Every book begins long before it reaches a reader. It begins with someone willing to read closely, make difficult choices, shape the work with care, and believe that one more voice deserves a place in the world.

In this episode, Enzo sits down with poet, editor, and publisher Rebecca Hart Olander to pull back the curtain on small press publishing and the heart-labor that makes each book possible. They talk about the difficult choices behind saying yes to a manuscript, what writers misunderstand about the editing process, and the many unseen hands that shape the books that eventually shape us.

The conversation also moves through the delicate balance of being both poet and publisher, writing through grief, protecting room for one’s own creative life, and continuing to bring meaningful work into the world during a changing climate of censorship and uncertainty.

This is a conversation for writers, editors, publishers, and anyone who has ever wondered what it truly takes to turn a manuscript into a book someone can hold.

Subscribe to It’s a Poetic Life and share this episode with someone who believes language still matters.

In this episode of It’s a Poetic Life, Enzo welcomes violist, cultural curator, and Castle of Our Skins Co-Founder Ashleigh Gordon for a conversation on cultural stewardship, Black artistic lineage, and the ecosystems of care that make creative work possible.

Together, they explore what it means to honor Black excellence not as an initiative, but as a living practice rooted in memory, community, rigor, and imagination. From music and performance to education, collaboration, and cultural preservation, this conversation invites listeners to consider how art carries history forward while creating space for what can still become.

In this episode of It’s a Poetic Life, Enzo sits down with poet, educator, and Salem Poet Laureate J.D. Scrimgeour for a conversation about poetry, place, mentorship, language, and literary community.

Together, they reflect on the poetic life as something shaped not only by what we write, but by the spaces we help create for others. From Salem’s literary history and the Mass Poetry Festival to questions of family, translation, teaching, and community building, this conversation explores how poetry can live on the page, in the classroom, in the city, and in the relationships that sustain us.

At its heart, this episode is about what it means to keep showing up for the work, for the people, and for the communities that make a literary life possible.

What happens when care starts to feel harder to read?

In this episode of It’s a Poetic Life, I sit with a feeling I haven’t been able to shake: the sense that empathy is still present, but the way we encounter it has started to shift.

From the language we absorb online to the way it follows us into real conversations and onto the page, I explore how care can become tangled with being seen, being affirmed, or being rewarded, and what that does to the way we trust each other.

This isn’t a callout. It’s a conversation.

A reflection on empathy, performance, mentorship, creative community, and the quiet work of remaining human with one another, even in the stories we tell and the characters we create.

At the center of the episode is a question I’m still carrying:

What does empathy look like when no one is watching?

And how do we keep choosing presence in a world that often rewards performance?

In practice, not perfection.

What does it really mean to build a writing life when the path doesn’t look the way you imagined?

In this episode of It’s a Poetic Life, Enzo Silon Surin sits down with Dr. Molly Gaudry, founder of Lit Pub, author of We Take Me Apart, and assistant professor at Stony Brook University. She also teaches fiction at the Yale Writers’ Workshop.

Together, they move through the quieter, often unseen parts of a creative life. They talk about rejection, community, and what it means to stay in relationship with your voice even when the work shifts.

At the heart of the conversation is a simple but powerful idea. Sometimes the challenge is not a lack of material. It is learning how to enter the vastness of what is already there.

This conversation reminds us that everything does not have to speak at once. Sometimes the work is simply finding a way in.

Season Two of It’s a Poetic Life opens with a question that refuses to sit quietly:

What does it mean to live—and write—toward freedom?

In this opening episode, we enter a conversation about poetry, memory, and creative resistance—exploring poetry not just as art, but as an act of reclamation. Inspired by the work of the late Haitian poet Danielle Legros Georges and her haunting poem Makak, we also explore how language holds history while still making room for transformation.

Joining me is the brilliant poet and scholar Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie. Together we reflect on the ways poetry becomes both refuge and reckoning—a place where we confront what history leaves behind and imagine what freedom might yet become.

How do we write in the shadow of empire and displacement?

