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Poetry Off the Shelf

English, Poetry, 1 season, 110 episodes, 3 days, 18 hours, 3 minutes
About
Producer Helena de Groot explores the diverse world of contemporary poetry with readings by poets, interviews with critics, and short poetry documentaries. Nothing is off limits, and nobody is taken too seriously.
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Stay in Character

Gregory Pardlo on improv, therapy, and driving around with his father’s ashes.
2/13/202445 minutes, 53 seconds
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Instructions for Divorce

Caitlin Cowan on rejection, tradwives, and poems from our better self.
1/30/202450 minutes, 25 seconds
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Make Art for Me

Blake Butler on complex mourning, the suicide of his wife Molly Brodak, and finding his way back.
1/16/20241 hour, 25 seconds
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Poets We Lost in 2023

Remembering the lesbian poet and activist Minnie Bruce Pratt, as well as the Palestinian poet and symbol of the resistance, Refaat Alareer.
1/3/202444 minutes, 54 seconds
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The Utopian Business

Steve Zeitlin and Bob Holman on the healing act of writing, small frogs, and politics at the fiddle festival.
12/12/202336 minutes, 44 seconds
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Cease and Desist

Laura Mullen on academia, death threats, and doing the next brave thing.
11/30/202353 minutes, 45 seconds
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Falling Off the Stairs

Daniel Brock Johnson on risk, a T-shirt mantra, and life after the death of his friend James Foley.
11/14/202346 minutes, 14 seconds
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Ghost Sister

Sebastian Merrill on the voice of his former self, the underworld, and laughing during yoga.
10/31/202346 minutes, 46 seconds
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Living in And Times

 Sahar Muradi on cyclical time, leather butterflies, and saying goodbye to her father.
10/17/202353 minutes, 4 seconds
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Pen Pals

Sean Cole on loneliness, fear of aging, and what poems can do.
10/3/202354 minutes, 54 seconds
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Notes From the Bathhouse

Eric Sneathen on queer utopia, bad writing, and San Francisco in the ’70s.
9/19/202358 minutes, 19 seconds
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The Magic Section

Irène Mathieu on pediatrics, suburbs without a TV, and our body's unknown terrain.
9/5/20231 hour, 2 minutes, 20 seconds
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My Totally Normal Crisis

Natalie Shapero on Wheel of Fortune, babysitting for her landlord, and pretending not to grieve.
8/22/202345 minutes, 2 seconds
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The Eldest Daughter

Rosanna Young Oh on her parents’ grocery store, leaving poetry, and the duties of the firstborn. 
8/8/202331 minutes, 47 seconds
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Invisible Hands

Airea D. Matthews on self-interest, starry skies, and her parents’ fateful wedding day.
7/25/202356 minutes, 5 seconds
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Chaos Reigns

Sophus Helle on empire, Calvin and Hobbes, and the world's first author. 
7/11/202353 minutes, 42 seconds
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The Fact of a Suitcase

Leslie Sainz on Bill O’Reilly, glassblowing, and the lure of praise.
6/27/202343 minutes, 24 seconds
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Good Old Sonnet

Diane Seuss on New York in the ’70s, virtue, and her father’s early death.
6/13/202346 minutes, 29 seconds
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Add Me to the Forest Floor

Katie Farris on cancer, desire, and her early-menopause care package. 
5/30/202355 minutes, 16 seconds
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Let the Record Hide

Paisley Rekdal on maps, Sisyphus, and the dangers of beauty.
5/16/20231 hour, 3 minutes, 32 seconds
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As Best I Could

Aaron Smith on shame, telling the truth, and his mother's last lipstick.
5/2/20231 hour, 1 minute, 44 seconds
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A Human Joy

Rebecca Gayle Howell and Ashley M. Jones on working-class poems, good food, and their fathers’ bodies.
4/18/202348 minutes, 21 seconds
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Center Stage

Jennifer Jean on foster care, finding her voice, and loving her father as he was.
4/4/202345 minutes, 36 seconds
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Mom, I Love You

Mahogany L. Browne on her first kiss, family secrets, and having your book banned.
3/21/20231 hour, 24 seconds
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My Alleged Accident

Janine Joseph on memory loss, car sounds, and a mirror that loves you.
3/11/20231 hour, 6 minutes, 48 seconds
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The Book of Possibilities

Peter Cole on his brother's death, finding his vocation, and the erotic pull of letters.
2/21/202357 minutes, 31 seconds
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New Parents

Raymond Antrobus on late-night BBC poetry dubs, real people, and becoming a father.
2/8/20231 hour, 10 minutes, 12 seconds
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Intimate Distance

