Lovely loves, we went on a panda break but we're back now with our latest drop: a conversation with the inimitable Tommye Blount on color, order and desire.

TOMMYE BLOUNTE grew up in Detroit, Michigan. He earned an MFA from Warren Wilson College. He is the author of the poetry collection Fantasia for the Man in Blue (2020) and the chapbook What Are We Not For (2016). Blount has been awarded scholarships and fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Cave Canem, and Kresge Arts. He lives in Novi, Michigan.

PELEGRINO WITH LIME.

Tommye Blount Interview

The Poet Salon is a podcast where poets talks over drinks prepared especially for them.Your hosts are Gabrielle Bates, Luther Hughes, and Dujie Tahat.

In our first season, we'll interview some of the very best in the world. Each of our guests will span two episodes over two weeks. In the first episode with them, we have a wide-ranging conversation about their work. In the second, we have shorter discussion about a poem our guest loves. 

Our first episode drops January 9, 2019. Keep up with us on our website (thepoetsalon.com) and on Twitter (@poetsalonpod).

Introducing The Poet Salon: Season 1 Trailer!

We're live! In this, our first episode, you'll hear us discuss the virtues and vices of chapbooks. We we interview the inimitable Lena Khalaf Tuffaha over Sonnet Spiced Coffee.

LENA KHALAF TUFFAHA is an American poet, writer, and translator of Palestinian, Jordanian, and Syrian heritage. She is the winner of the 2016 Two Sylvias Chapbook Prize for Arab in Newsland, and the author of Water & Salt, a book of poems from Red Hen Press published in April 2017, which won the Washington State Book Award. You can follow her on Twitter @LKTuffaha.

SONNET SPICED COFFEE RECIPE

The word “sonnet” comes to us from the Italian word “sonetto,” meaning little song. We don’t know exactly what song is inspiring this coffee, but we’re pretty sure it would sound amazing if sung by Fairuoz (iconic Lebanese diva, see picture below). This drink is pretty easy to make (assuming you know how to make coffee in a French Press and have a bean grinder). Simply coarse-grind your coffee beans and spices together, then proceed with your coffee brewing per usual. Sonnet Spiced Coffee pairs splendidly with fresh satsumas, tiny porcelain cups, and this very episode.

-8 tablespoons of coffee (we used Peets “Big Bang” blend)
-3 black peppercorns
-dash of cardamom
-dash of cinnamon
-dash of nutmeg
-dash of crushed clove

REFERENCES

-"Translation" and "Water & Salt" by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha
-Invasive Species (Nightboat) by Marwa Helal
-"Imagining a Vernacular Future", A Brooklyn Poets class taught by Marwa Helal
-American-Arab Anti-Discrimination committee (ADC)
-Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU)
-"'I Belong to Many Places': A Q&A with Washington State Book Award Winner Lena Khalaf Tuffaha" (The Seattle Times, December 2018)
-"Hold Up! Time For An Explanatory Comma" (NPR Code Switch)
-"Dozens of Palestinian Detainees on Hunger Strike Are Hospitalized" (The New York Times, May 2014)
-"Ana La Habibi" by Fairuz
-Touched (Sibling Rivalry Press) by Luther Hughes

Lena Khalaf Tuffaha + Sonnet Spiced Coffee

We're here! Last week, we were chatting it up with Nabila Lovelace about the South, the Conversation Literary Festival, and, of course, violence and intimacy. This week, Nabila brought in "On Kindness" by Aracelis Girmay. Hear her read it and be healed.

NABILA LOVELACE is a born and raised Queens native, as well as a first generation American. In her debut collection, Sons of Achilles, Nabila attempts to examine the liminal space between violence and intimacy. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Narrative Northeast, Washington Square Review, Day One, ESPNW, & Vinyl. She is co-founder of The Conversation Literary Festival.  

ARACELIS GIRMAY is the author of three collections of poetry: the black maria (BOA Editions, 2016); Kingdom Animalia (BOA Editions, 2011), winner of the 2011 Isabella Gardner Poetry Award and the GLCA New Writers Award, and a finalist for both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award; and Teeth (Curbstone Press, 2007). The recipient of fellowships from Cave Canem, Civitella Ranieri, and the National Endowment for the Arts, Girmay is the winner of a 2015 Whiting Award for Poetry. She teaches in Hampshire College’s School for Interdisciplinary Arts and Drew University’s low-residency MFA program in poetry.

