The Poet Salon

Hanif reads Angela Veronica Wong's "Elsa Was Stabbed To Death She Had Her Key"

It's our last episode of the season! After chopping it up with Hanif Abdurraqib last week on his work, he brought in Angela Veronica Wong's "Elsa Was Stabbed To Death She Had Her Key" to share and marvel over.

HANIF ABDURRAQIB is a poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio. His first full-length poetry collection, The Crown Ain't Worth Much, was released in 2016 from Button Poetry, was named a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Prize, and was nominated for a Hurston-Wright Legacy Award. His first collection of essays, They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us, was released in 2017 by Two Dollar Radio and was named a book of the year by Buzzfeed, Esquire, NPR, Oprah Magazine, and The Los Angeles Review, among others. Hanif’s book Go Ahead In The Rain published this year by University of Texas Press debuted as a New York Times Best Seller. His next books are A Fortune For Your Disaster from Tin House and They Don't Dance No' Mo'  2020 from Random House.

ANGELA VERONICA WONG is a writer, artist, and educator living in New York City. She is a former Fulbright scholar and Humanities New York Public Humanities fellow. She has won the Poetry Society of America New York Chapbook Fellowship and been a finalist for the Tarpaulin Sky Book Prize, The Frost Place Chapbook Contest, Slash Pine Chapbook Contest, Fordham University Poets Out Loud Prize and a semi-finalist for Center For Book Arts Chapbook Competition and Akron Poetry Prize. Her work has been nominated for several Pushcart Prizes and the Best of the Net. She was a Hemispheric Institute EMERGENYC fellow. Her performance work has been featured in independent galleries in Buffalo, Toronto, and New York City.

You missed us, we know

Season 1 came and went, and we learned so much, y'all. We're so grateful for the 10 wonderful guests who rolled through. It's been a blessing. 

In this little bonus pod, you can hear us reflect on what we learned, what we've been up to between seasons, and what we have coming up. Season 2 will officially launch in January, but we'll be here with some additional special bonus drops until then. So keep us in your feed, share the pod with your friends, put us on speaker phone on your bus ride home.

It's so good to be back in your beautiful ears.

Live! with Natalie Scenters-Zapico

What's good fam—did our first a live episode with the inimitable Natalie Scenters-Zapico as part of Lit Crawl: Seattle. It was wonderful. Hear us chop it up about Concha Piquer, ending poems, and the ethics of repetition. 

Natalie Scenters-Zapico is a fronteriza from the sister cities of El Paso, Texas, U.S.A., and Cd. Juárez, Chihuahua, México. She is the author of Lima :: Limón (Copper Canyon 2019), which has been reviewed widely in prominent periodicals including The New Yorker, and The Verging Cities (Center for Literary Publishing 2015), which won the PENAmerican/Joyce Osterweil Award, GLCA's New Writers Award, and more. She has won fellowships from the Lannan Foundation (2017), CantoMundo (2015), and a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation (2018). Her poems have appeared in a wide range of anthologies and literary magazines including Best American Poetry 2015, POETRY, Tin House, Kenyon Review, and more. She teaches poetry workshops in English and Spanish through the Department of English and the Latina/o Studies Program at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington.

 

Jericho Brown + The Bizzy Izzy

Hello beautiful beautiful people! We're back! Season two is here and what a season it is. We're thrilled to start of 2020 talking about the books that messed us all the way up in 2019 and to chat with the inimitable Jericho Brown about the South, rhyme, and why we write at all.

 

Jericho Brown is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, and the National Endowment for the Arts, and he is the winner of the Whiting Writer's Award. Brown’s first book, Please (New Issues 2008), won the American Book Award. His second book, The New Testament (Copper Canyon 2014), won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. His third collection is The Tradition (Copper Canyon 2019). His poems have appeared in The Bennington Review, Buzzfeed, Fence, jubilat, The New Republic, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, TIME magazine, and several volumes of The Best American Poetry. He is an associate professor and the director of the Creative Writing Program at Emory University.

 

The Bizzy Izzy: sherry, bourbon, pineapple, and lemon juice on ice in a high ball glass. A pre-prohibition cocktail created by Tom Bullock, the first African-American to author his own cocktail manual.

