It is easy to dismiss poetry as being disconnected from the human, the everyday, the useful; to deride it for being uppity, dense, or purposefully confusing. What is difficult is encountering the kind of poetry that makes the world clear. Li-Young Lee is a poet of clarity, even if that clarity is admitting to multiplicity and to wonder at the simplest, most difficult facts of life.

Born in Jakarta after his parents fled China, Lee is a poet of witness to exile, loss, family, love, and stitched through it all: the intimacy of faith. Whether that bond appears in his poetry between a father and son, a god and a human, or a body and the air around, Lee dares each of us to open our eyes wider to the world. There is nothing as divine as this life. There is nothing flawed that is not deserving of a poem. Author of six beloved poetry collections, a memoir, and a translation of the Dao De Jing, Lee is a poet whose voice has shaped generations of writers.

In this episode of SAL/on air we were joined in the studio by Janae Lu and Zackary Mickelson for a conversation about Janae’s experience as the 2024-25 Seattle Youth Poet Laureate, and discussion of her chapbook published by Poetry NW Editions, In All Spaces Liminal. Janae Lu is a writer whose work explores the nuances of transition, identity, and self-discovery through free-verse poetry and creative prose. Janae has been a member of SAL’s Youth Poetry Fellowship program for the last two years, and Mr. Mickelson is a language arts teacher at Tesla STEM High School.

SAL is pleased to support our friends at Hinton Publishing with the premiere episode of their brand-new podcast, Hinton Cast!

Hinton Publishing prioritizes amplifying the voices of underinvited communities in the Pacific Northwest. The podcast features Hinton publishers, Marcus Harrison Green & Maggie Block, speaking with the storytellers who are carving a path of creative disruption through the publishing industry. Enjoy their debut episode as the Hinton team interviews author Reagan E J Jackson about her book "Still True: The Evolution of an Unexpected Journalist."

What makes a poet’s voice timeless? For more than 40 years, Naomi Shihab Nye has been writing poems, novels, and stories; teaching workshops to adults, children, and incarcerated individuals. Every piece of her work cherishes and honors, be it people or relationships or olive trees, and each of these vivid snapshots create a timeline of her work that seems to extend forever.

In between her poems and laugh out loud stories, Naomi refers to “these hard times of disconnection.” This talk was recorded in 2009, and it is one of the great joys of sharing the SAL archive to hear these moments from so long ago and reckon with how those times felt. Together, we remember those precious evenings, what was difficult now and what was difficult then, how we have changed and how we wish to become still better, more generous, kinder poets.

Ed Yong’s bestselling first book, "I Contain Multitudes," prompted us to look at ourselves and the microbes we contain as the interconnected, interdependent systems that we are. And his follow-up, "An Immense World," was named one of the best books of the year by numerous publications while opening our eyes to the glorious world right before us. Yong visited SAL virtually in 2022, when microbes were in the news every day and the onslaught of new information overwhelmed, and his talk on the nature of journalism did a world of good.

As an Indigenous human rights lawyer and writer from Guam, Julian Aguon’s book 'No Country for Eight Spot Butterflies' memorizes grief from family to country and into one of the most difficult, intangible feelings of our time: climate grief. Drawing on his experience with the law and litigation against nuclear-powered countries, Aguon reminds us that no love is ever wasted, and grief is so often an expression of that love. Part of that love begs us to question, what does a better world look like? How do we imagine justice for generations upon generations? Where do we go from here?

As a reporter, Patrick Radden Keefe holds two disparate truths together with unparalleled skill: there are facts, and there is a story. In his work as a staff writer at The New Yorker, Keefe has showcased this talent in long form articles ranging from Anthony Bourdain to the hunt for the drug lord Chapo Guzman, and in his nonfiction books he has entranced a generation of readers.

Keefe joined SAL in the summer of 2021 over Zoom to discuss his recent smash hit books, and while there is no thrum and cheer of a crowded auditorium in this recording, Keefe’s words bring all the light and crackle on their own. From how he began Say Nothing by reading an obituary of an unknown woman, to uncovering the moral bankruptcy of the Sackler family in Empire of Pain, Keefe has unearthed stories that must be told, with every fact both a pickaxe and a vein of gold.

At the beginning of the pandemic Charles Yu wrote an essay on the experience, which many noted, had a cinematic slant to it. “Five hundred years ago,” Yu wrote, “What we really mean when we say that this pandemic feels “unimaginable” is that we had not imagined it. Just as imagination can mislead us, though, it will be imagination—scientific, civic, moral—that helps us find new ways of doing things, helps remind us of how far we have to go as a species.”

Having worked as both a television writer and a poet in addition to writing novels, Yu’s imagination is boundless, generous, and vivid. And while his path to his award-winning book, Interior Chinatown, was long and zigzagging, there was endless imagination to keep him going.

As Chris Abani once stated, “The art is never about what you write about. The art is about how you write about what you write about.” Here, we find Abani’s "how" thick with feeling, braided by nimble and swift metaphors, and shaped by mercurial forms. Imprisoned several times for his political writing, Abani does not shy away from the messy reality of exile, both in geography, culture, and memory.

Following the reading, Abani is joined by poet and theologian Pádraig Ó Tuama for a conversation in which he discusses history, West African mythology, and how language continues to change within and around us. Abani reminds that poetry at its greatest, will always resist time.

Nikky Finney is not only a poet but a storyteller, the kind of voice that weaves through the air in a room until every person there feels that much closer together. Her poems travel the world, from her home in South Carolina to the stage at the National Book Awards where she was lauded for her prizewinning book Head Off & Split. The journeys Finney guides her readers on across the page are filled with curiosity and overflowing with lush sound until you feel sure you would follow her anywhere.