Interesting People Reading Poetry

In this episode, Amy Dickinson reads “Say It” by Roland Flint. Dickinson wrote the beloved daily advice column “Ask Amy,” which appeared in newspapers across the country from 2003 until her retirement in June of 2024. She is also the author of two memoirs and a new Substack newsletter.

Roland Flint was born in Park River, North Dakota in 1934. “Say It” was first published in Say It (Dryad Press, 1979). It appears in The Complete Poems of Roland Flint, published by Elizabeth Flint in 2022.

We feature one short listener poem at the end of every episode. To submit, call the Haiku Hotline at 612-440-0643 and read your poem after the beep. For the occasional prompt, follow us on Facebook.

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In this IPRP Poetry Playlist, U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón reads three selections from the anthology You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World, out now from Milkweed Editions. The collection, edited and introduced by Limón, offers “fifty poems reflecting on our relationship to the natural world by our most celebrated contemporary writers.” Click here to learn more about the anthology, including upcoming events and how to share your own “You Are Here” nature poem.

1. “Reasons to Live” by Ruth Awad

2. “Lullaby for the Grieving” by Ashley M. Jones

3. “Twenty Minutes in the Backyard” by Alberto Ríos

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In this episode, Roy Foster reads “Sailing to Byzantium” by William Butler Yeats. Foster is the Emeritus Professor of Irish History at the University of Oxford and the author of many books, including his classic, two-volume biography of Yeats, published in 1997 and 2003. In a review of the first volume published in the New York Review of Books, the Irish novelist John Banville wrote: “W.B. Yeats: A Life is a great and important work, a triumph of scholarship, thought, and empathy such as one would hardly have thought possible in this age of disillusion. It is an achievement wholly of a scale with its heroic subject.”

“Sailing to Byzantium” by William Butler Yeats was first published in 1927 and included in his magnificent collection, The Tower, published in 1928. To learn more about Yeats’ life and work, look no further than Roy Foster’s W.B Yeats: A Life, Vol. I: The Apprentice Mage and Vol. II: The Arch-Poet.

We feature one short listener poem at the end of every episode. To submit, call the Haiku Hotline at 612-440-0643 and read your poem after the beep. For the occasional prompt, follow us on Facebook.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

In this IPRP Poetry Playlist, our host Brendan Stermer reads three poems from his debut chapbook, Forgotten Frequencies, out now from North Dakota State University Press. The books were printed in a limited edition at The Braddock News Letterpress Museum in Braddock, ND and assembled by hand by students in the publishing program at North Dakota State University in Fargo. Forgotten Frequencies was selected as the winner of the 2023 Poetry of the Plains & Prairies Award and named a 2024 Midwest Book Awards finalist. Purchase a signed copy of Forgotten Frequencies here.

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In this episode, musician and writer Dessa reads an excerpt from “Natural Enemies of the Conch” by Alan Dugan. Dessa first gained prominence as a rapper with the Twin Cities hip hop collective Doomtree, but has since worked across many genres and creative disciplines. She has collaborated with the Minnesota Orchestra, published a memoir and poetry collections, and even hosted a BBC science podcast. Her fantastic new album, Bury the Lede, is an embrace of dance floor-ready pop music. 

Alan Dugan was an American poet born in New York City in 1923. “Natural Enemies of the Conch” appears in Poems Seven: New and Complete Poetry, published by Seven Stories Press.

Keep up with Dessa on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and at dessawander.com. 

We feature one short listener poem at the end of every episode. To submit, call the Haiku Hotline at 612-440-0643 and read your poem after the beep. For the occasional prompt, follow us on Facebook.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

For each IPRP Poetry Playlist, we curate a selection of three poems, loosely thematically related, presented with musical score, but without any commentary or historical context. We encourage you to approach these short episodes with the same relaxed attitude you might take toward a playlist on a burnt CD, given to you by a friend, which you casually pop in on a long road trip. Don’t worry about perfect comprehension, and steer clear of academic analysis. Just turn up the volume, roll down your windows, and enjoy the ride.

1. “Little Exercise” by Elizabeth Bishop appears in Poems, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

2. “Love For Other Things” by Tom Hennen appears in Darkness Sticks to Everything, published by Copper Canyon Press.

