Aracelis Girmay reading at the Unamuno Author Festival. The festival took place in May of 2019 in Madrid, Spain. This reading was recorded at La Residencia de Estudiantes which cultural luminaries such as Frederico Garcia Lorca and Salvador Dali once called home.

Learn more about Aracelis Girmay, here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/aracelis-girmay

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Episode #202 Aracelis Girmay Reading at the Unamuno Author Festival

Raena Shirali is a poet, editor, and educator whose latest book SUMMONINGS won the 2021 Hudson Prize. The book examines present-day witch hunting in India. Shirali reads from the book, discusses some of the formatting choices she made, and explains the connections she sees between explicit witch hunting in India, and social practices in the United States that similarly endanger women.

Learn more about Raena Shirali, here: http://www.raenashirali.com/

Get a copy of SUMMONINGS, here: https://blacklawrencepress.com/books/summonings/

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Episode #203 Raena Shirali Reads from Her New Collection SUMMONINGS

After a busy couple weeks at Close Talking headquarters, a slightly different show. This episode is from our sister-podcast, Poetry Spoken Here. The episode first aired in the summer of 2020 and was simply called "Black Lives Matter." The poems and voices featured are all from the Poetry Spoken Here archives and address race, policing, and more. Readers include Pulitzer Prize-winner Jericho Brown, the youngest ever Baltimore Youth Poet Laureate, Maren (Lovey) Wright Kerr, Chicago-area slam legend Maria "Mama" McCray, Sillerman First Book Prize winner Ladan Osman, and SlamFind creator and Bowery Arts and Science Executive Director Mason Granger.

You can listen to full readings, and interviews with the poets featured in this episode, here:
Jericho Brown, Episode #100: https://soundcloud.com/poetry-spoken-here/episode-100-jericho-brown-reading-at-the-unamuno-author-festival
Maren (Lovey) Wright Kerr, Episode #085: https://soundcloud.com/poetry-spoken-here/episode-085-maren-lovey-wright-kerr-and-lynne-sharon-schwartz-reviewed
Maria "Mama" McCray, Episode #058: https://soundcloud.com/poetry-spoken-here/episode-058-tribute-to-maria-mama-mccray
Ladan Osman, Episode #023: https://soundcloud.com/poetry-spoken-here/episode-023-ladan-osman-and-the-book-thing
Mason Granger, Episode #034: https://soundcloud.com/poetry-spoken-here/episode-034-mason-granger-and-billy-collins

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You can always send us an email with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Episode #175 - Poetry Spoken Here Ep. 132: Black Lives Matter

Superstar author Alex Foulkes sits down with the Booklings to talk about Rules for Vampires!

Episode #80: Alex Foulkes!

Connor and Jack discuss the sonically and thematically dense poem "Topsoil, in Repentance" by Sherry Shenoda. Shenoda's book MUMMY EATERS was longlisted for the National Book Award in 2022. The conversation moves from an exploration of internal rhymes and alliteration, to the climate crisis, to the religious implications of the word "repentance," to soil strata, and to the relative weight of humanity.

You can find out more about Sherry Shenoda, here: https://www.sherryshenoda.com/

Read the poem, here: https://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/2022/march/topsoil-repentance-sherry-shenoda

Topsoil, in Repentance
By: Sherry Shenoda

On my mind daily with the insistence of a metronome
is that thin granular layer, rich humus, spare humility,
black earth daily lifted and blown into the Gulf of Mexico.

Thinnest of salvations with a margin of error
wide as the pink, gelatinous body of the earthworm
Which my spade barely misses, and every time

my tines enter the ground, my wrist twists the damp loam,
I breathe easier to see them wriggling, unburied
fleeing the light, burrowing back down, aerating

this earth we have packed down with our culpability
this immense density of earth, only the topmost of which
can support the unimaginable numbers of us, our great warm swarm

Squinting up in immense sunlight I hear the silent swish and tick
the back-and-forth rhythm, the last few seconds before midnight
the enormity of the loan, which has been called in full

The hazy buzzing of the furry bees, busy in the branches
above my exposed neck, on any given day a stay
for a little while longer, of execution

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You can always send us an email with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at closetalkingpoetry@gmail.com.

Episode #176 Topsoil, In Repentance - Sherry Shenoda

Connor and Jack bid farewell to the year they've taken to calling "Twenty Twenty Poo" and contemplate the complexities of language in a wide-ranging conversation about a spectacular untitled poem by Diné poet Sherwin Bitsui, from his 2009 collection Flood Song. They discuss movement, the natural world, an extremely informative dissertation and more.

