought in all of this stuff and I started out by talking to the group about what I liked about poetry asked them what they liked about poetry we looked at some different kinds of poetry that was very expansive but also lots of poetry, where the poets communicated in just a few words we looked at haiku poetry we looked at homes by Thomas transformer and we looked at a beautiful poem called silence by Laurence Dunbar Paul Laurence Dunbar I should say which the group really seem to enjoy it was all poem about when you don't need to speak and we looked at a bunch of different kinds and poems that seem to have no order to them and poems were the language was all over the page and we just started there and very slowly got a sense of who, who was comfortable taking a pen in their hands that day, who is comfortable just moving around pieces of paper with words on them desk who wanted to intersperse. You know words and dice and some of the objects together on the table in front of them and make a sentence that would have visual half you know language managing all of you know. And we did you know from session to session started that simply and we started to notice that you know from session to session, the group was becoming a little more fat file a little more comfortable with these materials and the work became more complex. Until You know yeah and I mean I think it's important to emphasize that I'm not talking about touring anything. You know and I'm not talking about poetry as a means to overcoming. A failure or repairing the brain, but what was interesting to me. More than interesting what was actually astonishing with that. There were a couple of students in that class who had given up on holding a pen. Because they had their, the aphasia they had was the result of multiple and severe strokes, which you know resulted in paralysis and you know they've given up on being able to you know steadily hold him suddenly being renewed in their desire to do so and actually managing to get. Like a pen. Steady in their good hands, knowing that if they could just get a few words, so they didn't have to construct a sentence, you know, a one student in particular began isolating nouns it took her while you know she would take the session to do it, she would start isolating the nouns that she wanted us and spacing them out with a live seeds using you know dots and dashes is connective tissue and you know, there was this sort of renewed vigor and You know she gone from you know she started out the first few sentences. Pointing you know to an assistant, you know pointing with an assistant at various things and saying you know put that next to that next to them and now she was taking the pen in our hand and starting to write poems out by hand. And then you know, once you know, and then, once she had the freedom to take you know, as I said, take the things home and work on it for a week. And you know she was there, you know whether index finger and making words on a keypad and doing the same thing, using an ellipse ease or dots and dashes or forward flashes to sort of you know uh, You know, do the work of articles and incidental words and just you know and then information was and then. California Guy: Oh yeah uh you know she was using dots and dashes and and various forms of you know, sometimes just period do the work of conjunctions and you know articles and connective tissue in her language and created this really vivid work. Michael and I decided that we would do a six-week session, and then we followed that with another eight-week session because the group really seem to enjoy themselves and wanted to do more of this and after the second eight week session, he was like Okay, you know. This is this is tested Now this is working over and over again and that's when I got to meet you because we went out to Asia camp in Wisconsin and tried to do some workshops there with a whole new group of folks and you know what started to happen in a really interesting way yeah. The Professor: So maybe we can talk a little bit about what's been happening in our group and kind of where it began, and where it's going those sorts of things kind of how we approach things on the on the front end and welcome kinds of supports are provided that sort of stuff. California Guy: Yeah, this has been a really interesting experience and again it's continued to broaden my understanding of you know what it means to be doing this kind of work. Oh, I'm at risk of a digression, but I think perhaps this is the context that will be helpful. hmm. At the same time I want to get a good handle on how I want to say this. The Professor: Yeah, that's cool. California Guy: As I said, poetry, when you study its origins from culture to culture, it really does seem to emerge in a pattern. And that pattern seems to be you know, of course, mostly of all languages, for the most part, begin spoken whether or not a culture will develop a written language it's not always the case, there are you know, there are exceptions around the world in cultures, where you know. A written tradition might not appear, or it might not appear, for a long time. But when the language is up and running, it does seem that, after a period of time people become aware that it falls short of expressing some very necessary things. That they're things that just cannot simply be named and that they need a special way to talk about special thing they need an intimate way to talk about intimate thing. And so you'll see people will start to use, there will be certain subjects for which they use only the most beautiful words in that language are only sacred words or they will as Pessoa says speak against the true nature of speech they'll give them music and unnatural rhythm or musicality they'll they'll give it a meter or they'll put it to music they'll they may even deliberately misuse their language for the purpose of fire communion because what it is that they seem to lack is an emotional vocabulary. And I think that's what that poetry provides is an emotional vocabulary and what I've seen with our particular group is this vocabulary gets bigger and bigger and bigger. And a famous poet said that poetry was a curious sort of language that is changed slightly by everyone who uses that well and. And our group has been sort of a microcosm for this, you know they started out very simply, and it seems to me that the first the first few efforts in poetry that we got on our on our very first session were largely sort of aphoristic that there were, you know that they there wasn't a lot of image, there was mostly there was mostly just sort of poems you know about being the best that you could be or being the happiest that you could be. They were poems that largely tend to be just sort of both writing encouragement and the more that they began to wait in from session to session to you know putting an emphasis on nouns over adjectives putting an emphasis on you know, on sensory details. On giving the language that kind of flow our rhythm and these kinds of things, and the more examples that they saw these the more different kinds of writing from which to draw upon you know presented to them with this is not a poem for you to imitate you're just looking at what the writer does and see if here's that word again if anything they're doing is useful to you and that you know by the third session we were seeing very vivid changes in how they were expressing themselves and it seemed to happen that fast, you know you know they've got a week between each session, you know so by the third session. You know there's you know, two weeks later. Suddenly, there are these very vivid transformation taking place, and not just in you know and with our with our Members that were, as you know, as we mentioned before, at very. You know, with very different kinds of trump you know and dealing with a very different sort of set of I don't I don't know whether to call and characteristics or pair of beiges or symptoms but you know one person in the group who for the most part is okay with sentence construction, but does tend to Max out over a period of time, and another person who you know who you know who needs two or three tries to get at you know at the sentence, they want and then you know, and then you know and get another person with a slightly more extreme case you know where they really can't very easily construct complete sentences at all on the first they really need some time you know to say let the words calm at their own pace, you know, and if they can't get the word say one you know get it, the words around the words they want. With interesting too and it's true at all levels of writing and by all levels, I don't mean all levels of people, you know that are in therapy with that, but I mean this is true of all writers in fact it's true of all our time has always been largely a question of what the artists does in dead of what they don't do well and that's where your true voice is going to become is going to come from and where it's going to be at its most particular and peculiar. You know. Billie Holiday didn't have a singer's voice neither did Janis Joplin it's what they did with what they fat instead of what they didn't do well, that made it interesting you know. You know, and I, and I guarantee you that if we were to talk to the people in our class about their own writing. I'm guessing that most of them were you know, or at least at the beginning, have felt that the very things that made their week writing week is just the things that to you and I make it the most interesting. You know, you know, and you know and for any writer in any class, you know who is looking at the radius around them and going well, I can't do what they do. No, you can't. Going right yeah. The Professor: Yeah. California Guy: Or rather don't make that her goal I don't I guess I wouldn't say don't try but don't make that your goal, because I guarantee you. You know weakness right like you. You know you're gonna have to you can't do what somebody else does you're gonna have to do what you do