In episode seven of Poet Talk, Jody and Sanna are joined by award-winning Toronto poet, Farah Ghafoor, to talk about trees.

Together, the trio explores photos of snails after the rain; the ethos of commas; power and prestige as barriers to poetry; and the practice one creates the feeling of time in a poem. Against the backdrop of the magic and factuality of long poems—and the sharp political and economical analysis of Farah's debut collection, Shadow Price—we ask questions like: why do people love trees? What will we leave behind, rooted in them?

This episode features a litany of poets and writers we admire such as Solmaz Sharif, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Richard Siken, George Jackson, and more.

*

🔥 2025 Tkaronto Traditional & Prescribed Burn

🌀 Who's Afraid: Reading Series, curated by Furqan Mohamed

🌱 "Here, Grass" by Farah Ghafoor

🐌 "The Snail" by Farah Ghafoor

📝 "The Near Transitive Properties of the Political and Poetical: Erasure" by Solmaz Sharif

🖊️ Cason Sharpe (RIP Twitter)

📗 War of the Foxes by Richard Siken

🌲 Old Growth Forests

📝“On the Concept of History” by Walter Benjamin

🎙️ Yanyi vs. the Personal (VS Podcast)

📝 "Patronage" by Solmaz Sharif

📝 "Notes on Craft: Writing in the Hour of Genocide" by Fargo Tbakhi

🩸Blood in my Eye by George Jackson

🌳 Finding the Mother Tree by Suzanne Simard

📝 "Most American Literature is the Literature of Empire" by Viet Thanh Nguyen

*

We’d like to spotlight Climate Justice TO and the Scarborough Environmental Association. CJTO is a grassroots group across the Greater Toronto Area who seek to build a powerful movement to stop the climate crisis by confronting its root causes. SEA is an organization of local residents; together, their goal is make Toronto's largest borough a kinder, greener place.

Support the show

🔔 Follow, rate and subscribe to Poet Talk wherever you're listening.

✨ Poet Talk is independently run, created and produced by Sanna Wani.

♫ Check out the show music in the album Hélice's Awesome Dance Adventure and the creator Komiku on their website.

📲 Don't forget to follow us on Instagram, @talkpoet.

In the sixth episode of Poet Talk, we’re joined by one of our favourite poets: Diana Khoi Nguyen.

Together, we explore swimming as both a poetic and life practice. A master class on the body's inherent abilities as well as the legacy of inherited sound, this episode dives deep into what it means to sculpt language like water. 

What does learning to speak have to do with learning to swim? How does the sheet music of the body emerge from silence? And where, in poems, might the natural cadence of our language lead?

Tune in as we explore these questions and more.

*

Notes

🌱 Resources on Indigenous Peoples in "Pittsburgh"

📗 Ghost Of by Diana Khoi Nguyen

📘 Root Fractures by Diana Khoi Nguyen 

🎙️ Diana Khoi Nguyen vs Silence

📝 "Grief Logic" from Ghost Of

🎙️ Helena Bonham Carter reads Danusha Laméris' "Small Kindnesses"

💬 Proprioception

📒 The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks

📈Đổi Mới

🚼 Researchers find meaning in baby babbling

📝 Excerpt of "Đổi Mới" from Root Fractures

Support Crips for E-Sims for Gaza. ❤️

Support the show

🔔 Follow, rate and subscribe to Poet Talk wherever you're listening.

✨ Poet Talk is independently run, created and produced by Sanna Wani.

♫ Check out the show music in the album Hélice's Awesome Dance Adventure and the creator Komiku on their website.

📲 Don't forget to follow us on Instagram, @talkpoet.

In the last episode of 2024, Jody and Sanna reflect on the first year of the podcast and their own places in writing community. They also do a close reading of one of their favourite poems: “God is an American” by Terrance Hayes. Together, they investigate beauty’s difficulty and longing’s limits, informed by the wisdom of Audre Lorde, Heather Christle and Lena Khalaf Tuffaha among others.

How is the artist a cultural worker? What constitutes an American poetics? And why, most importantly, was Terrance Hayes labelled “Handsome Mystery Man” on the news in 2021? Tune in and find out.