Nabila Lovelace reads Aracelis Girmay’s “On Kindness”

It's goin up on a Tuesday, dearest listener, and for this week's episode we get into it with the inimitable Hanif Abdurraqib about sneakers, slashes, and suffering for one's art. Mmhmmm. But first your favs chat it up about how many rejections we can take before letting go of a dream journal... 

HANIF ABDURRAQIB is a poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio. His first full-length poetry collection, The Crown Ain't Worth Much, was released in 2016 from Button Poetry, was named a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Prize, and was nominated for a Hurston-Wright Legacy Award. His first collection of essays, They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us, was released in 2017 by Two Dollar Radio and was named a book of the year by Buzzfeed, Esquire, NPR, Oprah Magazine, and The Los Angeles Review, among others. Hanif’s book Go Ahead In The Rain published this year by University of Texas Press debuted as a New York Times Best Seller. His next books are A Fortune For Your Disaster from Tin House and They Don't Dance No' Mo'  2020 from Random House.

SPRITE in a glass. No ice. Straw optional.

Hanif Abdurraqib + Sprite

It's our last episode of the season! After chopping it up with Hanif Abdurraqib last week on his work, he brought in Angela Veronica Wong's "Elsa Was Stabbed To Death She Had Her Key" to share and marvel over.

HANIF ABDURRAQIB is a poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio. His first full-length poetry collection, The Crown Ain't Worth Much, was released in 2016 from Button Poetry, was named a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Prize, and was nominated for a Hurston-Wright Legacy Award. His first collection of essays, They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us, was released in 2017 by Two Dollar Radio and was named a book of the year by Buzzfeed, Esquire, NPR, Oprah Magazine, and The Los Angeles Review, among others. Hanif’s book Go Ahead In The Rain published this year by University of Texas Press debuted as a New York Times Best Seller. His next books are A Fortune For Your Disaster from Tin House and They Don't Dance No' Mo'  2020 from Random House.

ANGELA VERONICA WONG is a writer, artist, and educator living in New York City. She is a former Fulbright scholar and Humanities New York Public Humanities fellow. She has won the Poetry Society of America New York Chapbook Fellowship and been a finalist for the Tarpaulin Sky Book Prize, The Frost Place Chapbook Contest, Slash Pine Chapbook Contest, Fordham University Poets Out Loud Prize and a semi-finalist for Center For Book Arts Chapbook Competition and Akron Poetry Prize. Her work has been nominated for several Pushcart Prizes and the Best of the Net. She was a Hemispheric Institute EMERGENYC fellow. Her performance work has been featured in independent galleries in Buffalo, Toronto, and New York City.

Hanif Abdurraqib reads Angela Veronica Wong's "Elsa Was Stabbed To Death She Had Her Key"

Hello beautiful beautiful people! We're back! Season two is here and what a season it is. We're thrilled to start of 2020 talking about the books that messed us all the way up in 2019 and to chat with the inimitable Jericho Brown about the South, rhyme, and why we write at all.

Jericho Brown is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, and the National Endowment for the Arts, and he is the winner of the Whiting Writer's Award. Brown’s first book, Please (New Issues 2008), won the American Book Award. His second book, The New Testament (Copper Canyon 2014), won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. His third collection is The Tradition (Copper Canyon 2019). His poems have appeared in The Bennington Review, Buzzfeed, Fence, jubilat, The New Republic, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, TIME magazine, and several volumes of The Best American Poetry. He is an associate professor and the director of the Creative Writing Program at Emory University.

The Bizzy Izzy: sherry, bourbon, pineapple, and lemon juice on ice in a high ball glass. A pre-prohibition cocktail created by Tom Bullock, the first African-American to author his own cocktail manual.

Jericho Brown + The Bizzy Izzy

Hey you! This week we pop off on prosody before sitting down with the amazing Bettina Judd. Bettina takes us through her interdisciplinary approach to poems, patience, and of course, JOY!

Bettina Judd is an interdisciplinary writer, artist and performer whose research focus is on Black women's creative production and our use of visual art, literature, and music to develop feminist thought. Her current book manuscript argues that Black women’s creative production is feminist knowledge production produced by registers of affect she calls “feelin.” She is currently Assistant Professor of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Washington. She has received fellowships from the Five Colleges, The Vermont Studio Center and the University of Maryland. Her poems and essays have appeared in Torch, Mythium, Meridians and other journals and anthologies. Her collection of poems titled patient. which tackles the history of medical experimentation on and display of Black women won the Black Lawrence Press Hudson Book Prize and was released in November of 2014. As a performer she has been invited to perform for audiences within the United States and internationally.