Gabrielle Bates on betrayal, home church, and living in her mother's slaughterhouse.
1/24/202346 minutes, 49 seconds
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Sonic Trust Fund

Marisa Tirado on Selena, cow skulls, and the memory of adobe brick.
1/10/20231 hour, 6 minutes, 18 seconds
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Poets We Lost in 2022

Remembering Richard Howard as a poet, mentor, and friend, plus a few words on money by Bernadette Mayer.
12/27/202252 minutes, 2 seconds
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Attica, Again

Celes Tisdale on similarities, teaching after the uprising, and his mother's favorite poet.
12/13/202240 minutes, 49 seconds
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Hiding Between the Loaves

Belarussian poets Valzhyna Mort and Julia Cimafiejeva on magic, transformation, and what's hidden underneath the forest floor.
11/29/20221 hour, 2 minutes, 20 seconds
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Please Poem

JoAnna Novak on islands, a plush placenta, and a gift from the suicide hotline.
11/15/202245 minutes, 46 seconds
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Give Me a Sign

Alexandra Lytton Regalado on fate, snake mirrors, and the daily work of letting go.
11/1/20221 hour, 1 minute, 26 seconds
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As I Am

Ama Codjoe on normal naked bodies, solving problems, and her childfree life.
10/4/202255 minutes, 34 seconds
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The Land Is the Center

Noʻu Revilla on ancestral history in newspapers, ocean consciousness, and how to be a guest.
9/20/202249 minutes, 45 seconds
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Remember Every Ginseng Seed

Chelsea Harlan on knowledge, creaturehood, and the quest for her mother’s secret sadness.
9/6/202259 minutes, 30 seconds
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Before We Return to Dust

André Naffis-Sahely on desert sand, rootlessness, and the long shadow of fascism.
8/23/202249 minutes, 3 seconds
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The Future Trembles

Elisa Gabbert on commitment, boredom, and the poem as theater. 
8/9/202248 minutes, 24 seconds
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Trickster God

Saeed Jones on accuracy, being funny, and creating what we need.
7/26/20221 hour, 2 minutes, 3 seconds
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The Healing Brush

Chantal Gibson on ancestors, laundry, and Frantz Fanon for beginners.
7/14/202243 minutes, 45 seconds
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Yelling Down the Phone

Nina Mingya Powles on muscle memory, Haka tutorials, and the shock of home.
6/28/202252 minutes, 2 seconds
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Telling the Truth

Niina Pollari on sunflowers, redemption, and the most depressing phone note in the world.
6/14/202246 minutes
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Team Mystery

Victoria Chang on bonsai trees, witticisms, and the wisdom of not giving a crap.
5/31/202240 minutes, 37 seconds
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All There Is

Tom Sleigh about his romance with experience, fancy jackets, and one last visit to the dog beach.
5/17/20221 hour, 6 minutes, 19 seconds
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The Neverending Quest

Sylvie Kandé and her translator Alexander Dickow on the courage of migrants, the limits of language, and an epic without a nation.
5/3/20221 hour, 3 minutes, 52 seconds
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The Body You Control

Kim Moore on playing the trumpet, misogyny, and the men we love.
4/19/202254 minutes, 8 seconds
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Pushing the Ear

Tommye Blount on transformation, Kids Incorporate, and the joy of drowning in diction.
4/5/202251 minutes, 55 seconds
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Blossoms in Ukraine

Oksana Maksymchuk and Oksana Lutsyshyna on life as a refugee, the God of comfort, and the deep roots of the war.
3/22/20221 hour, 2 minutes, 5 seconds
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Listen for My Name

Julie Enszer and Elena Gross on community care, the AIDS epidemic, and OutWrite, the conference that shaped queer literary history.
3/8/202252 minutes, 36 seconds
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Ghost Diplomat

Hoa Nguyen on photographs, her mother's past with the motorcycle circus, and the quiet ways to talk to ghosts.
2/22/202245 minutes, 12 seconds
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My Body, My Stones

Poet and playwright Malcolm Tariq on listening, field trips with his brother, and the perils of dating while Black.
2/8/202252 minutes, 41 seconds
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The Big Hollow

Kaveh Akbar on human wondering, fat squirrels, and the best spouse in the world.
1/25/202256 minutes, 19 seconds
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A Little Wrong

Bianca Stone on family trauma, wrinkled towels, and the case against self-improvement.
1/10/202257 minutes, 39 seconds
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Poets We Lost in 2021

Remembering the life, poetry, and activism of Janice Mirikitani, plus a few words on love by bell hooks.
12/21/202130 minutes, 43 seconds
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Bird in a Drawer

