The Exacting Clam Cephalopodcast

David Collard and Kurt Luchs discuss their two recent books: Collard's A Crumpled Swan: Fifty essays about Abigail Parry's 'In the dream of the cold restaurant' (Sagging Meniscus, June 2025) and Luchs' Tributaries: Essays & Verses Flowing From & Celebrating Favorite Poems (Sagging Meniscus, December 2025).

After a long hiatus, Kurt Luchs returns with another poem from his 2024 collection,  Death Row Row Row Your Boat . This episode's poem is the second in the collection: "Mine".

Today Kurt Luchs begins a series of readings of poems from Death Row Row Row Your Boat , his new collection from Sagging Meniscus. This episode's poem is the first in the collection: "A Mist in the Tree".

In this episode, Guillermo Stitch, Executive Editor of Exacting Clam, reads his editorial from the Winter 2023 issue .

In this brief but informative episode, the host (or a pigeon, or perhaps Mrs. Brodsky herself), having damaged the sun and been bitten by a doorbell, is led to reconsider career options.

Today we talk about the play Kinderkrankenhaus and its new production at the Brick Theater in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY, with author Jesi Bender, director Nola Latty, and assistant director/dramaturg AJ Stoogenke. Jesi Bender is an artist from Upstate NY. Her play, Kinderkrankenhaus , was published by Sagging Meniscus Press in late 2021 and debuted at Colgate University's Brehmer Theater in 2022....

The Cephalopodcast returns to life with a brief report from an appropriately mollusk-friendly region—Wellfleet, Massachusetts. Featuring "observations and admonitions" from roving, raving publisher Jacob Smullyan and proper poems by Clam regulars Mike Silverton and Marvin Cohen, its nudities of meaning are gracefully hidden behind the murmur of a consuming sea.

In this episode, Kevin Philip Sirois presents C.J. Spataro’s gorgeous, moving, strange yet familiar story, “The Becoming,” available in the print edition of Exacting Clam’s Autumn 2021 issue . C.J. Spataro is the MFA program director at Rosemont College and the editorial director of Philadelphia Stories and PS Books. She is an award-winning short story writer, Pushcart Prize nominee, and a Pennsyl...

In this installment of the Cephalopodcast, Kevin Philip Sirois talks with publisher Jacob Smullyan about art's futility and necessity, the origins of Sagging Meniscus and Exacting Clam, the Cephalopodcast itself, and, especially, Royce M. Becker.

In this, the Cephalopodcast's inaugural episode, host Kevin Philip Sirois reads pieces by Kurt Luchs, Charles Holdefer, Steven D. Schroeder, and Daniel Beauregard. Books from this episode: Kurt Luchs: Falling in the Direction of Up Charles Holdefer: Dick Cheney in Shorts Exacting Clam No. 1 — Summer 2021