Poetry Off the Shelf: Recent Episodes
Poetry Foundation
Producer Helena de Groot explores the diverse world of contemporary poetry with readings by poets, interviews with critics, and short poetry documentaries. Nothing is off limits, and nobody is taken too seriously
Fanny Howe (rerun) on the sky, visions, and the beam that killed the landlord, plus an excerpt from her posthumous collection.
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Maya C. Popa on the monkey at the pet store, beauty, and waking up to the world as it is.
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Laura Kolbe on hormones, sainthood, and the trouble with change.
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America at 250.
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Serena Chopra on prairie grass, manic rage, and the memories in her ears.
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J Brooke on testosterone, incinerators, and the mobster at home.
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Chris Crowder on muscles, privacy, and being Captain Safety.
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Arielle Hebert on Florida, driving with the windows down, and tallying up the dead.
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Iain McGilchrist on Rip Van Winkle, the poet's brain, and the real word for sunshine.
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D.S. Waldman on the left hand, losing his brother, and introducing the most wounded part.
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Sony Ton-Aimé on radical joy, pig blood, and the ancestors we forgot.
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Monica Ferrell on robot apples, Playboy bunnies, and botox vs. crow's feet.
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James Ciano on sports, masculinity, and the desperation to belong.
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Stephanie Niu on being lost at sea, crab bridges, and finding the heart of the world.
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Diamond Forde on poison, fan fiction, and writing the Great American Vampire Novel.
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Remembering Ellen Bryant Voigt, plus a few words on mortality by Andrea Gibson.
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Amanda Quaid on cancer, being bad in New York, and erotic hands.
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Tracy K. Smith on her Hello Kitty notebook, automatic writing, and the afterlife.
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Chet'la Sebree on fertility, the ocean, and sonnets about menstruation.
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brittny ray crowell on grief, the scent of burning leaves, and finding her way back.
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Kay Gabriel on embarrassment, labor organizing, and the discipline of hope.
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Martha Silano in memoriam: on blushing knees, fairy houses, and preparing your kids for loss.
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Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize winner Rigoberto González on immigration raids, rhythm, and his father’s last words.
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Ahmad Almallah on Gaza, the moon, and the companionship of Paul Celan.
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KB Brookins on change, gym bros, and the stories that haven't been told.
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Drew Ackerman on insomnia, late-night radio, and soothing his inner cynic.
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Shin Yu Pai on professional breakup, desert art, and love in the archive.
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Alina Stefanescu on ruins, fear of flying, and life in the Romanian Republic of Alabama.
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Philip Hoare on William Blake, revolution, and swimming in the dark.
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Stephanie Burt on queer time, glass dildos, and making it up as you go.
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Lauren K. Watel on blooming late, showing off, and the question of what's for dinner.
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A.E. Stallings on shipwrecks, daylight robbery, and the air in 19th century Athens.
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A reading in memory of Martha Silano.
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Darius Atefat-Peckham on crocheting, masculinity, and the aftermath of loss.
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Keetje Kuipers on becoming a single mother by choice, gardening topless, and leaping without looking.
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Catherine-Esther Cowie on Saint Lucia, breathing life into history, and the violence in our heart.
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Keetje Kuipers on becoming a single mother by choice, gardening topless, and leaping without looking.
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Tiana Clark on divorce, joy, and taking up space on the page.
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Four poets on old stories, cultural memory, and minority languages.
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Rebecca Lindenberg on diabetes, a final phone call, and letting yourself fall in love.
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Catherine Barnett on improv, misfit details, and the humor in elegy.
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Mike Sonksen on the Los Angeles fires and what it means to love a city in danger.
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Helen Vendler and Marjorie Perloff in the words of people who loved them.
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Caleb Femi on parties, golden pavements, and the downside of self-awareness.
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Cass Donish on grief rituals, putting on makeup, and letting in joy.
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Elisa Díaz Castelo on vertigo, breaking a chicken, and her grandmother's advice for a good life.