Jericho Brown reads Lucille Clifton's "The Lost Baby Poem"

Hello there! After last week's episode with Jericho Brown in which we hashed it out over rhyme and why we write, Jericho brought us Lucille Clifton's "The Lost Baby Poem" to nerd out over. Hear us out.

Jericho Brown is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, and the National Endowment for the Arts, and he is the winner of the Whiting Writer's Award. Brown’s first book, Please (New Issues 2008), won the American Book Award. His second book, The New Testament (Copper Canyon 2014), won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. His third collection is The Tradition (Copper Canyon 2019). His poems have appeared in The Bennington Review, Buzzfeed, Fence, jubilat, The New Republic, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, TIME magazine, and several volumes of The Best American Poetry. He is an associate professor and the director of the Creative Writing Program at Emory University.

Lucille Clifton was born in Depew, New York, on June 27, 1936. Her first book of poems, Good Times (Random House, 1969), was rated one of the best books of the year by the New York Times. Clifton remained employed in state and federal government positions until 1971, when she became a writer in residence at Coppin State College in Baltimore, Maryland, where she completed two collections: Good News About the Earth (Random House, 1972) and An Ordinary Woman (Random House, 1974). She was the author of  several other collections of poetry, including Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems 1988–2000 (BOA Editions, 2000), which won the National Book Award; Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir 1969-1980 (BOA Editions, 1987), which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize; and Two-Headed Woman (University of Massachusetts Press, 1980), also a Pulitzer Prize nominee as well as the recipient of the University of Massachusetts Press Juniper Prize. Clifton was also the author of Generations: A Memoir (Random House, 1976) and more than sixteen books for children, written expressly for an African-American audience.

Bill Carty + Grecian Laurel 75

Hello hello! This week we're thrilled to wax poetic about Brigit Pegeen Kelly—who is she? and why do poets love her so??—and to interview our dear friend Bill Carty about clouds, clarity, clowns, etc.

Bill Carty is the author of Huge Cloudy (Octopus Books) and the chapbook Refugium. He holds degrees from Dartmouth College (BA) and University of North-Carolina-Wilmington (MFA), and he has received poetry fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Artist Trust, Hugo House, and Jack Straw. He was awarded the 2017 Emily Dickinson Award from the Poetry Society of America, and his poems have recently appeared in the Boston Review, Ploughshares, Oversound, Iowa Review, Conduit, Warscapes, and other journals. Originally from coastal Maine, Bill now lives in Seattle, where he is Senior Editor at Poetry Northwest. He teaches at Hugo House, the UW Robinson Center for Young Scholars, and Edmonds Community College. 

Grecian Laurel 75: Roasted lemon, bay leaf lemonade, gin, and Prosecco. 

 

Bill Carty reads Jennifer Chang's "Dorothy Wordsworth"

Friends— last week, Bill Carty schooled us on clouds, clarity, and clowns. For this week's episode, Bill brought in Jennifer Chang's "Dorothy Wordsworth" to boot, scoot, n' boogie with. Enjoy!

Bill Carty is the author of Huge Cloudy (Octopus Books) and the chapbook Refugium. He holds degrees from Dartmouth College (BA) and University of North-Carolina-Wilmington (MFA), and he has received poetry fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Artist Trust, Hugo House, and Jack Straw. He was awarded the 2017 Emily Dickinson Award from the Poetry Society of America, and his poems have recently appeared in the Boston Review, Ploughshares, Oversound, Iowa Review, Conduit, Warscapes, and other journals. Originally from coastal Maine, Bill now lives in Seattle, where he is Senior Editor at Poetry Northwest. He teaches at Hugo House, the UW Robinson Center for Young Scholars, and Edmonds Community College. 

