Versify

By Nashville Public Radio

Society & Culture

What's Versify about?

Versify is part storytelling and part poetry. It begins by sending our team of poets out into neighborhoods and to community events, where we invite people to share a story from their life. The person they are sharing it to — the person listening — is one of our poets. This is where the magic comes in. The poet listens intently and then turns that life story into a poem, on the spot.

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LAST EPISODE

Freedom Summer: Violence Wa...

09.21.2020

For Dr. Freddrick Leonard, joining the Nashville Student Movement in the Fall of 1960 meant learning to suppress his instincts. As a high schooler in Chattanooga, he sat in at lunch counters with other students, and they defended themselves when ...

Versify episodes:

09.21.2020 Freedom Summer: Violence Was In Me Then For Dr. Freddrick Leonard, joining the Nashville Student Movement in the Fall of 1960 meant learning to suppress his instincts. As a high schooler in Chattanooga, he sat in at lunch counters with other students, and they defended themselves when ...
09.07.2020 Freedom Summer: Pitfalls, Prison Terms, and Conquests A Klan hit, an ambush, a sanctuary under siege, these are just a handful of the encounters that Civil Rights veteran, Dr. Allen Cason Jr., survived during his time in the Nashville Student Movement. In this episode Allen sits down ...
08.24.2020 Freedom Summer: We Wanted Nashville To Hear Footsteps, part 2 After the carnage in Birmingham and the bus bombing in Anniston, Rip Patton and the Nashville students set out to continue the Freedom Rides. Hear how their journey finds them in the crosshairs of Bull Connor and the Alabama Klan, ...
08.17.2020 Freedom Summer: We Wanted Nashville To Hear Footsteps, part 1 In the early 1960’s Rip Patton was on the frontlines of the civil rights movement. A foot soldier in a coordinated campaign to combat racial inequality on every front. And ultimately, induce the political opposition to revise the central edicts ...
08.03.2020 Freedom Summer: The Freedom Rides, A Letter, Then Silence During the Nashville Student Movement, silence was used as a tool to illuminate the strength of a movement, but in the decades following the sit-ins, stand-ins, and Freedom Rides, silence was used as a method of obscuring it. Etta Marie ...
07.25.2020 Season 4 Trailer In season 4 of Versify, we bring you the stories of a remarkable band of historical luminaries, connected by their courageous commitment to racial equality in the 1960s: the Nashville Freedom riders. We hear of their experiences, in their own ...
12.09.2019 Our Babies Have Always Been The War It's not an exaggeration to say that Rhiannon Giddens is a narrative archeologist. A historical thaumaturge who conjures the often willfully forgotten chronicles of American history and renders them with a rosined bow. For Rhiannon that process of narrative excavation ...
11.18.2019 Imagine This Chutzpah For Nashville Choreographer Diane Kimbrough, her route to a career as a professional dancer, was influenced by her family history. A descendant of Ukrainian Jews who fled during the Pogroms of the Russian Empire, for Diane, leaning on resilience in ...
10.21.2019 Beyond A Four-Walled Hustle For artist, influencer and activist, Thaxton Waters, the roots of his artistic practice began with a suspicion of history. An unease about the stories around the community he was born into. And that sense of questioning spurred Thaxton toward a ...
09.30.2019 Little Boxes All The Same Demetria Kalodimos is something of a Nashville institution, anchoring the Channel Four news desk since she first arrived in Music city in 1984. But thirty plus years into her career, Demetria was unprepared to have her decades of dedicated news ...
09.09.2019 The Blade And The Blooming For attorney and aspiring writer Adam Hill, his journey towards understanding the life of his younger brother Eric, began by coping with Eric’s death, both in the present, and 1,000 years before either of them was ever born. Adam tells ...
08.12.2019 Do You Want To See More? Tasha Lemley, has spent much of her professional life championing the stories of people on the margins. She Cofounded The Contributor, a Nashville nonprofit “street newspaper” that helps to empower people experiencing homelessness. But even with a career’s worth of ...
07.22.2019 Before Bukowski There are about as many ways to fall in love with the craft of writing as there are books to be read. But whatever the means of introduction, that first literary gateway drug, it’s typically hard to forget. But for ...
07.08.2019 A Kiss For Every Frog Perhaps you’ve had the experience of standing on some nondescript street corner, minding your own business, when a stranger comes along and tries to chat you up. Maybe you found yourself thinking "I hope this person’s not a murderer” — ...
06.17.2019 All Power To All The People When Ritagay Sisk-Jaimson first joined the Phillidelphia chapter of the Black Panther Party in 1969, she was under scrutiny not only from some of its members but also the federal government. Ritgay & her daughter Tandekile Francis sit down to ...
06.03.2019 A Penny Sewn Into Every Scrap For Nashville muralist Andee Rudloff, the process of making a public artwork is about a lot more than adding a little color to urban landscapes. Andee sits down with poet J Joseph Kane, to talk about how an early exposure ...
05.20.2019 I Call Myself Indigo For Indigo, a young gender fluid person, the decision to live as their authentic self, hasn’t been easy. Today Indigo speaks with poet Susannah Felts, about the journey start their life over in Nashville while dealing with the hurdles of ...
05.06.2019 Person, Animal, Thing When we talk about the casualties of war, often the emphasis gets placed on the visible losses, but for the people like Rani Banjarian, a Lebanese international student turned East Nashville Maths teacher, who actually endure those conflicts, the intangible ...
10.12.2018 A Woman And A Dragon, Part Two After surviving the Mumbai terror attacks. Linda Ragsdale made good on her promise to honor her friend Naomi’s last wish — teach her how to draw a dragon — by starting a non-profit to travel the world and teach children ...
09.20.2018 A Woman And A Dragon, Part One Linda Ragsdale felt lucky to get the last seat on a trip to Mumbai, intending to deepen her practice of meditation. She found herself instead struggling for survival — in the middle of India's most severe terrorist attack in decades. ...
08.16.2018 It Took 27 Years & Then It Popped Have you ever had the nightmare where you’re standing at the front of an audience, about to say something important, but when you open your mouth there’s nothing? Well imagine waking up in that nightmare and realizing that you couldn’t ...
