The Deerfield Public Library Podcast

Marina Shifrin, writer of Pickled Herring, and Bryan Simpson and Taylor Simpson, creators of Creating Things. This conversation was recorded as part of a special live podcast and film screening event we held last month at the Library. The filmmakers—who grew up here in Deerfield—all traveled home to share their films and an illuminating panel discussion with an audience of community members, friends, and family. You’ll hear how Marina, Bryan, and Taylor all reconnected on the film festival circuit, as well as entertaining and deeply felt reflections on the surprising thematic connections between the films, which both center on fathers and the power of translating life into art. The documentary Creating Things (2022) was created by brothers Bryan Simpson and Taylor Simpson and uses clips from an interview with their late father, Roger Simpson, in which he shares his personal philosophy of creativity as an artist, creative director, and person. Set to Taylor’s beautiful score, and featuring pieces of art and family mementos, it is a moving exploration of art-making and legacy. Creating Things won Best Documentary at the 2023 Pittsburgh Shorts film festival. We are honored to announce that Bryan and Taylor have made Creating Things available to stream for free on their website as of our podcast release, in celebration of their father’s birthday. Pickled Herring (2023), written by our guest Marina Shifrin, and directed by and starring Milana Vayntrub, tells the autobiographical story of a woman who has a major accident requiring assistance for her basic needs. Enter her Russian immigrant father, who has ideas of his own on how to help, from finding the best Russian foods or fixing her garage to cultural clashes over family, lifestyle, and art. Pickled Herring won Best Narrative Short at the Santa Clara International Film Festival. You can watch the trailer of Pickled Herring on Marina’s website. Marina has written about her father before, including in her book of essays 30 Before 30: How I Made a Mess of My 20s and You Can Too. Listen to our 2019 podcast conversation with Marina on 30 Before 30, or check it out here at the Library. Blog post: https://www.deerfieldlibrary.org/deerfield-filmmakers/ We hope you enjoy our 63rd interview episode! Each month (or so), we release an episode featuring a conversation with an author, artist, or other notable guests from Chicagoland or around the world. Learn more about the podcast on our podcast page. You can listen to all of our episodes in the player below or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts. We welcome your comments and feedback—please send to podcast@deerfieldlibrary.org.

The Best That You Can Do (Soft Skull Press, 2024) by our guest Amina Gautier, one of the most prolific and acclaimed short story writers working today. She lives in Chicago. The Best That You Can Do is a beautiful and wide-ranging collection, made up of what Gautier calls “very short fiction”—most of the 58 stories span only a few pages. This distilled form gives us lyrical explorations of Afro-Puerto Rican identity, the ups and fearful downs of romantic relationships, and political satires and counterfactuals in response to violence against Black bodies, among other concerns. In this captivating conversation, Gautier also reflects movingly on how cultural forms from classic literature to Gen-X nostalgia both ironically comment on and inspire her characters to action. Explaining the title, she tells us: “I’m always asking myself with fiction, “how do we get in our own way?” or “when we find ourselves trapped or in an inescapable space, what things can we do to try to claim agency or to try to free ourselves or try to find our way?” which evolved into the [new] collection: what is the best that we can do in any given situation?” Listen to hear more from a master storyteller responding to her time. You can check out books by Amina Gautier through our library, or find out more on her website. Amina Gautier is the author of the story collections At-Risk (2011), Now We Will Be Happy (2014), and The Loss of All Lost Things (2016). She is the recipient of the Blackwell Prize, the Chicago Public Library Foundation’s 21st Century Award, the International Latino Book Award, the Flannery O’Connor Award, and the Phillis Wheatley Award in Fiction. For her body of work, she received the prestigious PEN/MALAMUD Award for Excellence in the Short Story. The Best That You Can Do was published as the winner of the inaugural Soft Skull-Kimbilio Publishing Prize. Kimbilio for Black Fiction is a community of writers and scholars committed to developing, empowering, and sustaining fiction writers from the African diaspora and their stories. We hope you enjoy our 62nd interview episode! Each month (or so), we release an episode featuring a conversation with an author, artist, or other notable guests from Chicagoland or around the world. Learn more about the podcast on our podcast page. You can listen to all of our episodes in the player below or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts. We welcome your comments and feedback—please send to podcast@deerfieldlibrary.org. Follow us: Facebook X Instagram YouTube TikTok The Deerfield Public Library Podcast is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include Adult Language.

