Keep the Channel Open

Dayna Patterson is a poet, photographer, and textile artist based in the Pacific Northwest. The poems in her latest collection, O Lady, Speak Again, use the voices of the women characters from Shakespeare's plays to talk about patriarchy, motherhood, sexuality, religion, heritage. In our conversation, Dayna and I discussed her creative process and how she finds her way into a poem, her use of persona in O Lady, Speak Again, and how and why she interrogates that same device within the collection. The in the second segment, we talked about play, and how it interacts with the creative process.

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• Dayna Patterson
• Purchase O Lady, Speak Again: Village Books (Bellingham, WA) | The Book Catapult (San Diego, CA) | Bookshop.org
• Keep the Channel Open - Episode 120: Kazim Ali
• Keep the Channel Open - Episode 137: Gabrielle Bates
• NaPoWriMo
• Othello, Act V, Scene ii
• Jorie Graham
• The Winter's Tale
• Emily Dickinson - "Tell all the truth but tell it slant"
• Rachel Zucker - The Poetics of Wrongness
• Kristiana Kahakauwila
• Jehanne Dubrow
• Mike Sakasegawa - Sheets: A Love Letter
• Bruce Beasley - Prayershreds

• Editing/Mixing: Mike Sakasegawa
• Music: Podington Bear
• Transcription: Shea Aguinaldo

Joshua Burton is a poet and educator based in Houston, TX. The poems in Joshua's debut collection, Grace Engine, ask what grace means in a hostile world of lynchings, mental illness, self-hate, and suicide. These poems offer no solace, yet nevertheless reach toward beauty and peace. In our conversation, Joshua and I talked about what a grace engine is, processing shame through poetry, and what can be unlocked by returning to the same subject in multiple poems. Then for the second segment, we talked about creating mythology as a way of honoring those whom history may have overlooked.

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• Joshua Burton
• Purchase Grace Engine: Brazos Bookstore (Houston, TX) | The Book Catapult (San Diego, CA) | Bookshop.org
• Mike's video review of Grace Engine
• Jeff Buckley - Grace
• Mono no aware
• Lynching of Jim McIlherron
• Lynching of Mary Turner
• Lynching of Laura and L. D. Nelson (note: link contains graphic images)
• Royal Robertson
• William O'Neal
• Keep the Channel Open - Episode 108: The Craft of the Literary Podcast Interview
• Joshua Burton - Fracture Anthology
• Roland Barthes - Camera Lucida
• Toni Morrison - Song of Solomon
• Lupe Fiasco - DROGAS Wave

• Editing/Mixing: Mike Sakasegawa
• Music: Podington Bear
• Transcription: Shea Aguinaldo

For our latest KTCO Book Club episode, media critic Mel Thomas joins us for a conversation about Holly Black's YA fantasy novel The Cruel Prince. In our conversation, we discuss the ways that craft in YA fiction is often dismissed or overlooked by both critics and readers, the dynamics of abuse and trauma in the novel, and being able to enjoy art on multiple levels.

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• Mel Thomas
• Purchase The Cruel Prince: Carmichael's Bookstore (Louisville, KY) | Mysterious Galaxy (San Diego, CA) | Bookshop.org
• David Eddings - The Belgariad
• Ursula K. Le Guin - A Wizard of Earthsea
• Nicole Kornher-Stace - Archivist Wasp
• Kameron Hurley
• Stephen R. Donaldson - The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant
• Sarah J. Maas - A Court of Thorns and Roses
• boygenius - the record

• Editing/Mixing: Mike Sakasegawa
• Music: Podington Bear
• Transcription: Shea Aguinaldo

Gabrielle Bates is a poet based in Seattle, WA. Throughout Gabrielle's debut collection, Judas Goat, there is a feeling of quiet, that the poems are almost being whispered to you. And yet it is not a soft or comforting quiet that these poems bring, but rather one that often contains a sense of menace. In our conversation, Gabrielle and I talked about that disquieting feeling, the slipperiness of memory, the poetics of attention, and how important narrative to her poetics. Then for the second segment, we discussed what literature and poetry can do.

