Drunk as a Poet on Payday

Today's guest is David Baker. Baker is a poet, educator, editor, and literary critic. His new book is Transit , and he is the author of 12 previous collections of poetry, including, most recently, Whale Fall and Swift: New and Selected Poems , and six works of nonfiction. The first of those, Meter in English , I found incredibly important as a young graduate student. Baker is an Emeritus Professor...

Today's guest is Dan Beachy-Quick! He is a poet, essayist, and translator. His work has been supported by the Monfort, Lannan, and Guggenheim Foundations, and longlisted for the National Book Award in Poetry. His poetry collections include North True South Bright , Spell , Mulberry , a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award for poetry, This Nest, Swift Passerine , Circle’s Apprentice , and...

Today's guest is Anna Lena Phillips Bell, and her new book, Might Could , won the Anthony Hecht Prize from Waywiser Books. Anna Lena Phillips Bell is also the author of Ornament , winner of the Vassar Miller Poetry Prize, and the chapbook Smaller Songs , from St Brigid Press. Poems appear in journals including The Southern Review, The Georgia Review, Electric Literature, Orion, The Sewanee Review...

Poet Lauren Camp is the author of the new book, Is Is Enough , a collection of poems that face her father’s dementia and the way she and her family are affected by it. Camp is the author of eight previous poetry collections, including In Old Sky , which grew out of her experience as Astronomer-in-Residence at Grand Canyon National Park. As New Mexico Poet Laureate, Lauren Camp created the New Mexi...

Happy National Poetry Month! Today, poet D.M. Aderibigbe joins me to talk about his new book, 82nd Division . D.M. Aderibigbe was born and raised in Lagos, Nigeria. Prior to 82nd Division , he published his first collection of poems, How the End First Showed, which won the Brittingham Prize in Poetry. He has received fellowships and scholarships from the Mississippi Arts Commission, Sewanee Writer...

Today, I’m so pleased to present my conversation with my friend, the essayist and poet, Heather Lanier, about her newest chapbook, Erasing the Book of Pregnancy . She is the author of the memoir, Raising a Rare Girl , a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, and along with her award-winning poetry chapbooks, she has published the full-length poetry collection, Psalms of Unknowing , which was...

Today's show features Patricia Smith, whose The Intentions of Thunder: New and Selected Poems , won the National Book Award for Poetry last fall. It’s a tremendous book, gathering a generous selection of her previous nine volumes along with the new pieces. Patricia Smith's previous books include Unshuttered ; Incendiary Art , winner of the 2018 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and finalist for the 2018...

The show's first overseas guest! I'm delighted to present my conversation with poet Matthew Francis, who joins me from his home in Wales to talk about his new book, The Green Month , a rendering of the Welsh poet Dafydd ap Gwilym, one of the most important figures in Welsh poetry. Matthew Francis, besides his work with Welsh poets, is the author of the poetry collections Blizzard , Dragons , Musco...

Today our guest is Elizabeth Bradfield, author of the new book of poems, SOFAR . Bradfield is also the author of the books Toward Antarctica ; Once Removed ; Approaching Ice , which was a finalist from the James Laughlin award from the Academy of American Poets; and Interpretive Work , which won the Audre Lorde Prize in Lesbian Poetry. She has edited the anthologies Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecol...

Today on the show is poet Eric Pankey, whose recent collection, Vanishments , is out from Slant Books. Eric is the author of many books of poems, including For the New Year , which was selected as the winner of the Walt Whitman Award by Mark Strand, The Pear as One Example: New and Selected Poems , and his most recent book prior to Vanishments, The History of the Siege , to name a few. His poetry,...

Today on the show we have the poet David Baker—but he joins us to talk about another poet, the late Stanley Plumly, his good friend, and whose new Collected Poems he has coedited with Michael Collier. Stanley Plumly published twelve collections of poetry along with four books of prose, including Posthumous Keats: A Personal Biography and Elegy Landscapes: Constable and Turner and the Intimate Subl...

Today on the show it's Natalie Shapero, and her new book, Stay Dead, her fourth full-length collection. Stay Dead was nominated for the longlist of the National Book Award in Poetry, I think even before it actually came out! And overseas, its British-published counterpart is a finalist for the equally impressive TS Eliot Prize. These are punchy poems, full of irony and humor and a sharp critical e...

It’s episode 20! And a special one in many ways. It’s my first live in-person podcast recording, and it’s with my great friend Ross White! White is the author of Charm Offensive and the chapbooks Valley of Want , How We Came Upon the Colony , and The Polite Society , and is teaching faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. White also runs Bull City Press, which focuses on chapbo...

