The Poetry Saloncast

Audre Lorde Pleasure Activism adrienne maree brown Octavia Butler Chen Chen, “When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities” Khadija Queen’s “I’m so Fine” Take-Away Quotes “I thought about (the book) like a jewel setting. The Gettysburg poems were the center ring. The first and last sections would be the side settings. There are memoriam poems, and then there are love poems and happier poems about children. “You don’t have to try so hard to just be yourself. . . There’s plenty to write about each day. Just look at the news.” “We’re all being trained to be fierce in our writing, but are we doing it safely? Are we taking care of ourselves as we write?” “As much as I want to be a witness to the difficulty of the world, I also want to be a place of comfort. I think about that when (organizing a book or doing a reading).” “It’s about the battles, but it’s also about the love. We can’t keep going without the love. . . From what I remember about learning of the French Revolution, it started with mothers who couldn’t get bread for their children. I realized that revolutions are fought for love, not for ideals, but for love.”

Can you write love poems during a time of war? What about sex poems or erotic poems about your current “situationship?” In this interview, Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo discusses her latest book, Incantation, Love Poems for Battle Sites. She tells us that the book started with an artists grant which allowed her to visit Gettysburg to write about national monuments during a time when many were fighting over the meaning of those monuments and whether or not they should be kept or torn down. These poems became a centerpiece for the book, but around those central poems she also wrote poems about children growing up during this time, about her own love life, about daily life with its anxiety, hope and especially its acts of love. As she points out, the French Revolution kicked off because parents couldn’t get enough bread to feed their children. They fought not because of ideals, but because they wanted to protect those they loved. She continues this tradition in her work by providing not only poems of witness, but also poems of pleasure and comfort for all those who read her work. References Audre Lorde Pleasure Activism adrienne maree brown Octavia Butler Chen Chen, “When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities” Khadija Queen’s “I’m so Fine” Take-Away Quotes “I thought about (the book) like a jewel setting. The Gettysburg poems were the center ring. The first and last sections would be the side settings. There are memoriam poems, and then there are love poems and happier poems about children. “You don’t have to try so hard to just be yourself. . . There’s plenty to write about each day. Just look at the news.” “We’re all being trained to be fierce in our writing, but are we doing it safely? Are we taking care of ourselves as we write?” “As much as I want to be a witness to the difficulty of the world, I also want to be a place of comfort. I think about that when (organizing a book or doing a reading).” “It’s about the battles, but it’s also about the love. We can’t keep going without the love. . . From what I remember about learning of the French Revolution, it started with mothers who couldn’t get bread for their children. I realized that revolutions are fought for love, not for ideals, but for love.”

In this interview Nadia discusses her second book of poems, I Say the Sky from published by University Press of Kentucky. You can take Nadia’s 7-Day New Year Writing and Meditation Program, starting January 17th, for free when you buy a copy of her book.

How do you process the passing of someone you love? In this interview, Lindsey Royce discusses her latest collection, The Book of John. Already an established poet, when her late husband, was diagnosed with terminal cancer, Royce wrote consistently about what she experienced during his last year of life. Her book documents the tender beauty, despair, anger and resilience of that last year and her journey into the next chapter. As the title suggests, The Book of John takes on a magnitude of biblical proportions, though it is not God who cares for John as he passes, but Lindsey. In this interview she discusses her influences, story, and what motivated the title poem of the book.

Tresha talks with Angela Penaredondo about her third collection, nature felt but never apprehended (Noemi Press, 2022). Angela discusses how personal and world history inspired her book. She relies on reading and research to generate writing, but sometimes allows another voice, less conscious and more magical. She utilizes different parts of her voice, voices of others, and multiple themes to create a collection that is intricately layered and rewards a second reading.