Learn more about Bitsui, here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/sherwin-bitsui

[Flicking off the light switch.]
By: Sherwin Bitsui

Flicking off the light switch.
Lichen buds the curved creases of a mind
pondering the mesquite tree’s dull ache
            as it gathers its leaves around clouds of spotted doves—
                        calling them in rows of twelve back from their winter sleep.

Doves’ eyes black as nightfall
shiver on the foam coast of an arctic dream
           where whale ribs
                      clasp and fasten you to a language of shifting ice.

Seeing into those eyes
you uncoil their telephone wires,
gather their inaudible lions with plastic forks,
tongue their salty ribbons,
            and untie their weedy stems from your prickly fingers.

You stop to wonder what like sounds like
when held under glacier water,
how Ná ho kos feels
under the weight of all that loss.



Check out episodes of Close Talking on YouTube: www.youtube.com/channel/UCCCSpjZcN1hIsG4aDrT3ouw
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Episode #177 [Flicking off the light switch.] - Sherwin Bitsui

In 2022 Poetry Spoken Here celebrated its 200th episode. We had guests from across the United States and around the world. We also shared even more readings from the Unamuno Author Festival which took place in 2019. Guests you will hear on this episode include Ashley M. Jones, the first Black Poet Laureate of Alabama, Emmy Award-Winning Director Violet Du Feng, Polaris Award-Winning throat-singer, poet, and activist Tanya Tagaq and many, many more.

In order or appearance in the show:
Episode 181: Ashley M. Jones: https://soundcloud.com/poetry-spoken-here/episode-180-ashley-m-jones-poet-laureate-of-alabama
Episode 182: Jonathan Mayers: https://soundcloud.com/poetry-spoken-here/episode-182-jonathan-mayers-poet-laureate-of-baton-rouge-on-writing-in-english-and-kouri-vini
Episode 198: Marty Gervais https://soundcloud.com/poetry-spoken-here/episode-198-marty-gervais-first-poet-laureate-of-windsor-ontario-shares-tales-from-the-road
Episode 200: Tanya Tagaq: https://soundcloud.com/poetry-spoken-here/episode-200-tanya-tagaq-reads-from-split-tooth
Episode 189: Wendy Hind: https://soundcloud.com/poetry-spoken-here/episode-189-open-mic-of-the-air-11
Episode 190: Teresa Dzieglewicz: https://soundcloud.com/poetry-spoken-here/episode-190-teresa-dzieglewicz-on-teaching-at-standing-rock 
Episode 195: Jim Cohn: https://soundcloud.com/poetry-spoken-here/episode-195-jim-cohn-and-the-power-of-the-storm-anthology
Episode 204: Violet Du Feng: https://soundcloud.com/poetry-spoken-here/episode-204-violet-du-feng-director-of-hidden-letters-on-the-secret-language-of-chinese-women
Episode 202: Aracelis Girmay: https://soundcloud.com/poetry-spoken-here/episode-202-aracelis-girmay-reading-at-the-unamuno-author-festival

SUBMIT TO THE OPEN MIC OF THE AIR! www.poetryspokenhere.com/open-mic-of-the-air
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Episode #206 2022: The Poetry Spoken Here Retrospective

Visit www.theconvolutedjalebi.com for the blog. I read a paragraph from the Short Story 'The Model Millionaire' by Oscar Wilde and picked out a word. I churned a creative writing prompt from the word and attempted it... May be you could try the writing prompt too :)
Let me know how much fun you had by commenting on the blog.
Thank you!

Churning Creative Writing Prompts

Dandy Daisies

Visit www.theconvolutedjalebi.com for the blog. I read a paragraph from the Short Story 'The Valley of Spiders' by H G Wells and picked out a word. I churned a creative writing prompt from the word and attempted it... May be you could try the writing prompt too :)
Let me know how much fun you had by commenting on the blog.
Thank you!

Churning Creative writing prompts

The Paramount Gaunt

Visit www.theconvolutedjalebi.com for the blog. I read a paragraph from the Short Story 'How the Leopard got his spots' by Rudyard Kipling and picked out a word. I churned a creative writing prompt from the word and attempted it... May be you could try the writing prompt too :)
Let me know how much fun you had by commenting on the blog.
Thank you!

The Jumpsome Fivesome

An almost weekly poetry podcast that features interviews with poets, reviews of poetry books, examinations of individual poems, and investigations of themes in poetry. Sit back, relax, and let poetry speak to you.

Close Talking is a poetry podcast hosted by good friends Connor Stratton and Jack Rossiter-Munley. In each episode the two read a poem and discuss at length. The pop culture references fly as freely as the literary theories. Close Talking is a poetry podcast anyone can enjoy.

New tracks tagged #Literary Podcast