This month, we're partnering with Arc Poetry Magazine! Learn more about their Poem of the Year contest here. Submit your poems by February 1, 2025.

"God is an American" was first published in Guernica Magazine in 2007 and then in Hayes' fourth collection, Lighthead (Penguin Random House, 2010).

*

Cool Stuff Below! 🛍️

📢 Toronto Writers Against the War on Gaza
🗣️ Canlit Responds: Boycott Giller
🚨 No Arms in the Arts
📝 Read Jody’s Counter-Gala speech
💬 Schadenfreude
📙 Where Things Touch by Bahar Orang
📝 Audre Lorde quote from "We Must Learn to Use Our Power”
🎙️ Lena Khalaf Tuffaha's speech at the National Book Awards
📒 America is Not the Heart by Elaine Castillo
📗 America is in the Heart by Carlos Bulosan
📘 Heather Christle quote from The Crying Book
☀️ Nuclear fusion (not fission) at the heart of the sun
📝 "Notes on Craft: Writing in the Hour of Genocide" by Fargo Tbakhi
📸 Terrances Hayes as Handsome Mystery Man on the news

Support the show

🔔 Follow, rate and subscribe to Poet Talk wherever you're listening.

✨ Poet Talk is independently run, created and produced by Sanna Wani.

♫ Check out the show music in the album Hélice's Awesome Dance Adventure and the creator Komiku on their website.

📲 Don't forget to follow us on Instagram, @talkpoet.

In the fourth episode of Poet Talk, Jody and Sanna talk to poet, linguist and lawyer Chim Undi about language. Why do adults tell certain kids to become lawyers? How do people find themselves in the world of spoken word poetry? From erasure poetry to text trajectory, Canadian court cases to poetry's penchant for uncertainty, the trio traverse interpersonal beliefs, linguistic axioms and the powerful presence of silence. Join us as we read poems by Donika Kelly, Danez Smith and Chim herself—and find out, maybe, how a practice of care may govern it all.

*

Cool Stuff Below! 🛍️

🎙️ Noura Erakat on Centre Stage
📕 Scientific Marvel by Chimwemwe Undi
📘 The Renunciations by Donika Kelly
❤️ Jenny Heijun Wills on life writing
📝 "Black Voices Matter Too: Counter-Narrating Smithers v The Queen" by Dr. Amar Koday
📗 Bluff by Danez Smith
📝 "A poem is not a revolution" from tilwefree's "the gurreilla is like a poet"
💡 Grice's Maxims
📝 "Property 101" by Chimwemwe Undi
📝 Terrance Hayes and American Sonnets
❤️ Eduardo C. Corral 

Support the show

🔔 Follow, rate and subscribe to Poet Talk wherever you're listening.

✨ Poet Talk is independently run, created and produced by Sanna Wani.

♫ Check out the show music in the album Hélice's Awesome Dance Adventure and the creator Komiku on their website.

📲 Don't forget to follow us on Instagram, @talkpoet.

In this episode of Poet Talk, Jody and Sanna dive into one of our favourite topics: dogs. What kind of poems would a dog write? How do they see (or smell) the world? The duo share their favourite dog poems and earliest dog memories. From protest dogs to canine colonial history, Eileen Myles to Mary Oliver, join us as we talk play, mastery, grief, devotion, freedom and more.

*

Cool Stuff Below! 🛍️

📕 "The Humber is a Haunting" by Craig Fortier
📺 How do dogs "see" with their noses? - Alexandra Horowitz
📝 "Confession" by Michael Bazzett
📘 The Temple by Michael Bazzett
📝  "poem for dogs" by Elee Kraljii Gardiner
❤️ Douglas Kearney
❤️ Eileen Myles
📗 Afterglow: A Dog Memoir by Eileen Myles
🗣️ "Kidnapped from Planet Dog"
📺 A brief history of dogs - David Ian Howe
🗣️ "Negro Matapacos: Chile’s 'riot dog'"
❤️ Mary Oliver
📙 Dog Songs by Mary Oliver
📝 "The Poetry Teacher" by Mary Oliver
📝 "Being-Nothingness" by Zaina Alsous
📝 "Against Mastery" by Brionne Janae
📔 Because You Were Mine by Brionne Janae

Please check out Workshops 4 Gaza! ❤️ 

Support the show

🔔 Follow, rate and subscribe to Poet Talk wherever you're listening.

