Post Poet Pop, Episode 29 features the work of Sara Larsen, specifically her latest book, Detonated Mirror. The book makes me ask, What is a body and what is a body’s destruction? As the work you will hear Sara Larsen read in this episode reflects how body may be parenthetical, an echo, Russian doll-esque, as poetry may also be. The work is crucial at the moment to take deeper looks at how self relates to place and how a/the body spreads, deflates, grows, decays, transfers, transitions, and that interpretation of that is completely open to being whatever it may. These poems are visionary and they are also, in Sara's words, "visionary poems".

Learn more about Detonated Mirror and get a copy from The Elephants, here (or from your local bookstore). Find out about Sara Larsen by following her on Substack (@saralarsenpoet) or visiting SaraLarsenPoet.com.

All poems are performed by Sara Larsen and all the author’s poems discussed are published in Detonated Mirror (The Elephants, 2023). The poems are the property of the author(s) and the publisher(s) listed. The song played during the introduction is “Sunday Afternoon” and is performed by The True Loves. Please support their work.

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CONTENT WARNING: Discussion of sexual assault.

What does it mean to be silent in an era of necessary refusal? This question has taken many forms of late, for me, especially following my interview with this episode's featured poet—David McLoghlin, whose third collection of poems, Crash Centre, is just out from Salmon Poetry in Ireland. To begin the book, David employs an epigraph, a Latin proverb: “He who is silent is taken to agree; he ought to have spoken when he was able to.” As a sexual assault survivor, this epigraph works hard on behalf of David's poetry. First, let’s look at the facts: over 90% of sexual assault victims are women. Only 30% of sexual assault crimes are reported to legal authorities; 1 in 5 women in college are sexually assault and 1 in 16 of men are. It seems we are surrounded on all sides by a ubiquitous patriarchal violence, by genocide, extractive economy, et cetera, so…what does it mean to be silent—does it imply complicity, does it mean you’re not doing anything or does it mean you don’t know what to do?

David’s own assault was perpetrated by a man of power, at that, a religiously-sanctioned man of power. The last line of one of the poems you will hear David read in this episode—’Hostage Walk’—goes: “No one asked: where has David gone?” As trauma goes, a person is here and not here. But, you'll hear David, here, read a handful of poems from Crash Centre and we will discuss his life in Cork, his love of being a father, and his poetics. My hope is that our conversation will hold a kind of healing space for other victims/survivors and I am very grateful to listeners out there. Learn more at DavidMcLoghlin.com, and get a copy of Crash Centre at SalmonPoetry.com or at your local bookstore.

All poems are performed by David McLoghlin and all the author’s poems discussed are published in Crash Centre (Salmon Poetry, 2024). The poems are the property of the author(s) and the publisher(s) listed. The song played during the introduction is “Sunday Afternoon” and is performed by The True Loves. Please support their work.

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Post Poet Pop, Episode 27 features poems from the new anthology of Venezuelan poets living in Chile entitled A Scar Where Goodbyes Are Written (Louisiana State University Press, 2023). The anthology showcases the work of 15 poets, including: Ivana Aponte, Georgina Ramírez, Miguel Ortiz Rodríguez, Sara Emanuel Viloria (all of whose work you will hear today) and many others. The book is translated and edited by David Brunson. 

This work is crucial because it elucidates the diasporic experience of being a migrant, not only to Chile, but away from a misunderstood homeland; and now—at a time when many diasporas are being ignited or re-ignited in Haiti, the Sudan, and of course the genocide in Palestine—it is even more important to become more than acquainted with that experience. The term diaspora comes from the Greek and means to scatter across but it also means to be forced to leave home. Venezuela has seen nearly 8 million of its citizens depart its borders and over 5,200 Venezuelans have been killed, extrajudicially. Chile has its own complications and repressive history and this enmeshing of two cultures at the very least sets the stage for poets to, in the words of David Brunson’s introduction, empathetically reclaim identity and more fully realize a sense of humanity.

Get an e-Book or print copy of A Scar Where Goodbyes Are Written from Louisiana State University Press (or order one from your local bookstore), and learn more about David (the book's translator and editor) at DavidMBrunson.com and Ivana (poet in the book) at CopihuePoetry.com/who-we-are.

All poems are performed by Ivana Aponte and David Brunson and all the author’s poems discussed are published in A Scar Where Goodbyes Are Written: An Anthology of Venezuelan Poets in Chile (Louisiana State University Press, 2023). The poems are the property of the author(s) and the publisher(s) listed. The song played during the introduction is “Sunday Afternoon” and is performed by The True Loves. Please support their work.