07.27.2018 Before I Could Give Her The Ring A craving for novelty and excitement is a hallmark of early adulthood. But for Jakob Lewis, host of WPLN’s podcast Neighbors, a summertime quest for new experiences nearly cost him his life. Today, Jakob tells the story of how a ...
07.13.2018 Saturn Returns By I-40 West After leaving suburban Tennessee for a career in Hollywood when he was just 18, Brad Wear became, in a lot of ways, the picture of LA success. But twenty years later, Brad was struck with a feeling of absence, of ...
06.21.2018 Mercy At The Ryman For singer-songwriter Mary Gauthier, coming to country music in her 40s was one of many things that made her feel like an industry outsider. Today, Mary speaks with poet Destiny Birdsong about her unconventional entry into the music business, and ...
06.07.2018 Thank God For That Judge Being in love often requires making sacrifices, but for Helen German, the sacrifice was a big one: Finding romance meant losing the approval of her family. Today, Helen relates the details of her life story, from surviving the air raids ...
05.17.2018 Never Forget Your Name, Lyzette For Lyzette Garza, learning to embrace her Mexican American heritage has been a lifelong journey. Lyzette speaks with poet Kelley Bell about her formative childhood moments: hearing stories from her dad under the stars, encountering prejudice on a family trip ...
05.03.2018 Ending The Game With Sunset For most people, living with your parents past your early 20s isn’t something to make a point of bringing up in public. But Paresh Sheth says that living with his mom and dad in a three generation household has deepened ...
04.20.2018 Acknowledgment of Paternity for a Child Born to an Unmarried Woman Amelia and Mark share the story of their intense uncertainty about having their first child, Silas — but the surprising joy of his first year. As 30-something New Yorkers transplanted to Nashville, they’re more ironic than emotive in telling this ...
04.05.2018 How They Met When our poets ask people to share an important story from their lives, they often like to tell us about how they met their partners. And though she admits it’s a bit cliché...Marcia Barker shares the story of an unlikely ...
03.22.2018 Insider's Guide To Prayer When Mark Lemley was 17, he lived through a near-death experience that fundamentally altered his outlook on life: a car accident that has haunted him for 24 years, and he wasn't even the one in the car. In this episode ...
03.08.2018 The Thread Stretched Between Us They say you should never go into business with family — but for Craig Fernandes, starting a patriotic clothing company with his son Brady has actually brought the two of them closer together. Craig speaks to poet Kelley Bell about ...
02.22.2018 A Hurricane, A Wedding, And A Flood For Betty and Raul Malo, lead singer of country band the Mavericks, their romantic life has been punctuated by a series of severe storms. August of '92: Hurricane Andrew throttled the Florida coastline, destroying Betty's home just months before their ...
02.08.2018 The Blood Tie Emily Tan comes from generations of immigrants and refugees; and she’s traveled the globe in pursuit of a family history fragmented by war. In this episode, Emily speaks with poet Destiny Birdsong about her journey to reconnect with relatives both ...
02.05.2018 Coming Soon: Versify, Season 2 In our second season of Versify, we bring you moments of impact: those times when our storytellers’ lives were changed forever. Decisive moments, pivotal shifts, and even brushes with death. You’ll hear moving personal stories, and also how our writers ...
12.15.2017 Learning To Fight In creating Versify, we’ve realized the power of listening to people's stories and sharing them as poetry. To close out our first season, we’re gonna take you through some of the first poems and conversations that inspired us to make ...
11.16.2017 The Crash, The Rock, It Sings For Nashville Councilwoman Nancy VanReece, her passion for public service began with an act of intimidation. It was 1968 — and she was 4 — when someone threw a rock through the window of her family home. It was the ...
11.02.2017 Sometimes It's The Simple Things For Eloise Briscoe, raising two daughters hasn’t been about splashy gestures, but more “the simple things” — an approach gleaned from the long line of women in her family. As the unofficial family historian, Eloise is a diligent keeper of ...
10.19.2017 It Wasn't The Fun Way More than most people, Ben Groner feels pretty lucky to be alive — and that’s because his life is the result of some pretty remarkable choices. In this episode, Ben tells poet Megan Smith about his parents’ unlikely love story, ...
10.05.2017 People Will Surprise You Ask anyone about their neighbors and they’ll likely have a strong opinion to share. This week, Versify’s team of poets sit down with strangers to hear stories about neighbors and neighborhoods. They discover unusual recollections and moments of camaraderie — ...
09.21.2017 Don’t Try This at Home Ambushed by a menacing dog, Nashville physics teacher (and standup comedian) Bob Clark taps into some unconventional wisdom in his attempt to flee. Bob slyly reveals his story to poet Destiny Birdsong. She’s caught off guard, but weaves the compelling ...
09.07.2017 It Is Not What Is Written On Your Tombstone For much of her life, Ali Russell has been uncertain about religion. Even as a little girl, she’d ask her parents, “How do we know we’re worshiping the right God?” She even had a Jesus dream that still lingers with ...
08.23.2017 Bone Deep Serg Rodriguez hasn’t seen his family in years. He was excommunicated by their church and grew apart from his parents and siblings. But now as a writer in Nashville, his little sister is never far from his mind. Without warning, ...
08.23.2017 Why We Will Never Forget April 1994 Ebralie Mwizerwa is a mother of five, an accountant, a devoted church-goer — and a survivor of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. She fled with her family while pregnant and now runs a nonprofit that assists incoming refugee families in Nashville, ...
08.23.2017 There's No Cure Fred Bailey grew up blind on a farm in Gallatin, Tennessee — except he didn’t actually know he was blind at first. Through a run in with a teacher, a visit to a doctor, and a confrontation with his father, ...
08.17.2017 Sneak Peek: Versify Season One In the newest podcast from Nashville Public Radio, The Porch writers’ collective, and PRX, people tell life stories and hear writers turn their words into poetry. We launch on Aug. 24 with three episodes. Here’s a sneak peak.
06.01.2017 Coming Soon: Versify Versify is part storytelling and part poetry. It begins by sending our team of poets out into neighborhoods and to community events, where we invite people to share a story from their life. The person they are sharing it to ...