[Recorded Jan 2, 2023]

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• Gabrielle Bates
• Purchase Judas Goat: Open Books (Seattle, WA) | The Book Catapult (San Diego, CA) | Bookshop.org
• Keep the Channel Open - Episode 123: KTCO Book Club - Song (with Gabrielle Bates)
• Between the Covers - Claire Schwartz : Civil Service
• Keep the Channel Open - Episode 134: Luther Hughes
• Keep the Channel Open - Episode 120: Kazim Ali
• Gabrielle Bates - Poetry Comics
• Kazim Ali - "Know No Name"
• Abi Pollokoff
• Erin L. McCoy
• Keep the Channel Open - Episode 112: Ross Sutherland
• Benjamin Labatut - When We Cease to Understand the World

• Editing/Mixing: Mike Sakasegawa
• Music: Podington Bear
• Transcription: Shea Aguinaldo

Abby Minor is a writer based in central Pennsylvania. In her debut book of poems, As I Said: A Dissent, Abby combines the historical narrative of Ann Lohman—a 19th-century abortion provider in New York City—with personal and family history, creating a collection of poems that challenge the typical notion of an abortion story. In our conversation, Abby and I talked about her approach to documentary poetry, why it was important to her to push back against conventional abortion discourse, and how art and activism intersect. Then in the second segment, we talked about American work culture and the necessity of rest.

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• Abby Minor
• Purchase As I Said: A Dissent: Webster's Bookstore (State College, PA) | The Book Catapult (San Diego, CA) | Bookshop.org
• NPR Arts & Letters - "The Wickedest Woman in New York"
• Erin Marie Lynch - "Using the Lens of Abortion to Look at Other Things"
• Abby Minor - "Out On This Red Edge"
• Abby Minor - "Rooms"
• Contrary Magazine - Interview with Best of the Net 2018 Winner Abby Minor
• Abby Minor - "Beyond Choice"
• Abby Minor - Reframing Abortion to Breathe Life into a "Culture of Death"
• Steven Stoll - Ramp Hollow: The Ordeal of Appalachia
• Robin Wall Kimmerer - Braiding Sweetgrass
• Vaughn Stills - Places for the Spirit: Traditional African American Gardens

• Editing/Mixing: Mike Sakasegawa
• Music: Podington Bear
• Transcription: Shea Aguinaldo

Molly Spencer is a poet based in Michigan. The poems in her collections In the House and Hinge engage with chronic illness, divorce, domesticity, motherhood, and the ways that our lives don't always work out the way we expected them to. In our conversation, we talked about dissolution, the uses of poetry, ways of knowing, and speaking unlovely truths. Then for the second section, we talked about attention—both the kind of attention we'd like to cultivate in our own lives, and what kind of attention we ask of our readers.

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• Molly Spencer
• Purchase If the House: Literati (Ann Arbor, MI) | The Book Catapult (San Diego, CA) | Bookshop
• Purchase Hinge: Literati (Ann Arbor, MI) | The Book Catapult (San Diego, CA) | Bookshop
• Emily Dickinson - "Make me a picture of the sun"
• Etel Adnan - Sea and Fog
• Wallace Stevens - "The Snow Man"
• Susan Glaspell - "A Jury of Her Peers"
• Molly Spencer - "On 'Most Accidents Occur At Home'"
• Mary Oliver - "Yes! No!"
• Solmaz Sharif - Customs
• Dionne Brand - Nomenclature

• Editing/Mixing: Mike Sakasegawa
• Music: Podington Bear
• Transcription: Shea Aguinaldo

Luther Hughes is a poet based in Seattle, WA. The poems in Luther's debut collection, A Shiver in the Leaves, are tender, erotic, vulnerable, erudite, at times dark, and at times ecstatic. In our conversation, we talked about power dynamics in sexual encounters, different forms of love, and writing as a way of understanding oneself. Then in the second section, we talked about why so many sex scenes in popular media are so strange.

