Rachel Zucker speaks with poet Matthew Rohrer, author of eight books. The two discuss marriage, lightheartedness, serious poetic practice, little league baseball, and Rohrer’s collaboration with haiku masters in his most recent book, Surrounded by Friends. With jaunts into his own academic career and his influences, Rohrer speaks on his understanding of the New York School, an unpublished interview with Ron Padgett, and receiving criticism for being “too adoring.” The conversation touches on a variety of subjects, including Rohrer’s forthcoming book, his dreamed list of “what-not-to-do” in poetry, and the importance of addressing politics in his work.

Award winning poet, playwright, professor, editor, essayist, and critic Claudia Rankine speaks with Rachel Zucker about collaboration, poetry’s role in social change, and the investigation of feeling. In this episode, Rankine discusses the importance of ideas put forward by writers such as James Baldwin and Adrienne Rich, the known unknown, the arena of consciousness, being a spectator, willed ignorance, and the illusion of difficulty in poetry.

In this episode, Rachel Zucker speaks with John Murillo, author of Up Jump the Boogie, about his initiation as a priest in La Regla de Ocha, his writing process, Philip Levine and other poets he loves, his thoughts on the ethics of writing poetry, and duende. Murillo explores the interstices of narrative and lyric poetry, the structure of love poems, how to navigate the line between one’s own story and the stories of others and what it means to be in someone’s poetry tribe.

Poet Rachel Zucker interviews Nick Flynn, author of My Feelings (among many other books), out from Graywolf Press.

In this episode, poet David Trinidad discusses collecting vintage Barbies and Vera scarves and how images of collecting and the process of collecting have affected his poems and poetics.