Poet and scholar Jennifer Chang was born in New Jersey. She earned her MFA and PhD from the University of Virginia and teaches at George Washington University. She is the author of two books of poetry, The History of Anonymity and Some Say the Lark. Chang’s lyrical poems often explore the shifting boundaries between the outer world and the self. Chang’s debut poetry collection, The History of Anonymity (2008), was selected for the Virginia Quarterly Review’s Poetry Series and was a finalist for the Shenandoah/ Glasgow Prize for Emerging Writers. She co-chairs the advisory board of Kundiman, a nonprofit organization that supports Asian American literature. She lives in Washington, D.C

 

Bettina Judd + JOY! Spritzes

Hey you! This week we pop off on prosody before sitting down with the amazing Bettina Judd. Bettina takes us through her interdisciplinary approach to poems, patience, and of course, JOY!

Bettina Judd is an interdisciplinary writer, artist and performer whose research focus is on Black women's creative production and our use of visual art, literature, and music to develop feminist thought. Her current book manuscript argues that Black women’s creative production is feminist knowledge production produced by registers of affect she calls “feelin.” She is currently Assistant Professor of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Washington. She has received fellowships from the Five Colleges, The Vermont Studio Center and the University of Maryland. Her poems and essays have appeared in Torch, Mythium, Meridians and other journals and anthologies. Her collection of poems titled patient. which tackles the history of medical experimentation on and display of Black women won the Black Lawrence Press Hudson Book Prize and was released in November of 2014. As a performer she has been invited to perform for audiences within the United States and internationally.

JOY! Spritzes: An Aperol Spritz you have to toast the way Lucille Clifton signed all her books—with the word "JOY!" in all caps!

Bettina Judd reads from Aracelis Girmay's "The Black Maria"

Good ppl, good ppl—last week we chopped it up with THEE Dr. Bettina Judd on so many goodness. This week, she brought in Aracelis Girmay's "The Black Maria" for us to melt our hearts over. 

Bettina Judd is an interdisciplinary writer, artist and performer whose research focus is on Black women's creative production and our use of visual art, literature, and music to develop feminist thought. Her current book manuscript argues that Black women’s creative production is feminist knowledge production produced by registers of affect she calls “feelin.” She is currently Assistant Professor of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Washington. She has received fellowships from the Five Colleges, The Vermont Studio Center and the University of Maryland. Her poems and essays have appeared in Torch, Mythium, Meridians and other journals and anthologies. Her collection of poems titled patient. which tackles the history of medical experimentation on and display of Black women won the Black Lawrence Press Hudson Book Prize and was released in November of 2014. As a performer she has been invited to perform for audiences within the United States and internationally.

Aracelis Girmay is the author of three collections of poetry: the black maria (BOA Editions, 2016); Kingdom Animalia (BOA Editions, 2011), winner of the 2011 Isabella Gardner Poetry Award and the GLCA New Writers Award, and a finalist for both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award; and Teeth (Curbstone Press, 2007). The recipient of fellowships from Cave Canem, Civitella Ranieri, and the National Endowment for the Arts, Girmay is the winner of a 2015 Whiting Award for Poetry. She teaches in Hampshire College’s School for Interdisciplinary Arts and Drew University’s low-residency MFA program in poetry.

Oliver de la Paz + The Long Line

Our people, our people! We're back this week with a fresh new episode featuring the one and only Oliver de la Paz. He came through The Poet Salon to talk about parenting, prose poems, and myths.

OLIVER DE LA PAZ is the author of five collections of poetry, Names Above Houses, Furious Lullaby (SIU Press 2001, 2007), and Requiem for the Orchard (U. of Akron Press 2010), winner of the Akron Prize for poetry chosen by Martìn Espada, Post Subject: A Fable (U. of Akron Press 2014), and the forthcoming book The Boy in the Labyrinth (U. of Akron Press 2019).  He is the co-editor with Stacey Lynn Brown of A Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Persona Poetry (U. of Akron Press 2012).  He co-chairs the advisory board of Kundiman, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the promotion of Asian American Poetry. A recipient of a NYFA Fellowship Award and a GAP Grant from Artist Trust, his work has appeared in journals like Virginia Quarterly Review, North American Review, Tin House, Poetry, and in anthologies such as Asian American Poetry:  The Next Generation. He teaches at the College of the Holy Cross and in the Low-Residency MFA Program at Pacific Lutheran University. 

The Long Line: Espresso soda, almond syrup, chocolate bitters.