3. “The Lady Speaks” by William Carlos Williams appears in The Collected Poems: Volume II, 1939-1962, published by New Directions.

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In this episode, Tish Harrison Warren reads “Possible Answers to Prayer” by Scott Cairns. Warren is an Anglican priest and the author of two award-winning books, Liturgy of the Ordinary and Prayer in the Night. She also writes a weekly newsletter for the New York Times on “faith in private life and public discourse.” 

“Possible Answers to Prayer” by Scott Cairns appears in Slow Pilgrim, published by Paraclete Press. Cairns is an American poet born in 1954. Much of his work explores spiritual themes and is influenced by his Eastern Orthodox faith.

Keep up with Tish Harrison Warren on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and at tishharrisonwarren.com. 

We feature one short listener poem at the end of every episode. To submit, call the Haiku Hotline at 612-440-0643 and read your poem after the beep. For the occasional prompt, follow us on Facebook.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Vocalism, measure, concentration, determination, and the divine power to speak words; Are you full-lung’d and limber-lipp’d from long trial? from vigorous practice? from physique?

–WALT WHITMAN

What would it be like to experience a selection of poems with the same relaxed attitude you might take toward a playlist on a burnt CD, given to you by a friend, which you casually pop in on a long road trip? That’s the question we’re exploring with this new, extra-short episode format, which we’ll be publishing in-between our full-length releases.

We’re calling it a Poetry Playlist: three poems, loosely thematically related, presented with musical score, but without any commentary or historical context. Don’t worry about perfect comprehension, and steer clear of academic analysis. Just turn up the volume, roll down your windows, and enjoy the ride.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/4hED7uFa96T1z9GH9VeQWg

1. “Vocalism” by Walt Whitman

2. “Introduction to the Songs of Experience” by William Blake

3. “To the Roaring Wind” by Wallace Stevens

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In this episode, Alissa Rubin reads an excerpt from the ancient Greek epic The Iliad. Rubin is a Senior International Correspondent for The New York Times. She worked previously as the Bureau Chief in Baghdad, Paris, and Kabul. In 2016, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting for “thoroughly reported and movingly written accounts giving voice to Afghan women who were forced to endure unspeakable cruelties.”

The passage that Rubin selected is from the very last book of The Iliad, and portrays an encounter between the Trojan King Priam and the Greek warrior Achilles. If you’re unfamiliar with the story, all you really need to know — for our purposes — is that Priam’s son killed Achilles’ best friend in combat, and Achilles then killed Priam’s son in retribution. At the point where we meet them, Achilles has been dragging the body of his slain enemy behind his chariot for twelve days, and Priam has come in person to his enemy’s encampment to plead for the return of his son’s body. 

The Iliad by Homer, translated by Robert Fagles, is published by Penguin Random House.

Alissa Rubin’s reporting – including her recent must-read coverage on climate change in the Middle East – is available to subscribers of The New York Times.

We feature one short listener poem at the end of every episode. To submit, call the Haiku Hotline at 612-440-0643 and read your poem after the beep. For the occasional prompt, follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

Subscribe on RadioPublic, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.

In this episode, Makoto Fujimura reads an excerpt from “Burnt Norton” by T. S. Eliot. Fujimura is a leading contemporary painter whose work fuses abstract expressionism with traditional Japanese painting styles. He is also the author of several books, including Art + Faith: A Theology of Making, out now from Yale University Press.

T. S. Eliot was an influential modernist poet, playwright, and literary critic born in St. Louis in 1888. His late masterpiece, Four Quartets, is a collection of four linked poems partially inspired, in sound and structure, by Beethoven’s late string quartets. “Burnt Norton,” the first poem in the series, was written while Eliot was living in England in 1935.

“Burnt Norton” by T. S. Eliot appears in Four Quartets, published by Ecco.

Art + Faith: A Theology of Making by Makoto Fujimura is available now from Yale University Press. Keep up with Fujiumura – and explore his recent visual art – on his website, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

We feature one short listener poem at the end of every episode. To submit, call the Haiku Hotline at 612-440-0643 and read your poem after the beep. For the occasional prompt, follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

Subscribe on RadioPublic, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.