KRCB-FM: WordTemple

Recorded live at the WordTemple Poetry Series in February of this year, WordTemple host and series curator Katherine Hastings airs the performances of Kevin Simmonds and Mary Mackey. Simmonds - poet, musician, filmmaker, writer - is the editor of Ota Benga Under My Mother’s Roof, a collection of narrative poems by Carrie Allen McCray. Ota Benga, “a strong yet gentle man from the deep Congo forest,” was brought to America in 1904 to be exhibited in the St. Louis Fair and then in 1906 at the Museum of Natural History. Finally, he was exhibited in a cage with an ape at the Bronx Zoo. On this program, you will hear about Ota Benga’s life and how he came to live with the poet’s family in Lynchburg, Virginia. You will hear not just the powerful poetry of Carrie Allen McCray, but songs composed and sung by Kevin Simmonds, and more. Mackey reads from her latest collection, Sugar Zone, winner of the 2012 PEN-Oakland Josephine Miles Award for Excellence in Literature. The culmination of many trips to Brazil, the poems in Sugar Zone are works of the jungle, the Amazon and more. Combining Portuguese and English, she creates poems that use Portuguese as incantation to invoke the lyrical space that lies at the conjunction between these two languages.

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WordTemple host Katherine Hastings presents an evening of poetry recorded while in Boston. Elizabeth Bradfield and Camille Dungy give separate readings and then talk together, responding to each other's work.

Elizabeth Bradfield is the author of Interpretive Work, which won the Audre Lorde Award and Approaching Ice, a book of poems about Arctic and Antarctic exploration that was a finalist for the James Laughlin Award from the American Academy of Poets. She has been awarded fellowships and scholarships from Stanford University's Wallace Stegner Fellowship program, the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference and the Vermont Studio Center. A naturalist who lives on Cape Cod, Bradfield spends time on expedition ships around the world. For 2012-2014, she is the Jacob Ziskind Visiting Poet-in-Residence at Brandeis University.

Camille Dungy is the author of Smith Blue, winner of the Crab Orchard Open Book Prize; Suck on the Marrow; and What to Eat, What to Drink, What to Leave for Poison. She is the editor of Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry; co-editor of From the Fishouse: An Anthology of Poems That Sing, Rhyme, Resound, Syncopate, Alliterate, and Just Plain Sound Great; and assistant editor of Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem's First Decade. A two-time recipient of the Northern California Book Award and a two-time NAACP Image Award nominee, Dungy has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Virginia Commission for the Arts, Caven Canem, the Dana Award, and Bread Loaf.

In the first of several shows recorded in New York and Boston, WordTemple host Katherine Hastings introduces KRCB-FM listeners to Pui Ying Wong and Tim Suermondt.

Wong, whose poetry has appeared in a wide variety of noted journals, is from Hong Kong and the author of the honest and moving book of poems Yellow Plum Season. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband Tim Suermondt.

Suermondt's poetry has also appeared in several renowned literary reviews. His latest published collection, Just Beautiful, is warm-hearted and funny.

Word Temple host Katherine Hastings welcomes Grace Marie Grafton, who reads from her collection Whimsy, Reticence & Laud: Unruly Sonnets. Also joining Hastings is poet Lee Slonimsky, author of four collections of poetry, the most recent of which is Logician of the Wind. Slonimsky lives in New York but visits Sonoma County frequently where he gives readings and teaches poetry workshops. Finally, in honor of th this month's Big Read Sonoma County, host Katherine Hastings will air a number of poems written by Emily Dickinson.

On this WordTemple show, host Katherine Hastings presents widely published poet Arisa White, author of Hurrah's Nest, her debut collection recently nominated for a 44th NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work in Poetry, and A Penny Saved, Released in November 2012. Arisa, a native New Yorker, living in Oakland, California, is sure to delight our listeners.

Also, Sonoma County poet and painter Ed Coletti reads from his book When Hearts Outlive Minds, an exploration of the many ways he found to celebrate life even during the heartbreak of his father's decline and death.

This and more, on WordTemple!

Way back in July, the WordTemple Poetry series hosted Alicia Suskin Ostriker, reading from her new collection The Book of Life - Selected Jewish Poems, 1973 – 2011. KRCB aired this powerful reading. One of America’s premier visionary poets and critics, Ostriker has authored several collections of poetry and won numerous literary awards.

Then, Marin County poet Gerald Fleming turns the table on WordTemple host and poet Katherine Hastings and interviews her about her new collection of poems Cloud Fire, a profound and fertile collection of poems.

For our December WordTemple program, host Katherine Hastings takes a brief departure from poetry to present two stories. First, the 1941 radio play based on James Hilton's 1933 novel of the same title, Lost Horizon, starring Ronald Colman and Donald Crisp. (Colman also starred in the 1937 film directed by Frank Capra.) Following Lost Horizon, Dylan Thomas reads his classic A Child's Christmas In Wales. Finally, a little poetry: Arisa White reads with the Jessica Jones Quartet.

In the spring of 2011 over 20 poets were given a tour of the construction site of the eastern span of the Bay Bridge, the portion that was being replaced after a section of the old span collapsed during the Loma Prieta earthquake. One result of that tour was the publication of an anthology of poems and photographs, Everything Indicates - Bay Bridge Poems and Portraits. In celebration of this book and of the Bay Bridge's 75th anniversary, several poets read their work, including Tamsin Smith, Katherine Hastings, Kevin Simmonds, Jack Pitts, Ben Davis and others.

Also, WordTemple host Katherine Hastings talks this month with Bruce Snider about his prize-winning collection Paradise, Indiana. Snider is also the author of The Year We Studied Women. A former Wallace Stegner Fellow and the recipient of a James A. Michner fellowship, he teaches at Stanford University.

In an interview with WordTemple host Katherine Hastings, Pulitzer Prize nominated poet Diana O'Hehir reads from her latest collection Walk Me To Schenectady. This is the multiple-award winning poet's fifth collection; she has also published 5 novels. Also, Terry Ehret reads from her latest collection of poems, Night Sky Journey (Kelly's Cover Press, 2011.) Previous books by Ehret are Lost Body, Translations from the Human Language; and Lucky Break.

Poet and writer F. D. Reeve talks with host Katherine Hastings about his friendship with Robert Frost, his son, the late actor Christopher Reeve, and reads from his collection, The Toy Soldier. You will also hear some of Reeve's poetry from The Blue Cat Walks the Earth read to jazz accompaniment.

Also - Sonoma County poet Kathleen Winter, winner of the Elixir Press Poetry Award, reads from her first full-length collection Nostalgia for the Criminal Past.