✨ Poet Talk is independently run, created and produced by Sanna Wani.

♫ Check out the show music in the album Hélice's Awesome Dance Adventure and the creator Komiku on their website.

📲 Don't forget to follow us on Instagram, @talkpoet.

Welcome to the second episode of Poet Talk! In this episode, Jody and Sanna talk to Palestinian poet, critic and editor Summer Farah about the parasocial. Together, they delve into all things online: video games, prose poems and Tumblr as a critical space. The trio defines the parasocial by analyzing pop culture, like Chappell Roan and Mitski's “solidarity” with Palestine and Richard Siken's relationship to the Supernatural fandom. Summer shares poems from her chapbook, I could live again and die again, and her in-progress series, I tell Etel Adnan about Supernatural.  From loneliness and obsession to the ancient act of fanfiction, this episode is an introduction to what the parasocial and poetry have to offer each other.

*

Cool Stuff Below! 🛍️

💬 "para"
💬 "social"
📚 Dictionary.com's definition
📗 I could live today and die again by Summer Farah
📕 "& I was so young when I behaved 25" by Summer Farah
📙 Capable Monsters by Marlin M. Jenkins
🎮 Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild   
📺  Haikyu!!
♪"Punisher" by Phoebe Bridgers
🗣️ "Mitski had to Quit Music to Love It"
♫ Laurel Hell by Mitski
❤️ Etel Adnan
📘 There's Always This Year by Hanif Abdurraqib
❤️ Mary Oliver
📺 Supernatural
📕 How Do I Look? by Sennah Yee
📝 "The Desert" by Sennah Yee
📖 canthius
📘 Crush by Richard Siken
📙 If An Egyptian Cannot Speak English by Noor Naga
📗 War of Foxes by Richard Siken
📝 "I Tell Etel Adnan about Mitski" by Summer Farah
❤️  Jess Rizkallah 

Support the show

🔔 Follow, rate and subscribe to Poet Talk wherever you're listening.

✨ Poet Talk is independently run, created and produced by Sanna Wani.

♫ Check out the show music in the album Hélice's Awesome Dance Adventure and the creator Komiku on their website.

📲 Don't forget to follow us on Instagram, @talkpoet.

Join us for the pilot episode of Poet Talk, a podcast where poets talk. In this episode, future cohosts Jody Chan and Sanna Wani delve into beginnings with questions like, "How does a poem begin?" and "What is the beginning of poetry?" Chan and Wani share some of their favourite poem beginnings, etymologies and more. From politics to gossip to lore, this epsiode is an introduction of what poetry means to us in community and in practice.

*

Goodie Bag Alert! 🍭

Find all the things we mentioned in the episode below:

📗 Jody's books, sick and impact statement

📕 Sanna's book, My Grief, the Sun

📙 Where Things Touch by Bahar Orang

📘The Year of Blue Water by Yanyi

📓Ordinary Notes by Christina Sharpe

📖 “The Poetic Analytic: A Conversation with Zaina Alsous” in Adroit Journal

🤡 "No poets!" meme

🎙️ VS podcast

💬 Etymology of the word "begin"

📝 Solmaz Sharif's poem "Look"
 
📝 Fatimah Asghar's poem "Kal"

💬 "Poetry" etymology in English

💬 "Poetry" etymology in Urdu

💬 "Poetry" etymology in Cantonese

📒 The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron

📓 Dreams That Matter: Egyptian Landscapes of the Imagination by Amira Mittermaier

📔The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study by Stefano Harvey and Fred Moten

📖 “The End of White Supremacy, An American Romance” by Saidiya Hartman in BOMB

🎙️ Fatimah Asghar's episode on the VS podcast

📝 Sanna Wani's poem "Tomorrow is a Place"

Support the show

🔔 Follow, rate and subscribe to Poet Talk wherever you're listening.

✨ Poet Talk is independently run, created and produced by Sanna Wani.

♫ Check out the show music in the album Hélice's Awesome Dance Adventure and the creator Komiku on their website.

📲 Don't forget to follow us on Instagram, @talkpoet.