We're born in a specific place with a specific history. How do these arbitrary facts affect us as artists? In this podcast I talk with Jane Muschenetz about her collection, All the Bad Girls Wear Russian Accents (Kelsay Books, 2023). Jane was born to a Jewish family in Lviv, a city once under Soviet control, now located in Western Ukraine. As a resident of the US, Jane wrote poetry about a variety of topics. However, when Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022, Jane wrote about her roots and her experience as a Russian-Jewish immigrant. She writes, "Naming God is an ambition I do not share / I am only trying to unpack one girlhood’s worth of beginning". Enjoy this interview with our special guest.

Can a writer finish a book in time to meet a deadline? In our interview with DeShawn McKinney we discuss the genesis of his first chapbook, father, forgive me from Black Sunflower Press, 2003. Deshawn explains that he wrote a large portion of the book in 12 hours in order to meet the deadline for Black Sunflower. How does this help the process and how can other writers learn to work with these kinds of deadlines to catch and capture the heat of their emotions? Listen to this interview to hear our thoughts on this and other topics. References: James Baldwin, Ajanae Dawkins, Liz Barry, Sherman Alexie, Danez Smith, June Jordan

How does a person deal with grief in poetry? In this interview Joan Kwon Glass discusses her first full-length collection, Night Swim, winner of the Diode Poetry Prize (2021), which explores the death by suicide of both her nephew and sister. Glass believed nobody would want to read her book, but she discovered many with similar issues who craved an open forum to discuss them. These are the "Tribe of invisible people." Kwon discusses the poets she read to give her courage to write her own book, and what she learned about truth-telling along the way. References Black out poems Elisabeth Kubler-Ross TED KOOSER T.S. Eliot Ezra Pound Objective Correlative Diannelly Antigua Eugenia Lee Sparrows and Blood Sparrows Ugly Music Don't speak ill of the dead Spartans How Writing Heals, Hayley Bauman, Psy.D. Chen Chen Don't Call us Dead Danez Smith James Diaz, editor of Anti Heroine Chic Ellen Bass, The Human Line M.T. Vallarda, Harbor Review Kay Iver Mary Jo Bang, Elegy Lois P. Jones Rumi, the Guest House Sonia Greenfield

Do you struggle to make time for your creative self? In this episode, creativity experts and writers Tresha Faye Haefner and Jon Pearson discuss their different approaches to making time and finding motivation for their writing. As Jon notes, the difficulty is not writing but "starting" to write. Get some great tips to use in your creative process, from starting to celebrating, to just making the time! Listen now.

-"We thought we knew a lot about our history. We were wrong." - Heather Bourbeau How do you write poetry about historical people and events? In this interview, Heather Bourbeau discusses the way she tackles the personal and historical in her new book, Monarch. Broken into four parts, the collection illuminate aspects of history that schools often leave out of their curriculum, like the Miss Atomic Blast beauty pageant held in Nevada to celebrate the creation of the bomb, or the list of items left after Mt. St. Helens exploded. Heather gives tips how to connect with historical events, how to write about sometimes difficult subject matter, and how to do good self-care along the way.

How do we know what other people know? In this interview Douglas Manuel and Tresha Faye Haefner talk with Jessica Cuello about her third collection, Liar, selected by Dorianne Laux for the Barrow Street Book Prize. Her book explores issues of childhood trauma that children are taught to lie about or to hide from adults. Jessica discusses her own ambiguous, uncertain relationship with the lyric "I" when writing, and asks the question, "How do we know what others know?" As James Baldwin says, all art is a form of confession. Listen for references to James Baldwin, Dorianne Laux, and Mary Oliver.

In this interview, host Douglas Manuel gets his chance to interview Lois P. Jones, who interviewed him on Poet's Café. Lois discusses how winter stirs her imagination for poetry (as Wallace Stevens put it, "One must have a mind of winter") because of its mystery. Doug, Tresha and Lois discuss how poems confront readers, challenging them to use their own imaginations, and "complete" the poems as they read. She also references Lorca, Rilke, Neruda, Galway Kinnel and Joseph Fasano. Enjoy.

