Welcome to the first episode of Season Eight of the Bagley Wright Lecture Series on Poetry podcast.

Season Eight is comprised of lectures written and delivered by Rachel Zucker during her tenure as a Bagley Wright Lecturer. 

Rachel Zucker’s lectures ask questions about obedience, wrongness, and decorum. Like her poetry, the lectures are borne from a long lineage of female writers and artists who ask What now? What next? and Am I allowed to do this? To break that? Rachel considers the history of Confessional poetry, the ethical consequences of representing real people in art, and the other great medium that has influenced her work—photography—exploring how it taught her to look for, but also question, truth and permission in art.

Today we'll hear “The Poetics of Wrongness: an Unapologia,” given November 14, 2016, in partnership with Seattle Arts & Lectures. A quick note about this lecture–just prior to beginning, Zucker gives a nod the timing of writing this talk. She is speaking about having written it 16 months prior to the election of Donald Trump to the presidency, and to the fact that she is now giving this talk, about a week after his election.

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–for example, you can read a transcript of the Q&A that followed this lecture, here.

Rachel Zucker's book based on her BWLS lectures, The Poetics of Wrongness (Wave Books, 2023), is available here.

Music: "I Recall" by Blue Dot Sessions

from the Free Music Archive

CC BY NC