Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast

Caitlin Conlon is a poet and avid reader from Upstate New York. She holds a BA in English and a Creative Writing Certificate from the University at Buffalo and, while there, was chosen for the Friends of the University Libraries Undergraduate Poetry Prize, and the Arthur Axlerod Memorial Prize for Poetry. Her debut poetry collection, The Surrender Theory, was released in 2022 with Central Avenue Publishing. You can find her online almost anywhere @cgcpoems. Below are excerpts from the interview with James Morehead on the Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast.

A trigger warning for listeners: the book being discussed contains sensitive material related to death, grief, and mental health.

Roger Craik, Professor Emeritus of English at Kent State University, Ohio, has written four collections of poetry: I Simply Stared (2002), Rhinoceros in Clumber Park (2003), The Darkening Green (2004), and Down Stranger Roads (2014), along with two chapbooks, Those Years (2007), (translated into Bulgarian in 2009), and Of England Still (2009). His poetry has appeared in several national poetry journals, such as The Formalist, Fulcrum, The Literary Review, The Atlanta Review, The London Grip and The London Magazine. English by birth and educated at the universities of Reading and Southampton, he has worked as a journalist, TV critic, and chess columnist. Before coming to the USA in 1991, he worked in Turkish universities and was awarded a Beinecke Fellowship to Yale in 1990. He is widely traveled, having visited North Yemen, Egypt, South Africa, Tibet, Nepal, Japan, Bulgaria (where he taught during spring 2007 on a Fulbright Scholarship), the United Arab Emirates, Austria, Croatia and Romania, (where from 2013-14 he was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Oradea). He is glad every day that he is living in the USA. He watches the birds throughout the year, with joy.

L.J. Sysko is the author of “The Daughter of Man” (April ’23, University of Arkansas Press), the 2023 Miller Williams Poetry Series first finalist selected by Patricia Smith, and Battledore (Finishing Line Press), a chapbook about early motherhood. Sysko’s poems have been anthologized in “Best New Poets” and “Let me Say This: A Dolly Parton Poetry Anthology” (Madville Publishing) and have appeared in publications such as Ploughshares, The Missouri Review's "Poem of the Week," and Mississippi Review, among others. An MFA in poetry from New England College, a Virginia Center for Creative Arts Fellow, and a 2022 Palm Beach Poetry Festival Thomas Lux Scholar, Sysko is Director of Executive Communications at Delaware State University.

Adult content warning: A trigger warning for listeners: this interview includes adult themes and may not be appropriate for children.

Born in the Gambia, Kweku Abimbola earned his MFA in poetry from the University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers’ Program. He is of Gambian, Ghanaian, and Sierra Leonean descent. Abimbola’s first full-length poetry collection, Saltwater Demands a Psalm, was published by Graywolf Press in 2023. In 2022, the début collection was selected by Tyehimba Jess to receive the Academy of American Poets’ First Book Award. Abimbola’s writing primarily investigates colonization, Black mourning, Black boyhood, gender politics, and the spiritual consequences of climate change in West Africa. He is a Visiting Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Tampa.

The Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast June submitted poems episode features five wonderful contributions read by five poets. Different forms and themes are featured. The Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast explores the art of poetry through interviews with poets and artists including Safia Elhillo, A.E. Stallings, Dana Gioia, Yanyi, Olivia Gatwood, Lisa Marie Simmons and more. Subscribe today.

On this episode we welcome poet Aimee Baker and filmmakers Jason Greer and Vanessa Cicarelli to discuss the award-winning documentary "She" based on Baker's collection "Doe" which tells the stories of missing and unidentified women through poetry. A warning that this episode deals with subject matter some listeners may find triggering or disturbing.

Aimée Baker is the author of the Akron Prize-winning collection of poetry Doe (University of Akron Press, 2018) which was the subject of the documentary She (Birdy & Bean Films, 2022) starring Kate Mulgrew, Coco Jones, and Raven Goodwin. As a multi-genre writer, Aimée’s work has been published in journals such as Guernica, The Southern Review, and Black Warrior Review. Currently she teaches at a university in upstate New York and is working on her next book.