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Post Poet Pop, Episode 26 features the bike commuting, softball coaching, Oakland A's loving poet and scholar, Jared Stanley. He is the author of So Tough (Saturnalia Books, 2024), and it's that title of Jared's book that made me think about the always-reaching descriptor that the word "tough" is. So Tough is a sequential, set-in-octet book that appears gentle, in a visual sense, but doesn’t waste a speck of anything, as Jared's work has always done, in its devotion to the ecological. He writes, in one of the poems you will not hear him read on this episode, “able bodied youths throw their muscle at smoke, It’s sunday” … What durability, how fibrous, and yet all that wasted potential that’s become an everyday thing but, here, it's also a supposed day of rest—all those firefighters trying to stop mountains of wind and heat. Is the world tough to withstand humanity or are we tough to endure climate change? Who can tell? It’s all so very absurd.

Find out more about Jared's work at JaredStanleyInfo.Wordpress.com, and you can grab a copy of So Tough from Saturnalia Books, or wherever books are sold.

All poems are performed by Jared Stanley and all the author’s poems discussed are published in So Tough (Saturnalia Books, 2024). The poems are the property of the author and the publisher(s) listed. The song played during the introduction is “Sunday Afternoon” and is performed by The True Loves. Please support their work.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Post Poet Pop, Episode 25 features the poet Kristina Erny, the author of Elijah Fed By Ravens (Solum Literary Press, 2024). In her own words, Kristina Erny is a third culture person who was raised in Seoul and is always homesick for somewhere. She is a poet, a visual artist, a teacher, a wife, a mother, and a foreigner. We conducted this conversation via voice message letters, in which I was sending questions to Kristina that she would get in the morning and her answers would come in, to me, in the morning. We truly bridged time. Kristina writes, in the poem "In the Days Before" that "In the days before the actual end there were many smaller heartbreaks [...] A person used to be able to split through the husk and know there would be seeds." I think these two statements summarize the poetics of Elijah Fed By Ravens and our conversation quite well. Kristina is a magnetic person and I hope you will find a bit of sustenance you may need in this conversation.

Find out more about Kristina's work by visiting KristinaErny.com and you can buy a copy of Elijah Fed By Ravens from Solum Literary Press, and wherever books are sold.

All poems are performed by Kristina Erny and all the author’s poems discussed are published in Elijah Fed By Ravens (Solum Literary Press, 2024). The poems are the property of the author and the publisher(s) listed. The song played during the introduction is “Sunday Afternoon” and is performed by The True Loves. Please support their work.

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Post Poet Pop, Episode 24 features the poet Douglas Piccinnini. Douglas is an interdisciplinary artist and author and his latest poetry collection, Beautiful, Safe & Free (New Books, 2023) examines origins and the ordinary under new light and scrutiny. Douglas writes, in the poem, "In America," "I imagine myself / through desire / to numb myself [...] I'm brutal, at first, unsanitary / aroused, then friendly / coached by a system [...] I drink from the invisible / order that sustains me". These poems' truths are also the work of dreams and coalesce into (in Douglas's words) "new scenery made / by what is missing". Douglas is actively engaged in developing content for film and television, and lives with his wife, Tara, and their son, Oblio, in western New Jersey.

Find out more about Douglas's work at DouglasPiccinnini.com and grab a copy of Beautiful, Safe & Free directly from him.

All poems are performed by Douglas Piccinnini and all the author’s poems discussed are published in Beautiful, Safe & Free (New Books, 2023). The poems are the property of the author and the publisher(s) listed. The song played during the introduction is “Sunday Afternoon” and is performed by The True Loves. Please support their work.

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Post Poet Pop, Episode 23 features the poet Kristi Maxwell and her 2023 Wishing Jewel Prize winning book, Goners, with poems set in lipogram form and organized around the names of endangered or extinct species. In the opening essay in the collection, Kristi writes: In The New Poetics of Climate Change, Matthew Griffiths asks, “Must poetry of climate change belong in the tradition of the pastoral or the elegy? … What alternative models or approaches might there be?” And, later: "What I stress now: I’m not writing about endangered species; I’m writing without them—attempting to imagine in a linguistic landscape the ways that loss would be registered and felt or fail to be Kristi is the author of 8 books of poetry, an associate professor of English at the University of Louisville, and holds a PhD in Literature & Creative Writing from the University of Cincinnati and an MFA in Poetry from the University of Arizona. We, of course, talk about animals, but also we speak about her process for Goners and the uncanny and much more.