JOY! Spritzes: An Aperol Spritz you have to toast the way Lucille Clifton signed all her books—with the word "JOY!" in all caps!

Bettina Judd + JOY! Spritz

Our people, our people! We're back this week with a fresh new episode featuring the one and only Oliver de la Paz. He came through The Poet Salon to talk about parenting, prose poems, and myths.

OLIVER DE LA PAZ is the author of five collections of poetry, Names Above Houses, Furious Lullaby (SIU Press 2001, 2007), and Requiem for the Orchard (U. of Akron Press 2010), winner of the Akron Prize for poetry chosen by Martìn Espada, Post Subject: A Fable (U. of Akron Press 2014), and the forthcoming book The Boy in the Labyrinth (U. of Akron Press 2019).  He is the co-editor with Stacey Lynn Brown of A Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Persona Poetry (U. of Akron Press 2012).  He co-chairs the advisory board of Kundiman, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the promotion of Asian American Poetry. A recipient of a NYFA Fellowship Award and a GAP Grant from Artist Trust, his work has appeared in journals like Virginia Quarterly Review, North American Review, Tin House, Poetry, and in anthologies such as Asian American Poetry:  The Next Generation. He teaches at the College of the Holy Cross and in the Low-Residency MFA Program at Pacific Lutheran University. 

The Long Line: Espresso soda, almond syrup, chocolate bitters.

Oliver de la Paz + The Long Line

Hello dearest dearests—what a time to be alive listening to podcasts! If you're here, you probably know the drill already. If not, you're about to hear a thoughtful and laugh-filled conversation with Taneum Bambrick about sturgeon, sex, and stuff you throw in the trash. If you're new to The Poet Salon, stay tuned for next week, where she brings a poem for us to fawn over. 

Taneum Bambrick is the author of Vantage, which was selected by Sharon Olds for the 2019 American Poetry Review/Honickman first book award (Copper Canyon Press 2019). Her chapbook, Reservoir, was selected by Ocean Vuong for the 2017 Yemassee Chapbook Prize. A graduate of the University of Arizona’s MFA program, she is the winner of an Academy of American Poets University Prize, an  Environmental Writing Fellowship from the Vermont Studio Arts Center, and the 2018 BOOTH Nonfiction Contest. Her poems and essays appear or are forthcoming in The New Yorker, The American Poetry Review, PEN, Narrative, The Missouri Review, 32 Poems, West Branch, and elsewhere. She has received scholarships from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. She is a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University.

End of Tour Toddy: A regular Hot Toddy with a splash of hopped mead

Taneum Bambrick + End of Road Toddy

Have you washed your hands yet? Please take care of your selves and each other.

This week, we recorded remotely for the first time. After chopping it up about how COVID-19 has affected our relationships to poetry, we dive into a conversation with Paisley Rekdal from a few months ago about mythology, movement, and making difficult editorial choices. 

PAISLEY REKDAL  is the author of a book of essays, The Night My Mother Met Bruce Lee;  the hybrid photo-text memoir, Intimate; and five books of poetry: A Crash of Rhinos; Six Girls Without Pants; The Invention of the Kaleidoscope; Animal Eye, a finalist for the 2013 Kingsley Tufts Prize and winner of the UNT Rilke Prize; and Imaginary Vessels, finalist for the 2018 Kingsley Tufts Prize and the Washington State Book Award. Her newest work of nonfiction is a book-length essay, The Broken Country: On Trauma, a Crime, and the Continuing Legacy of Vietnam. A new collection of poems, Nightingale, which re-writes many of the myths in Ovid's The Metamorphoses, was published spring 2019.  Appropriate: A Provocation, which examines cultural appropriation, is forthcoming from W.W. Norton in Feb. 2021.  She is the guest editor for Best American Poetry 2020. Her work has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Fellowship, a Fulbright Fellowship, a Civitella Ranieri Residency, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, Pushcart Prizes (2009, 2013), Narrative's Poetry Prize, the AWP Creative Nonfiction Prize, and various state arts council awards. Her poems and essays have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, Poetry, The New Republic, Tin House, the Best American Poetry series (2012, 2013, 2017, 2018, 2019), and on National Public Radio, among others. She is a Distinguished Professor at the University of Utah, where she is also the creator and editor of the community web project Mapping Salt Lake City. In May 2017, she was named Utah's Poet Laureate and received a 2019 Academy of American Poets' Poets Laureate Fellowship. 