Versify

What's Versify about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Versify episodes:

Freedom Summer: Violence Was In Me Then

Freedom Summer: Pitfalls, Prison Terms, and Conquests

Freedom Summer: We Wanted Nashville To Hear Footsteps, part 2

Freedom Summer: We Wanted Nashville To Hear Footsteps, part 1

Freedom Summer: The Freedom Rides, A Letter, Then Silence

Season 4 Trailer

Our Babies Have Always Been The War

Imagine This Chutzpah

Beyond A Four-Walled Hustle

Little Boxes All The Same

The Blade And The Blooming

Do You Want To See More?

Before Bukowski

A Kiss For Every Frog

All Power To All The People

A Penny Sewn Into Every Scrap

I Call Myself Indigo

Person, Animal, Thing

A Woman And A Dragon, Part Two

A Woman And A Dragon, Part One

It Took 27 Years & Then It Popped

Before I Could Give Her The Ring

Saturn Returns By I-40 West

Mercy At The Ryman

Thank God For That Judge

Never Forget Your Name, Lyzette

Ending The Game With Sunset

Acknowledgment of Paternity for a Child Born to an Unmarried Woman

How They Met

Insider's Guide To Prayer

The Thread Stretched Between Us

A Hurricane, A Wedding, And A Flood

The Blood Tie

Coming Soon: Versify, Season 2

Learning To Fight

The Crash, The Rock, It Sings

Sometimes It's The Simple Things

It Wasn't The Fun Way

People Will Surprise You

Don’t Try This at Home

It Is Not What Is Written On Your Tombstone

Bone Deep

Why We Will Never Forget April 1994

There's No Cure

Sneak Peek: Versify Season One

Coming Soon: Versify

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