Find out more about Kristi's work at KristiMaxwellPoetry.com and grab a copy of Goners from Green Linden Press right away.

All poems are performed by Kristi Maxwell, and all the author’s poems discussed are published in Goners (Green Linden Press, 2023) . The poems are the property of the author and the publisher(s) listed. The song played during the introduction is “Sunday Afternoon” and is performed by The True Loves. Please support their work.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Post Poet Pop, Episode 22 features the poet Isaac Pickell. Isaac Pickell is a Black & Jewish poet, and was raised in Michigan near the back of his parents’ used bookstore. He graduated from Miami University's MFA program, and is currently a PhD candidate, and an adjunct instructor in Detroit where he is working on his dissertation called “Passing Over, Passing Through: Transgressive Ambiguity Beyond the Colorline,” and you can learn more about his work at IsaacPickell.com and be sure to get a copy of It’s not over once you figure it out from Black Ocean, as soon as you can. 

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All poems are performed by Isaac Pickell, and all poetry discussed are published in It’s Not Over Once You Figure It Out (Black Ocean, 2023) . The poems are the property of the author and the publisher(s) listed. The song played during the introduction is “Sunday Afternoon” and is performed by The True Loves. Please support their work.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Post Poet Pop, Episode 21 features not 1 but 2 poets who reside at opposite ends of the US—Elizabeth Metzger and Timothy Donnelly. 

Elizabeth lives in LA and is the editor of the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of (her second book) Lying In—which we will focus on today—and has just been published by Milkweed Editions in 2023. Elizabeth writes, at the end of the poem, “Daughter As Myself,” Taste no taste./Pull a sheet over your tongue if you have to. Invent a tongue/for the carrot. This meal is purely/for passing through.”

Timothy Donnelly, Brooklyn resident, professor at Columbia University in Manhattan, and author of (his fourth book) Chariot—which we will focus on today—published by Wave Books this year, 2023. Timothy writes in the poem “Reality Hit Me”—So I hit back. Bare-knuckled, all my weight, across the ugly truth of it. Afterwards, a hand stings for decades in embarrassment. This impedes one’s growing closer to the feel of things as they are, making everyday merchandise hard to hold without a wince.”

Find out more about Elizabeth Metzger’s work, here, and learn about Timothy Donnelly’s work, here. 

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All poems are performed by Elizabeth Metzger and Timothy Donnelly. All poetry discussed are published in Lying In (Milkweed Editions by Elizabeth Metzger, 2023) and Chariot (Wave Books by Timothy Donnelly, 2023). The poems are the property of the authors themselves and the publisher(s) listed. The song played during the introduction is entitled “Sunday Afternoon” and is performed by The True Loves. Please support their work.

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The poet Lao Yang (via translators Lynn Xu and Joshua Edwards) writes, in his poem, “Imitation of Autobiography” (from the collection Pee Poems published by Circumference Books in 2022):

At night

Each person is lifted into their own starry sky

To meet a self who has been resurrected again and again

To encounter the boundlessness of darkness

Today’s episode features the work of the 3 brilliant poets all involved in that stanza—Lao Yang, Joshua Edwards, and Lynn Xu. You’ll hear Lynn and Josh read a few pieces from Lao Yang’s Pee Poems and we’ll discuss what they found in, and how they traversed, translating Lao Yang’s work. Then, we will focus on Joshua Edward’s work in The Double Lamp of Solitude published by Rising Tide Projects, also in 2022. Third, we will swing over to the work of Lynn Xu, and her latest And Those Ashen Heaps That Cantilevered Vase of Moonlight put out by Wave Books in 2022. 

Visit here for more information about Lao Yang’s Pee Poems. And see here for details about Joshua Edwards’ work. Find out more here about the work of Lynn Xu.

All poems are performed by Lynn Xu and Joshua Edwards. Other poetry represented is written originally by Lao Yang and translated by Lynn Xu and Joshua Edwards. All poetry discussed are published in Pee Poems (Circumference Books, 2016 by Lao Yang, 2022 translated by Joshua Edwards and Lynn Xu); The Double Lamp of Solitude (Rising Tide Projects, 2022 by Joshua Edwards); and And Those Ashen Heaps That Cantilevered Vase of Moonlight (Wave Books 2022 by Lynn Xu). The poems are the property of the authors themselves and the publisher(s) listed. The song played during the introduction is entitled “Sunday Afternoon” and is performed by The True Loves. Please support their work.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.