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Violeta Orozco on the US presidential election, leaving Mexico, and her connection to deep time.
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Tyler Mills on the truth, how to love a cockroach, and her grandfather's silence about the bomb.
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A.B. Spellman on Jim Crow, alligator suede shoes, and shaking up the art of the castle.
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Camille Dungy on her garden, writing from the provinces, and the poetry of Anne Spencer.
Declan Ryan on his father's construction job, tenderness between boxers, and the inevitable tragic end.
Blake Butler on complex mourning, the suicide of his wife Molly Brodak, and finding his way back.
Remembering the lesbian poet and activist Minnie Bruce Pratt, as well as the Palestinian poet and symbol of the resistance, Refaat Alareer.
Steve Zeitlin and Bob Holman on the healing act of writing, small frogs, and politics at the fiddle festival.
Daniel Brock Johnson on risk, a T-shirt mantra, and life after the death of his friend James Foley.
Sebastian Merrill on the voice of his former self, the underworld, and laughing during yoga.
Natalie Shapero on Wheel of Fortune, babysitting for her landlord, and pretending not to grieve.
Rosanna Young Oh on her parents’ grocery store, leaving poetry, and the duties of the firstborn.
Airea D. Matthews on self-interest, starry skies, and her parents’ fateful wedding day.
Rebecca Gayle Howell and Ashley M. Jones on working-class poems, good food, and their fathers’ bodies.
Peter Cole on his brother's death, finding his vocation, and the erotic pull of letters.
Remembering Richard Howard as a poet, mentor, and friend, plus a few words on money by Bernadette Mayer.
Celes Tisdale on similarities, teaching after the uprising, and his mother's favorite poet.
Belarussian poets Valzhyna Mort and Julia Cimafiejeva on magic, transformation, and what's hidden underneath the forest floor.
Shortly after Martin Luther King's assassination in 1968, Gwendolyn Brooks wrote a poem about the power of riots.
Need a transcript of this episode? Request a transcript here.
Noʻu Revilla on ancestral history in newspapers, ocean consciousness, and how to be a guest.
Chelsea Harlan on knowledge, creaturehood, and the quest for her mother’s secret sadness.
Niina Pollari on sunflowers, redemption, and the most depressing phone note in the world.
Tom Sleigh about his romance with experience, fancy jackets, and one last visit to the dog beach.
Sylvie Kandé and her translator Alexander Dickow on the courage of migrants, the limits of language, and an epic without a nation.
Oksana Maksymchuk and Oksana Lutsyshyna on life as a refugee, the God of comfort, and the deep roots of the war.
Julie Enszer and Elena Gross on community care, the AIDS epidemic, and OutWrite, the conference that shaped queer literary history.
Hoa Nguyen on photographs, her mother's past with the motorcycle circus, and the quiet ways to talk to ghosts.
Poet and playwright Malcolm Tariq on listening, field trips with his brother, and the perils of dating while Black.
Remembering the life, poetry, and activism of Janice Mirikitani, plus a few words on love by bell hooks.
Clint Smith on being human, healing on a plantation, and the difference between Jefferson and Grant.
Poet and priest Spencer Reece on his cousin's murder, the AIDS epidemic, and bearing witness to a moment.
Zohra Saed on cooking, culture, and the volunteer-led rescue operation to get Afghans to safety.
Mary Jo Bang on her 15-year long translation effort to remake Dante’s Divine Comedy for the modern ear.
Raymond Antrobus on forgiving his dad, becoming a father, and poetry dubs on late-night BBC.
Vievee Francis on dark corners, an encounter with a bear, and the promise of the north.
Translator Emily Drumsta geeks out about the poetic patterns in the work of Iraqi modernist Nazik al Mala'ika.
Molly McCully Brown and Susannah Nevison on Gmail poems, pot roast, and the legacy of pain.
C. Dale Young on sugar cane fields, his favorite saint, and the machinations of the mind.
Poet and founder of Friends of the Los Angeles River Lewis MacAdams, in the words of his friend Kevin Opstedal.
