In a virtual panel hosted by Literary Cleveland during the 2024 Inkubator writing conference, Ohio poets Ruth Awad and Maggie Smith consider how poetry can awaken us to new possibilities of being. Throughout their wide-ranging conversation, Awad and Smith discuss inspiration, hyphenated identities, poems as time capsules, poetic supervillain origin stories, and finding language for grief and rage as well as peace and liberation. What words keep us moving? How can poetry help us not just survive but find joy?

The event, titled “Outside the Joy: Poetry and Possibility,” was held September 18, 2024. Page Count thanks Literary Cleveland for making this episode possible.

Ruth Awad is a Lebanese-American poet, a 2021 NEA Poetry fellow, and the author of Outside the Joy (Third Man Books, 2024) and Set to Music a Wildfire (Southern Indiana Review Press, 2017), winner of the 2016 Michael Waters Poetry Prize and the 2018 Ohioana Book Award for Poetry. She is the co-editor of The Familiar Wild: On Dogs and Poetry (Sundress Publications, 2020). She lives and writes in Columbus, Ohio.

Maggie Smith is the New York Times bestselling author of You Could Make This Place Beautiful; My Thoughts Have Wings, a picture book illustrated by Leanne Hatch; the national bestsellers Goldenrod and Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change; as well as Good Bones, named one of the Best Five Poetry Books of 2017 by the Washington Post; The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison; and Lamp of the Body. Her next book, Dear Writer: Pep Talks & Practical Advice for the Creative Life, is forthcoming in April 2025.

Page Count is produced by Ohio Center for the Book at Cleveland Public Library. For full show notes and an edited transcript of this episode, visit the episode page. To get in touch, email [email protected] (put “podcast” in the subject line) or follow us on Instagram or Facebook.