The Poetry Magazine Podcast - TopPodcast.com

View Top 200 Chart

Back to Rankings Page

The Poetry Magazine Podcast — Arts
The Poetry Magazine Podcast

The Poetry Magazine Podcast takes listeners on an audio journey into and beyond the pages of Poetry. Hear poets share the surprises, confusions, and desires that keep them writing. Produced by Rachel James.

Copyright: ℗ & © 2020 Poetry Foundation

Latest Episodes:

Srikanth Reddy with Liesl Olson and Ed Roberson on Margaret Danner’s “The Elevator Man Adheres to Form” May 31, 2022

Show notes

This week, we return to the little-known world of Margaret Danner with guest editor Srikanth Reddy, historian Liesl Olson, and poet Ed Roberson. Olson and Roberson were the people who first introduced Reddy to Margaret Danner’s poetry. Olson is the Director of Chicago Studies at the Newberry Library, the building where Margaret Danner worked as an editor of Poetry magazine from 1951 to 1956. Roberson is a celebrated poet living in the South Side of Chicago—probably not far from where Danner grew up and wrote much of her poetry.

Born in 1915, Danner was a contemporary of Gwendolyn Brooks and Langston Hughes—and knew them personally—but she never achieved the recognition she deserved in her lifetime. It’s hard to find her poetry in print; in fact, Reddy might have borrowed one of the last copies of her collected poems left in Chicago in preparation for this podcast.

Danner wrote about many things—the civil rights movement, African art, gender, class, and faith (there’s a previous episode of the Poetry Magazine Podcast that focuses on Danner’s Baha’i faith). Today, we do a deep dive into one of Danner’s poems that explores race, class, and social mobility in 1950s America. It’s called, “The Elevator Man Adheres to Form,” and it may (or may not) be about an elevator operator who worked at the Newberry Library in Chicago.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Srikanth Reddy in Conversation with Josué Coy Dick, Juan Coy Tení, and Jesse Nathan May 18, 2022

Show notes

Today we explore the Popol Vuh, the foundational sacred narrative of the K’iche people. This Mayan epic tells the story of creation, the role of the gods in human affairs, and the history of migration and settlement in Central America up to the Spanish conquest in the sixteenth century. The story of the Popol Vuh is pretty amazing itself. It was passed down from generation to generation for hundreds of years, first orally and then written in Mayan glyphs in the mid sixteenth century. The original Mayan text was hidden from Spanish invaders—until the K’iche people allowed a Dominican friar, Francisco Ximenez, to make a Spanish translation in the early 1700s. Today there are many translations of the Popol Vuh—but it’s not nearly as well known as other texts, like the Bible or the Epic of Gilgamesh, even though it’s considered by many to be the oldest book in the Americas.

One incredible thing about the translation we’ll be talking about today is that it’s a family affair. Juan Coy Tení was born into an Indigenous community in Coban, Guatemala; he studied law and is now a social worker living in Kansas. When he married the poet Jesse Nathan’s sister, Juan and Jesse began translating poetry together over email and at gatherings—and now Juan’s son, Josué, an undergraduate student who was raised in the US, has joined in their work as a family of translators. To guest editor Srikanth Reddy, Jesse, Juan, and Josue’s translation—made across borders, languages, and generations—marks an important new chapter in this epic poem’s story.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Srikanth Reddy in Conversation with James Shea May 03, 2022

Show notes

This week, Srikanth Reddy talks shit, quite literally, with the poet and translator James Shea. Shea recently co-translated, with Ikuho Amano, a little-known essay by the Japanese poet Masaoka Shiki titled “Haiku on Shit.” It’s a surprisingly serious, if not a little deadpan, essay about art and reality, beauty and ugliness, and poop and poetry. One favorite that’s shared in the episode is this one by Issa: “When you show it some sympathy, the baby sparrow takes a crap on you.” Here’s another favorite, this time by Buson: “Fallen red plum blossoms appear to be ablaze on clumps of horse shit.” To begin, Shea and Reddy take us through the history of haiku, starting with the four great poets of the form: Issa, Buson, Basho, and—200 years later—Shiki, who published the essay “Haiku on Shit” over a century ago.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Srikanth Reddy in Conversation with Don Mee Choi Apr 19, 2022

Show notes

Srikanth Reddy first encountered the complex poetic world of Don Mee Choi as a translator of avant-garde Korean poetry before reading Choi’s own poetry. As a poet, Choi invites readers into her personal history—which is also the history of her father and of war. Even if you haven’t read Choi’s poetry, you’ve probably seen the work of her father—a photojournalist who filmed much of the news footage that Americans saw of the Vietnam War and the Cold War era. Choi is at work on a new book, Wings of Utopia, which is the final book in what unintentionally became a trilogy. In Hardly War, Choi set out to explore the dictatorship era of South Korea, but to understand Park Chung-hee’s dictatorship, she felt she also needed to delve into the 1945 national division of Korea, so she wrote a second book, DMZ Colony. Today you’ll hear three poems from the final book, where Choi orbits around her father’s memories as a way to explore the Gwangju Massacre, and what Walter Benjamin called “temporal magic.”