A conversation with Dr. Jennifer MacLure, Assistant Professor of English at Kent State University, on the occasion of the publication of her book, The Feeling of Letting Die: Necroeconomics and Victorian Fiction (Ohio State University Press, 2023). (Our conversation is also occasioned by our Library’s Classics Book Discussion current tackling of Bleak House, Charles Dickens’ massive 1853 masterpiece!) The Feeling of Letting Die looks at how the Victorian novel addresses a knotty problem at the heart of England’s rapidly industrializing society—how does a system that creates so much wealth also intentionally let certain people die in the service of the free market? Dr. MacLure explores the underpinnings of this “necroeconomic” system by looking at how fiction by Harriet Martineau, Elizabeth Gaskell, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, and William Morris can be seen as a “literary laboratory,” as experiments in how the feelings that support and thwart this economic system circulate. It’s both a delightful conversation and about the origins of some of our most pressing issues today—epidemics, workers rights, gender, racism, poverty, charity—and it all builds to an affirmation of the study of literature as an “epistemological tool” for understanding our world today. As Dr. MacLure puts it, the histories of political economy and literature are more intertwined—and weirder—than normally assumed. Whether you are already a fan or not of Victorian literature, this podcast offers an opportunity for thinking anew. You can check out The Feeling of Letting Die: Necroeconomics and Victorian Fiction here at the library in our podcast collection. We hope you enjoy our 61st interview episode! Each month (or so), we release an episode featuring a conversation with an author, artist, or other notable guests from Chicagoland or around the world. Learn more about the podcast (and our seven years of archives) on our podcast page. You can listen to all of our episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts. We welcome your comments and feedback—please send to podcast@deerfieldlibrary.org. You can listen to all of our episodes in the player below.

For our final day of Queer Poem-a-Day Lineage Edition, we reveal the unknown lineage story of the composer Robert Savage (whose "AIDS Ward Scherzo" is our excerpted music this year) and and his connection to poet John Ashbery. While preparing the music for this year, our pianist Daniel Baer discovered a 1982 piece by Savage "Chaconne," dedicated to John Ashbery. For the last month, while we've been presenting lineage poems, we've also been tracking down the mystery of their connection. We want to extend our enormous gratitude to David Kermani, John Ashbery's husband, for his time and sharing his insights. And to Jeffrey Lependorf, Executive Director of The Flow Chart Foundation, to Karin Roffman, Ashbery’s biographer, to academic Andrew Epstein, author of the Locus Solus Blog about the New York School Poets. We also want to point listeners to the work of pianist Marcus Ostermiller, whose performances of and dissertation on Robert Savage have been pioneering in increasing the visibility of this remarkable composer. Quotations from texts and interviews by John Ashbery are Copyright © 2019, 2020. All rights reserved. Used by arrangement with Georges Borchardt, Inc. for the John Ashbery Estate. deerfieldlibrary.org/queerpoemaday/ Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language. Find books from participating poets in our library's catalog. Queer Poem-a-Day is directed by poet and teacher Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Deerfield Public Library. Music for this third year of our series is AIDS Ward Scherzo by Robert Savage, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by generous donations from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission.