because trust me, none of us can. The Professor: Yeah, absolutely I love that metaphor of Janis Joplin and Billie Holiday that idea of don't try to do what you can't do what you can it's just such a powerful mindset. California Guy: When you're looking at supporting broke all over the place, I mean constantly falling off notes and leaving ABS of words, other than whatever what she gave us was so much more powerful you know I mean if she you know I started, and it is true, you know it's not always easy to get yourself in that mindset I get it, I mean I actually heard somebody say something to the effect that, like Thelonious monk was great if you didn't mind all the mistakes. Take you know where you take know your he did. Give me in the emotion, the raw emotion that's coming out on that keyboard. The thing that made my month. You know and made us want to keep going back you know you know those notes, some of them strong and some that are so frail You know, as you know, the way Hendrix would you know would blast through certain chords and combinations of notes and you know and just starting to fall off or get ahead of the bass, the bass, or you know it was just you know amazing you know that's where the artist that's where it gets spectacular. The Professor: And I do. California Guy: Yeah, and we've seen that again and again. The Professor: Yeah absolutely so I mean, so this podcast is about an approach, called the LIFE participation approach for aphasia and I think what we just talked about just really encapsulates that idea of doing what you can do not you know kind of dwelling on what you can't do is just such a great mantra for that that approach, you know one other thing that you do that, I think. Always kind of instills this sense of confidence in this sense of I can take on anything in the world, and I think for anyone who's thinking about a poetry class, this is just so powerful, and I bet you use this expression with your high school kids with anyone. I'm not going to say this right, but you know, sometimes there are words that are in you for 30 years that just needed to come out and this is the moment that they come out on a piece of paper. That idea that you've got things inside of you that want to be shared and that you know, this is just kind of a vehicle for sharing them I just think that. Expresses so much confidence and that they're that they're capable of doing anything, and I think that's powerful. California Guy: And I really you know for anybody that might be cynically going I was like well yeah but maybe you just had an awesome group. I you know I highly recommend that you just you just give it a shot. You know, and that you just you know you take your you take your expectations off of the end result and just you know going to find some poems that you think are interesting you know and be willing to share them with a group of people and be prepared to not have all the answers, in other words, you know, bringing a poem that you don't completely understand that you can't necessarily explain. You know and sit there with the group and wonder at it together. And because the truth of the matter is if a poet could have explained everything in their home down to the teacups they probably wouldn't have needed to write home. You know, and so you know if you're if you're willing to go into this with them and feel a little out of your depth, you know um. You know and just lead in and look at a handful of poems and just say okay we're gonna. You know what would we like about these poems what are these poems seem to do, how are they shaped you know. Is there anything with the poet does over and over is there, you know, is there something they only do once at the end that's really interesting you know well let's see if we can look up can do that, you know let's see if we can. You know, take that example and sort of run with it, and our own direction and I'll See you in a week you just pile up a few weeks to doing that and guarantee you you're going to see. You know, some changes, and if you if you can't find any problems to use you're not sure where to start writing poems to use in your workouts. Because there's just tons of gorgeous work. The Professor: yeah, that's terrific so Brendan I was gonna ask you about outcomes, but I have a different idea. If I share screen, will you read because you're a much better reader than I am some of the right out of the horse's mouth, some of the expressions about the poetry group that group members have shared, so this is what they said about. What poetry group means to them, I think you'll be able to see this there. I'll let you read a little bit and. California Guy: These quotes are examples of the therapeutic power of poetry. It's healing me it's all really helping me now. I'm healing leaps and bounds and other one says it makes me feel like my thoughts are coherent, whereas the rest of the time I don't feel like my thoughts are coherent it helps me bring my thoughts together. Another person says, I didn't know, I was a poet, I also didn't know, I was an international speaker it's pushing me outside of my comfort zone. I guess, I never realized that some of that stuff was in me and maybe I was trying to get it out, but I just didn't quite know how and it's just another avenue for. Another person ads it's helped me to focus my energy more it's helped me to focus my thoughts more because my putting words together oh sorry. I'm going to take that sorry going to take that quote again, it helped me to focus my energy more it's helped me to focus my thoughts more because my thoughts are scattered on a daily basis. Like I have trouble with concentration, I have troubled was putting words together and that kind of stuff So when I sit down and actually, I'm working on a phone it's like words come together miraculously. And I'm like wait a minute, if I could talk like this, all the time I'd be able to really communicate unfortunately life isn't about poetry. But it really has helped me it's given me the boost I need in life to realize that I am capable of something more than what my brain injury is making me capable of, yeah wonderful. California Guy: Had you shared those important because I don't remember team that? The Professor: I wanted to throw them on you right now, so you get kind of red face. California Guy: Fear to make me cry in the middle of a podcast Thank you. Well yeah well that's miraculous and that's what you hope for, I should also say just and maybe I'm only saying it for myself. I do believe that the most successful that any writer can ever hope to be has nothing to do with publishing a book or having your name on a library or getting a Pulitzer it's not the green room, the most successful that I think you can reasonably hope to be is to meet somebody in your lifetime, who you know says. You know you wrote this thing and it stayed with me. You know. And that's it that's the green room that's you know and what's been interesting is that some of the folks in our groups I've started sharing their work outside of our class and are getting a really interesting response. One person and I guess, I can say first name is Katie was just telling me that. A piece that she wrote, is now being read at a funeral because somebody else you know she shared it with somebody else you know and You know, they were like this, this has to be this this get to what I can say. And you know I mean it's you know that's funny that's you know I mean how successful did you want to be. A waiter that's you know that beats the pants off of anything else you know and for somebody who you know already feels that a huge disadvantage to somebody who's already been dealing with. You know, living in recovery after traumatic brain injury to you know, to find that not only did they did they clarify something that they wanted to say, but that it was useful there's that word again for somebody else I mean that's. You know what are we after, not that oh. The Professor: Absolutely, and I think both of you and I have felt this sense after multiple groups multiple classes, where we just say I just continued to be blown away by what people produce. And how they continue to just knock through that ceiling that glass ceiling that just accomplish things that I just didn't know was in them and they certainly didn't know was in them. For some of them I think what if they had never been a part of that class, and you know to not have known what potential lies underneath you know all of the struggles that they've been through. I think that's the power of something like this is to just see them break through and gain confidence and continue to do things that they didn't think they were capable of doing. yeah yeah. So, I was gonna say it's been a great conversation and just a privilege to be a part of this this work with you anything else you want to say to our listeners and closing? California Guy: Just this. It has been my experience that writer's block is almost never a shortage of magic, it is almost always a surplus of judging. And if you can just take your expectations off of it, you know don't add it before anything lands on the page just let it happen. You will be amazed before you are halfway through. The Professor: Absolutely, and I think you've created a space where people can feel like they have no judgment, where they feel like they can share and be successful and fail and screw up and begin each poem with I think I did this wrong. Right. California Guy: Right and again it's always I mean it's like I said, it's my favorite here like as soon as I heard, like all this is going to be excellent. The Professor: Absolutely, if all therapy for speech language pathologist with people with aphasia and brain injury was like that. Right, I think I did this wrong I'm going to love it. Boy, we got great outcomes. California Guy: Yeah absolutely. Well, thank you so much for inviting me to participate yeah. The Professor: Thank you so much Brendan and see you next Thursday. California Guy: Next Thursday man. The Professor: Alright, thanks. Bye-Bye.
