The Poetry Magazine Podcast

Latest Episodes:

The Cyborg Jillian Weise and Ishmael Reed in Conversation Apr 06, 2021

Show notes

This week, The Cyborg Jillian Weise speaks with Ishmael Reed. Reed is a writer whose decades of work have been immensely influential to Weise. They’ve shared stages and pages as poets, performers, editors, and activists. They both wield humor and satire to seriously consider the violence of our governments, our literature, and the many other forms of erasure that are enacted on the lives and works of disabled people. Born 43 years apart, Reed in Tennessee in 1938, and Weise in Texas in 1981, they share a sort of poetic kinship. Today, they talk about smashing tokenism and the joy of making up new words and new paths.

The Cyborg Jillian Weise reads from the April 2021 issue of Poetry, and Ishmael Reed reads from his newest poetry collection, Why the Black Hole Sings the Blues, Poems 2007-2020.

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

Marilyn Nelson and Nikki Grimes in Conversation Mar 23, 2021

Show notes

This week: thoughts on form. Both Marilyn Nelson and Nikki Grimes agree, playing with poetic constraints can create an expansive world to write within. Listen as two of the most celebrated authors writing for young readers today share their thoughts on poetic forms. You’ll hear about two of their favorite forms to experiment with, as well as excerpts from both of their memoirs in verse.

The impact Nelson and Grimes have had on the field of writing for younger audiences is profound. Both are featured in this month’s special issue of Poetry dedicated to poems for young people.

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

Naomi Shihab Nye and Danusha Laméris in Conversation Mar 09, 2021

Show notes

Spring is almost officially here. This week, poets Naomi Shihab Nye and Danusha Laméris reflect on the year that has passed—a year that has been so different and difficult to comprehend. Nye and Laméris remind us that poetry makes sense when things stop making sense—that poetry can take us over, under, or through difficulty.

Nye is the Poetry Foundation's Young People’s Poet Laureate, and one of the guest editors of the magazine's special issue dedicated to poems for young people. When we asked her who she wanted to speak with on the podcast, she said Danusha Laméris, the last person she really spent time with before the lockdown began. The two were essentially meeting for the first time, but they sound like “new-old friends.” They’ve spent a year getting to know each other from afar by exchanging letters, poems, and packages between San Antonio, Texas, and Santa Cruz, California.

You’ll hear poems from Nye and Laméris, including Nye’s poem in the current issue of Poetry, “Every day as a wide field, every page.”

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

Joshua Bennett and Justin Rovillos Monson in Conversation Feb 01, 2021

Show notes

In this week’s episode, Bennett and Monson get into literary ancestors, Monson’s top 5 rappers of all time, and what the future of poetry in this country might look like (if we are brave enough to invest in our young people).

Monson spoke to us from the Michigan Department of Corrections in Freeland, Michigan. His poems are featured in “The Practice of Freedom” issue, which focuses on poetry and visual art produced by artists who have been directly affected by the criminal legal system. Joshua Bennett guest edited the issue alongside Tara Betts and Sarah Ross.

In Bennett's words, “Justin Monson is one of the most courageous, original, daring poets working today. I first encountered his work three years ago, as a judge for PEN America’s Writing for Justice Fellowship, and was absolutely taken aback from the very first lines. The work shimmered. Monson has a fantastic ear, and a citational breadth that is truly a wonder to behold; it’s clear that he reads, and listens, to everything. Postcolonial theory, 90s hip-hop, erasure poetry. It’s all there. All of these traditions are part of the world Monson paints on the page, and is generous enough to share with us.”

Need a transcript of this episode? Request a transcript here.

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

Cathy Park Hong and Lynn Xu on the Poetry of Choi Seungja Jan 26, 2021

Show notes

In this week’s episode, Cathy Park Hong and Lynn Xu talk about the startling directness of Korean poet Choi Seungja and the humbling experience of translation. The conversation ranges from Nietzsche to South Korea in the 1980s, and from Paul Celan to capitalism. As Xu says, Choi’s poems contemplate “living with death as one’s companion,” but instead of indulging in nihilism, her poems are often surprisingly hopeful. Choi Seungja is one of the most influential feminist poets in South Korea, and her book Phone Bells Keep Ringing For Me (Action Books) has recently been published in English, thanks to Cathy Park Hong and her cotranslator Won-Chung Kim.