THE DARK SISTER: Pear juice, ginger soda, and a dash of aged balsamic vinegar.

Paisley Rekdal + The Dark Sister

O dear ones—hope you're staying safe and well! We're coming to you from our respective apartments for our second conversation with Paisley Rekdal, who was kind enough to bring in Brigit Pegeen Kelley's "Black Swan". We geeked. If you haven't yet, be sure to check out last week's episode and leave us a sweet review!

PAISLEY REKDAL  is the author of a book of essays, The Night My Mother Met Bruce Lee;  the hybrid photo-text memoir, Intimate; and five books of poetry: A Crash of Rhinos; Six Girls Without Pants; The Invention of the Kaleidoscope; Animal Eye, a finalist for the 2013 Kingsley Tufts Prize and winner of the UNT Rilke Prize; and Imaginary Vessels, finalist for the 2018 Kingsley Tufts Prize and the Washington State Book Award. Her newest work of nonfiction is a book-length essay, The Broken Country: On Trauma, a Crime, and the Continuing Legacy of Vietnam. A new collection of poems, Nightingale, which re-writes many of the myths in Ovid's The Metamorphoses, was published spring 2019.  Appropriate: A Provocation, which examines cultural appropriation, is forthcoming from W.W. Norton in Feb. 2021.  She is the guest editor for Best American Poetry 2020. Her work has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Fellowship, a Fulbright Fellowship, a Civitella Ranieri Residency, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, Pushcart Prizes (2009, 2013), Narrative's Poetry Prize, the AWP Creative Nonfiction Prize, and various state arts council awards. Her poems and essays have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, Poetry, The New Republic, Tin House, the Best American Poetry series (2012, 2013, 2017, 2018, 2019), and on National Public Radio, among others. She is a Distinguished Professor at the University of Utah, where she is also the creator and editor of the community web project Mapping Salt Lake City. In May 2017, she was named Utah's Poet Laureate and received a 2019 Academy of American Poets' Poets Laureate Fellowship. 

BRIGIT PEGEEN KELLY was born in Palo Alto, California, in 1951. Her first collection of poems, To The Place of Trumpets (1987), was selected by James Merrill for the Yale Series of Younger Poets. Song (BOA Editions), which followed in 1995, was the 1994 Lamont Poetry Selection of the Academy of American Poets. Her third collection, The Orchard (2004), was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, the Los Angeles Times Book Award in Poetry, and the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry. Her work has also appeared in several volumes of the Pushcart Prize Anthology and several volumes of The Best American Poetry. She has taught at the University of California at Irvine, Purdue University, Warren Wilson College, and the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, as well as numerous writers' conferences in the United States and Ireland. In 2002 the University of Illinois awarded her both humanities and campus-wide awards for excellence in teaching. She died in October 2016.

Paisley Rekdal reads Brigit Pegeen Kelly "Black Swan"

This week, friends, we're sitting with the question "So what do you write about?" ahead of a lovely conversation with Michelle Peñaloza. We chop it up about confession, contrast, and kasamas while sipping on Fire and Chrysanthemums. Enjoy!

MICHELLE PEÑALOZA is the author of Former Possessions of the Spanish Empire, winner of the 2018 Hillary Gravendyk National Poetry Prize (Inlandia Books, 2019). She is also the author of two chapbooks, landscape/heartbreak (Two Sylvias, 2015), and Last Night I Dreamt of Volcanoes (Organic Weapon Arts, 2015). The recipient of fellowships and awards from the University of Oregon, Kundiman, Hugo House and The Key West Literary Seminar, Michelle has also received support from Lemon Tree House, Caldera, 4Culture, Literary Arts, VONA/Voices, and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, among others. The proud daughter of Filipino immigrants, Michelle was born in the suburbs of Detroit, MI and raised in Nashville, TN. She now lives in rural Northern California.

FIRE AND CHRYSANTHEMUMS: Chrysanthemum tea, Scotch and lemon juice, garnished with burnt lemon.

Michelle Peñaloza + Fire and Chrysanthemums

Hi loves, we're back with part deux of our conversation with the vibrant Michelle Peñaloza. Coming off of last week's lovely conversation about her own work, for this episode, she brought in Douglas Kerney's "Tallahatchie Lullabye, Baby". We excited to share the poem and this chat with you. Hope you're staying safe!