Rattlecast #96 features the editor of Light poetry magazine, Melissa Balmain. As always, the first half-hour will feature Poets Respond Live. Melissa Balmain is a humorist, journalist, and teacher. Since 2012 she has edited Light, the country's longest-running journal of light verse (founded in 1992 by John Mella). Balmain's poems have appeared in The American Bystander, American Life in Poetry, The Hopkins Review, Lighten Up Online, Literary Matters, Measure, Mezzo Cammin, The New Criterion, The New Verse News, Poetry Daily, Rattle, The Spectator (UK), Verse Daily, The Washington Post, and many anthologies; her prose in The New Yorker, The New York Times, McSweeney's, Weekly Humorist, and elsewhere. A former columnist for Success magazine and other publications, she's the author of a memoir, Just Us: Adventures of a Mother and Daughter (Faber and Faber). Balmain has received national honors for her journalism, including the National Society for Newspaper Columnists humorous columnist award and multiple Pulitizer Prize nominations. She teaches at the University of Rochester and lives nearby with her husband and two children. Her poetry collection Walking in on People was chosen by X.J. Kennedy for the Able Muse Book Award. Her newest collection is The Witch Demands a Retraction: Fairy-Tale Reboots for Adults, illustrated by Ron Barrett (Humorist Books). For more on the author, and to order the book, visit: https://www.melissabalmain.com/ Visit Light poetry magazine here: https://lightpoetrymagazine.com/ As always, we'll also include live open lines for responses to our weekly prompt or any other poems you'd like to share. For details on how to participate, either via Skype or by phone, go to: https://www.rattle.com/rattlecast/ This Week's Prompt: Write a a poem in which an inanimate object or concept is personified. (See “Mirror” by Sylvia Plath for a great example.) Next Week's Prompt: A pivotal moment in your childhood. The Rattlecast livestreams on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, then becomes an audio podcast. Find it on iTunes, Spotify, or anywhere else you get your podcasts.
Rattlecast #92 features frequent contributor Michael Mark. Michael Mark’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Pleiades, Ploughshares, Poetry Daily, River Styx, Salamander, The Southern Review, The New York Times, The Sun, Verse Daily, Waxwing, American Life in Poetry, and other places. He was the recipient of the Anthony Hecht Scholarship at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. He’s the author of two books of stories, Toba and At the Hands of a Thief (Atheneum). Michael Mark lives with his wife Lois in San Diego. For more info on the poet, visit: http://www.michaeljmark.com/ As always, we'll also include live open lines for responses to our weekly prompt or any other poems you'd like to share. For details on how to participate, either via Skype or by phone, go to: https://www.rattle.com/rattlecast/ This Week's Prompt: This Lithub article details the 32 “most iconic” poems in the English language. Read, or reread, a few and write a poem that replies to one of these works. https://lithub.com/the-32-most-iconic-poems-in-the-english-language/ Next Week’s Prompt: Write a reverse poem—a poem with lines that can be read both forward and backward. The Rattlecast livestreams on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Periscope, then becomes an audio podcast.
Eric Tran is queer Vietnamese writer and a resident physician in psychiatry in Asheville, NC, where he is also an associate editor at Orison Books. His debut book of poems, The Gutter Spread Guide to Prayer, won the Autumn House Press Emerging Writer's contest. He is also the author of the chapbooks Revisions and Affairs with Men in Suits. His work has been featured in Poetry Daily and Best of the Net and appears in Missouri Review Poem of the Week, Iowa Review, 32 Poems, and elsewhere. He can be reached at VeryEricTran.com. In this episode, Derek and Eric discuss the reading of comic books as sacred text, building your own canon, writing about grief, creating poetic forms, & how one builds literary community. Website: VeryEricTran.com Buy the Book: https://www.autumnhouse.org/books/the-gutter-spread-guide-to-prayer/ Support the podcast: Patreon.com/ContributeYourVerse Find the Host: derekberrywriter.com
Today’s poem is "Tender Talk" by Leonore Hildebrandt. She is the author of the poetry collections Where You Happen to Be, The Work at Hand, and The Next Unknown. Her poems and translations have appeared in the Cimarron Review, The Fiddlehead, Harpur Palate, Poetry Daily, RHINO, and the Sugar House Review, among other journals. A native of Germany, Leonore lives “off the grid” in Harrington, Maine.
Today’s poem is "We Are Just Three Mouths," by Julia Bouwsma. Julia lives off-the-grid in the mountains of western Maine, where she is a poet, farmer, editor, and small-town librarian. She is the author of two poetry collections: Midden (Fordham University Press, 2018) and Work by Bloodlight (Cider Press Review, 2017) and received the 2019 and 2018 Maine Literary Awards for Poetry. Her poems and book reviews have appeared in Poetry Daily, Poetry Northwest, RHINO, River Styx, and other journals. She’s the Director of Webster Library in Kingfield, Maine.