Amanda Gunn reads a poem by Judy Grahn and the poem "Like This" from Amanda's new book Things I Didn't Do With This Body (Copper Canyon Press, 2023). Quick Note: for today’s episode, Amanda Gunn chose a long poem by the living poet Judy Grahn as her lineage work—while Judy Grahn is not a “poet of the past” Amanda’s passion about this poem and this great figure of our current age was irresistible, so we end our Lineage series by reopening the present. Queer Poem-a-Day Lineage Edition is our new format for year three! Featuring contemporary LGBTQIA+ poets reading a poem by an LGBTQIA+ writer of the past, followed by an original poem of their own. Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language. Amanda Gunn is a poet, teacher, and doctoral candidate in English at Harvard where she studies poetry, ephemerality, and Black pleasure. Raised in Connecticut, she worked as a medical copyeditor for thirteen years before earning a master of fine arts degree in poetry from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins. She is a 2021-23 Wallace Stegner Fellow in poetry at Stanford, the inaugural winner of the Auburn Witness Poetry Prize honoring Jack Adam York, the recipient of a writing fellowship from the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, and the recipient of a Pushcart Prize. "Like This" was first published in Things I Didn't Do With This Body (Copper Canyon Press, 2023). Text of today’s original poem and more details about our program can be found at: deerfieldlibrary.org/queerpoemaday/ Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language. Find books from participating poets in our library's catalog. Queer Poem-a-Day is directed by poet and teacher Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Deerfield Public Library. Music for this third year of our series is AIDS Ward Scherzo by Robert Savage, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by generous donations from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission.

Megan Fernandes reads a poem by Federico García Lorca and "Paris Poem Without Clichés" from Megan's just-released book, I Do Everything I'm Told (Tin House, 2023) Queer Poem-a-Day Lineage Edition is our new format for year three! Featuring contemporary LGBTQIA+ poets reading a poem by an LGBTQIA+ writer of the past, followed by an original poem of their own. Megan Fernandes is a poet living in NYC. She has been published in The New Yorker, The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, among many others. Text of today’s original poem and more details about our program can be found at: deerfieldlibrary.org/queerpoemaday/ Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language. Find books from participating poets in our library's catalog. Queer Poem-a-Day is directed by poet and teacher Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Deerfield Public Library. Music for this third year of our series is AIDS Ward Scherzo by Robert Savage, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by generous donations from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission.

Randall Mann reads a poem by Karl Tierney and ""Wi-Fi" from Randall Mann's new book Deal: New and Selected Poems (2023, Copper Canyon Press). Queer Poem-a-Day Lineage Edition is our new format for year three! Featuring contemporary LGBTQIA+ poets reading a poem by an LGBTQIA+ writer of the past, followed by an original poem of their own. A queer poet, critic, and medical writer, Randall Mann is the author of five poetry collections: Deal: New and Selected Poems (2023, Copper Canyon Press), Complaint in the Garden, Breakfast with Thom Gunn, Straight Razor, Proprietary, and A Better Life. He is also the author of a book of criticism, essays, and interviews, The Illusion of Intimacy: On Poetry. His writing has appeared in The Adroit Journal, Lit Hub, Kenyon Review, Paris Review, Poetry Magazine, San Francisco Chronicle, and elsewhere. He is the recipient of the Kenyon Review Prize in Poetry and the J. Howard and Barbara M.J. Wood Prize from Poetry, and his books have been shortlisted for the Lambda Literary Award, California Book Award, and Northern California Book Award. Mann lives in San Francisco. Text of today’s original poem and more details about our program can be found at: deerfieldlibrary.org/queerpoemaday/ Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language. Find books from participating poets in our library's catalog. Queer Poem-a-Day is directed by poet and teacher Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Deerfield Public Library. Music for this third year of our series is AIDS Ward Scherzo by Robert Savage, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by generous donations from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission.

Jameson Fitzpatrick reads a text by Gertrude Stein and a poem "The Genius of Wives I Have Sat With" from Jameson's chapbook Mr. & (Indolent Books, 2018). Queer Poem-a-Day Lineage Edition is our new format for year three! Featuring contemporary LGBTQIA+ poets reading a poem by an LGBTQIA+ writer of the past, followed by an original poem of their own. Jameson Fitzpatrick is the author of the poetry collection Pricks in the Tapestry (Birds, LLC, 2020) and the chapbooks Mr. & (Indolent Books, 2018) and Morrisroe: Erasures (89plus/LUMA Publications, 2014). She is a 2023 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow in Creative Writing and teaches first-year writing at New York University. Text of today’s original poem and more details about our program can be found at: deerfieldlibrary.org/queerpoemaday/ Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language. Find books from participating poets in our library's catalog. Queer Poem-a-Day is directed by poet and teacher Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Deerfield Public Library. Music for this third year of our series is AIDS Ward Scherzo by Robert Savage, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by generous donations from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission.

Alicia Mountain reads a poem by Pat Parker and "Rewinding the Lesbian Sex Scene on a Flight to Denver" originally published in American Poetry Review. Queer Poem-a-Day Lineage Edition is our new format for year three! Featuring contemporary LGBTQIA+ poets reading a poem by an LGBTQIA+ writer of the past, followed by an original poem of their own. Alicia Mountain is the author of Four in Hand (BOA 2023). Her debut collection, High Ground Coward (Iowa 2018), won of the Iowa Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in The Nation, Guernica, Pleiades, Poetry Northwest, and American Poetry Review. Mountain was a Clemens Doctoral Fellow at the University of Denver and the 2020-2021 Artist in Residence at the University of Central Oklahoma. She serves on the board of Foglifter, a LGBTQIA+ journal based in the Bay Area. Mountain lives in New York City, where she is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Writer’s Foundry MFA program at St. Joseph’s University in Brooklyn. Text of today’s original poem and more details about our program can be found at: deerfieldlibrary.org/queerpoemaday/ Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language. Find books from participating poets in our library's catalog. Queer Poem-a-Day is directed by poet and teacher Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Deerfield Public Library. Music for this third year of our series is AIDS Ward Scherzo by Robert Savage, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by generous donations from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission.

Chen Chen reads a poem by Justin Chin and "The World's Italianest Resturant" from Chen's new book, Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency (BOA Editions, 2022); the poem first appeared in bath magg (bathmagg.com/chenchen2/). In this special longer episode, Chen Chen shares (in conversation with Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno) his reflections on the importance of libraries being for everybody and standing against censorship. Queer Poem-a-Day Lineage Edition is our new format for year three! Featuring contemporary LGBTQIA+ poets reading a poem by an LGBTQIA+ writer of the past, followed by an original poem of their own. Chen Chen’s second book, Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency, has been selected as a best book of 2022 by the Boston Globe, Electric Lit, NPR, and others. It has also been named a 2023 Notable Book by the American Library Association. His debut, When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities, was long-listed for the National Book Award and won the Thom Gunn Award, among other honors. A 2022 United States Artists Fellow, his work appears in many publications, including The New York Times and three editions of The Best American Poetry. Text of today’s original poem and more details about our program can be found at: deerfieldlibrary.org/queerpoemaday/ Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language. Find books from participating poets in our library's catalog. Queer Poem-a-Day is directed by poet and teacher Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Deerfield Public Library. Music for this third year of our series is AIDS Ward Scherzo by Robert Savage, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by generous donations from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission.

K. Iver reads a peice by David Wojnarowicz and their poem "Central Park" originally published in Bat City Review, Spring 2023. Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language. Queer Poem-a-Day Lineage Edition is our new format for year three! Featuring contemporary LGBTQIA+ poets reading a poem by an LGBTQIA+ writer of the past, followed by an original poem of their own. K. Iver (they/them) is a nonbinary trans poet born in Mississippi. Their book Short Film Starring My Beloved’s Red Bronco won the 2022 Ballard Spahr Prize for Poetry from Milkweed Editions. Their poems have appeared in Boston Review, Kenyon Review, TriQuarterly, and elsewhere. Iver has received fellowships from The Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, the Sewanee Writer’s Conference, and the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation. They have a Ph.D. in Poetry from Florida State University. For more, visit kleeiver.com. Text of today’s original poem and more details about our program can be found at: deerfieldlibrary.org/queerpoemaday/ Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language. Find books from participating poets in our library's catalog. Queer Poem-a-Day is directed by poet and teacher Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Deerfield Public Library. Music for this third year of our series is AIDS Ward Scherzo by Robert Savage, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by generous donations from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission.

