Post Poet Pop, Episode 29 features the work of Sara Larsen, specifically her latest book, Detonated Mirror. The book makes me ask, What is a body and what is a body’s destruction? As the work you will hear Sara Larsen read in this episode reflects how body may be parenthetical, an echo, Russian doll-esque, as poetry may also be. The work is crucial at the moment to take deeper looks at how self relates to place and how a/the body spreads, deflates, grows, decays, transfers, transitions, and that interpretation of that is completely open to being whatever it may. These poems are visionary and they are also, in Sara's words, "visionary poems".

Learn more about Detonated Mirror and get a copy from The Elephants, here (or from your local bookstore). Find out about Sara Larsen by following her on Substack (@saralarsenpoet) or visiting SaraLarsenPoet.com.

All poems are performed by Sara Larsen and all the author’s poems discussed are published in Detonated Mirror (The Elephants, 2023). The poems are the property of the author(s) and the publisher(s) listed. The song played during the introduction is “Sunday Afternoon” and is performed by The True Loves. Please support their work.

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CONTENT WARNING: Discussion of sexual assault.

What does it mean to be silent in an era of necessary refusal? This question has taken many forms of late, for me, especially following my interview with this episode's featured poet—David McLoghlin, whose third collection of poems, Crash Centre, is just out from Salmon Poetry in Ireland. To begin the book, David employs an epigraph, a Latin proverb: “He who is silent is taken to agree; he ought to have spoken when he was able to.” As a sexual assault survivor, this epigraph works hard on behalf of David's poetry. First, let’s look at the facts: over 90% of sexual assault victims are women. Only 30% of sexual assault crimes are reported to legal authorities; 1 in 5 women in college are sexually assault and 1 in 16 of men are. It seems we are surrounded on all sides by a ubiquitous patriarchal violence, by genocide, extractive economy, et cetera, so…what does it mean to be silent—does it imply complicity, does it mean you’re not doing anything or does it mean you don’t know what to do?

David’s own assault was perpetrated by a man of power, at that, a religiously-sanctioned man of power. The last line of one of the poems you will hear David read in this episode—’Hostage Walk’—goes: “No one asked: where has David gone?” As trauma goes, a person is here and not here. But, you'll hear David, here, read a handful of poems from Crash Centre and we will discuss his life in Cork, his love of being a father, and his poetics. My hope is that our conversation will hold a kind of healing space for other victims/survivors and I am very grateful to listeners out there. Learn more at DavidMcLoghlin.com, and get a copy of Crash Centre at SalmonPoetry.com or at your local bookstore.

All poems are performed by David McLoghlin and all the author’s poems discussed are published in Crash Centre (Salmon Poetry, 2024). The poems are the property of the author(s) and the publisher(s) listed. The song played during the introduction is “Sunday Afternoon” and is performed by The True Loves. Please support their work.

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Post Poet Pop, Episode 27 features poems from the new anthology of Venezuelan poets living in Chile entitled A Scar Where Goodbyes Are Written (Louisiana State University Press, 2023). The anthology showcases the work of 15 poets, including: Ivana Aponte, Georgina Ramírez, Miguel Ortiz Rodríguez, Sara Emanuel Viloria (all of whose work you will hear today) and many others. The book is translated and edited by David Brunson. 

This work is crucial because it elucidates the diasporic experience of being a migrant, not only to Chile, but away from a misunderstood homeland; and now—at a time when many diasporas are being ignited or re-ignited in Haiti, the Sudan, and of course the genocide in Palestine—it is even more important to become more than acquainted with that experience. The term diaspora comes from the Greek and means to scatter across but it also means to be forced to leave home. Venezuela has seen nearly 8 million of its citizens depart its borders and over 5,200 Venezuelans have been killed, extrajudicially. Chile has its own complications and repressive history and this enmeshing of two cultures at the very least sets the stage for poets to, in the words of David Brunson’s introduction, empathetically reclaim identity and more fully realize a sense of humanity.

Get an e-Book or print copy of A Scar Where Goodbyes Are Written from Louisiana State University Press (or order one from your local bookstore), and learn more about David (the book's translator and editor) at DavidMBrunson.com and Ivana (poet in the book) at CopihuePoetry.com/who-we-are.

