Special Feature: Major Jackson reads Clint Smith on The Slowdown

Jim Moore joins Kevin Young to read “I wonder if I will miss the moss,” by Jane Mead, and his own poem “Mother.” Moore has published eight poetry collections, including, most recently, “Prognosis.” He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and multiple Minnesota Book Awards.

Amber Tamblyn joins Kevin Young to read “The Dahlias,” by Didi Jackson, and her own poem “This Living.” Tamblyn, a writer, director, and actor, is the creator of the newsletter “Listening in the Dark” and the editor of an anthology of the same title.

Valzhyna Mort joins Kevin Young to read “Testimonies” by Victoria Amelina, which Mort translated from the Ukrainian, and “Map,” by Wisława Szymborska, which was translated, from the Polish, by Clare Cavanagh. Mort’s collection “Music for the Dead and Resurrected” won the 2021 International Griffin Poetry Prize and the 2022 UNT Rilke Prize. Her other honors include a 2021 Rome Prize in literature and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, and the Amy Clampitt Fund.

Raymond Antrobus joins Kevin Young to read “A Protactile Version of ‘Tintern Abbey,’ ” by John Lee Clark, and his own poem “Signs, Music.” Antrobus has received the Rathbones Folio Prize, the Ted Hughes Award from the Poetry Society, the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, the Lucille Clifton Legacy Award, and a Somerset Maugham Award, among other honors. 

Amy Woolard joins Kevin Young to read “Via Negativa,” by Charles Wright, and her own poem “Late Shift.” Woolard, whose debut poetry collection, “Neck of the Woods,” won the 2018 Alice James Award from Alice James Books. She is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Breadloaf Writers’ Conference, she’s also a civil-rights attorney and the chief program officer for the ACLU of Virginia.

We have a special episode to share with you today of the daily poetry podcast, “The Slowdown.” “The Slowdown” offers a poem and a moment of reflection in short episodes, each weekday. In this episode, host Major Jackson, reads “Chaos Theory” by Clint Smith. Major writes… “Occasionally, I try to follow the series of decisions that led me to this present, however triumphant or painful. My life wavers between fate and destiny. But then again, poetry brings me to the belief that some mysterious force is at work, below, that unveils a spiritually deeper meaning to it all.”If you’d like to hear more episodes of “The Slowdown,” you can learn more at slowdownshow.org and listen wherever you get your podcasts.

José Antonio Rodríguez joins Kevin Young to read “[World of the future, we thirsted](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/07/29/world-of-the-future-we-thirsted),” by Naomi Shihab Nye, and his own poem “[Tender](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/08/22/tender).” Rodríguez is a poet, memoirist, and translator whose honors include a Bob Bush Memorial Award from the Texas Institute of Letters and a Discovery Award from the Writers’ League of Texas. He teaches in the M.F.A. program at the University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley.

Ada Limón joins Kevin Young to read “You Belong to The World,” by Carrie Fountain, and her own poem “Hell or High Water.” Limón is the current United States Poet Laureate and the recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship. She’s the author of six books—including “The Carrying,” which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for poetry—and the editor of the forthcoming anthology “You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World.

Donika Kelly joins Kevin Young to read “One Hundred White-Sided Dolphins on a Summer Day,” by Mary Oliver, and her own poem “Sixteen Center.” Kelly is the author of two poetry collections, and the recipient of an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, a Cave Canem Poetry Prize, a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and a Kate Tufts Discovery Award. A founding member of the collective Poets at the End of the World, she teaches at the University of Iowa.

Richie Hofmann joins Kevin Young to read “Twilight” by Henri Cole, and his own poem “French Novel” Hofmann is the author of two collections of poetry and the recipient of a Ruth Lilly Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation and a Wallace Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University.