This week poet and novelist Travis Nichols talks about poets writing auto-fiction, the artifice-sincerity polarity, Ashberyists vs. O’Haraists, how Twitter has changed what makes poets popular, David Berman, and how poetry can gesture towards another world.  Download Actual Air in the Purple Mountains: An Interview With David Berman Travis Nichols on Poetry Foundation Travis’ poetry book See Me Improving Travis’ fiction book The More You Ignore Me ..read more

This week we met up on the 4th of July, read some poems about America and got philosophical about the disappointment in the promise of America’s beginnings that run through literature. Download WCW In the American Grain Thaddeus’ Invite to the Pestilent (with music by Wexler and Sunny ..read more

This week poet/writer Tracey Anne Duncan joins us to share some poems & talk about advice columns, whether poets should date poets, personal ads, famous poets who got good poems out of their relationship. Download Tracey’s Website Tracey’s GoFundMe Ginberg’s Personal Ad Poem ..read more

Musician Joseph Darensbourg joined us this week to talk about the Creole poetry of Les Cenelles, his string ensemble inspired by it, and the intersection of poetry, music, language, and the ancestral past. Download background on Les Cenelles Les Cenelles Facebook Page N.O.Lit has a nice selection of English translations of poems form Les Cenelles ..read more

The day after New Orleans Poetry Fest we sat down with poets Joseph Lease and Mark Statman and had a wonderfully sprawling conversation about poetry. Some topics include: the poetry scene in the ’80s, “words you can’t use in poems, Creeley. Koch, & Ginsberg, how Joseph “used to be a hard critic but he softened up,” reading Beats in teh time of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, and Joseph and Mark read some of their incredible poems. Download The Body Ghost by Joseph Lease Exile Home by Mark Statman ..read more

This week poet Lisa Pasold joins us to talk about poems that use questions. We look at poems by Catherine Barnett, Pablo Neruda, Terrrance Hayes, C.D. Wright, and Lisa herself. Download Lisa Pasold’s Books Human Hours by Catherine Barnett The Book of Questions by Pablo Neruda “Music to Interrogate By” by Terrance Hayes One with Others by C.D. Wright “Among School Children” by William Butler Yeats ..read more

This week poet Vincent Cellucci joins us to talk about his course on film and poetry, how the two mediums intersect, videopoems, and how to make interactive poetry that makes use of current technology and shares some poems from his new book Absence Like Sun. Download Vincent’s Website Vincent’s Page at Lavender Ink ..read more

This week we are talking about writing poems in a persona, and what it shows us about how poetry and identity work in general. We read poems by Ezra Pound, Adrienne Rich, James Tate, and Andre Breton. Download Planetarium by Adrienne Rich The Motorcyclists by James Tate ..read more

Past guest Brendan Lorber rejoins us this week to talk about ghosts and his ghost story novel he’s been working. We talk about ghosts and how they relate to relics of the past in city’s, lost love ones, and creativity and the subconscious. Download ..read more

This week poet and novelist Travis Nichols talks about poets writing auto-fiction, the artifice-sincerity polarity, Ashberyists vs. O’Haraists, how Twitter has changed what makes poets popular, David Berman, and how poetry can gesture towards another world.  Download Actual Air in the Purple Mountains: An Interview With David Berman Travis Nichols on Poetry Foundation Travis’ poetry book See Me Improving Travis’ fiction book The More You Ignore Me ..read more