All poems are performed by Ivana Aponte and David Brunson and all the author’s poems discussed are published in A Scar Where Goodbyes Are Written: An Anthology of Venezuelan Poets in Chile (Louisiana State University Press, 2023). The poems are the property of the author(s) and the publisher(s) listed. The song played during the introduction is “Sunday Afternoon” and is performed by The True Loves. Please support their work.

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Post Poet Pop, Episode 26 features the bike commuting, softball coaching, Oakland A's loving poet and scholar, Jared Stanley. He is the author of So Tough (Saturnalia Books, 2024), and it's that title of Jared's book that made me think about the always-reaching descriptor that the word "tough" is. So Tough is a sequential, set-in-octet book that appears gentle, in a visual sense, but doesn’t waste a speck of anything, as Jared's work has always done, in its devotion to the ecological. He writes, in one of the poems you will not hear him read on this episode, “able bodied youths throw their muscle at smoke, It’s sunday” … What durability, how fibrous, and yet all that wasted potential that’s become an everyday thing but, here, it's also a supposed day of rest—all those firefighters trying to stop mountains of wind and heat. Is the world tough to withstand humanity or are we tough to endure climate change? Who can tell? It’s all so very absurd.

Find out more about Jared's work at JaredStanleyInfo.Wordpress.com, and you can grab a copy of So Tough from Saturnalia Books, or wherever books are sold.

All poems are performed by Jared Stanley and all the author’s poems discussed are published in So Tough (Saturnalia Books, 2024). The poems are the property of the author and the publisher(s) listed. The song played during the introduction is “Sunday Afternoon” and is performed by The True Loves. Please support their work.

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Post Poet Pop, Episode 25 features the poet Kristina Erny, the author of Elijah Fed By Ravens (Solum Literary Press, 2024). In her own words, Kristina Erny is a third culture person who was raised in Seoul and is always homesick for somewhere. She is a poet, a visual artist, a teacher, a wife, a mother, and a foreigner. We conducted this conversation via voice message letters, in which I was sending questions to Kristina that she would get in the morning and her answers would come in, to me, in the morning. We truly bridged time. Kristina writes, in the poem "In the Days Before" that "In the days before the actual end there were many smaller heartbreaks [...] A person used to be able to split through the husk and know there would be seeds." I think these two statements summarize the poetics of Elijah Fed By Ravens and our conversation quite well. Kristina is a magnetic person and I hope you will find a bit of sustenance you may need in this conversation.

Find out more about Kristina's work by visiting KristinaErny.com and you can buy a copy of Elijah Fed By Ravens from Solum Literary Press, and wherever books are sold.

All poems are performed by Kristina Erny and all the author’s poems discussed are published in Elijah Fed By Ravens (Solum Literary Press, 2024). The poems are the property of the author and the publisher(s) listed. The song played during the introduction is “Sunday Afternoon” and is performed by The True Loves. Please support their work.

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Post Poet Pop, Episode 24 features the poet Douglas Piccinnini. Douglas is an interdisciplinary artist and author and his latest poetry collection, Beautiful, Safe & Free (New Books, 2023) examines origins and the ordinary under new light and scrutiny. Douglas writes, in the poem, "In America," "I imagine myself / through desire / to numb myself [...] I'm brutal, at first, unsanitary / aroused, then friendly / coached by a system [...] I drink from the invisible / order that sustains me". These poems' truths are also the work of dreams and coalesce into (in Douglas's words) "new scenery made / by what is missing". Douglas is actively engaged in developing content for film and television, and lives with his wife, Tara, and their son, Oblio, in western New Jersey.

Find out more about Douglas's work at DouglasPiccinnini.com and grab a copy of Beautiful, Safe & Free directly from him.

All poems are performed by Douglas Piccinnini and all the author’s poems discussed are published in Beautiful, Safe & Free (New Books, 2023). The poems are the property of the author and the publisher(s) listed. The song played during the introduction is “Sunday Afternoon” and is performed by The True Loves. Please support their work.

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Post Poet Pop, Episode 23 features the poet Kristi Maxwell and her 2023 Wishing Jewel Prize winning book, Goners, with poems set in lipogram form and organized around the names of endangered or extinct species. In the opening essay in the collection, Kristi writes: In The New Poetics of Climate Change, Matthew Griffiths asks, “Must poetry of climate change belong in the tradition of the pastoral or the elegy? … What alternative models or approaches might there be?” And, later: "What I stress now: I’m not writing about endangered species; I’m writing without them—attempting to imagine in a linguistic landscape the ways that loss would be registered and felt or fail to be Kristi is the author of 8 books of poetry, an associate professor of English at the University of Louisville, and holds a PhD in Literature & Creative Writing from the University of Cincinnati and an MFA in Poetry from the University of Arizona. We, of course, talk about animals, but also we speak about her process for Goners and the uncanny and much more.