Need a transcript of this episode? Request a transcript here.

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

Jackson Holbert and John Darnielle in Conversation Jan 12, 2021

Show notes

When we learned that poet Jackson Holbert asked to speak with John Darnielle for this episode, it made so much sense to us. Holbert’s poems in the magazine are simple in construction, but the voice is incredibly distinct. The poems deal with heavy subjects in a way that feels normal, everyday. For those listeners who spent the 90s listening to cassettes of Darnielle’s musical moniker, The Mountain Goats, you know that Darnielle has one of the most deceptively simple and distinct vocal styles you’ll ever encounter.

Holbert and Darnielle discuss everything from Iowa, a shared love of Slipknot, metal, and the physicality of writing. You’ll hear Darnielle read an unreleased lyric for a future song, and read from his latest novel, Universal Harvester. Holbert reads “The Uncle Poem” from the January 2021 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.

Tongo Eisen-Martin and Sonia Sanchez in Conversation Dec 22, 2020

Show notes

On today’s show, Tongo Eisen-Martin talks with activist, icon, legend, Sonia Sanchez. Listen to these brilliant poets pass fire, life, and love between them.

Eisen-Martin is a poet, movement worker, and educator. His poem “Pennies for the Opera” is featured in the December 2020 issue of Poetry as part of a portfolio of work from the book Carving Out Rights from Inside the Prison Industrial Complex. Both Eisen-Martin and Sanchez appear in the book, alongside artists incarcerated at Stateville Prison in Crest Hill, Illinois.

Sonia Sanchez is a poet, playwright, professor, and activist. You can read “Haiku and Tanka for Harriet Tubman”—which you’ll hear in this episode—in the April 2018 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.

Leila Chatti and Sharon Olds in Conversation Dec 08, 2020

Show notes

When we asked Leila Chatti who she wished to speak with most, she chose one of the poets who gave her permission to be a poet herself: Sharon Olds. And not just to be a poet, but to write from a voice she thought wasn’t possible. You’ll hear why.

This episode features more poems than we’ve ever had on the Poetry Magazine Podcast. Chatti asked Sharon to read a selection of poems that span 40 years – ranging from her first book, Satan Says, to her most recent book, Arias. Leila also reads from the December issue of Poetry, and her latest collection, Deluge, a chronicle of illness, womanhood, and faith.

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

Alison C. Rollins and Latria Graham in Conversation Nov 24, 2020

Show notes

Poet Alison C. Rollins recently finished her first outdoor survival training program. Part of her preparation was to read Latria Graham’s essays about the experience of being a Black woman in the outdoors. Graham is a journalist and fifth-generation farmer living in South Carolina. In “Out There, Nobody Can Hear You Scream,” published in Outside Magazine, Graham describes a moment when—right before leaving for the Great Smoky Mountains—her mother handed her the gun of her late father for protection. Rollins had a very similar experience. Her mother’s first question, when hearing of her daughter's desire to journey into the outdoors, was, “How are you going to protect yourself?” This moment of recognition led Rollins and Graham together, to talk about writing, survival, and, as Rollins calls it, “Black nature joy.”

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

avery r. young in conversation with LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs Nov 10, 2020

Show notes

young and Diggs both work with words, sound, image—and bodies—as Diggs puts it. On today’s show, they talk about funk, Dolly Parton, taking notes, polyglots, and how these different cadences resonate in young’s series peestain. In these collages and poems, featured in the November issue of Poetry, young weaves his own history with the lives of his students and characters like Willis Jackson from the sitcom Diff'rent Strokes. The familiarity and openness of the references are as heartening as they are devastating. Nothing is neat. Nothing is predictable in young’s work—or Digg’s—as you’ll hear today. In the course of the conversation, Diggs reads one of her own poems and a poem by Carl Hancock Rux.

Need a transcript of this episode? Request a transcript here.

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

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

The Poetry Magazine Podcast

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected