In this program we celebrate Black voices on the airwaves, from a 1967 radio-play staging of Samuel R. Delaney’s The Star-Pit  to Douglas Kearney’s 2018 appearance on Charles Bernstein’s Close Listening. The stations represented here include college and community broadcasters, flagship stations for the venerable Pacifica Radio network, modern internet radio, and even the BBC. Other authors featured include Audre Lorde, Amiri Baraka, Yusef Komunyakaa, Claudia Rankine, Tyehimba Jess, Erica Hunt, and Tracie Morris.

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Al Filreis met up with Sarah Riggs, Lee Ann Brown, and Laynie Browne at the Renee & Chaim Gross Foundation in lower Manhattan to talk about two poems by the late Stacy Doris. The discussion included remembrances of Doris as friend and poetry-world colleague; that happens along the way but in particular toward the end. Mostly, though, the group worked through close readings of parts of two poems from the book Paramour (2000, Krupskaya): “Ménage à Trois” and “A Month of Valentines.”

In this episode, a group gathered in the Wexler Studio at the Kelly Writers House to discuss the poems and legacies of two important poets we lost in the last years: Jerome Rothenberg and Pierre Joris. Al Filreis guided the discussion, joined by Nicole Peyrafitte, Charles Bernstein, and Ariel Resnikoff.

The winter solstice will take place this year at 10:03 on the morning of December 21st. It’s an astronomical event thoroughly woven into the fabric of our culture, especially the holidays and festivals that we celebrate at this time of year, which seek light in the midst of our darkest days. For many lovers of contemporary poetry, the solstice also brings bittersweet memories of the late Bernadette Mayer, whose beloved Midwinter Day was written in its entirety on December 22, 1978.

In this episode, Al Filreis was joined in the Wexler Studio at the Kelly Writers House by George Quasha and Chris Funkhouser. The three discuss Quasha’s ongoing series of preverbs, which Funkhouser has worked for years to record and can be found at PennSound here.