Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast

As 2022, and our second season, comes to a close Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast host James Morehead shares his Christmas-themed poem "Among the scattered ribbons and crumpled paper" which first appeared on NPR’s Poetically Yours earlier this month.

W’d like to thank all of the wonderful poets profiled this year with in-depth interviews, and the poets that 89 for inclusion in our monthly submitted poetry episodes.

We’ll be back in 2023 with more interviews and opportunities for poets to have their work featured on our podcast.

Until then have a wonderful holiday season and New Year’s with your family.

The Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast December submitted poems episode features seven wonderful contributions read by six 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, Olivia Gatwood, Regina Harris Baiocchi, Kari Byron, Lisa Marie Simmons and more.

Poets featured in this episode:

On this week's episode of the Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast we interview not one, but three wonderful poets about their collaboration to create Chalk Song.

Susan Berger-Jones is an architect and poet.  Her written and visual work has appeared in Drunken Boat, No Exit, and two anthologies of ekphrastic poems published by Off the Park Press.

Gale Batchelder lives in Cambridge.  Her work has been published Tupelo Quarterly, This Rough Beast, Colorado Review, SpoKe4, and in the poetry anthologies New Smoke (2009) and Triumph of Poverty (2011).

Judson Evans is a poet whose work has focused on crossing genres and collaboration.  He was recently named Haibun Editor of Frogpond, the journal of the Haiku Society of America.  In 2007, he was chosen as an “Emerging Poet” by John Yau for the Academy of American Poets and won the Philip Booth Poetry Prize from Salt Hill Review in 2013. His poems have appeared in numerous journals.

Stelios Mormoris is a resident of Boston and Martha’s  Vineyard, Massachusetts, and formerly lived in Paris most  of his life, working as an executive in the beauty industry.  Stelios is currently Chief Executive Officer of Scent Beauty,  Inc. He studied architecture at Princeton University, where  he received his BA, and he received his MBA from INSEAD in  Fontainebleau, France. He has held positions on the boards  of the French Cultural Center of Boston, ACT-UP, Historic  New England, and The Fragrance Foundation.

Donald Platt is the author of eight volumes of poetry, his most recent is Swansdown (Grid Books, 2022).  His poems have appeared in many journals, including The New Republic, American Poetry Review, Paris Review, Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, New England Review, and Yale Review, as well as in The Best American Poetry 2000, 2006, and 2015. He is a recipient of two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, three Pushcart Prizes, and the Center for Book Arts Chapbook Prize.

Tess Taylor, who Ilya Kaminsky recently hailed as “the poet for our moment” resides in El Cerrito, California. Her poems have received wide national and international acclaim.  Taylor’s chapbook, The Misremembered World, was selected by Eavan Boland for the Poetry Society of America’s inaugural chapbook competition. The San Francisco Chronicle called her first book, The Forage House, (an exploration of hidden family histories through archive and shard) “stunning,” and it was a finalist for the Believer Poetry Award.

The Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast October submitted poems episode features contributions from six wonderful contributions read by the 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, Olivia Gatwood, Regina Harris Baiocchi, Kari Byron, Lisa Marie Simmons and more.

Featured in this episode:

This episode features eleven points, nine finalists (eight of whom performed live at the City of Dublin's Splatter Festival on Saturday September 10, 2022) and two honorable mentions. All have wonderful poetic focus covering a diversion range of topics.

Finalists

Honorable Mentions

Yanyi is the author of Dream of the Divided Field (One World 2022) and The Year of Blue Water (Yale University Press 2019), winner of the 2018 Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize. His work has been featured in or at NPR’s All Things Considered, New York Public Library, Tin House, Granta, and A Public Space, and he is the recipient of fellowships from Asian American Writers’ Workshop and Poets House. He holds an MFA in Poetry from New York University. He was most recently poetry editor at Foundry. Currently, he teaches creative writing at large and gives creative advice at The Reading.

Pamela Wax is the author of Walking the Labyrinth (Main Street Rag, 2022) and the forthcoming chapbook, Starter Mothers (Finishing Line Press). Her poems have received awards from Crosswinds Poetry Journal, Paterson Literary Review, Oberon Poetry Magazine and the Robinson Jeffers Tor House. Her publication credits include Barrow Street, Pensive, Connecticut River Review, Heron Tree, Glimpse, Mudfish, Pedestal, Pangyrus, Reed Magazine, Naugatuck River Review, Sixfold, Solstice, and Passengers Journal, among others. Pam is an ordained rabbi who facilitates spiritual poetry writing workshops and walks labyrinths in the Northern Berkshires of Massachusetts—or wherever she can find them. Her forthcoming website is www.pamelawax.com.

A trigger warning. Please note that this interview, because of the subject matter and themes of Pamela’s new book Walking the Labyrinth, may touch on suicide. If you are having suicidal thoughts please reach out for support resources in your area.