PennSound Podcasts

In Episode 78 of PennSound podcasts, poet Larry Price joins Al Filreis and William Fuller for an interview in the Wexler Studio at the Kelly Writers House to discuss his new book 1/0, as well as some of his earlier work. The three discuss various influences on Price's poetry, including his love of Shakespeare and his former work as a performance artist, which are both reflected in the theatrical, monologic quality of his work.

In Episode 77 of PennSound podcasts, poet Evie Shockley sits down in the Wexler Studio at the Kelly Writers House for an interview about her work with Al Filreis, Tyrone Williams, Aldon Nielson, and William J. Harris. In this wide-ranging conversation, Shockley, Filreis, Williams, Nielson, and Harris discuss the scope and trajectory of Shockley's poetry, from her 2011 book the new black, to her more recent books semiautomatic (2017) and suddenly we (2023). Shockley talks about the influences of various poets on her work, including Amiri Baraka, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Harryette Mullen, among others.

In Episode 76 of PennSound podcasts, Sally Van Doren joins Al Filreis in the Wexler Studio at the Kelly Writers House for a discussion of her newest book, Sibilance (LSU Press, 2023). Van Doren reads aloud from her work, and the two discuss the practices of visual art and asemic writing that structure her life as an artist and inform her approach to poetry.

In Episode 75 of PennSound podcasts, Willard Spiegelman sits down with Al Filreis at the Kelly Writers House's Wexler Studio for a discussion on the underappreciated 20th century poet Amy Clampitt. The duo embark on a long exploration of Spiegelman's biography on Clampitt, Nothing Stays Put: The Life and Poetry of Amy Clampitt (Knopf, 2023). Spieigelman reveals the challenges he faced connecting the dots on simple elements of Clampitt's biographical record, noting gaps in Clampitt's earlier life that she avoided discussing with even her close friends and family.

In Episode 74 of PennSound podcasts, Christy Davids talks with Montréal writer Gail Scott about her recent release Permanent Revolution (Book*hug Press, 2021), a compilation of new and revised essays, including work that originally appeared in Scott's foundational feminist text, Spaces Like Stairs (Women's Press, 1996). The revolutionary character of richly polysemous, multiply path-winding texts is a recurrent thread in this conversation. Davids and Scott also query the role of feminist theory, including that which it avows to do, as well as that which it actually does, and for whom.

In Episode 73 of PennSound podcasts, Jeff T. Johnson and Emily Abendroth exchange perspectives on how modular, nonlinear writing can open into enactive relationships that press readers and listeners alike beyond individual experience toward "critical empathy" and its relational tactics and strategies for living in common amidst social struggles that require collective reflection and navigation. The conversation is structured around a set of readings and commentary on material drawn from Johnson's Trouble Songs: A Musicological Poetics (punctum books, 2018) and Abendroth's Sousveillance Pageant (Radiator Press, 2021), two texts that employ complementary approaches to working across genres, formal and gestural structures, and disjunctive expressive modes.

In Episode 72 of PennSound podcasts, Davy Knittle and Jill Magi spoke over Zoom about Magi's book Speech (Nightboat Books, 2019). Their discussion moved through many aspects of the relationship between the city and the woven object, such as the intersection of textiles and architecture; how weaving, like walking, teaches us to live in communities; and walking, weaving, and poetry as fragmentary practices. They also discussed how language habits further spatial inequalities in cities, and poetry's capacity to introduce questions about the language of climate change, citizenship versus belonging, and our understanding of value.

In Episode 71 of PennSound podcasts, Levi Bentley, Ted Rees, and Danielle LaFrance met in the Wexler Studio in November 2019 to discuss LaFrance's books Just Like I Like It and Friendly + Fire as a part of the Housework series. Their conversation touched on the gross and grotesque, "it" as ideology, abolishing the self and the "sovereign I," empathy in a late-capitalist world, and the discomfort of being both a participant in and host to parasitic social injustice.

In Episode 70 of PennSound podcasts, Al Young, Tyrone Williams, and William J. Harris joined Al Filreis in the Wexler Studio to discuss Young and his work. The conversation covered the relationship between Young's poetry and the Black Arts Movement, the role of music and jazz in his writing, and other figures with whom he was acquainted, such as poets Ishmael Reed and Bob Kaufman. Young also gave readings of some of his poems: "A Dance for Militant Dilettantes," "Yes, the Secret Mind Whispers" (which was written in honor of Kaufman), and "January."

In Episode 69 of PennSound podcasts, Davy Knittle hosted poet Rodney Koeneke in the Wexler Studio to discuss his book, Body and Glass (Wave Books, 2018). Their conversation touches on Koeneke's writing process and use of pronouns as a "distancing technique," the role of poetry — particularly experimental forms — in America today, and how joy might emerge from work about loss. In the podcast, the two also examine the traditions that poetry assembles for itself, drawing comparisons between modernists like James Joyce and contemporary poets.