February 25, 2012 Aaron Shurin, Part 3

On Saturday February 25th, we played part 3 of our interview with Aaron Shurin. During this segment we moved into talking about his book of personal essays King of Shadows. Aaron talked about what was made possible through writing in prose rather than poetry. We talked more in depth about the letters and conflict between Denise Levertov and Robert Duncan and discussed the balance between moral and poetic 'imperitives' in poetry. He also talked about his older work Unbound, which tackled the HIV epidemic in both the 'factual' and the 'creative.' And again, we got to hear his wonderful work. Click here to listen

February 18, 2012- Aaron Shurin Part 2!

This past Saturday, we played part 2 of our interview with Aaron Shurin, which concluded our talk about his new book Citizen, recently published by City Lights Books. We touched on how characters emerge in the book, including the use of gender in the text. Again, Shurin generously shared his process with us and how this book benefitted from a 'permission' to intensity that he reached at this point in his wonderful writing career. We got to sink our teeth into his complex, 'exuberant' language and hear him read quite a bit from the book. We started to talk about how (political) content is tackled in poetry without slipping into the didactic. Click here to listen

February 11, 2012- Aaron Shurin Part 1

This Saturday, we played the first part of our interview with Aaron Shurin, writer and professor at USF, who recently published his book Citizen with City Lights Books. Besides hearing some of his wonderful work, he discussed the construction of his book, his writing and editing process and his use of sound and sensuality in his poetry. Shurin generously tells us about the building blocks of Citizen, including his use of found text, his ideas about language and how place informs the work. Please listen on February 18th for part 2! Click here to listen

January 14, 2012- Spicer, MLK and gateway 'drugs.'

On Saturday, we read a couple of our favorite African American poets in honor of Martin Luther King Jr's birthday. We finally revealed the Spicer poem that was the source for our show title and got to hear Mr Spicer himself perform 'Sporting Life.' From there we discussed what instigates our writing. Aliens? Spirits? How does craft effect our writing? How do we let our emotions into our words? We read some song lyrics and talked about own non-poetry inspirations. We ended with some Velvet Underground and finally more homage to MLK.
Click here to listen

January 7, 2012... The Apocalypse!!!

This Saturday we talked about apocalyptic poetry and read some pieces that reminded us that the world is scheduled to end in December. We played Dylan Thomas reading his own work. We also listened to  Thomas's piece 'Vision and Prayer,' performed with challenging vocals and synthesized music composed by Milton Babbit. You can find this piece here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8gH-TbXUIc. The very interesting visual text can be found here:http://visoundtextpoem.blogspot.com/2008/10/vision-and-prayer-by-dylan-thomas.html.

To answer the trivial pursuit question, which Delia may have misquoted: What living creature kills humans SECOND only to humans: Mosquitos.

We discussed a show idea for a later date: What other types of art inspired us to become writers? For instance, music, art, song lyrics. Send us your own 'gateway-to-poetry' drug experiences at poetasradio@gmail.com

Click here to listen

December 17, 2011: Colleen Lookingbill

Last weekend Colleen Lookingbill joined us live in the studio and read from her recent book a forgetting of (lyric& Press). Among a flow of topics focusing on Colleen’s poetry and art, we discussed her writing and collage/assemblage processes, writing from the dream world, “silence as an idea of composition,” illness and the body and how it “teaches about itself,” language poetry, writing towards the “unknown,” and working with a palette of “found" objects.

In the second half, Colleen read two discursive pieces that she wrote during the Bay Area language poetry heyday, “Dream Body” and “Writing the Written”
that were published in Peter Gizzi’s Writing from the New Coast (O-blek) in 1993.

Colleen left us not only thinking about the various possibilities that arise when we play with both image and word, but she left us with several actual “vispo” (visual poem) pieces that include a variety of objects like GG Park leaves, puzzle pieces, poem fragments, antique figurines, sea pods, and wasp nests. Thank you Colleen! Click here to listen.

December 3, 2011- Poetry for the People!

This past Saturday we played Poetry for the People, an open reading taking place at Oscar Grant Plaza on Sundays at noon. This amazing series is being organized by Sara Larsen and David Brazil, who also publish TRY! Magazine. Listen to both poets and passersby read their own work, or the work of others. We want to give a shout out to Andrew Kenower for generously sharing his amazing recording of the event. Poetry for the People is still taking place at Oscar Grant Plaza, just off the 12st BART in Oakland. Please go check them out.

Click here to listen