An MFA-sponsored trip to the Mariana Islands allowed Danielle P. Williams of George Mason University to reconnect with her ancestral culture. She sits down with Jared to discuss exploring Chamorro history through poetry, learning ancient language through translation, and meeting mentors and allies through her program. Danielle P. Williams is a Pushcart-nominated poet, essayist, and spoken-word artist from Columbia, South Carolina. She strives to give voice to unrepresented cultures, expanding on the narratives and experiences of her Black and Chamorro cultures. She is an Editorial Coordinator for Poetry Daily, the Poetry Editor for So To Speak, and a 2019 Alan Cheuse MFA Travel Fellow. Danielle is a 2020 Writing Workshop Fellow for The Watering Hole and 2021 Langston Hughes Fellow for Palm Beach Poetry Festival. Her poems were selected for the 2020 Literary Award in Poetry from Ninth Letter. Her writing appears or is forthcoming in Hobart, Juked Magazine, The Pinch, Barren Magazine, JMWW, The Hellebore, and elsewhere. She is the author of a self-published collection of poetry, The Art in Knowing Me, and two spoken-word EP's, At My Own Risk and We Fall Down. Find her at daniellepwilliams.com, on Twitter @dpwpoetry, or on Instagram @daniellepwilliams. MFA Writers is hosted by Jared McCormack and produced by Jared McCormack and Hanamori Skoblow. New episodes are released every two weeks. You can find more MFA Writers at MFAwriters.com. Twitter: @MFAwriterspod Instagram: @MFAwriterspodcast Facebook: MFA Writers Email: mfawriterspodcast@gmail.com
Today’s poem is "Dear ghosts, in winter my camp on the hill becomes" by Julia Bouwsma. Julia lives off-the-grid in the mountains of western Maine, where she is a poet, farmer, editor, and small-town librarian. She is the author of two poetry collections: Midden (Fordham University Press, 2018) and Work by Bloodlight (Cider Press Review, 2017) and received the 2019 and 2018 Maine Literary Awards for Poetry. Her poems and book reviews have appeared in Poetry Daily, Poetry Northwest, RHINO, River Styx, and other journals. She’s the Director of Webster Library in Kingfield, Maine.
Today’s poem is "Dear ghosts, in winter my camp on the hill becomes" by Julia Bouwsma. Julia lives off-the-grid in the mountains of western Maine, where she is a poet, farmer, editor, and small-town librarian. She is the author of two poetry collections: Midden (Fordham University Press, 2018) and Work by Bloodlight (Cider Press Review, 2017) and received the 2019 and 2018 Maine Literary Awards for Poetry. Her poems and book reviews have appeared in Poetry Daily, Poetry Northwest, RHINO, River Styx, and other journals. She’s the Director of Webster Library in Kingfield, Maine.
399. Part 2 of our interview with David and Ashley Havird, part 2. They joined us to read and discuss some of their poetry. The Havirds are poets from Shreveport in North Louisiana. David, Professor Emeritus of English at Centenary, has published several collections of poetry, including Map Home (2013) and Penelope’s Design (2010). His work has also appeared in The New Yorker, Shenandoah, Southwest Review, Texas Review, Yale Review, and online at Poetry Daily. Ashley Mace Havird has published widely in journals, including The Southern Review, Shenandoah, Calyx, and Southern Humanities Review. Her chapbook, Dirt Eaters, was published in 2009, and this year she won the X.J. Kennedy Prize for poetry with her book The Garden of the Fugitives, published in 2014. This week in Louisiana history. February 9, 1877. Both Democrat Francis T. Nicholls and Republican Stephen B. Packard claim victory in election for governor; both take oath of office. This week in New Orleans history. New Orleans' NFL expansion team officially named the "Saints." January 9, 1967. This week in Louisiana. Visit the Plantation Parade on River Road. Oak Alley Plantation Houmas House Plantation San Francisco Plantation Laura: The Creole Plantation We'd recommend going to the Whitney near Laura Plantation, for its history of the treatment of slaves in Louisiana. Postcards from Louisiana. Quess speaks at a BLM protest.Listen on iTunes.Listen on Google Play.Listen on Google Podcasts.Listen on Spotify.Listen on Stitcher.Listen on TuneIn.The Louisiana Anthology Home Page.Like us on Facebook.
398. Part 1 of our interview with poets David and Ashley Havird. David and Ashley join us to read and discuss some of their poetry. The Havirds are poets from Shreveport in North Louisiana. David, Professor Emeritus of English at Centenary, has published several collections of poetry, including Map Home (2013) and Penelope’s Design (2010). His work has also appeared in The New Yorker, Shenandoah, Southwest Review, Texas Review, Yale Review, and online at Poetry Daily. Ashley Mace Havird has published widely in journals, including The Southern Review, Shenandoah, Calyx, and Southern Humanities Review. Her chapbook, Dirt Eaters, was published in 2009, and this year she won the X.J. Kennedy Prize for poetry with her book The Garden of the Fugitives, published in 2014. This week in Louisiana history. January 2 1860. The Seminary of Learning of the State of Louisiana near Pineville, Louisiana opened with Col. William Tecumseh Sherman as superintendent, would later become LSU, Seminary opens with five professors and 19 cadets. This week in New Orleans history. George Adrian Paoletti is born January 2, 1867. According to the Times Picayune, "We dare assert that no one man during his lifetime has occupied a fuller place in our city's music, or in the sum total has been of more service to the cause of music, or has given more enjoyment to a greater number of citizens." The article went on the note that Paoletti had dedicated 25 years of winters to the French Opera House (where he also led ballets) and 30 summers travelling with Liberiti's Band and that he was "prominently connected with important musical movements in the city for more than 35 years." This week in Louisiana. Visit City Park in New Orleans. New Orleans City Park is filled with iconic oak trees, alligators, birds, beautiful art, and so much to do that you could spend an entire vacation exploring the city's largest green space. This guide lists 10 things to do in City Park. Postcards from Louisiana. Tuba Skinny at dba.Listen on iTunes.Listen on Google Play.Listen on Google Podcasts.Listen on Spotify.Listen on Stitcher.Listen on TuneIn.The Louisiana Anthology Home Page.Like us on Facebook.
Rattlecast #71 features Sarah P. Strong and their new book, The Mouth of Earth. Sarah has appeared in seven issues of Rattle, most recently in this winter's. Sarah P. Strong is the author of two poetry collections, Tour of the Breath Gallery, winner of the Walt McDonald First-Book Prize (Texas Tech, 2013), and The Mouth of Earth (University of Nevada, forthcoming 2020), and two novels, The Fainting Room (Ig, 2013) and Burning the Sea (Alyson, 2002). Their poems have appeared in many journals, including The Nation, The Southern Review, Southwest Review, Poetry Daily, Rattle, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and The Sun. They are the recipient of a Connecticut Artist Fellowship Award, a Promise Award from the Sustainable Arts Foundation, the Elizabeth Matchett Stover Award from Southwest Review, and their work has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Sarah teaches creative writing at Central Connecticut State University and the University of Hartford. For more information, visit: https://sarahpstrong.com/ As always, we'll also include live open mic for responses to our weekly prompt or any other poems you'd like to share. For details on how to participate, either via Skype or by phone, go to: https://www.rattle.com/rattlecast/ This Week's Prompt: A still life is a work of art depicting mostly inanimate and typically commonplace objects. Write a still life poem. Next Week's Prompt: Write a Clogyrnach, a syllabic Welsh form with six-line stanzas. Learn more about it here: https://www.writersdigest.com/write-better-poetry/clogyrnach-poetic-form The Rattlecast livestreams on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Periscope, then becomes an audio podcast.