Tara Skurtu reads a poem by Elizabeth Bishop and "Morning Love Poem" from from her debut collection The Amoeba Game (Eyewhere Publishing, 2017), and first published in the Minnesota Review. Queer Poem-a-Day Lineage Edition is our new format for year three! Featuring contemporary LGBTQIA+ poets reading a poem by an LGBTQIA+ writer of the past, followed by an original poem of their own. Tara Skurtu is the author of the chapbook Skurtu, Romania, the full poetry collection The Amoeba Game, and the upcoming collection Faith Farm. A two-time Fulbright grantee and recipient of a Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship, the Marcia Keach Poetry Prize, and two Academy of American Poets prizes, she is the founder of International Poetry Circle and a national steering committee member of Writers for Democratic Action. Tara is based in Brooklyn, where she is a writing coach for clients worldwide. Text of today’s original poem and more details about our program can be found at: deerfieldlibrary.org/queerpoemaday/ Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language. Find books from participating poets in our library's catalog. Queer Poem-a-Day is directed by poet and teacher Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Deerfield Public Library. Music for this third year of our series is AIDS Ward Scherzo by Robert Savage, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by generous donations from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission.

Armen Davoudian reads a poem by James Merrill and "The Yellow Swan" from Armen's chapbook Swan Song (Bull City Press, 2020), originally published in Literary Matters, 11.3. Queer Poem-a-Day Lineage Edition is our new format for year three! Featuring contemporary LGBTQIA+ poets reading a poem by an LGBTQIA+ writer of the past, followed by an original poem of their own. Armen Davoudian is the author of The Palace of Forty Pillars, forthcoming from Tin House Books in in Winter 2024. His poems and translations from Persian appear in Poetry magazine, the Hopkins Review, the Yale Review, and elsewhere. His chapbook, Swan Song, won the 2020 Frost Place Competition. Armen grew up in Isfahan, Iran, and is a PhD candidate in English at Stanford University. Text of today’s original poem and more details about our program can be found at: deerfieldlibrary.org/queerpoemaday/ Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language. Find books from participating poets in our library's catalog. Queer Poem-a-Day is directed by poet and teacher Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Deerfield Public Library. Music for this third year of our series is AIDS Ward Scherzo by Robert Savage, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by generous donations from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission.

Rachel Mennies reads a poem by Muriel Rukeyser and "Feburary 26, 2017" from Rachel's book The Naomi Letters. Queer Poem-a-Day Lineage Edition is our new format for year three! Featuring contemporary LGBTQIA+ poets reading a poem by an LGBTQIA+ writer of the past, followed by an original poem of their own. Rachel Mennies is the author, most recently, of THE NAOMI LETTERS (BOA Editions, 2021). Her poetry has appeared, or will soon, at Poetry, American Poetry Review, The Believer, and elsewhere. An editor for AGNI, she lives in Chicago. Text of today’s original poem and more details about our program can be found at: deerfieldlibrary.org/queerpoemaday/ Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language. Find books from participating poets in our library's catalog. Queer Poem-a-Day is directed by poet and teacher Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Deerfield Public Library. Music for this third year of our series is AIDS Ward Scherzo by Robert Savage, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by generous donations from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission.

Maggie Millner reads a poem by Adrienne Rich and Section 2.9 from Millner's new book Couplets. Queer Poem-a-Day Lineage Edition is our new format for year three! Featuring contemporary LGBTQIA+ poets reading a poem by an LGBTQIA+ writer of the past, followed by an original poem of their own. Maggie Millner is the author of Couplets (FSG, 2023). Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Nation, BOMB, Kenyon Review, Poetry, and elsewhere. She is currently a senior editor at The Yale Review and a lecturer in writing at Yale. Text of today’s original poem and more details about our program can be found at: deerfieldlibrary.org/queerpoemaday/ Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language. Find books from participating poets in our library's catalog. Queer Poem-a-Day is directed by poet and teacher Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Deerfield Public Library. Music for this third year of our series is AIDS Ward Scherzo by Robert Savage, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by generous donations from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission.