Keats Conley on smelly ducks, spiders, and the limits of the human perspective.
12/7/202149 minutes, 6 seconds
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How to Be a Family of One

Steven Espada Dawson on possibility, toothpaste, and the grief of cosmic aloneness.
11/23/20211 hour, 2 minutes, 16 seconds
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Heart of a Reporter

Noor Hindi on home ownership, evictions court, and her father's grief.
11/9/20211 hour, 1 minute, 44 seconds
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A History with Holes

Clint Smith on being human, healing on a plantation, and the difference between Jefferson and Grant.
10/26/202141 minutes, 51 seconds
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My Drowning Home

Isabel Duarte-Gray on town gossip, folk remedies, and the music of Kentucky.
10/13/202153 minutes, 54 seconds
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When Time is Kind

Poet and priest Spencer Reece on his cousin's murder, the AIDS epidemic, and bearing witness to a moment.
9/28/202148 minutes, 52 seconds
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Technically Roommates

Chen Chen on nourishment, homophobia, and breaking free of the fear of failure.
9/14/202158 minutes, 33 seconds
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Leaving and Loving Afghanistan

Zohra Saed on cooking, culture, and the volunteer-led rescue operation to get Afghans to safety.
8/31/202131 minutes, 11 seconds
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Dante for Today

Mary Jo Bang on her 15-year long translation effort to remake Dante’s Divine Comedy for the modern ear. 
8/10/202144 minutes, 37 seconds
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My Imagined Incoherence

Tracy Fuad on Yelp reviews, mortality, and the weather in her mind.
7/27/202138 minutes, 11 seconds
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The Final Girl

torrin a. greathouse on public transport, horror, and the love of a chosen family.
7/13/202155 minutes
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Parents in a Poem

Raymond Antrobus on forgiving his dad, becoming a father, and poetry dubs on late-night BBC.
6/29/20211 hour, 1 minute, 7 seconds
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Patterns of Memory

Natasha Trethewey on writing a memoir about her mother’s life and murder.
6/15/20211 hour, 6 seconds
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Not My Face in the Mirror

Vievee Francis (part 2) on beauty in a racist world.
6/1/202126 minutes, 46 seconds
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Salvation in the Dark

Vievee Francis on dark corners, an encounter with a bear, and the promise of the north.
5/18/202157 minutes, 15 seconds
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A Sea of Rhythm

Translator Emily Drumsta geeks out about the poetic patterns in the work of Iraqi modernist Nazik al Mala'ika.
5/4/202144 minutes, 56 seconds
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Wild at the Root

Molly McCully Brown and Susannah Nevison on Gmail poems, pot roast, and the legacy of pain.
4/20/202156 minutes, 48 seconds
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The Light is Going Out

Famous Polish poet Adam Zagajewski remembered by friend and Translator Clare Cavanagh.
4/6/202145 minutes, 26 seconds
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A Room of Our Own

Cornelius Eady on Sterling Brown’s South: his porch, banter, and barbershop.
3/23/202144 minutes, 7 seconds
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Save Everything

Kimiko Hahn on tie-dying on the stove, puns, and her father's things.
3/9/202145 minutes, 18 seconds
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The Landscape Within

C. Dale Young on sugar cane fields, his favorite saint, and the machinations of the mind.
2/23/202145 minutes, 23 seconds
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This Is a River

Poet and founder of Friends of the Los Angeles River Lewis MacAdams, in the words of his friend Kevin Opstedal.
2/9/202149 minutes, 29 seconds
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Mad at the Right People

Hafizah Geter on shelves full of Black writers, forgiveness, and knowing your history.
1/26/202145 minutes, 24 seconds
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You Get Proud by Practicing

Meg Day on the poetry and activism of the late Laura Hershey, lip reading in a masked world, and the joy of connection.
1/12/20211 hour, 1 minute, 21 seconds
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Keep Going

A look back at the early days of the pandemic—eight poets about Zoom calls, the egg shortage, and being stranded abroad.
1/12/202133 minutes, 28 seconds
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Poverty’s History, Episode 2: Let the People Speak

How a Victorian and a Harlem Renaissance poet struggled with poverty and the publishing world—while facing racism and classism—to become widely read and legends to us. Featuring interviews with experts Dr. Gene Jarrett, Dr. Tara Betts, Dr. Elizabeth McHenry, Dr. Joe Trotter, and Dr. R. Baxter Miller.
12/15/20201 hour, 16 minutes, 58 seconds
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Elegies for the Future

Lilly Rosenberg Fellowship winner Khaty Xiong on intergenerational trauma, a chicken's neck, and the long wave of grief.
12/1/202050 minutes, 4 seconds
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Creatures of Giving

