May 19, 2013 Carla Harryman live!!!!

On Sunday May 19th, Carla Harryman did us the honor of joining us live in the studio. The show opens (and closes) with a recording of a performance of Carla's translation of a Theodor Adorno lecture. The lecture addresses how 'New Music' is 'bracketed away' from 'music as a totality' and how this new music strives to address social concerns. In this lecture, Adorno questions the term of 'New Music' while focusing mainly on Arnold Schoenberg. Carla talked about the possible connections between New Music and social critique. We discussed Carla's own relationship to music as well as how her poetry works on the page but also in performance. A little later in the interview, we transitioned to talking about her book of essays and poetry, Adorno's Noise (Essay Press 2008), and listened to examples of how the pieces within allow slippage between these two forms. Carla discusses her 'poetics of negation,' which grapples with the problem of language, it having become a doubtful mode of public communication and discourse (as similarly critiqued by Language poets.) We luckily did not end without hearing some work from this wonderful and complex book.
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May 5, 2013 Tinker Greene Live!

On May 5th poet, and awesome chapbook-maker, Tinker Greene joined us in the studio. We started off the interview talking about how Tinker began making chapbooks of his poetry. Tinker makes his chaps at home, incorporating photographs and art, and passes them out to those who want them. We discussed the tendency towards seriality. Tinker dates most of his poems; this fact led us to discuss time and writing, how time informs process and construction. We had the pleasure of hearing quite a few of his poems read in the studio. As a photographer, Tinker's poetic attention to the visual strongly conveys emotional content without sentimentality. Due to this interplay of the visual and written, his poems end up being inter-media pieces. He trusts that the images that come to him should be gathered in the poem. Tinker gives away his chaps to those who want them so if you can email us or comment on this post, and we can connect you with him. He is creating a new chap so expects to be doing readings soon. Keep your eyes open for announcements!!!!
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April 28, 2013 Round Table Discussion 4: Writing as Revolution

On April 28th, we sat down to chat amongst ourselves about writing as a revolutionary act. We hope that hearing our discussion will spur our listeners to join the conversation. First we tossed around the idea of 'revolution' itself and the different ways that writing can affect change. Through this conversation, we briefly returned to the subject of audience and how might writing and poetry reach enough people to create societal change. Also, who owns language and where does the poem come from? When we put words on paper, from where do those words originate? How do we strive to be political in our own writing. What attracts us to writing and talking about writing? And lastly, what kind of revolution are we looking for in the world?
This coming Sunday we'll have our first live interview in some weeks, but for now, we hope this round table talk encourages further consideration of poetry and social transformation.
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April 7, 2013 Round Table Discussion 3: Audience

On April 7th, the three of us sat down to talk about poetic audience. Who reads our writing and what agency does the poetry have in the larger world? We discussed 'difficult' poetry and whether this type of work is only read by other poets. We hope this work has a broader reach than just other experimental or Bay Area writers, but in this case, how do we share our work with those who might not otherwise feel drawn to it? We talked about how poetry and literature are taught in schools and how we may have come to be attracted to experimental work. As poets, we may or may not consider who we are writing to or about when we write the poem. We started to tackle issues of words and ownership (which we we delve further into in our next round table). Towards the end, we discussed the editing process and how community effects our writing.
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