Find out more about Kristi's work at KristiMaxwellPoetry.com and grab a copy of Goners from Green Linden Press right away.

All poems are performed by Kristi Maxwell, and all the author’s poems discussed are published in Goners (Green Linden Press, 2023) . The poems are the property of the author and the publisher(s) listed. The song played during the introduction is “Sunday Afternoon” and is performed by The True Loves. Please support their work.

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Post Poet Pop, Episode 22 features the poet Isaac Pickell. Isaac Pickell is a Black & Jewish poet, and was raised in Michigan near the back of his parents’ used bookstore. He graduated from Miami University's MFA program, and is currently a PhD candidate, and an adjunct instructor in Detroit where he is working on his dissertation called “Passing Over, Passing Through: Transgressive Ambiguity Beyond the Colorline,” and you can learn more about his work at IsaacPickell.com and be sure to get a copy of It’s not over once you figure it out from Black Ocean, as soon as you can. 

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All poems are performed by Isaac Pickell, and all poetry discussed are published in It’s Not Over Once You Figure It Out (Black Ocean, 2023) . The poems are the property of the author and the publisher(s) listed. The song played during the introduction is “Sunday Afternoon” and is performed by The True Loves. Please support their work.

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Post Poet Pop, Episode 21 features not 1 but 2 poets who reside at opposite ends of the US—Elizabeth Metzger and Timothy Donnelly. 

Elizabeth lives in LA and is the editor of the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of (her second book) Lying In—which we will focus on today—and has just been published by Milkweed Editions in 2023. Elizabeth writes, at the end of the poem, “Daughter As Myself,” Taste no taste./Pull a sheet over your tongue if you have to. Invent a tongue/for the carrot. This meal is purely/for passing through.”

Timothy Donnelly, Brooklyn resident, professor at Columbia University in Manhattan, and author of (his fourth book) Chariot—which we will focus on today—published by Wave Books this year, 2023. Timothy writes in the poem “Reality Hit Me”—So I hit back. Bare-knuckled, all my weight, across the ugly truth of it. Afterwards, a hand stings for decades in embarrassment. This impedes one’s growing closer to the feel of things as they are, making everyday merchandise hard to hold without a wince.”

Find out more about Elizabeth Metzger’s work, here, and learn about Timothy Donnelly’s work, here. 

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All poems are performed by Elizabeth Metzger and Timothy Donnelly. All poetry discussed are published in Lying In (Milkweed Editions by Elizabeth Metzger, 2023) and Chariot (Wave Books by Timothy Donnelly, 2023). The poems are the property of the authors themselves and the publisher(s) listed. The song played during the introduction is entitled “Sunday Afternoon” and is performed by The True Loves. Please support their work.

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The poet Lao Yang (via translators Lynn Xu and Joshua Edwards) writes, in his poem, “Imitation of Autobiography” (from the collection Pee Poems published by Circumference Books in 2022):

At night

Each person is lifted into their own starry sky

To meet a self who has been resurrected again and again

To encounter the boundlessness of darkness

Today’s episode features the work of the 3 brilliant poets all involved in that stanza—Lao Yang, Joshua Edwards, and Lynn Xu. You’ll hear Lynn and Josh read a few pieces from Lao Yang’s Pee Poems and we’ll discuss what they found in, and how they traversed, translating Lao Yang’s work. Then, we will focus on Joshua Edward’s work in The Double Lamp of Solitude published by Rising Tide Projects, also in 2022. Third, we will swing over to the work of Lynn Xu, and her latest And Those Ashen Heaps That Cantilevered Vase of Moonlight put out by Wave Books in 2022. 

Visit here for more information about Lao Yang’s Pee Poems. And see here for details about Joshua Edwards’ work. Find out more here about the work of Lynn Xu.