This week on Words and Sh*t we're featuring a Texas titan of poetry, Faylita Hicks! Join hosts Chibbi and Rooster as we talk about the journey from youth slam poet to Editor-In-Cheif of Borderlands Texas Poetry Review, how to make it in this world as a writer, and so much more! Faylita Hicks is the Editor-in-Chief of Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review and the author of HoodWitch (Acre Books, 2019), a finalist for the 2020 Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Poetry and longlisted for the Julie Suk Award. They are a 2020 Tin House Resident and the recipient of fellowships from Lambda Literary, Jack Jones Literary Arts, and Right of Return USA, the first fellowship designed exclusively for previously incarcerated artists. An activist and member of the Statewide Leadership Council, established by the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition, they advocate for policy changes related to pretrial incarceration, immigrant detention, and the use of cash bail in rural Texas counties. Their poems, personal essays, and interviews have been featured in or are forthcoming in Adroit, American Poetry Review, Cincinnati Review, Huffpost, Kenyon Review, Longreads, Poetry Magazine, Poetry Daily, the Rumpus, Slate, Texas Monthly, the Texas Observer, and others. An interdisciplinary artist, they have an MFA in Creative Writing from Sierra Nevada University.
Ella Frears is a poet and visual artist based in south-east London. She has had poetry published in the LRB, Poetry London, Ambit, The Rialto, Poetry Daily, POEM, and the Moth among others. Her pamphlet Passivity, Electricity, Acclivity was published by Goldsmiths Press 2018. Her debut collection, Shine, Darling is published by Offord Road Books, and came out in April, 2020. Suzanna V Evans spoke with Ella Frears at the StAnza Poetry Festival in 2019. Frears reads her poems and discusses sand, vintage porn and the interplay between her roles as a writer and visual artist. Photo credit: Cat Goryn
This week, we are bringing you an extra special podcast! That’s right, we recorded LIVE for the first time ever at Philly’s PodFest in the National Liberty Museum. Well...most of us. Marion joined us via Zoom from chilly Cork, Ireland, instead of her usual home base of Abu Dhabi. However, everyone else was on stage in front of old, and new, Slushies! Jason Sneiderman traded up his yellow Parsons table in New York for a yellow Honda, to join us in the flesh. On the other hand, poet and professor Laura McCullough joined us by way of a blue Honda. (And no, Honda did not sponsor this podcast. Unfortunately…) Lastly, present were: Kathleen Volk Miller, Tim Fitts and Joseph Zang (who for once, had the opportunity to just sit back instead of pulling all the strings behind the scenes). Okay, now onto the incoherent babbling and “sweaty festivities.” Jason reminisced on how he came to join PBQ, back in the dinosaur ages of the early 2000s, when he was a graphic designer finding his way in the world. Next, we discussed how online publications were looked down on back in the day. In fact, Jason pointed out a huge contrast to publications today, from online posts being as good as sticking flyers on a bulletin board, to “if it didn’t happen online, it didn’t happen.” Now, podcasting has caught on with just as much speed as online journals. That is why Slush pile has become one of our most prized platforms, as it’s given us the opportunity to broadcast our democratic process that takes place behind the scenes. Joe expressed hopes that our podcast has made submitters realize that we strive to be gate-openers, rather than gatekeepers. In fact, we encourage all writers out there to do what they want with their personal work, first and foremost, and then let people appreciate their ideas. See, we might be more open-minded than you think! We went on to deliberate over the “Iowa Method.” This technique is practiced in “brutal workshops” in which peers talk and give their opinions, while the writer stays silent and bares the heat. Do you, Slushies, believe this method is outdated? Or necessary for growth? Laura went on to give those who may have received a rejection letter from us, or other publications, some encouragement. She told us a story about how editors messaged her saying they cried over a piece she had written, but funny enough, this came in the form of a rejection letter. The point is that some pieces may need some further revision, but it does not mean they are not worthy of being published, one day. Also, just because your piece does not fit the theme of what one publication is looking for, does not mean another will not fall head over heels in love with it. Laura joined us from an extremely unique position: She had her own poetry discussed on an early episode of Slush Pile. Jason had the audience rolling in laughter when he told us the story of a friend who received a rejection letter for a children’s book. This mother of 2 was told that she clearly had no experience with children. To conclude our babbling, we encourage writers and readers to visit our “naked meetings,” in which you could meet our editors in a relaxed environment. In fact, we have a public reading coming up September 9th, 2019! All upcoming events can be found on our Facebook page (@painted.quarterly). ON TO THE POEM! BJ Ward was so brave that he allowed us to read his poem, “Madagascar” in front of a live audience. Tim Fitts described this piece as being “so close to being stupid that it’s not stupid” and “sentimental without being cheesy.” We praised the film allusions to Citizen Kane and Solaris. As a matter of fact, Marion said it best: The poem is like an “invitation to think cinematically.” (Side note: When Joe said, “Mad At Gascar,” did you find yourself laughing with him, or at him?) Tim pointed out a possible “Gen X image system” in reference to Van Morrison, Rosebud (Citizen Kane) and... duct tape? Can a generation really claim duct tape?? The popular joke of duct tape might have resurfaced a few years ago, as prom dresses and wallets, made from this magical-fixer-of-all-things, started popping up on social media. It seems the Millennials might have reclaimed it as their own as they’ve done with Polaroids, high-waisted jeans and anything else to make themselves look more “hipster.” Our podcast came to an end with a vote from not only the usual panel, but the entire audience. Imagine that, a wave--no, a TSUNAMI--of thumb flippin’! Well Slushies, if you missed this event, your loss. Just kidding! Look out for another live podcast next year. In the meantime, we’ll be back in our regular recording studio every other week. Until then, read on! BJ Ward is the author of four books of poetry, most recently Jackleg Opera: Collected Poems 1990-2013 (North Atlantic Books), which received the Paterson Award for Literary Excellence. His poems have appeared in Poetry, American Poetry Review, TriQuarterly, The New York Times, and The Sun, among others, and have been featured on NPR’s “The Writer’s Almanac,” NJTV’s “State of the Arts,” and the website Poetry Daily. He is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and two Distinguished Artist Fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. He co-founded the creative writing degree program at Warren County Community College in NJ, where he teaches full-time.
Nancy Mitchell is a Pushcart Prize recipient and the author of The Near Surround, Grief Hut, and The Out-of-Body Shop, and co-editor of Plume Interviews 1. Her poems have appeared in journals such as Agni, Green Mountains Review, Poetry Daily, Washington Square Review and have been anthologized in Last Call (Sarabande Books) The Working Poet (Autumn House Press) and Plume 3, 4, 5 & 7.She has been awarded artist in residence fellowships at Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in San Angelo, Virginia and Auvillar, France, and at Spring Creek, Oregon State University. She taught Creative Writing for Maryland Summer Center for Arts, 2012-2014, and in the Environmental Studies Program and English Department at Salisbury University where she produced the annual Fulton School of the Arts festival WORDSTOCK. Mitchell currently teaches for CELL at Salisbury University in Maryland, and serves as Associate Editor of Special Features and Interviews for Plume Poetry. She is the Poet Laureate of Salisbury, Maryland.