MICHELLE PEÑALOZA is the author of Former Possessions of the Spanish Empire, winner of the 2018 Hillary Gravendyk National Poetry Prize (Inlandia Books, 2019). She is also the author of two chapbooks, landscape/heartbreak (Two Sylvias, 2015), and Last Night I Dreamt of Volcanoes (Organic Weapon Arts, 2015). The recipient of fellowships and awards from the University of Oregon, Kundiman, Hugo House and The Key West Literary Seminar, Michelle has also received support from Lemon Tree House, Caldera, 4Culture, Literary Arts, VONA/Voices, and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, among others. The proud daughter of Filipino immigrants, Michelle was born in the suburbs of Detroit, MI and raised in Nashville, TN. She now lives in rural Northern California.

DOUGLAS KERNEY has published six books, most recently, Buck Studies (Fence Books, 2016), winner of the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Award, the CLMP Firecracker Award for Poetry and silver medalist for the California Book Award (Poetry). BOMB says: “[Buck Studies] remaps the 20th century in a project that is both lyrical and epic, personal and historical.” M. NourbeSe Philip calls Kearney’s collection of libretti, Someone Took They Tongues. (Subito, 2016), “a seismic, polyphonic mash-up that disturbs the tongue.” Kearney’s collection of writing on poetics and performativity, Mess and Mess and (Noemi Press, 2015), was a Small Press Distribution Handpicked Selection that Publisher’s Weekly called “an extraordinary book.” His work is widely anthologized, including Best American Poetry (2014, 2015), Best American Experimental Writing (2014), The Creative Critic: Writing As/About Practice, What I Say: Innovative Poetry by Black Writers in America, and The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop. He is also widely published in magazines and journals, including Poetry, Callaloo, Boston Review, Hyperallergic, Jacket2, and Lana Turner. His work has been exhibited at the American Jazz Museum, Temple Contemporary, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, and The Visitor’s Welcome Center (Los Angeles). A librettist, Kearney has had four operas staged, most recently Sweet Land, which received rave reviews fro The LA Times, The NY Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The LA Weekly. He has received a Whiting Writer’s Award, a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Cy Twombly Award for Poetry, residencies/fellowships from Cave Canem, The Rauschenberg Foundation, and others. A Howard University and CalArts alum, Kearney teaches Creative Writing at the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities. Born in Brooklyn, raised in Altadena, CA, he lives with his family in St. Paul.

Michelle Peñalozs reads Douglas Kearney's "Tallahatchie Lullabye, Baby"

Friends! Lovers! Nemeses! Hope you're washing your hands! This episode is our first recording entirely remotely—including our interview with special guest Aria Aber, who was gracious enough to deal with a combination of technical difficulties and our muddled quarantine brains. No amount of ambient noise could get in the way of her sheer brilliance though. 

ARIA ABER was raised in Germany. Her debut book Hard Damage won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry and was published in September 2019. Her poems are forthcoming or have appeared in The New Yorker, New Republic, Kenyon Review, The Yale Review, Poem-A-Day, Narrative, Muzzle Magazine, Wasafiri and elsewhere. A graduate from the NYU MFA in Creative Writing, where she was the Writers in Public Schools Fellow, she holds awards and fellowships from Kundiman, Dickinson House, and the Wisconsin Institute of Creative Writing. For Spring 2020, Aber will be the Li Shen Visiting Writer at Mills College. She is at work on a second book of poems and a novel.

DUINO MOJITO: muddled mint and a scoop of limone sorbet in a coup glass, topped with rum, fresh lime, and a splash of soda

Aria Aber + Duino Mojito

Yooo we did it! Another week, another episode. In this one, the one-and-only Aria Aber brings in Solmaz Sharif's "The Master's House" to binge and revel and geek and play and laugh and pray. And oh did we—

ARIA ABER was raised in Germany. Her debut book Hard Damage won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry and was published in September 2019. Her poems are forthcoming or have appeared in The New Yorker, New Republic, Kenyon Review, The Yale Review, Poem-A-Day, Narrative, Muzzle Magazine, Wasafiri and elsewhere. A graduate from the NYU MFA in Creative Writing, where she was the Writers in Public Schools Fellow, she holds awards and fellowships from Kundiman, Dickinson House, and the Wisconsin Institute of Creative Writing. For Spring 2020, Aber will be the Li Shen Visiting Writer at Mills College. She is at work on a second book of poems and a novel.