All poems are performed by Lynn Xu and Joshua Edwards. Other poetry represented is written originally by Lao Yang and translated by Lynn Xu and Joshua Edwards. All poetry discussed are published in Pee Poems (Circumference Books, 2016 by Lao Yang, 2022 translated by Joshua Edwards and Lynn Xu); The Double Lamp of Solitude (Rising Tide Projects, 2022 by Joshua Edwards); and And Those Ashen Heaps That Cantilevered Vase of Moonlight (Wave Books 2022 by Lynn Xu). The poems are the property of the authors themselves and the publisher(s) listed. The song played during the introduction is entitled “Sunday Afternoon” and is performed by The True Loves. Please support their work.

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Post Poet Pop, Episode 19 features the work and conversation of poet, scholar, photographer and more—A.H. Jerriod Avant. Jerriod has just seen his first collection of poems—Muscadine—come to life, published by Four Way Books this month, September 2023.

Muscadine, for anyone who may not know, is a type of vined grape that grows in the US South and has long been used for jams, preserves, and even wine. But the meaning deepens when we look at the symbolism around muscadine—thick skinned fruits, how they flourish in darkness as well as in the light, and how they were once wild, untamed and nearly ubiquitous throughout the pre-cololnized, southeastern United States. But I also want to draw attention to the gothic aspect that both the visuals and narratives that come through Jerriod’s poetry present—how the gothic sort of vines its way through this book. There is grief and there is dance and there is family and there is heartache and there are breaks—both in the sense of gaps or fissures or things never being the same as they were as well as beats and rhythm and sonics that open up the space and allow for something unique. This gives the speaker of Jerriod’s poems a large range to operate out of, and perhaps as importantly, highlights a very particular musicality that shines throughout the collection. 

As Jerriod writes in the first poem in the book, “Pride,”—”Give me memories as / slow to leave as snails [...] Listen, how the voice of a dead man can live. Pack me a bag I can fit in my heart.”

Find out more about A.H. Jerriod Avant and get a copy of Muscadine right here.

All poems performed are the property of A.H. Jerriod Avant, and are published in Muscadine (Four Way Books, 2023).

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Welcome to the 18th episode of Post Poet Pop; This is Part 2 of a dedicated set featuring poets from the Once A City Said Louisville poets anthology put out by Sarabande Books and launched this summer. You can purchase the book, here, and you can learn more about the featured poets by visiting the links below.

I would like to dedicate this episode to: James Taylor, Michael Newby, David McAtee, and Breonna Taylor—for their lives that were, and for their lives that should have been. Cheers to a better metabolic city! Featured poets in this episode are:

Alissa Vance - For Hamza Travis Nagdy

Erin L. McCoy - witch-auk and me stop over in my hometown

Ellen Birkett Morris - Sport of Kings 

Anna Leigh Knowles - Roses In The Eyes, Oblivious To The Thorns 

makalani bandele - east broadway, or on catching TARC (Transit Authority of River City) uptown 

Robert L. Penick - Dennis Cooper Racing Stables 

Martha Greenwald - Double Aortic Arch 

Robin Garner - Community 

Mitchell L.H. Douglas - Al Green Was A Preacher

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Welcome to the 17th episode of Post Poet Pop; This is Part 1 of a dedicated set featuring poets from the Once A City Said Louisville poets anthology put out by Sarabande Books and launched this summer. You can purchase the book, here, and you can learn more about the featured poets by visiting the links below.

I would like to dedicate this episode to: James Taylor, Michael Newby, David McAtee, and Breonna Taylor—for their lives that were, and for their lives that should have been. Featured poets are:

Nguyên Vũ Ngọc Uyên - Neighbors 

Erin Keane - Directions to Colonel Sanders’ Grave 

Steve Cambron - When The Wind Came 

Jasmine Wigginton - Growing Hands 

Jeremy Clark - One Year Sober  

Sunshine Meyers - Frail 

Lance G. Newman II - Heritage

Isiah Fish - I Will Tell You What Joy Is 

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Post Poet Pop, Episode 16 features the poet Olivia Muenz. Olivia is a disabled writer from New York. She won the 2022 Gatewood Prize for the poetry collection, I Feel Fine published by Switchback Books this year and which we will be putting under the spotlight today. Olivia was an undergraduate at New York University and went on to earn an MFA in creative writing from Louisiana State University, where she received the Robert Penn Warren Thesis Award in prose and served as an editor for the New Delta Review. 

In I Feel Fine, Olivia writes: “Here is your brain on. Music. I’ll give it to you Einstein. I’ll take you on a boat and make you watch it sink. Do you believe me now. Is anybody alive out there. Can anybody hear me.” What you can’t see here is that the first sentence ends at the word on and the next sentence is just the word “Music” or at least that is how the punctuation (periods only throughout the entire book) seeks to redetermine our literacy. 