Paulette Beete's poems, short stories, and personal essays have appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Always Crashing, and Beltway Poetry Quarterly, among other journals. Her chapbooks include Blues for a Pretty Girl and Voice Lessons. Her work also appears in the anthologies Full Moon on K Street: Poems About Washington, DC and Saints of Hysteria: A Half-Century of Collaborative American Poetry (with Danna Ephland). Her work has also been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She also blogs (occasionally) at thehomebeete.com and her manuscript "Falling Still" is currently in circulation. Find her on Twitter as @mouthflowers.Kathleen Hellen is the author of The Only Country Was the Color of My Skin (2018), the award-winning collection Umberto's Night, and two chapbooks, The Girl Who Loved Mothra and Pentimento. Nominated for the Pushcart and Best of the Net, and featured on Poetry Daily, her poems have been awarded the Thomas Merton poetry prize and prizes from the H.O.W. Journal and Washington Square Review. She has won grants from the Maryland State Arts Council and the Baltimore Office of Promotion & the Arts. Hellen's poems have appeared in American Letters & Commentary, Barrow Street, The Massachusetts Review, New Letters, North American Review, Poetry East, Prairie Schooner, Salamander, The Seattle Review, the The Sewanee Review, Southern Poetry Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, Witness, and elsewhere. For more on Kathleen visit https://www.kathleenhellen.comStephen Zerance is the author of Safe Danger (Indolent Books, 2018), which was nominated for Best Literature of the Year by POZ Magazine. His poems have appeared in West Branch, Prairie Schooner, Quarterly West, and Poet Lore, among other journals. He has also been featured on the websites of Lambda Literary and Split This Rock. Zerance received his MFA from American University, where he received the Myra Sklarew Award. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland. Find him on Twitter @stephnz. Instagram: stephenzeranceRead "Freddie Gray Breaks Free" and "Please Excuse This Poem" by Paulette Beete.Read "The Girl They Hired from Snow Country" by Kathleen Hellen.Read "Anne Sexton's Last Drink" and "Lindsay Lohan" by Stephen Zerance.Recorded On: Thursday, February 7, 2019
Paulette Beete's poems, short stories, and personal essays have appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Always Crashing, and Beltway Poetry Quarterly, among other journals. Her chapbooks include Blues for a Pretty Girl and Voice Lessons. Her work also appears in the anthologies Full Moon on K Street: Poems About Washington, DC and Saints of Hysteria: A Half-Century of Collaborative American Poetry (with Danna Ephland). Her work has also been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She also blogs (occasionally) at thehomebeete.com and her manuscript "Falling Still" is currently in circulation. Find her on Twitter as @mouthflowers.Kathleen Hellen is the author of The Only Country Was the Color of My Skin (2018), the award-winning collection Umberto's Night, and two chapbooks, The Girl Who Loved Mothra and Pentimento. Nominated for the Pushcart and Best of the Net, and featured on Poetry Daily, her poems have been awarded the Thomas Merton poetry prize and prizes from the H.O.W. Journal and Washington Square Review. She has won grants from the Maryland State Arts Council and the Baltimore Office of Promotion & the Arts. Hellen's poems have appeared in American Letters & Commentary, Barrow Street, The Massachusetts Review, New Letters, North American Review, Poetry East, Prairie Schooner, Salamander, The Seattle Review, the The Sewanee Review, Southern Poetry Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, Witness, and elsewhere. For more on Kathleen visit https://www.kathleenhellen.comStephen Zerance is the author of Safe Danger (Indolent Books, 2018), which was nominated for Best Literature of the Year by POZ Magazine. His poems have appeared in West Branch, Prairie Schooner, Quarterly West, and Poet Lore, among other journals. He has also been featured on the websites of Lambda Literary and Split This Rock. Zerance received his MFA from American University, where he received the Myra Sklarew Award. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland. Find him on Twitter @stephnz. Instagram: stephenzeranceRead "Freddie Gray Breaks Free" and "Please Excuse This Poem" by Paulette Beete.Read "The Girl They Hired from Snow Country" by Kathleen Hellen.Read "Anne Sexton's Last Drink" and "Lindsay Lohan" by Stephen Zerance.
Slush Pile is back in the studio! For this episode’s micro editorial meeting, Kathleen and Joseph recorded from the studio for the first time since… June? April? A long time! Marion called from her office at NYUAD, looking out over a dark campus with a giant new microphone! For this episode, we discuss three poems by Michele Wolf. We were, in fact, early adopters of Michele! She was published way back in Issue 63, just one issue before our first print annual! Check out what she wrote, but because we’re rebuilding our archives, you’ll only find it here (along with access to Issue 63, if you’re up for some digging). Michele Wolf had a friend in Painted Bride Quarterly early on, when we first published her poems and her chapbook, The Keeper of Light, in 1995. Little did she know then that an Amazon rare-book seller would now offer this special booklet for $75 (!). Note to the world: Michele would be delighted to make one yours for $5. Fun fact: Michele was raised in Florida, and she loves not only the ocean but also Disney World—almost as much as PBQ editor Kathy Volk Miller does. On the poetry front, Michele has gone on to publish two full-length collections—Immersion (Hilary Tham Capital Collection, The Word Works) and Conversations During Sleep (Anhinga Prize for Poetry, Anhinga Press). Her work has appeared in Poetry, The Southern Review, The Hudson Review, North American Review and many other literary journals and anthologies, as well as on Poetry Daily and Verse Daily. A contributing editor for Poet Lore, she teaches at The Writer's Center in Bethesda, Maryland. She lives with her husband and daughter in Gaithersburg, Maryland. You can read more of Michele's work on Poets.org; on Poetry Foundation; and on her website. Listen in on our discussion of Michele’s poems, and check them out below! Our conversations brought up whether or not man landed on the moon (which we could debate, we suppose), deer’s bedtimes (7:00 PM, right?), and poems that make you go “WOWZA!” Our engineer, Joe, shared a story about finding a paper crane on his windowsill with “as if you could kill time without injuring eternity,” by Henry David Thoreau, but attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson. He recognized the handwriting, and thinks he might know who left the mysterious missive. Listen in to hear all about this “beautiful world” sort of story, then Kathleen and Joseph have a mini cook-off on air. Tell us what you like to bake! Is baking better than cooking? Let us know your thoughts, and, as always, keep reading! Present at the Editorial Table: Kathleen Volk Miller Marion Wrenn Joseph Kindt Production Engineer: Joe Zang ------------------------------- Michele Wolf To Orbit the Earth The steel capsule, ridged and riveted—an oversize Can—rests suspended at street level, docked Inside the Air and Space Museum’s entrance. A bounty of white lilies mingled with spider mums, Placed yesterday, honors the trail of pilot John Glenn, Dead at ninety-five. In ’62, even a second grader, Gripped by the grainy blastoff in black and white, Knew that the compact can was a bleak conveyance, That that helmeted dad, a human Superman laced up In a silver suit, could at any moment be lost in flames. And yet we launch from terra firma, compelled to behold The blue orb—its panorama of oceans as they curve From continent to continent. It knocks you down, This vision, your ache to enfold the globe in your arms. It is that child who slips into the darkness, sounding A cry you cannot ease, although you circle round and round. Expecting Snow Against a sky and lake bleached icy gray, the solid Surface edged with snow and spindly bones Of leafless trees, four silhouettes, a single file Of ash-brown deer—two adults, two adolescents— Halt their slow-mo synchrony of steps At the middle of the lake, its top layer hardened To host weightlessness, not illusion on elegant legs. Beauty is no help. The starving deer, weary of feeding On bark and road salt, resume their lake-top trek. From spring through fall, the white-tailed locals feast On roses, carry ticks. One after another, they meet Your eyes, and yet they leap onto the road— At the same bend where that drunk teen driver Bashed the fence, then flipped. Nature Holds you. When it drifts, it breaks your heart. Zebras in a Field The younger woman—hollowed out, reduced To a shadow wrapped in skin—allowed The older one, nearly her duplicate, To enfold her. They had both seen the knife, A small, glinty blade with a pearlized handle, When it was set beside the younger woman’s Thigh. “But you are not dead,” the older woman, Unable to speak, had wanted to say, “although It may seem so. You will live an abundant life. Someday you will drive, after seventeen hours Aloft, along a paved road edging a clutch Of tumbledown farms when a herd of zebras Will race to meet the wooden fence—whinnying, Tails flapping—oscillating your vision, the total scroll Of what you know, with the whirl of their stripes.”