Jason Greer and Vanessa Cicarelli are high school sweethearts that have been together for over 25 years. Jason was born in Bozeman, Montana and Vanessa in Montreal, Quebec. They now live in Upstate New York where they raise their children and run a family business. They started Greer  Cicarelli Photography in 2000 specializing in commercial photography and video production. Their work has been featured in numerous magazines and publications both nationally and internationally. Jason and Vanessa believe in telling authentic stories through photography or film. “She” is their first full-length film. What began as a passion project has taken on a life of its own, interweaving the weight of the forgotten with feminine beauty and the power of knowledge.

This week features the second interview in a two-part series with Daniel Ash and David J., lyricists and songwriters behind Love and Rockets, Bauhaus, and multiple other band and solo projects. I interviewed Daniel and David separately, with a similar set of questions. The success of their projects can be attributed, in part, to their distinctly different approaches to writing lyrics and crafting songs. Today’s episode features David J. I spoke with Daniel and David while they were preparing for Love and Rocket’s first US tour in fifteen years.

Named after the underground comic by the Hernandez brothers, Love and Rockets announced themselves to the world with their radically unique take on the classic Temptations song “Ball Of Confusion.” This debut proved that they were going to be a force to contend with. It became a huge seller and a popular club hit in the US and Canada, where it also went gold.

The legacy of the band has only grown with more people realizing the extent of their influence and generations of new fans discovering them. The list of artists who cite their influence is impressive: The Flaming Lips, The Dandy Warhols, A Place To Bury Strangers, Jane's Addiction, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Beck, Maynard Keenan, Dubfire, the Pixies and many more.

As a bonus, David agreed to share lyrics from an upcoming project.

This is the first interview in a two-part series with Daniel Ash and David J., lyricists and songwriters behind Love and Rockets, Bauhaus, and multiple other band and solo projects. I interviewed Daniel and David separately, with a similar set of questions. The success of their projects can be attributed, in part, to their distinctly different approaches to writing lyrics and crafting songs. This episode features Daniel Ash with David J.’s interview coming next. I spoke with Daniel and David while they were preparing for Love and Rocket’s first US tour in fifteen years.

Named after the underground comic by the Hernandez brothers, Love and Rockets announced themselves to the world with their radically unique take on the classic Temptations song “Ball Of Confusion.” This debut proved that they were going to be a force to contend with. It became a huge seller and a popular club hit in the US and Canada, where it also went gold.

The legacy of the band has only grown with more people realizing the extent of their influence and generations of new fans discovering them. The list of artists who cite their influence is impressive: The Flaming Lips, The Dandy Warhols, A Place To Bury Strangers, Jane's Addiction, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Beck, Maynard Keenan, Dubfire, the Pixies and many more.

As a bonus, Daniel agreed to share lyrics from an upcoming project, Ashes and Diamonds.

Katy Didden is the author of Ore Choir: The Lava on Iceland (Tupelo Press, 2022), and The Glacier’s Wake (Pleiades Press, 2013). Her poems, essays, and reviews appear in journals such as Public Books, Poetry Northwest, Ecotone, Diagram, The Kenyon Review, Image, 32 Poems, The Spoon River Poetry Review, The Sewanee Review, and Poetry, and her work has been featured on Verse Daily and Poetry Daily.  She has received fellowships and residencies from The Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Vermont Studio Center, the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, the Ragdale Foundation, the Hambidge Center, the MacDowell Colony, and the Listhús Residency in Ólafsfjörður, Iceland. She was also a 2013-2014 Hodder Fellow at Princeton University. Collaborating with members of the Banff Research in Culture’s Beyond Anthropocene Residency, she co-created Almanac for the Beyond (Tropic Editions, 2019). Katy is an Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing at Ball State University.

Stephen Massimilla is a poet, professor, painter, and author, most recently of the poetry collection Frank Dark (Barrow Street Press, 2022) and the 2022 co-edited social justice poetry anthology, Stronger Than Fear. His multi-genre, co-authored Cooking with the Muse (Tupelo Press, 2016) won the Eric Hoffer Award and many others. Previous books and honors include The Plague Doctor in His Hull-Shaped Hat (SFASU Press Prize); Forty Floors from Yesterday (Bordighera Prize, CUNY); The Grolier Poetry Prize; the Van Rensselaer Prize, selected by Kenneth Koch; a study of myth in poetry; award-winning translations; etc. His work has been featured recently in hundreds of publications ranging from AGNI to Denver Quarterly to Huffpost to Poetry Daily. Massimilla holds an MFA and a PhD from Columbia University and has taught there and at many other schools, currently The New School. He is also a prolific artist.