Born in Istanbul to Iranian parents, SOLMAZ SHARIF holds degrees from U.C. Berkeley, where she studied and taught with June Jordan’s Poetry for the People, and New York University. Her work has appeared in Harper’s, The Paris Review, Poetry, The Kenyon Review, the New York Times, and others. The former managing director of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, her work has been recognized with a “Discovery”/Boston Review Poetry Prize, Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, and an NEA fellowship. She was most recently selected to receive a 2016 Lannan Literary Fellowship and the 2017 Holmes National Poetry Prize from Princeton University. A former Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, she is currently an Assistant Professor in Creative Writing at Arizona State University. Her first poetry collection, LOOK, published by Graywolf Press in 2016, was a finalist for the National Book Award.

Aria Aber reads Solmaz Sharif's "The Master's House"

Another week, another hundred hand-washes. This week we get dig into ways to unstick writer's block before the blessing that was the virtual company of Keetje Kuipers. Together, we talk about symmetry, sadness, and sticking cold cheese in unexpected places. Buckle up!

Writer and editor KEETJE KUIPERS (pronounced Kay-tcha Ky-pers) is the author of three books of poems, all from BOA Editions. Her first book, Beautiful in the Mouth, was selected by Thomas Lux as the winner of the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize. Named one of the top ten debut poetry books of 2010 by Poets & Writers, her first book also appeared in the top ten on the contemporary poetry bestseller list. Her second collection, The Keys to the Jail (2014), was a book club selection for The Rumpus, and her third book, All Its Charms (2019), includes poems honored by publication in both The Pushcart Prize and Best American Poetry anthologies.

THE SMALL TOWN DRAG SHOW: fresh grapefruit juice, rose water, campari, served in a bedazzled mason jar

Keetje Kuipers + The Small Town Drag Show

Donate to bailout fund, pass it on.

Following up on last week's conversation with one of our favs Keetje Kuipers, today, we dig into one of her mentor's poems "Quarantine" by Eavan Boland.

Writer and editor KEETJE KUIPERS (pronounced Kay-tcha Ky-pers) is the author of three books of poems, all from BOA Editions. Her first book, Beautiful in the Mouth, was selected by Thomas Lux as the winner of the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize. Named one of the top ten debut poetry books of 2010 by Poets & Writers, her first book also appeared in the top ten on the contemporary poetry bestseller list. Her second collection, The Keys to the Jail (2014), was a book club selection for The Rumpus, and her third book, All Its Charms (2019), includes poems honored by publication in both The Pushcart Prize and Best American Poetry anthologies.

EAVAN BOLAND was born in Dublin, Ireland, on September 24, 1944. Her father was a diplomat and her mother was an expressionist painter. At the age of six, Boland moved with her family to London, where she first encountered anti-Irish sentiment. She later returned to Dublin for school, and she received her B.A. from Trinity College in 1966. She was also educated in London and New York. Boland's poetry collections include A Poet's Dublin (Carcanet Press, 2014), A Woman Without a Country (W. W. Norton, 2014), New Collected Poems (W. W. Norton, 2008), An Origin Like Water: Collected Poems 1967-1987 (W. W. Norton, 1996), and In Her Own Image (Arien House, 1980).

Keetje Kuipers reads Eavan Boland's "Quarantine"

Hello beautifuls—we're nearing the end of our second season (one more episode to go!) and we're grateful you're here with us. This week we answer TWO audience questions about capital-P Poetry and reading rituals. Then, we get the chance to (virtually) chop it up with the one and only delight Justin Phillip Reed.

JUSTIN PHILLIP REED is an American poet, essayist, and amateur bass guitarist. His preoccupations include horror cinema, poetic form, morphological transgressions, and uses of the grotesque. He is the author of two poetry collections: The Malevolent Volume (2020) and Indecency (2018), both published by Coffee House Press. He participates in vague spirituality and alternative rock music cultures. He was born and raised in South Carolina and enjoys smelling like outside.

WHISKEY FROM THE BOTTLE: Whiskey from the bottle to your mouth.

Justin Phillip Reed + Whiskey From The bottle

Congrats! You, us, we have made it through two whole seasons of this wacky little experiment to get poets to talk to us about poems. Can't think of more lovely way to close us out than with this conversation with the one and Justin Phillip Reed on Reginald Shepherd's "Occurrences across the Chromatic Scale". Listen to us astonish, awe, swell, delight, and learn from, over, below this poem. Then be sure to go back and re-listen the very first episode. It's a treat!