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• Luther Hughes
• Purchase A Shiver in the Leaves: Open Books (Seattle, WA) | The Book Catapult (San Diego, CA) | Bookshop.org
• Brooklyn Poets Reading Series - Luther Hughes, Lynn Melnick, Carl Phillips
• The Poet Salon
• Lue's Poetry Hour
• Luther Hughes - "On Power"
• Seattle Times - "Seattle poet Luther Hughes on 'A Shiver in the Leaves,' his debut collection"
• Brandon Taylor - Real Life

• Editing/Mixing: Mike Sakasegawa
• Music: Podington Bear
• Transcription: Shea Aguinaldo

André Ramos-Woodard is a photographic artist originally from Texas and Tennessee. In their series BLACK SNAFU, André combines photographs celebrating Blackness with appropriated illustrations from racist cartoons as a way of confronting the history and present reality of American racism. In our conversation we discussed appropriation, questions of audience and community, and mental health. Then in the second segment, we talked about what inspires us outside of the visual arts.

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• André Ramos-Woodard
• André Ramos-Woodard - BLACK SNAFU
• Hannah Jane Parkinson - "Instagram, an artist and the $100,000 selfies—appropriation in the digital age" (Article about Richard Prince Instagram images)
• William Camargo
• William Camargo's IG post riffing on John Diva's work
• Kansas City Artists Coalition - André Ramos-Woodard Artist Talk
• André Ramos-Woodard - African America
• Roger Ebert - "Video games can never be art"
• Beyonce - Renaissance

• Editing/Mixing: Mike Sakasegawa
• Music: Podington Bear
• Transcription: Shea Aguinaldo

Amanda Marchand is a Canadian, New York-based photographer. Amanda's Lumen Notebook series is a body of elegant and strikingly beautiful images that nevertheless layer deep meaning within their seemingly simple compositions. In our conversation, Amanda and I talked about her process in creating these photograms and how working within strict constraints allows her to explore the technique more fully. We also discussed how she uses photography to facilitate connection and presence, and the duality of delight and mortality in her work. Then for the second segment we had a meandering conversation about autism, communication, attention, and using art to process and understand our emotional experiences.

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• Amanda Marchand
• Amanda Marchand - The World is Astonishing With You in It
• Medium Photo - Second Sight lecture with Amanda Marchand
• Barbara Bosworth - The Meadow
• Stanley Fish - Is There a Text in This Class?
• Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal - Louise Bourgeois
• Linda Connor
• Kathy Acker
• Amanda Marchand - Nothing Will Ever Be the Same Again
• Amanda Marchand - Lumen Circles
• Keep the Channel Open - Episode 124: Farrah Karapetian
• Leah Sobsey
• Mary Oliver - Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver
• Mary Oliver - "The Summer Day"
• Tara Brach
• Jenny Odell - How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy

• Editing/Mixing: Mike Sakasegawa
• Music: Podington Bear
• Transcription: Shea Aguinaldo

Fatemeh Baigmoradi is a photographic artist originally from Iran. In her series It's Hard to Kill, Fatemeh works with archival family photos from Iran, using fire to obscure or destroy portions of the image—connecting to the way that her own family and many others burned their photos after the Iranian Revolution to protect themselves or others in the photos. In our conversation we talked about the relationship between photography and memory, censorship, and how violence, healing, and cleansing are all intertwined in Fatemeh's work. Then in the second segment, Fatemeh and I talked about immigration.

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• Fatemeh Baigmoradi
• Fatemeh Baigmoradi - It's Hard to Kill
• Fatemeh Baigmoradi - Subjectivity and Objectivity
• Medium Festival of Photography - Fatemeh Baigmoradi lecture
• Keep the Channel Open - Episode 22: Esmé Weijun Wang
• Keep the Channel Open - Episode 46: Rizzhel Javier
• Brandon Shimoda
• Patrick Nagatani
• Ignant - "Fatemeh Baigmoradi On Censorship and the Fires of Revolution"
• Mitra Tabrizian
• Marcel Proust - Swann's Way: In Search of Lost Time, Volume 1

• Editing/Mixing: Mike Sakasegawa
• Music: Podington Bear
• Transcription: Shea Aguinaldo