There is a symbolic formation in Olivia’s poetics that doubly represents what the prose is pushing forward—namely that the life of a disabled person remains a life both equal in stature to any other human individual but endures challenges not faced by most. The period, in her sentence structure, symbolizes the multiple fulcrums that Olivia has and continues to face. You will hear today that it took Olivia years and years of a frustrating journey through a medical multiplex of doctors who struggled to get her to her more recently given clinical diagnosis of Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, or EDS, which generally speaking affects the body’s connective tissue but that does not at all tell the entire story. When the body’s connective tissue is affected by the mechanism of EDS it causes severe pain, frequent migraines, and in some instances can make a person’s blood vessels so fragile that they can harden and fracture or break. And this is all mostly new information (like, within the last decade). New clinical understanding also finds that EDS can potentially be tied to neurodivergence and fibromyalgia. So, Einstein, we are here to take you on a boat ride and sink that boat so you can better listen and acknowledge.

Learn more about Olivia's work at OliviaMuenz.com.

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Post Poet Pop, Episode 15 features the poet Jared Daniel Fagen. Jared was born in South Korea and teaches in Manhattan at City College as he completes his PhD at the CUNY Graduate Center. His work has been featured in The Brooklyn Rail, Fence, Lana Turner, and Asymptote, among other publications. He is also the editor and publisher of Black Sun Lit. Jared has previously said that he wants readers to see what is not readily seen. And perhaps a radio, audio-only interview can help do that, although Jared means when you read his first full length book, The Animal of Existence (published by Black Square Editions, and which we will hear Jared read from today) that ultimate readership is ultimately out of the author’s control. Jared writes, in the title poem of the book (which you will not hear today), “They ask about my life. The likelihood of my living on. With eyes that will not be met I say of their inquiry that it is no decision of my own. [...] They ask about my life, but for life I grieve deeply.” I hope you hear some non-readily-available seeing.

Learn more about Jared's work at JaredDanielFagen.com.

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Post Poet Pop, Episode 14 features the poet Danika Stegeman. Danika is not only prolific and driven when it comes to her poetry practice but in her work, she does not shy away from the uncomfortable or the difficult. She engages in new formalism on her own—some of which are blended into existing conceptualist approaches (assemblage, erasure, etc.) and some of which she creates originally. Today, we are going to discuss her first book, Pilot, as well as her second book which is set to be released in November of this year—Ablation. The first book, Pilot, is an erasure of episode transcripts of the television show Lost, and speaks from a common source through borrowed tongues; Danika writes in Pilot, “I’m a shooting range. // Can you hear me shivering?” The second book you will hear from—Ablation—is an elegy to Stegeman LeMay's mom, who died in 2020, and it contains not only poems, but hybrid texts and images to form an artifact of healing. 

She earned an MFA from George Mason University and lives in Minneapolis. Go to DanikaStegeman.com to learn more about her work.

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Post Poet Pop, Episode 13 features the poet Mackenzie Berry. Mackenzie is a not only from Louisville, Kentucky but she is a beacon of positive representation of this, her hometown. Her debut poetry collection—Slack Tongue City (Sundress Publications, 2022)—is a compendium of Louisville nostalgia and detail, and it is a compass of what it means to bring your hometown along with you as you move closer toward the furthest point of the horizon. On this episode, Mackenzie reads 5 poems from the book and we discuss all things Louisville and all things Slack Tongue City.

Her poetry has been published in Poetry Ireland Review, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Hobart, and Blood Orange Review, among others. She is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison through the First Wave Program and Goldsmiths, University of London. She is, currently, a lecturer at Cornell University, but will soon be taking on a new role at Tufts. r Get a copy of Slack Tongue City, here, or at your local bookstore.

Go to MackenzieBerry.com to learn more about Mackenzie's work.

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Post Poet Pop, Episode 8 features Toby Altman—a poet, scholar, documentarian, and author of Discipline Park (selected as an Editor's pick from Wendy's Subway). Toby was born in the Prentice Women's hospital, designed by the architect Bertrand Goldberg, and has tracked the demolition of that building. He has traveled to many of Bertrand Goldberg's buildings to place his self as poet at the epicenter of the structures, and the poetry that has emerged is cunningly prescient.

Learn more about Toby's work at TobyAltman.com.

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