Derrick Austin reads a poem by Robert Hayden and "Black Docent." Queer Poem-a-Day Lineage Edition is our new format for year three! Featuring contemporary LGBTQIA+ poets reading a poem by an LGBTQIA+ writer of the past, followed by an original poem of their own. Derrick Austin is the author of Tenderness (BOA Editions, 2021), winner of the 2020 Isabella Gardner Poetry Award, and Trouble the Water (BOA Editions, 2016) selected by Mary Szybist for the A. Poulin Jr, Poetry Prize. His first chapbook, Black Sand, is recently out from Foundlings Press. Tenderness was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry, a Golden Poppy Award, and a Northern California Book Award. He is a 2022-2023 Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Scholar. Text of today’s original poem and more details about our program can be found at: deerfieldlibrary.org/queerpoemaday/ Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language. Find books from participating poets in our library's catalog. Queer Poem-a-Day is directed by poet and teacher Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Deerfield Public Library. Music for this third year of our series is AIDS Ward Scherzo by Robert Savage, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by generous donations from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission.

Richie Hofmann reads a poem by Walt Whitman and “Reconciliation.” Queer Poem-a-Day Lineage Edition is our new format for year three! Featuring contemporary LGBTQIA+ poets reading a poem by an LGBTQIA+ writer of the past, followed by an original poem of their own. Richie Hofmann is the author of two books of poems, A Hundred Lovers (2022) and Second Empire (2015). His poetry appears recently in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Review of Books, and The Yale Review, and has been honored with the Ruth Lilly and Wallace Stegner fellowships. Work from a new manuscript is forthcoming in Poetry and The Paris Review. He lives in Chicago. Text of today’s original poem and more details about our program can be found at: deerfieldlibrary.org/queerpoemaday/ Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language. Find books from participating poets in our library's catalog. Queer Poem-a-Day is directed by poet and teacher Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Deerfield Public Library. Music for this third year of our series is AIDS Ward Scherzo by Robert Savage, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by generous donations from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission.

For this third season of the program, we are shaking things up with a new format: Queer Poem-a-Day Lineage Edition. In each podcast episode, we asked a contemporary queer poet to read a work of influence by an LGBTQIA+ writer of the past followed by an original poem of their own. Our participating poets also discuss the poem they chose and how their own work responds, offering an educational opportunity to consider how today’s vibrant living voices are in conversation with the voices of the past that live on library shelves. Our new semi-daily format (shared Monday, Wednesday, and Friday), combined with additional educational programs, adds a new, enriching dimension to the Queer Poem-a-Day project. Queer Poem-a-Day is founded and co-directed by poet and teacher Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Library and host of the Deerfield Public Library Podcast. Music for this third year of our series is AIDS Ward Scherzo by Robert Savage, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. We are once again grateful to have received generous support from both the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission. To kick off season three of our series, Lisa and I had a short conversation reflecting on lineage, the threats to public libraries surrounding LGBTQIA+ programming and collections and the backdrop of new specifically anti-trans, and broadly anti-LGBTQIA+ laws, including book and curriculum bans. Our music has changed again as well: our Chicago-based pianist, Daniel Baer, chose the rarely performed AIDS Ward Scherzo by Robert Savage. He joins us for this introductory episode to think through our re-imagined series in the context of classical piano. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher Radio. Read our intro blog and see related programs at deerfieldlibrary.org/queerpoemaday Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language.