Hilary S. Jacqmin's first book of poems, Missing Persons, was published by Waywiser Press in spring 2017. She earned her BA from Wesleyan University, her MA from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University, and her MFA from the University of Florida. She lives in Baltimore, where she is an associate production editor at Johns Hopkins University Press. Her work has appeared in 32 Poems, Painted Bride Quarterly, PANK, Best New Poets, DIAGRAM, FIELD, and elsewhere.Greg Williamson is the author of four volumes of poetry: The Silent Partner, Errors in the Script, A Most Marvelous Piece of Luck, and The Hole Story of Kirby the Sneak and Arlo the True. He has received an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Whiting Writers’ Award, the Nicholas Roerich Prize, an NEA Grant in Poetry, and others. His poetry has been published in more than 50 periodicals and several anthologies, including The Norton Anthology of Poetry. He teaches in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University.Michele Wolf is the author of Immersion (Hilary Tham Capital Collection, The Word Works, selected by Denise Duhamel), Conversations During Sleep (Anhinga Prize for Poetry, Anhinga Press, chosen by Peter Meinke), and The Keeper of Light (Painted Bride Quarterly Poetry Chapbook Series, selected by J.T. Barbarese). Her poems have also appeared in Poetry, The Hudson Review, The Southern Review, The North American Review, and many other journals and anthologies, as well as on Poetry Daily and Verse Daily. A contributing editor for Poet Lore, she teaches at The Writer’s Center in Bethesda and lives in Gaithersburg, Maryland.Read "Coupling" by Hilary S. Jacqmin. Read "Drawing Hands" by Greg Williamson. Read "The Great Tsunami" by Michele Wolf.Recorded On: Wednesday, November 15, 2017
Hilary S. Jacqmin's first book of poems, Missing Persons, was published by Waywiser Press in spring 2017. She earned her BA from Wesleyan University, her MA from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University, and her MFA from the University of Florida. She lives in Baltimore, where she is an associate production editor at Johns Hopkins University Press. Her work has appeared in 32 Poems, Painted Bride Quarterly, PANK, Best New Poets, DIAGRAM, FIELD, and elsewhere.Greg Williamson is the author of four volumes of poetry: The Silent Partner, Errors in the Script, A Most Marvelous Piece of Luck, and The Hole Story of Kirby the Sneak and Arlo the True. He has received an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Whiting Writers’ Award, the Nicholas Roerich Prize, an NEA Grant in Poetry, and others. His poetry has been published in more than 50 periodicals and several anthologies, including The Norton Anthology of Poetry. He teaches in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University.Michele Wolf is the author of Immersion (Hilary Tham Capital Collection, The Word Works, selected by Denise Duhamel), Conversations During Sleep (Anhinga Prize for Poetry, Anhinga Press, chosen by Peter Meinke), and The Keeper of Light (Painted Bride Quarterly Poetry Chapbook Series, selected by J.T. Barbarese). Her poems have also appeared in Poetry, The Hudson Review, The Southern Review, The North American Review, and many other journals and anthologies, as well as on Poetry Daily and Verse Daily. A contributing editor for Poet Lore, she teaches at The Writer’s Center in Bethesda and lives in Gaithersburg, Maryland.Read "Coupling" by Hilary S. Jacqmin. Read "Drawing Hands" by Greg Williamson. Read "The Great Tsunami" by Michele Wolf.
Gary J. Whitehead reads his poem "Grey Water" as well as one of his favorites from William Blake called " The Tyger" Gary J. Whitehead’s poems recently appear or are forthcoming in The New Yorker, Ploughshares, Epoch, andThe Massachusetts Review. His third book of poetry, A Glossary of Chickens, was chosen by Paul Muldoon for the Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets and published in 2013 by Princeton University Press. His work has been featured on Garrison Keillor’s NPR program The Writer’s Almanac and on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and The Guardian’s Poem of the Week. Whitehead has been the recipient of the Anne Halley Poetry Prize (The Massachusetts Review), a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry, and the Princeton University Distinguished Secondary School Teaching Award. A featured poet at the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival and the Princeton Poetry Festival, he teaches English at Tenafly High School in New Jersey and lives in the Hudson valley of New York. http://www.garyjwhitehead.com/
Out of Our Minds is a 45 year old radio show hosted on KKUP Cupertino by Rachelle Escamilla. It airs every Wednesday night from 8-9pm pst and streams live on kkup.org. This week's guest was: Jehanne Dubrow is the author of five poetry collections, including most recently The Arranged Marriage (University of New Mexico Press, 2015), Red Army Red (Northwestern University Press, 2012) and Stateside (Northwestern University Press, 2010). She co-edited The Book of Scented Things: 100 Contemporary Poems about Perfume (Literary House Press, 2014) and the forthcoming Still Life with Poem: Contemporary Natures Mortes in Verse (2016). Dots & Dashes, her sixth book of poems, won the 2016 Crab Orchard Review Series in Poetry Open Competition Awards and will be published by Southern Illinois University Press in 2017. Her poetry, creative nonfiction, and book reviews have appeared in Southern Review, The New Republic, The New York Times Magazine, The Hudson Review, The New England Review, as well as on Poetry Daily and Verse Daily. She earned a B.A. in the “Great Books” from St. John’s College, an MFA from the University of Maryland, and a PhD from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She has been a recipient of the Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award, the Towson University Prize for Literature, an Individual Artist’s Award from the Maryland State Arts Council, fellowships from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and a Sosland Foundation Fellowship from the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies. The daughter of American diplomats, Jehanne was born in Italy and grew up in Yugoslavia, Zaire, Poland, Belgium, Austria, and the United States. In autumn 2016, she will join the Department of English at the University of North Texas as an Associate Professor of creative writing.