Something special today everyone! Double poet day! My guests are Matt Donovan and Jenny George, coauthors of the new chapbook, We Are Not Where We Are , published this week by Bull City Press. The book is an erasure of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden. It’s fascinating to hear the two of them, long-time friends, talk about how they worked together on the project and what they were looking to do with t...

Today on the show we have Felicia Zamora with her new book Interstitial Archaeology , an Editor’s Pick for the Wisconsin Poetry Series. Like the title says, it’s a book that digs down into undiscovered spaces; but it’s also one that pushes out, makes those spaces have a place in the surface world. There’s such a breadth of artistic craft in this book, and it’s incredibly smart and funny at times—a...

Today on the show is Sandra Marchetti, author of the new poetry collection, Diorama . In addition to Diorama , Marchetti is the author of Aisle 228 , the 2023 Winner of The Twin Bill Book Prize for Best Baseball Poetry Book of the Year, and Confluence . Her poetry and essays have appeared in Poet Lore, Blackbird, Ecotone, Southwest Review , The Rumpus , Pleiades , and other venues. She is Poetry E...

On the show today is Kansas State Poet Laureate Traci Brimhall. Her new book of poems, Love Prodigal , is recently out from Copper Canyon .  Brimhall's previous books of poetry include Come the Slumberless to the Land of Nod , Saudade , Our Lady of the Ruins , and Rookery . Brimhall’s work has appeared in The New Yorker, Orion, Poetry, The Nation, and The New York Times Magazine. Through fellowshi...

Today's show features poet Lesley Wheeler, and her wonderful new book of poems, Mycocosmic . It’s a fascinating book both in its individual poems and in its overall assembly. It takes us under the earth to the mycelia below, and under the skin to the heart inside. Lesley Wheeler’s previous poetry collections include The State She’s In , Radioland , The Receptionist , Heterotopia , and Propagation...

Today on the show we have poet Christian Teresi, talking about his new book, What Monsters You Make of Them , recently published by Red Hen Press. Teresi has published poems in AGNI , The American Poetry Review , Kenyon Review , Blackbird , and many other places. He has also translated Book 7 of Nonnus of Panopolis’s Dionysiaca , the longest surviving text from Ancient Greece, as a part of a colle...

On the show is poet Ava Nathaniel Winter, whose new book, her first full-length collection, is the National Poetry Series–winning Transgenesis . Winter has also published the chapbook, Safe House , and her work has appeared in The Baffler , Beloit Poetry Journal , Poetry International , TriQuarterly , and elsewhere. She served as a Stadler Fellow at Bucknell University and now teaches at the Unive...

I’ve always loved the poem " Year's End " by Richard Wilbur, and it is of course a great choice for the last day of the year, so here’s a short episode on this amazing poem. Wishing you all a wonderful New Year's Eve, and a great year to come! Richard Wilbur, twice-winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, was the author of eleven collections of poetry, and was also the second Poet Laureate of the U...

In time for your holiday travels, here is a new episode to cue up! Today, Abbie Kiefer talks about her new book, Certain Shelter , which focuses on the loss of her mother and the loss of her home, a Maine mill town. We also talk about the poet, E.A. Robinson. Happy Thanksgiving! Besides Certain Shelter , Kiefer is the author of the chapbook Brief Histories . Her work is forthcoming or has appeared...

Today on the show is Carl Phillips, whose new book, Scattered Snows, to the North , has recently been published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in the US and Carcanet in the UK, where it has been shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize. Phillips' previous book, Then the War and Selected Poems , was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. In total, Phillips has published 17 books of poetry and three prose volumes. His...

Today's guest is Matthew Buckley Smith, whose new book, Midlife , won the 2021 Richard Wilbur Poetry Award, and is out from Measure Press. He is also the author of Dirge for an Imaginary World , which won the 2011 Able Muse Book Award. His poems and stories have appeared in AGNI , American Life in Poetry , Beloit Poetry Journal , Best American Poetry , Cincinnati Review , Fairy Tale Review , The N...

A new sidebar edition! This week I read and discuss Barbara Jordan's poem "The Discovery Room," from her book, Channel . Jordan only published two books of poems, and they are excellent. What happened to her, why she stopped writing, or publishing, is a bit of a mystery. Do you know Jordan's work? Do you have clues as to her whereabouts? I'd love to know. Send me a note, please! Say hi to us onlin...