Jersey Breaks: Becoming an American Poet (W. W. Norton & Company, 2022) is the new memoir by former U.S. Poet Laureate, Robert Pinsky. Robert is the author of numerous poetry collections. Robert Pinsky is a celebrated poet, essayist, translator, teacher, and speaker. He served as the U.S. Poet Laureate from 1997-2000, during which time he founded the popular Favorite Poem Project. He is the author of many poetry collections, including the anthology The Figured Wheel: New and Collected Poems, 1966-1996, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and most recently the collection At the Foundling Hospital (FSG, 2016). He’s also the translator of the best-selling The Inferno of Dante. Robert is a professor of English and creative writing in the graduate program at Boston University. In the words of the New York Times Sunday Book Review, “No other living American poet—no other living American, probably—has done so much to put poetry before the public eye.” Jersey Breaks is a fascinating memoir, not least because Robert Pinsky’s poetry and essays often play with the expectations and confines of autobiography and poetry itself. In kaleidoscopic, essayistic chapters, Robert Pinsky considers the experiences that make up his life and voice, while sharing a deep wisdom about how the places and words that make up our identity are always in motion. You won’t want to miss this beautiful conversation in which Robert Pinsky tells us that including everything means including our questions about everything, too. You can check out Jersey Breaks and other books by Robert Pinsky here at the library, or check out his website. The Library is hosting a Favorite Poem Project Reading at the Library on Thursday, June 1, from 7:00—8:00 pm. If you are interested in being considered as a reader, please email me at favoritepoem@deerfieldlibrary.org with a favorite poem and why you chose it. Or, sign up to attend as an audience member. We hope you enjoy our 60th interview episode! Each month (or so), we release an episode featuring a conversation with an author, artist, or other notable guests from Chicagoland or around the world. Learn more about the podcast on our podcast page. You can listen to all of our episodes in the player below or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts. We welcome your comments and feedback—please send to podcast@deerfieldlibrary.org. The Deerfield Public Library Podcast is hosted by Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the library. We welcome your comments and feedback--please send to: podcast@deerfieldlibrary.org. More info at: http://deerfieldlibrary.org/podcast Follow us: Facebook Twitter Instagram YouTube TikTok The Deerfield Public Library Podcast is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include Adult Language.

We're sharing the recording of the special in-person interview we held earlier this month with New York Times bestselling author—and Deerfield resident—Lisa Barr. Our conversation was recorded live in front of an enthusiastic audience of fans, family, friends, book clubs, book bloggers, and neighbors. Lisa Barr’s novel Woman on Fire (2022) tells the story of the contemporary pursuit of a single Nazi-looted painting and the many lives it touches. Lisa shares how her own family history and her fascinating career as a journalist inspires her fiction. We take a local angle on this popular novel and discuss our own identity in the Village of Deerfield and surrounding areas as places where Holocaust survivors and their children made their lives. Weaving in themes from Lisa’s previous novels, The Unbreakables (2019) and the award-winning Fugitive Colors (2013), our conversation is both delightful and deep, considering painting and writing as sites for the expression of rage, passion, and escape. Find out how the Art Institute of Chicago’s 1991 exhibit Degenerate Art: The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany started Lisa on a path that led to the creation of her character Ernst Engle, a German Expressionist painter who features in both Fugitive Colors and in Woman on Fire. We even uncovered a local connection to that 1991 exhibit and a painting that hangs in our Library! You’ll also hear how actress and producer Sharon Stone came to option the film rights to Woman on Fire among many other stories from a bestselling author at her hometown library. You can check out books by Lisa Barr here at the Library or find out more on her website. We hope you enjoy our 59th interview episode! Each month (or so), we release an episode featuring a conversation with an author, artist, or other notable guests from Chicagoland or around the world. Learn more about the podcast on our podcast page. You can listen to all of our episodes in the player below or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts. We welcome your comments and feedback—please send to podcast@deerfieldlibrary.org. The Deerfield Public Library Podcast is hosted by Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the library. We welcome your comments and feedback--please send to: podcast@deerfieldlibrary.org. More info at: http://deerfieldlibrary.org/podcast Follow us: Facebook Twitter Instagram YouTube TikTok