Lilly Rosenberg Fellowship winner Luther Hughes on crows, processing trauma, and the allure of the wind.
11/17/202049 minutes, 57 seconds
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Start with One Thread

Alexandria Hall on farm sounds, solo time, and the way into a difficult poem.
11/3/202038 minutes, 54 seconds
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A Practice of Care

EJ Koh on distance, broken English, and writing poems that forgive.
10/20/202048 minutes, 41 seconds
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Better Broken Than Whole

Will Harris on mixedness, intimacy, and the music of difficult poems.
10/6/20201 hour, 2 minutes, 30 seconds
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No Place Like Home

Camille Dungy on words, home, and motherhood in times of climate collapse.
9/22/202054 minutes, 11 seconds
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Words in the Attic

Joy Ladin on the failures of language, courage, and the trans parable of Jonah and the Whale.
9/8/202053 minutes, 57 seconds
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Heroes History Forgets

Remembering Irish poet Eavan Boland, with her friends Jody Allen Randolph and Paula Meehan.
8/25/202038 minutes, 9 seconds
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I Love You, Wanda

Terrance Hayes on Wanda Coleman. Note from Terrance Hayes: “I cancelled this interview about Wanda Coleman’s work after signing the Poetry Foundation Petition. When the Foundation President and Board chair resigned, I decided to resume the interview believing the actions an indication of the PF’s willingness to change. Though I’m not yet quite convinced I should resume submitting my own poems to the magazine, I hope this interview represents  a willingness to remain in dialogue as PF rises to meet the other demands and challenges. Do check out the work of Wanda Coleman." To learn more: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/LetterOfCommitment
8/11/202054 minutes, 6 seconds
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The Bureau Under Your Bed

Interrogating the government’s half century of surveillance of Black writers.
7/21/202053 minutes, 29 seconds
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Empire State of Mind

Take a walk through post-WWI Paris in this recently reissued Modernist epic.
7/7/202041 minutes
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The Fire This Time

Gwendolyn Brooks, Elizabeth Alexander, and Haki Madhubuti on America’s perennial struggle to recognize that Black Lives Matter.
6/3/202019 minutes, 44 seconds
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I Come From Love

Nikky Finney on her father, her childhood, and the memories that made her.
5/26/202043 minutes, 35 seconds
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Phillis Reimagined

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers on listening to her ancestors.
5/12/202053 minutes, 1 second
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Poverty’s History, Episode 1: In the Beginning Was the Word

The first installment of a special series about the intersections between poetry and poverty.
4/29/20201 hour, 9 minutes, 52 seconds
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The Invention of the Self

Peter Murphy on a 16th-century poem that still speaks to us today.
4/14/202035 minutes, 26 seconds
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Our New Reality

Quarantined with kids, Zoom chats, and stranded abroad: eight poets on what life is like for them these days.
3/31/202033 minutes, 1 second
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Poems You Can Touch

Dorianne Laux on her favorite shirt, ugly California, and bringing her mother back to life.
3/17/202036 minutes, 29 seconds
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The Eternal Present

Biographer Jonathan Blunk on the life and longing of James Wright. Need a transcript of this episode? Request a transcript here.
3/3/202041 minutes, 59 seconds
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The Sovereign Poet

Layli Long Soldier on the sacred and the useful.
2/18/202035 minutes, 14 seconds
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The Truth Sometimes Rhymes

Jericho Brown wants to make rebellious art.
2/4/202028 minutes, 43 seconds
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Fragments from the Future

Brenda Shaughnessy stares her fears in the face.
1/21/202029 minutes, 27 seconds
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Dreams and Fathers

Bruce Beasley on his writing process, and on how fathers might be like warm ice cubes.
1/7/202040 minutes, 10 seconds
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Poets We Lost This Year

Timothy Liu remembers the life and work of his friend Linda Gregg, plus readings by Marie Ponsot and W.S. Merwin.
12/18/201946 minutes, 45 seconds
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The Point of Poetry

Matthew Zapruder on dreams, silence, and smoking with Brodsky.
12/3/201932 minutes, 13 seconds
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How to Triumph Like a Girl

Ada Limón is done with hiding in poems.
11/19/201928 minutes, 33 seconds
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A Presence in the Sky

Fanny Howe gives away the secret to being cavalier and brave.
11/5/201934 minutes, 40 seconds
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The Garden We Share

Ross Gay finds joy in life that outlives us.
10/22/201928 minutes, 12 seconds
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After Fear and Raging

Toi Derricotte on feeling part of something bigger.
10/1/201927 minutes, 5 seconds