Welcome to the fourth episode of Season Seven of the Bagley Wright Lecture Series on Poetry podcast.

Season Seven of the podcast includes lectures written and delivered by Douglas Kearney during his tenure as a Bagley Wright Lecturer. Today we'll hear “You Better Hush: Blacktracking A Visual Poetics.” This talk was originally given March 31, 2021, at Seattle Arts & Lectures, via Zoom.

Aretha and the Iceman, J-Dilla, Susan Howe, and a bird that becomes a fish only to become a bird, flower, then a bird again meet up in this lecture about visuality/visibility (Evie Shockley) and the textual/textural. Poet Douglas Kearney will discuss what draws him to visual poetry, the disruptive pleasure of collage’s cut, recognition as a strategy that places reading in tension with looking, and the genealogy of a threat from a spiritual to 1990s gangsta rap.

Visit us at our website, www.bagleywrightlectures.org, for more information about Bagley Wright lecturers, as well as links to supplementary materials on each lecturer’s archive page, including selected writings.

Douglas Kearney's book based on his BWLS lectures, Optic Subwoof (Wave Books, 2022) is forthcoming, and is available for purchase here.

Music: "I Recall" by Blue Dot Sessions

from the Free Music Archive

CC BY NC