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Srikanth Reddy in Conversation with Lawrence-Minh Bùi Davis Apr 05, 2022

Show notes

When Srikanth Reddy was reading about Lawrence-Minh Bùi Davis’s work as a curator at the Smithsonian, he was surprised to learn about Davis’s interest in ghosts. This week on the podcast, Reddy speaks with Davis about ghosts and “ghost practice,” and about the unusual way Davis’s novel is being haunted by other writers. They also talk about the Center for Refugee Poetics, founded by Davis with the poet Ocean Vuong, which Davis describes as “a mobile literary arts and education project, a Center without a physical home, a roving sanctuary.”

To learn more about the Center for Refugee Poetics, check out Davis’s essay in the April 2022 issue of Poetry, “On Refugee Poetics and Exophony.”

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Srikanth Reddy and CM Burroughs on Margaret Danner Mar 22, 2022

Show notes

This week, guest editor Srikanth Reddy and poet CM Burroughs dive into the world of Margaret Danner. Danner was a contemporary of Gwendolyn Brooks and Langston Hughes, whom she knew personally, but she never achieved the recognition she deserved in her lifetime. If you look for Danner’s poetry in your local bookstore, you won’t find anything in print. Recently, Burroughs connected with Danner, a poet from her lineage as a Black woman writing in America, but not through Danner’s poems—through her archival “hair-down letters.”

Reddy and Burroughs talk about Danner, race in America, and also faith. Danner converted to Baha’i, a relatively new world religion devoted to the unity of all faiths, in the early sixties. Burroughs reads one of her poems titled “God Letter,” from her newest book Master Suffering, and we’ll hear two poems by Danner. We’re grateful to also share a bit from the choir at the Bahá'í House of Worship and their director of music, Van Gilmer.

You can read more work by and on Margaret Danner, including CM Burroughs’s “Dear Margaret: An Epistolary Collaboration,” in the March 2022 issue.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Srikanth Reddy in Conversation with Jay Hopler and Kimberly Johnson Mar 08, 2022

Show notes

When Jay Hopler received a terminal cancer diagnosis in 2017, he was told he had two years to live. He thought, “I have to write a book in twenty-four months.” We’ll hear two poems from that book today. Still Life, out in June from McSweeney’s, is a “violently funny but playfully serious fulfillment of what Arseny Tarkovsky called the fundamental purpose of art: a way to prepare for death, be it far in the future or very near at hand.” Poetry guest editor Srikanth Reddy takes over the helm of the podcast this week, and interviews both Hopler and renaissance scholar and poet Kimberly Johnson. As a literary couple, Hopler and Johnson have shared a life in art for many years, and Johnson’s new book, Fatal, traces her experiences since Hopler’s 2017 diagnosis. Out in May from Persea Books, Paisley Rekdal writes, “Fatal examines how we live poised between terror and delight, stasis and transformation, ever bewildered by how even the simplest objects and events can change everything in instant.” Despite the heavy subject matter, the conversation between Hopler, Johnson, and Reddy contains plenty of laughter.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Suzi F. Garcia in Conversation with Jennifer Shyue Feb 22, 2022

Show notes

This week, Suzi F. Garcia sits down with Jennifer Shyue, a translator focusing on contemporary Cuban and Asian-Peruvian writers. We hear two poems by Julia Wong Kcomt, whose work Shyue has been translating for the past three years. Kcomt was born into a Chinese Peruvian family in 1965, and although Shyue was born in the US decades later, they share many obsessions. Kcomt traveled from an early age, traversing borders, languages, and cultures, and these multiplicities motivated her to write poetry. Shyue’s interest in hybrid identities and linguistic border crossings also motivated her to translate. Garcia and Shyue talk about what it means to write and translate from hyphenated or adjectival identities, as well the connections between language and identity.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Suzi F. Garcia in Conversation with Ada Limón Feb 08, 2022

Show notes

This week, Suzi F. Garcia speaks with one of her literary sheroes, Ada Limón. They talk about the importance of seeing but also being seen, the complexity of avoiding a trauma-porn poetics, and naps as part of the creative process.

We hear two poems from Limón’s newest book, The Hurting Kind, including “Foaling Season” from the February 2022 issue of Poetry.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Suzi F. Garcia in Conversation with Kay Ulanday Barrett Jan 25, 2022

Show notes

This week, Suzi F. Garcia had the honor of speaking with Kay Ulanday Barrett, a self-described queer brown Filipinx disabled transgender boi. Barrett is one of the most generous people we have ever encountered, no doubt due to their commitment to care work—which is another way of saying his commitment to collective survival. Their essay “To Hold the Grief & the Growth: On Crip Ecologies” in the January 2022 issue of Poetry is an absolute must read.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Related Podcasts