How do we remember without becoming trapped by memory?

And what does liberation look like when it must include tenderness, joy, and the courage to begin again?

This conversation moves through the spaces where poetry meets history, where voice meets inheritance, and where the act of speaking becomes its own form of freedom.

Because poetry is not only something we write.

It’s something we practice—

in the lives we build,

in the silences we refuse,

and in the worlds we dare to imagine together.

✨ Continue the journey with essays and reflections at enzothepoet.substack.com

🎧 Listen to more episodes of It’s a Poetic Life

Season One closes with a craft meditation on authorship, cadence, and the art of the intentional dive. From Elton John’s impossible-to-mimic phrasing to August Wilson’s dialogues with characters, Enzo maps the “fumble & tumble” of process—writing with the work (not at it), and composing a life that is unmistakably yours.

Along the way: the tree that keeps returning across his books and what it teaches about witness, endurance, and breath. This finale lingers on the deeper work of process—trusting the dive, embracing discovery, and allowing creation to change us.

Stay for a heartfelt wrap-up and a glimpse at what’s ahead: a guest-rich Season Two, opening with poet & artist Dr. Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie, and continuing the practice of holding clarity, courage, and presence. Two.

🎙 Season 1- Episode 9: Art Official — Writing Authentic Stories in a Market-Driven World

Guest: Daphne Santana Strassmann

What if the bravest thing you could do as a writer wasn’t just to write—but to write like no one’s watching?

In this intimate and layered conversation, Enzo sits down with memoirist and educator Daphne Santana Strassmann for what feels like a master class on writing from the inside out.

Together, they explore the quiet—but powerful—ways we’re taught to question the validity of our own stories. Not just by the outside world, but by the expectations we internalize. Whether it’s the pressure to fit into a narrative that makes sense to others, or the fear that our truth is too complicated, too specific, too much—this episode is a reminder that honoring your voice is a radical act.

💬 Inside this episode:

– How to trust the shape of your story before it’s “market-ready”

– Memoir as a way of returning to yourself

– The danger of leaving stories untold

– And how writing with honesty—on your own terms—is its own form of liberation

Daphne’s wisdom, warmth, and lived experience offer an invitation to all of us: to claim our stories not because they’re easy to tell—but because they’re ours to tell

What if poetry isn’t just about art—but about survival, clarity, and connection?

In this solo National Poetry Month reflection, Enzo the Poet invites listeners into the quiet laboratory of the poetic life. Drawing parallels between poets and scientists, he explores how language—like any evolving experiment—holds both implication and application. From the politics of translation to the sacred work of interpretation, this episode dives into what it really means to write, to witness, and to wonder aloud in a world that often demands silence.

Whether you’re a writer, a thinker, or simply someone trying to make sense of the noise, The Language of Infinity offers an intimate meditation on how poetry helps us live, remember, and begin again. With stories that span from cultural silencing to contemporary book bans, Enzo reflects on the emotional labor of language, the risks of being misunderstood, and the courage it takes to tell the truth anyway.

This isn’t just an episode about poems—it’s about why words still matter.

Subscribe to It’s a Poetic Life and join a growing community of listeners engaging with art, voice, and meaning—one reflection at a time.

In the final segment of this three-part episode, It’s a Poetic Life turns to the transformative power of art and curation in bridging cultural, geographic, and ideological divides. Curator Amy Rosenblum-Martín joins host Enzo Silon Surin for a compelling conversation on how exhibitions become spaces of resistance, reclamation, and relationship-building. From her work on Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration to Swagger and Tenderness, Amy reflects on the curatorial responsibility to amplify underrepresented voices while navigating institutional tensions and public resistance.

Together, they explore how art unsettles comfort, disrupts dominant narratives, and serves as a poetic force for connection in fragmented times. This segment asks: How do museums and curators hold space for authenticity amid systemic resistance to equity? What happens when storytelling becomes a collective bridge rather than an individual expression?

Listen in for a resonant close to a conversation rooted in the everyday work of creating true community.