Meg Day on the poetry and activism of the late Laura Hershey, lip reading in a masked world, and the joy of connection.
A look back at the early days of the pandemic—eight poets about Zoom calls, the egg shortage, and being stranded abroad.
How a Victorian and a Harlem Renaissance poet struggled with poverty and the publishing world—while facing racism and classism—to become widely read and legends to us. Featuring interviews with experts Dr. Gene Jarrett, Dr. Tara Betts, Dr. Elizabeth McHenry, Dr. Joe Trotter, and Dr. R. Baxter Miller.
Lilly Rosenberg Fellowship winner Khaty Xiong on intergenerational trauma, a chicken's neck, and the long wave of grief.
Lilly Rosenberg Fellowship winner Luther Hughes on crows, processing trauma, and the allure of the wind.
Joy Ladin on the failures of language, courage, and the trans parable of Jonah and the Whale.
Remembering Irish poet Eavan Boland, with her friends Jody Allen Randolph and Paula Meehan.
Terrance Hayes on Wanda Coleman.
Note from Terrance Hayes: “I cancelled this interview about Wanda Coleman’s work after signing the Poetry Foundation Petition. When the Foundation President and Board chair resigned, I decided to resume the interview believing the actions an indication of the PF’s willingness to change. Though I’m not yet quite convinced I should resume submitting my own poems to the magazine, I hope this interview represents a willingness to remain in dialogue as PF rises to meet the other demands and challenges. Do check out the work of Wanda Coleman."
To learn more: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/LetterOfCommitment
Gwendolyn Brooks, Elizabeth Alexander, and Haki Madhubuti on America’s perennial struggle to recognize that Black Lives Matter.
The first installment of a special series about the intersections between poetry and poverty.
Quarantined with kids, Zoom chats, and stranded abroad: eight poets on what life is like for them these days.
Dorianne Laux on her favorite shirt, ugly California, and bringing her mother back to life.
Timothy Liu remembers the life and work of his friend Linda Gregg, plus readings by Marie Ponsot and W.S. Merwin.
Naomi Shihab Nye talks about a trunk full of treasures, childhood in Palestine, and her grandson's poetic bone.
On Whitman's bicentennial, a contemporary poet finds a Whitmanic kinship with wonder, language, and the environment.
Marilyn Nelson's poetic legacy, through the eyes of one of her many protégés, Tyehimba Jess.
Carolyn Forché discusses her memoir of the same title, about her time in pre-civil war El Salvador in the late 1970s.
Meryl Streep narrates our hour-long radio documentary special about how the Women’s Movement changed poetry, and how women poets changed the culture.
Shortly after Martin Luther King's assassination in 1968, Gwendolyn Brooks wrote a poem about the power of riots.
To commemorate the 100th anniversary of Prohibition in the U.S., we discuss drinking poems over a few cocktails.
The centenary of the first volume by Gerard Manley Hopkins, the Jesuit Victorian experimentalist was posthumously published among the Modernists.
During the current nationwide prison strike, we look back at Etheridge Knight's influential poems he wrote while incarcerated.
For July 4, we talk about US immigration, Central American refugees, and poems across borders with Javier Zamora.
When poets used tape recorders to compose not for the page, but for the audio environment.
Maureen McLane on semi-autobiographical epic poems, narrative melodrama, and the dissociation of sensibility.
The legacy of second-wave feminism through the lens of anthologies, and the ongoing pursuit of equality and inclusion.
How women poets made birth, motherhood, and parenting central preoccupations of contemporary poetry, just as it is in life.
In the '70s, poetry workshops run by women, for women, sprang up in cities around the country. They mirrored what was happening in the women’s movement, and they became communities unto themselves.
Our series dedicated to the women's movement continues with the changing cultural roles of the 1970s, when women poets refused to be marginalized or tokenized, and public poetry readings and writing workshops for women spread across the U.S.
The second episode of our special series exploring poetry and the women’s movement looks at several books in the 1960s and ‘70s that fought for a place for women.