Listen here!

Former HIVE member, Geneffa Jahan, returns to offer this salient conversation with beloved local poet and SC Poet Laureate Emeritus, David Sullivan, and his equally lauded friend, the Illinois poet and teacher, Ignatius Valentine Aloysius. They discuss their recently released collaborative poetry collection, Salt Pruning, as they reflect upon the unlikely parallels of their lives and their evolving friendship.

"Salt pruning references the process by which saline mists and seawater shape and shear foliage and rocks along coasts. Meanwhile, the poems in Salt Pruning are a thoughtful conversation using the language of poetry and invented forms to explore how grief and love, immigrant trauma, and friendship have sculpted" these two fine poets (Luisa A. Igloria).

Saline winds, whether on the West Coast of Santa Cruz or Mumbai, prune the landscape, offering a ready trope for how truthful language, flowing between friends, shapes both craft and connection.

As Lee Herrick aptly notes about this collection, the long final poem says it well: 'Men weep everywhere / They can hardly see to steer.' This book is vulnerable and revelatory, a collaborative delight."

This one-hour conversation will leave you touched by something sacred and salient--something to steer you forward and inward.