Alan Soldofsky is a veteran of the San Francisco Bay Area poetry scene. His new collection of poems, IN THE BUDDHA FACTORY, was published in 2013 by Truman State University Press. He has been a contributing editor of Poetry Flash, and co-host of the popular poetry show “Planet on the Table” on Berkeley’s KPFA radio. He has published three poetry chapbooks: Kenora Station, Staying Home, and Holding Adam / My Father’s Books, a chapbook that includes a selection of poems by his son, Adam Soldofsky. Over the last three decades, his poems have been published widely in magazines and journals, including The DMQ Review, The Georgia Review, The Gettysburg Review, Grand Street, The Greensboro Review, The North American Review, Poetry Daily, Poetry Flash, Rattle, The Rattling Wall, and The Rumpus. His essays, interviews, and reviews have appeared in Chelsea, The Writer’s Chronicle, Narrative, and Poetry Flash. Before beginning his academic career, he edited the newsletter for The Commonwealth Club of California. He is professor of English and director of creative writing at San Jose State University, where he been on the faculty more than 25 years.
Poet Ross White reads from his new chapbook, “How We Came Upon the Colony” (Unicorn Press, 2014). The conversation travels from White’s imagined 14th colony of the New World to his foundation in imporv comedy. Podcast Notes: Ross White, Poet, Executive Director of Bull City Press: http://www.rosswhite.com/ •How We Came Upon the Colony by Ross White http://www.unicorn-press.org/books/White-How-We-Came-Upon-the-Colony.html Awards from: Bull City Press, Durham, NC: http://bullcitypress.com/ Best New Poets: http://bestnewpoets.org/ Poetry Daily: http://poems.com/ The New England Review: http://www.nereview.com/ Bread Loaf Writer's Conference, Ripton, VT: http://www.middlebury.edu/bread-loaf-conferences/bl_writers DSI Theater, Improve Comedy, Chapel Hill, NC: http://www.dsicomedytheater.com/ Warren Wilson MFA Program and Faculty Supervisors: Website: http://www.wwcmfa.org/ C. Dale Young: http://www.cdaleyoung.com/ Mary Leader: https://www.graywolfpress.org/author-list/mary-leader Heather McHugh: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/heather-mchugh A. Van Jordan: http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/van-jordan-0 Other mentioned poets: Michael McFee: http://englishcomplit.unc.edu/people/mcfeem Weldon Kees: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/weldon-kees Donald Justice: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/donald-justice W. S. Merwin: http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/w-s-merwin W. H. Auden: http://audensociety.org/index.html See also: The Grind Daily Writing Series: http://rosswhite.com/2012/04/08/how-napowrimo-inspired-the-grind/ tatestreet.org Three-Sentence Reviews: http://tatestreet.org/category/reviews/three-sentence-reviews/ Producers: Ray Crampton and Abigail Browning Produced by: tatestreet.org: http://tatestreet.org Music Provided by: Jonathan Stout and his Campus Five featuring Hilary Alexander: http://www.campusfive.com Podcast Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tatestreetorg Podcast Twitter: https://twitter.com/tatestreetorg Podcast Email: mailto:writeus@tatestreet.org
Julia Wendell's new poetry chapbook is Take This Spoon (Main Street Rag, 2014). Her previous publications include The Sorry Flowers (WordTech Editions, 2009), Dark Track (WordTech Editions, 2005), Wheeler Lane (Igneus Press, 1998), and An Otherwise Perfect History (Ithaca House Press, 1988), as well as the chapbooks Restalrig (Finishing Line Press, 2007), Scared Money Never Wins (Finishing Line Press, 2004), and Fires at Yellowstone (Bacchae Press, 1993). An equestrian athlete and owner of a horse farm, Wendell also authored Finding My Distance: a Year in the Life of a Three-Day Event Rider (Galileo Books, 2009),a book that is part memoir, part poetry collection. She has received Yaddo Colony and Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference Fellowships.Melanie McCabe is a high school English and creative writing teacher in Arlington, Virginia. Her second book of poems, What The Neighbors Know, was published in 2014 by FutureCycle Press. Her first book, History of the Body, was published by David Robert Books in 2012. Her poems have appeared on Poetry Daily, as well as in Best New Poets 2010, The Georgia Review, The Massachusetts Review, The Cincinnati Review, Bellingham Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Shenandoah, and numerous other journals. Her work also appears in the latest editions of Bedford/St. Martin’s Poetry: An Introduction and The Bedford Introduction to Literature: Reading, Thinking, Writing.Shelley Puhak is the author of Guinevere in Baltimore, selected by Charles Simic for the Anthony Hecht Prize (Waywiser, 2013). Her first collection, Stalin in Aruba, was awarded the Towson Prize for Literature. Puhak’s poems have appeared in many journals, including Alaska Quarterly Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, FIELD, Kenyon Review Online, The Missouri Review, and Ninth Letter. Puhak is the Eichner Professor of Writing at Notre Dame of Maryland University.Read poems by Julia Wendell here and here.Read poems by Melanie McCabe here and here.Read poems by Shelley Puhak here.Recorded On: Wednesday, October 8, 2014
Shanna Compton's books include Brink (Bloof, 2013), For Girls & Others (Bloof, 2008), Down Spooky (Winnow, 2005), Gamers (Soft Skull, 2004), and several chapbooks. A book-length speculative poem called The Seam is forthcoming in 2014. Her work has been included in the Best American Poetry series and other anthologies, and recent poems have appeared in Verse Daily, Poetry Daily, Court Green, the Awl, and the Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day feature.
Debra Kang Dean is the author of Back to Back, a chapbook of poems, News of Home, and Precipitates, which was nominated for the William Carlos Williams Award. Her poems have been featured on The Writer's Almanac, Poetry Daily, and Verse Daily, and have been published in a number of anthologies.
Sound poam iteration of "Accidental Culture," a print poam in TOKYO BUTTER that was also featured in Poetry Daily. This sound poam is for Don and Diane. Thanks for your interest in the print form.
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