Get inside the mind of poet-activist, writer, and publisher Edward Vidaurre as Tresha and Douglas ask about his book Cry, Howl from PricklyPear Press and his work running FlowerSong Press. He talks about riding the bus to school and seeing others reading; how that inspired him to seek out authors like Miguel Hernandez, Wanda Coleman, Naomi Shihab Nye, Richard Wright, Claude Brown and others. Now he uses his writing to speak up about issues as a contrary political force in Texas and to use his position as an editor to elevate writers who might not get heard.

In this interview Kelly Cressio-Moeller discusses how music, art and cinema play into her writing. As a student of art history and a drummer, Kelly describes how she created flow in and between poems to make her first collection, Shade of Blue Trees! When Pulitzer Prize winner Dianne Seuss gave her advice to "build a section" of her book, she had to make hard choices to cut out her darlings. Quoting Yusef Kommunyakkaa, she reminds us, "The ear is the greatest editor," and as a poetry editor who reads hundreds of manuscripts, the hard work that makes things flow can make all the difference. Kelly also relates the story of her "easy poem" dictated to her from the largest moon she ever witnessed.

Does a poem start with an image or with sound? In this interview Douglas Manuel and Tresha Faye Haefner ask Ellen Bass about her writing process. She tells us about ways she uses an image to start a poem and her use of tools like sound to distract her "overly logical mind" while her more intuitive mind goes to work. When things don't go right the first time, though, she keeps trying, reorganizing syntax, talking with friends, etc. She tells the story of writing the title poem of her latest book, Indigo by writing many "failed" poems first, and only being "successful" after seeing the right image one day while out walking. There are good reasons why poets need to get out, she says, even if they are hermit introverts.

How can you cope with anxiety? Try writing a book about it. In this interview Kelli Russell Agdon discusses her latest book. Originally she tells us that the book began with two separate manuscripts melding into one. One book was a collection of poems about the broken world, and another about the broken self. Together they become her manuscript, Dialogues with a Rising Tide, out from Copper Canyon Press. Hear Kelli discuss the way she channels anxiety into writing, how she uses constraint to help her choose titles for her poems, and why she has more fun and ease when writing with friends.

Were there certain topics that were off limits to talk about when you were growing up? Any words you weren’t allowed to say? In this interview Diannely Antigua discusses her book Ugly Music, a book where the speaker explores her complicated relationship to sexuality against a strict religious background. Antigua tells us about her transformation from being a girl who didn’t want to fall asleep having impure thoughts to becoming a poet who can use the word p***y and d**k. If you have taboos to break in your writing, you’ll be able to relate.

In this interview Tanaya Winder discusses the way she has combined poetry and performance with social advocacy to help others feel seen in real life and on the page. Once a student at Stanford driven to pursue a degree in law, Tanaya eventually turned to poetry seeing it as a way to help marginalized communities and survivors of trauma find their voices. Coming from a life rooted in music and ceremony she also tells us about the way she uses song and sound to help her access her poems and honor her own heritage. Find out more by listening to this podcast or watching Tanaya's TED talk here.

In this interview Meghan Sterling, author of These Few Seeds (Terrapin Books, 2022), passionately discusses the complexities of love and how profound that experience is as a mother of a four-year-old girl. She says love is, “An enormous braid of hope, fear, longing, joy, exhaustion, disappointment, exhilaration and feeling like a fraud.” People limit themselves because loving is so frightening. “In the veins of love runs the iron of fear,” but for her, writing poetry keeps her honest. Even in seemingly “mundane” events, there is a voice that says, “This means more than what you see on the surface.” If you give it space, the poem tells you what it means – that the tree is cut down, that your jeans don’t fit. The poems are under the surface of your skin.

In this wide-ranging interview, Kai Coggin tells her story of meeting Sandra Cisneros along with her middle school English class and how the famous author encouraged her to make time for her own writing as well as bringing writing to others. Now Kai Coggin on her fourth book Mining for Stardust, uses poetry to "freeze time", recording the darkness and tempering it with the power of the light. She introduces young people to the kinds of poems that help them find and define their own identity and shows them that poetry is meant for everybody. This interview is packed with wisdom and insight to inspire any writer.