On today’s show, Tongo Eisen-Martin talks with activist, icon, legend, Sonia Sanchez. Listen to these brilliant poets pass fire, life, and love between them.

Eisen-Martin is a poet, movement worker, and educator. His poem “Pennies for the Opera” is featured in the December 2020 issue of Poetry as part of a portfolio of work from the book Carving Out Rights from Inside the Prison Industrial Complex. Both Eisen-Martin and Sanchez appear in the book, alongside artists incarcerated at Stateville Prison in Crest Hill, Illinois.

Sonia Sanchez is a poet, playwright, professor, and activist. You can read “Haiku and Tanka for Harriet Tubman”—which you’ll hear in this episode—in the April 2018 issue of Poetry.

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When we asked Leila Chatti who she wished to speak with most, she chose one of the poets who gave her permission to be a poet herself: Sharon Olds. And not just to be a poet, but to write from a voice she thought wasn’t possible. You’ll hear why.

This episode features more poems than we’ve ever had on the Poetry Magazine Podcast. Chatti asked Sharon to read a selection of poems that span 40 years – ranging from her first book, Satan Says, to her most recent book, Arias. Leila also reads from the December issue of Poetry, and her latest collection, Deluge, a chronicle of illness, womanhood, and faith.

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Poet Alison C. Rollins recently finished her first outdoor survival training program. Part of her preparation was to read Latria Graham’s essays about the experience of being a Black woman in the outdoors. Graham is a journalist and fifth-generation farmer living in South Carolina. In “Out There, Nobody Can Hear You Scream,” published in Outside Magazine, Graham describes a moment when—right before leaving for the Great Smoky Mountains—her mother handed her the gun of her late father for protection. Rollins had a very similar experience. Her mother’s first question, when hearing of her daughter's desire to journey into the outdoors, was, “How are you going to protect yourself?” This moment of recognition led Rollins and Graham together, to talk about writing, survival, and, as Rollins calls it, “Black nature joy.”

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young and Diggs both work with words, sound, image—and bodies—as Diggs puts it. On today’s show, they talk about funk, Dolly Parton, taking notes, polyglots, and how these different cadences resonate in young’s series peestain. In these collages and poems, featured in the November issue of Poetry, young weaves his own history with the lives of his students and characters like Willis Jackson from the sitcom Diff'rent Strokes. The familiarity and openness of the references are as heartening as they are devastating. Nothing is neat. Nothing is predictable in young’s work—or Digg’s—as you’ll hear today. In the course of the conversation, Diggs reads one of her own poems and a poem by Carl Hancock Rux.

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When we asked Ed Roberson who he’d like to speak with on the show he said: Lyn Hejinian. Longtime friends despite living vastly far apart—Lyn in Berkeley and Ed in Chicago—they’ve been in close dialogue for almost 20 years. Now, for the first time, we have the pleasure of listening in. Topics discussed include the survival of the human species, the safety in friendship, and a pesky octopus at a Pittsburgh aquarium. Ed also reads from a new series of poems in the October 2020 issue of Poetry.

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Oli Rodriguez and Xandria Phillips on queer familia, ephemeral cruising spots, McDonald’s, Polaroid film, and much more. Rodriguez’s “Papi, Papi, Papi” appears in the October 2020 issue of Poetry.

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Kit Fan talks with Alice Oswald about her latest book, Nobody. Fan’s review of the book appears in the July/August 2020 issue of Poetry.

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Justice Leah Wards Sears talks about how Margaret Walker’s poem “For My People” has been a resource for her throughout her life. Justice Sears’s essay, “Love for My People,” appears in the June 2020 issue of Poetry.

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The editors discuss Karen An-hwei Lee’s poem “On June Blossoming in June” from the June 2020 issue of Poetry.

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The editors discuss Bradley Trumpfheller’s poem “Speculative Realism” from the June 2020 issue of Poetry.

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