Reginald Dwayne Betts — Essay on Reentry
This ‘Essay on Reentry’ charts life after prison: and the way that others keep your sentence alive even when you’re wishing to just get on with your own life. It’s about secrets and choice and disclos...
24 Maj 202117min
Li-Young Lee — From Blossoms
A poem about blossoms that is not only about blossoms. Li-Young Lee remembers a glorious day when he and a companion bought peaches; peaches that had come from blossoms. And in the taste of peaches, t...
21 Maj 202115min
Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo — Battlegrounds
This poem takes place on battlegrounds. The poet — Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo — is at Gettysburg National Military Park, where she wanders around the cemetery searching for the graves of Mexican soldiers....
17 Maj 202115min
Matthew Olzmann — Mountain Dew Commercial Disguised as a Love Poem
In this love poem, Matthew Olzmann writes about his wife — the poet Vievee Francis whose poem for Matthew was featured in the previous episode — and the reasons why their marriage might work: her cour...
14 Maj 202116min
Vievee Francis — How Delicious to Say It
Building up in lists of delicious words — uvular, hibiscus, loquacious, shuttlecock, dollop, chipotles and chocolate — this poem uses sensual language to make a simple point. Vievee Francis moves past...
10 Maj 202115min
Eavan Boland — Eviction
This poem offers critique into a moment of Irish history when Ireland, through independence, was rising to the light. But Irish women were facing lives as constricted in independence as under empire. ...
7 Maj 202115min
Jónína Kirton — Reconciliation
This poem starts off by describing how split the poet — Jónína Kirton — feels between two identities: having both Métis and Icelandic heritage. The poem imagines a bridge between these two places and ...
3 Maj 202113min
Lorna Goodison — Reporting Back to Queen Isabella
In Lorna Goodison’s imagined scene, Spain’s Queen Isabella receives the ‘report’ of the discovery of Xamaica from Christopher Columbus, an Italian man who was financed by the Spanish court to ransack ...
30 Apr 202112min
