Ms. Lyric's Poetry Outlaws

A climate change poem from The Revolving City anthology by an SFU prof. The delicate ways poetry can address gargantuan issues.

Poem two from The Revolving City anthology features a tony hood, aging denizens, heartbreak and survival. I talk about the poem. I read it. Enjoy!

Edited by Compton and Saklikar, this Vancouver-based collection of poems and their stories came out in 2015 as a culmination of the Lunch poems reading series at the downtown SFU campus. Lau's poem reminds us of the hell of Van real estate but also the small joys of living alone.

A Listener's Question from Chika. Actually two questions on whether grief writing can be seen as exploitative and whether personal grief twins with environmental mourning in poems. I aim to address my perspective on this complexity in 10 minutes, drawing on the origins of elegy, elegiac poets, current quotes from Natasha Tretheway on grief and art and the communal fusions of modes of mourning. I l...

Maja's Listener's Choice poem! By one of my most obsessed over poets ever. Thus I bumble about telling you how and why Ashbery couldn't tell you. But o the anaphora! What identity Majesties!!

A Listener's Choice poem from the wondrous Chika. It's ekphrastic. It's spiritual. It can even recall an episode of Family Guy. It's a poem you won't soon forget.

In which I ramble pointedly for awhile in attempts to address Maja's query - "is poetry a substance that creates altered states? Do you use substances to create poetry?" Rimbaud appears, Coleridge, Berryman, Stevens and the theorist Viktor Schklovsky. And the muse. Of course.

In which he recites it, I talk likely at far too great a length about its ambiguities and then I read it too. And append a note after about both our minor errors. And the beauty of the poem, regardless.

I read the title, Mum recites from mostly memory, then I talk about this mysterious piece and read it again. Repetition. The core of the spell.

This rare episode features Madeleine and Gerald Owen, my parents, from their livingroom in Burnaby BC. We chat randomly about poetry, their childhoods, being culture vultures, our familial diversities, puns, music, translation, and the importance of it all. Made with love. And a lot of laughter.

This is a test. This is only a test. Season three will actually start in a week but this is a recap of Season Two for starters and a dream poem of mine for kicks. Talk to you soon, word musicians!

Herewith the close of a shorter season two because hey such is life and it's my podcast so I can do what I want ;) I conclude with a punchy listener's question from Hollay Ghadery on what is up with Insta poems and the genre and practice? In 6 parts I answer this (or not) with research and personal opinion based on a whack of years of thinking and creating. Enjoy the rants. And then form your own...

Chapter 11 (the last chapter) of the Other 23 on all the ways a poet can hold weird and wonderful free-range (or at least different from ONLY teaching in the university system) jobs. Jenna has a farm! And writes delectable poems too. Explore! See what's out there poetry outlaws!!

Chapter 10 of the Other 23 on that thing we are missing these days: travel and outward adventuring. How does it assist the process of poetry? O in so many ways. Ask those Grecian beasts.

Chapter 9 of the Other 23 and a half hours where I talk about the fun and essential act of collaborating with other artists to create dances, books, librettos and other beautiful things. And recite Rachel Rose's anaphoric Ars Poetica. Expand your horizons. Make stuff with others!

Chapter 8 of the Other 23 where I talk about the value of painting, dancing, taking photos and playing music for a poet, invoking the words of Joe Rosenblatt and Paul Vermeersch, then reading his vivid and funny poem, Bad at Flowers. Go on. Play with art. Discover what else your poetic sensibilities can create. And happy Friday!

Chapter 7 of the Other 23 where we talk the ins and outs, types and kinds, whys and wherefores of running small presses and printing chapbooks. With John Pass to assist. And his lovely poem, Sparrows.

Hey it's September and this is Chapter 6 of The Other 23 on hosting radio shows and running reading events as a poet. I chat about university radio, the orality of the art, organizing a poetry series, encouraging a diversity of media and end with Yvonne's series Planet Earth and a planetary poem.

There's a fountain. Me turning pages. And talking about translation, mostly drawing upon Steve Noyes' multi-lingual experience, then reading one of his lusciously disruptive poems. Yes it's Chapter 5 of the Other 23 and the last day of August.

Chapter 4 of the Other 23 and I'm outside with the fountain again chatting about the importance of reviews and criticism. The real stuff. Lane knows about this. I read her poem Print too. And it's a beautiful thing.

I'm outside, the fountain is spilling into words and I talk the muse and transcendental nature of research. Chapter 3 of the Other 23 and a half Hours. Then Patricia chats about her process through quotations and I read one of her wondrous simian poems.

Chapter 2 of The Other 23 and a half hours in which I discuss the act of memorization of poems, out of fashion but essential. It doesn't have to be your own. Take the sounds of others within you. They will be there in the dentist's chair then, while on a walk, when traveling. I talk about reciting Jeffers in Cuba. And mostly about my former teacher Susan and read her wonderful mini-corona. Poetry....

Part 3 of Chapter 1 in the Other 23 and Half Hours collection in which I discuss the value performing has to poetry, whether at a single reading or on tour. Graham also contributes with her wise approach and her ability to memorize. It's WEDNESDAY!

Part 2 of Chapter 1 in The other 23 and a Half Hours where I chat about the importance of the ear in making changes to a poem, some thoughts about editorial ideology and then recite the tight sonority of a Dickinson piece. Don't be afraid.

This episode begins a 12 or so part series on the sections in my collection The other 23 and a Half Hours or Everything you wanted to know that your MFA didn't teach you (Wolsak & Wynn, 2015). I introduce it, talk about the first part on Reading and feature a poem by Steven Heighton called The Last Reader. Outlaw, there are many paths to poems.