Poetry! What is it good for?

I had a wonderful conversation with poet and creative Nancy Kangas at her "Emergency Poetry Clinic in Red Hook Brooklyn -- See PGF #17 -- and wanted more. And so -- Nancy invited her poet-friend Karl Michael Iglesias and we sat down in the pinball loft of Gebhard's Beer Culture Bar with PGF co-host Chris Brandt to talk about the work of editing a poem. A fun adventure through the creative minds of...

Our producer – Alina Larson – told us about Nancy Kangas’s Emergency Poetry Clinic in Red Hook, Brooklyn. It seemed clear to me that America needs an emergency poetry clinic; I wanted to see what that was about. and so on a recent Tuesday morning I took a subway and a bus and a walk to 166 Van Dyke Street, Brooklyn. Earlier that morning I looked up “Nancy Kangas” and discovered...

Back at our usual poetry-reading haunt -- Gebhard's Beer Culture Bar -- Chris Brandt, Rebecca McKean and Alan Winson talk with poets Amy Barone and Ron Kolm -- about: Extinction / Gambling with God / Men's love of their penes / COVID / Bison comeback / Book thieves and Ceiling stompers / Suicide and Attempted suicide / and -- of course -- A child's bicycle. Can you resist? CONTACT: barcrawlradio@g...

Phillis Levin’s poems have appeared in the  New Yorker , the  Atlantic, Poetry  magazine , Kenyon Review, among others, she has also published 5 collections of poems, and edited the sonnet anthology. She has taught at The University of Maryland, the Unterberg Poetry Center, the New School, and New York University, and currently is professor of English and poet-in-residence...

It has been awhile since we have posted a "Poetry! What Is It Good For" episode. And this one was not done on Zoom but with the living poets before us at Gebhard's Beer Culture Bar on Manhattan's Upper West Side. For this conversation we talked about running live poetry readings with three poets and organizers: Anton Yakovlev is a well-published poet born in Moscow, Russia; he co-hosts the Carmine...

The Poetry Foundation editors write: “When major parts of our lives seem to change in a flash, we are reminded that poetry can help us to cope with new realities and to assess the unknowns ahead. When we are stepping out into uncharted terrain, alone or together, poetry can capture our emotions. It can share our vulnerabilities and scars, along with our strengths.” Today. we are sharing the first...

PWIIGF podcast brings together two poets who have something in common read and talk about their work. For this episode we consider how word, image and mass interact within the creative artist.  Rick Mullin’s poetry has been published in many journals and anthologies, including  The Dark Horse , American Arts Quarterly , The New Criterion , and  Rabbit Ears: TV Poems . His...

Coming out of the call for “Black Power” in the 1960s by Malcolm X and others, historian and playwright Larry Neal describes a new breed of Black artist taking on the contradictions of the Black person’s experience in the racist West and developing a “black aesthetic.” For this "Poetry--What Is It Good For?" episode, we talked with one of the lead architects of Black Arts Movement [BAM] poetry, Eu...

We were joined by two world-class poets from Hispaniola --  Jean Dany Joachim  writes in Haitian Creole and Spanish poet  Rhina P. Espaillat  who left the Dominican Republic as a young girl fleeing the Trujillo massacre of 1937. Their poetry cuts to the bone of the immigrant experience in simple but deeply revealing ways. This episode is a lively conversation with lovely people...

Estha Weiner was born in Maine and from an early age, yearned to live in New York City and be an actress. Her early experiences as an actor and working for the BBC clearly show up in her poetry. Amongst her many other books of poetry – At the Last Minute – was published in Ireland in 2019. Her poems have appeared in  The New Republic  and  Barrow Street and many other...

This was a fun +hour talking with two brilliant poets who mentor each other's new work. MERVYN TAYLOR born and lives in Trinidad, and now retired there, Mervyn graduated from Howard and Columbia Universities. He taught at Bronx Community College, The Young Adult Learning Academy, He has published six books of poetry and won the Paterson Poetry Prize for sustained literary achievement.&nb...

"Poetry! What is it good for?" [PWIIGF] originated as a Bar Crawl Radio series and is now its own podcast. This episode continues our conversation with three poets who advocate and write about the potential of peace in world that celebrates war -- Veronica Golos, Angelo Verga, and Chris Brandt [Chris is also one of the co-hosts of PWIIGF]. This conversation opens with a rendition of "America the B...

In 2002 this country began a war against the Taliban in Afghanistan -- 18 years later – that war continues.  Three New York poets , Veronica Golos, Angelo Verga, and Chris Brandt decided that we could not stand by and bemoan U.S. policies. They organized events in which poets expressed their opposition to war’s destruction of life, and efforts to create understanding of life -- in l...

OK -- sit down -- calm your busy mind -- and get ready to listen to two amazing poets read and talk about their work. Martin Espada is a world-renowned poet who tells the stories of the Puerto Rican diaspora experience. Lauren Schmidt's poems live on the ground -- are raw and brave, exposing the sacred lives of the oppressed and the unspoken secrets of familial love. And a bonus -- Lauren and Mart...

"Poetry! What is it good for?" [PWIIGF] is a BCR series focusing on the committed and reverberating poetry of our times -- produced by Chris Brandt of Fordham University, English Dept. -- and member of  Witness Against Torture . For this PWIIGF episode, Chris invited two members of the inspiring NYC activist performance group  The Peace Poets -- a "family born of Hip Hop, heart, and...

This episode of "Poetry! What is it good for?" [PWIIGF] was first produced in April 2019 as part of the Bar Crawl Radio podcast. PWIIGF hosts-Chris Brandt, Rebecca Mckean and Alan Winson -- spoke with poets, --  Martha Collins  and  Sarah Gambito about racial and ethnic borders and the possibility of crossing them in new and healthy ways. We recorded at  Gebhard's Beer Culture...

What about that idea? We recently elected for president a reality-show-celeb-brand-mogul-liar-cheat-con-man-sexual-deviant. How about America chooses a poet for president? This was one of many ideas that came up in our delightful, fun conversations at  Gebhard's Beer Culture Bar  with three poet/performers who had participated in the  World Poetry Movement  event called "F...

The Poetry Foundation editors write: “When major parts of our lives seem to change in a flash, we are reminded that poetry can help us to cope with new realities and to assess the unknowns ahead. When we are stepping out into uncharted terrain, alone or together, poetry can capture our emotions. It can share our vulnerabilities and scars, along with our strengths.” This is the first program of a n...

Poetry! What is it good for? podcast will launch on August 10th 2021 with a remembrance of the 9/11 tragedy at its 20 year anniversary with Cornelius Eady and J. Chester Johnson. Let us know if you would like to be added to our newsletter with information about upcoming PWIIGF programming. Contact: poetrygoodfor@gmail.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.