JUSTIN PHILLIP REED is an American poet, essayist, and amateur bass guitarist. His preoccupations include horror cinema, poetic form, morphological transgressions, and uses of the grotesque. He is the author of two poetry collections: The Malevolent Volume (2020) and Indecency (2018), both published by Coffee House Press. He participates in vague spirituality and alternative rock music cultures. He was born and raised in South Carolina and enjoys smelling like outside

REGINALD SHEPHERD was born on April 10, 1963, in New York City and raised in tenements and housing projects in the Bronx. He received his BA from Bennington College in 1988 and MFA degrees from Brown University and the University of Iowa. His first collection, Some Are Drowning (1994), was chosen by Carolyn Forché for the Associated Writing Programs' Award in Poetry. His other collections are Fata Morgana (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007), winner of the Silver Medal of the 2007 Florida Book Awards; Otherhood (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003), a finalist for the 2004 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize; Wrong (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1999); and Angel, Interrupted (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1996). He is also the author of Orpheus in the Bronx: Essays on Identity, Politics, and the Freedom of Poetry (Poets on Poetry Series, University of Michigan Press, 2007) and the editor of The Iowa Anthology of New American Poetries (University of Iowa Press, 2004) and of Lyric Postmodernisms (Counterpath Press, 2008). His work has been widely anthologized, and has appeared in four editions of The Best American Poetry and two Pushcart Prize anthologies. His honors and awards include grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Illinois Arts Council, the Florida Arts Council, and the Guggenheim Foundation. He lived in Pensacola, Florida. Shepherd died on September 10, 2008.

Justin Phillip Reed reads Reginald Shepherd's "Occurrences across the Chromatic Scale"

Beloveds, lovers, and loves—new episodes are coming to you, right here in this feed, starting January 25, 2021. Wash your hands. Get ready. It's gonna be good.

Season 3 - Coming Soon!

O hi there, it's us, The Poet Salon, back in your ears with our third season—and what a season it is! 

We're kicking things off with the incomparable Ada Limón. After some quick updates from us, we discuss the virtues of poetic "play" before conversing with the one-and-only Ada about the human condition, carrying grief, and Kentucky.

ADA LIMÓN, a current Guggenheim fellow, is the author of five poetry collections, including The Carrying, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry. Her fourth book Bright Dead Things was named a finalist for the National Book Award, a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She serves on the faculty of Queens University of Charlotte Low Residency M.F.A program and lives in Lexington, Kentucky.

JANUARY GIMLET: a bright, easy-to-mix cocktail with gin, cranberry juice, and lime.

Ada Limón + January Gimlet

Friends—here we are. Here you are. Here's Ada Limón reading Wanda Coleman's "Requiem for a Nest." It is almost certainly the record for times we thought we were done with the conversation and Luther realized he had more to say about the poem. Enjoy. We did—we serenely and delusionally did.

ADA LIMÓN, a current Guggenheim fellow, is the author of five poetry collections, including The Carrying, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry. Her fourth book Bright Dead Things was named a finalist for the National Book Award, a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She serves on the faculty of Queens University of Charlotte Low Residency M.F.A program and lives in Lexington, Kentucky.

WANDA COLEMAN grew up in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. During her lifetime she worked as a medical secretary, magazine editor, journalist, and Emmy Award-winning scriptwriter before turning to poetry. Her poetry collections include Mercurochrome: New Poems (2001), which was a finalist for the National Book Award in poetry; Bathwater Wine (Black Sparrow Press, 1998), which received the 1999 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize; Native in a Strange Land: Trials & Tremors (1996); Hand Dance (1993); African Sleeping Sickness (1990); Heavy Daughter Blues: Poems & Stories 1968-1986 (1988); and Imagoes (1983). She also wrote the books Jazz and Twelve O'Clock Tales: New Stories (2008), Mambo Hips & Make Believe: A Novel (Black Sparrow Press, 1999), and A War of Eyes and Other Stories (1988). Coleman lived in Los Angeles until her death on November 22, 2013.

Ada Limón reads Wanda Coleman's "Requiem for a Nest"

The Poet Salon is a podcast where poets talks over drinks prepared especially for them. Your hosts are Gabrielle Bates, Luther Hughes, and Dujie Tahat.

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