The Poetry Magazine Podcast

Latest Episodes:

Fred Sasaki Interviews Ashley M. Jones Aug 24, 2021

Show notes

This week, Fred Sasaki had the very special honor of interviewing his friend and colleague, Ashley M. Jones. Jones guest edited the late spring and summer issues of Poetry magazine during a remarkable time in the publication’s history. In this conversation, we hear Jones read from her new book, Reparations Now! Sasaki asks, what are reparations and what do they mean? When did that idea materialize in each of their minds? They also talk about being Gods, being too cool for school, and playing with Barbies.

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Ashley M. Jones and Jacqueline Allen Trimble in Conversation Aug 10, 2021

Show notes

When Ashley M. Jones first heard the poetry of Jacqueline Allen Trimble, Jones says she heard something “Southern, unapologetically Black, fierce, sweet, and strong.” This week, Jones and Trimble talk about Alabama, activism, and the under-recognized power of historically Black colleges and universities in America. You’ll hear Trimble’s poems “This Is Why People Burning Down Fast Food Joints and Whatnot” and “The Language of Joy” from the July/August issue of Poetry.

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Ashley M. Jones and JoAnn Balingit in Conversation Jul 27, 2021

Show notes

This week, Ashley M. Jones and JoAnn Balingit talk about where poetry lives in the face of loss and grief, and how that intimate place can be shared. Balingit’s intimate approach to poetry has had to consider a wider audience during her tenure as poet laureate of Delaware. For example, when Balingit received a request from the Philippine embassy to write a poem, she said yes—but not without pause. The poem was to mark the 75th anniversary of Philippine-American relations. As Balingit put it, “This was a fraught request about a troubled relationship.” Her response was to write a Tanaga—a Filipino poetic form—alongside three other poets who also wrote Tanagas for the embassy marking the occasion. All four poems are in the July/August 2021 issue of Poetry. Today you’ll hear “Tanaga: Song Where Every Filipinx Person Is Standing by the Ocean.”

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Ashley M. Jones and Donna Aza Weir-Soley in Conversation Jul 13, 2021

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This week, Ashley M. Jones speaks with one of the most important mentors in her life: poet and scholar Dr. Donna Aza Weir-Soley. They speak about protest and power, Weir-Soley’s mentor Audre Lorde, and the legacies they inhabit and continue as Black poets writing toward liberation. Weir-Soley met Audre Lorde as a student at Hunter College, and came to run the Audre Lorde Women’s Poetry Center. Today, they invite Lorde into the room with the poem, “Power.” You’ll also hear “8 Minutes and 46 seconds,” by Weir-Soley, which appears in the July/August issue of Poetry magazine.

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Ashley M. Jones and Cathy Linh Che in Conversation Jun 29, 2021

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Ashley M. Jones is interested in the way that poetry can bring loved ones back to life. In this week’s episode, Jones sits down with Cathy Linh Che to talk about resurrections on the page. After fleeing Vietnam as refugees, Che’s parents worked as extras on the film Apocalypse Now. Jones and Che talk about the revisionist cinematic history of the film, and the uncanny family story which serves as the backdrop for a series of poems and a memoir.

You’ll hear “Zombie Apocalypse Now: The Making Of” and “Zombie Apocalypse Now: Documentary,” two poems from the June 2021 issue of Poetry.

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Ashley M. Jones and Sidney Clifton in Conversation Jun 15, 2021

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One thing Ashley M. Jones knows to be absolutely true is that her work is made possible by the poetry and spirit of Lucille Clifton. This week, Jones speaks with Sidney Clifton, one of Lucille Clifton’s daughters. Sidney Clifton is the President of the Clifton House, a new endeavour to transform her childhood home in Baltimore into a gathering place for writers and artists. They speak about mothers, their impenetrable connection to family, and how important it is to honor our journeys, no matter how winding they might be. Jones says, “It was unreal for me to get to spend time with Sidney, and what a joy to also get to invite Ms. Clifton’s poems into the room to join the conversation. What a celebration, indeed.”

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Ashley M. Jones and Ashlee Haze in Conversation Jun 01, 2021

Show notes

Ashley M. Jones says she has never met an Ashley she hasn’t liked. This week, the feeling was mutual. Jones caught up with Ashlee Haze, a force of a poet in every sense of the word. Haze’s poem, “temple,” is featured in this month’s issue of Poetry, along with a video of the poem, which you can check out on our website. Jones and Haze talk about the South, its memory, and the ways in which the world of poetry has opened to new ways of writing, working, and experiencing the form. In this episode, they rebuke the Ivory Tower.

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Kevin Simmonds and Anthony Davis in Conversation May 18, 2021

Show notes

This week we visit the opera. Writer and musician Kevin Simmonds and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Anthony Davis discuss Black sound, Black church, and the future of opera. Davis has been making operas rooted in Black history for over thirty years. X, The Life and Times of Malcolm X, premiered in 1986. Today you’ll hear from X, and his opera Amistad, which revisits the story of the Middle Passage.

Simmonds’s new book, The Monster I Am Today: Leontyne Price and a Life in Verse, skillfully travels through the life of one of classical music’s greatest virtuosos. Leontyne Price remains one of the twentieth century’s most revered opera singers, and the first Black opera singer to achieve such international acclaim. The book is structured operatically into overture, acts, and postlude, uncovering complex layers of music history, biography, and the body itself. How do our bodies sound? Why do they sound that way?

Simmonds reads from The Monster I Am Today, featured in the April 2021 issue of Poetry.

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André Naffis-Sahely and LeAnne Howe in Conversation May 04, 2021

Show notes

This week, we hear from one of the co-editors of the first historically comprehensive Native poetry anthology – yes the very first. It’s called When The Light of The World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry. It was edited by Poet Laureate Joy Harjo with Jennifer Elise Foerster and LeAnne Howe.

Organized by geographical region, each section begins with a poem from traditional oral literatures and closes with an emerging poet. Contributors range from Eleazar, a seventeenth-century Native student at Harvard, to Jake Skeets, a Diné poet born in 1991.

The poet, translator, and critic André Naffis-Sahely reviewed the anthology in the April 2021 issue of Poetry. Today he speaks with co-editor LeAnne Howe about how the anthology came to be, and why it took so long to get here. Howe, a member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, opens the conversation with a Choctaw chant.

You’ll hear two poems from the anthology. Ishki, Mother, Upon Leaving the Choctaw Homelands, 1831 by LeAnne Howe and The Old Man’s Lazy by Peter Blue Cloud.

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Ashley M. Jones and Faisal Mohyuddin in Conversation Apr 22, 2021

Show notes

Poetry can be a great connector. It can connect us to our bodies and our histories. For Ashley M. Jones, poetry is also a way to connect with faith. In today’s episode, Jones sits down with the poet Faisal Mohyuddin, whose poem “Allah Castles” appears in the May issue of Poetry, the first under Jones’s guest editorship. Mohyuddin and Jones explore faith, the things that move them into action, and their shared pride as high school writing teachers. Jones says she doesn’t believe in coincidences, only an otherworldly alignment. Today’s conversation is a testament to that.

Ashley M. Jones reads from her book dark//thing and Faisal Mohyuddin reads from the May issue of Poetry and from his book The Displaced Children of Displaced Children.

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