Episode 89: Pádraig Ó Tuama, excerpts from Kitchen Hymns
This episode was recorded on March 2, 2025 at the Phillis Wheatley Heritage Center in St. Louis., Missouri. In this conversation, Pádraig Ó Tuama reads several poems from Kitchen Hymns (https://www.coppercanyonpress.org/books/kitchen-hymns-by-padraig-o-tuama/) (Copper Canyon Press, 2024), his newest collection. We discuss subversive speech, belief and doubt, lyrical poetry, the psychology of poetic forms, and the power of ancient myths.
Pádraig Ó Tuama is a poet with interests in conflict, language and religion. He presents Poetry Unbound (https://onbeing.org/series/poetry-unbound/) from On Being Studios, and has published two anthologies (2022, 2025, both with WW Norton) from that podcast. A freelance artist, one of Ó Tuama’s projects is poet in residence with the Cooperation and Conflict Resolution Center at Columbia University. He splits his time between Belfast and New York City.
To learn more about Ó Tuama, you can visit his website (https://www.padraigotuama.com/).
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Episode 88: Oksana Maksymchuk, Tempo
Oksana Maksymchuk joins us for a reading and discussion of "Tempo," a poem that explores the how war causes us to "whirl with / planets and stars that coil / around our fragile core."
Oksana Maksymchuk is a bilingual Ukrainian-American poet, scholar, and literary translator. Her debut English-language poetry collection Still City (https://upittpress.org/books/9780822967354/) is the 2024 Pitt Poetry Series selection, published by University of Pittsburgh Press (US) and Carcanet Press (UK). And while Still City is Oksana’s first poem in English, she is an accomplished poet in the Ukrainian as well. She is also the co-editor of Words for War: New Poems from Ukraine, an anthology of contemporary poetry (https://www.wordsforwar.com/).
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Episode 87: Monica Ong, Her Gaze
In this episode, Monica Ong joins us to discuss "Her Gaze," a visual poem that celebrates the achievements of astronomer Caroline Herschel. "Her Gaze" appears in Planetaria, Ong's new collection that merges archival materials with striking lyric poems.
Monica Ong is the author of two books: Silent Anatomies (https://korepress.org/product/silent-anatomies-by-monica-ong), which was the winner of the Kore Press First Book Award in 2015; and Planetaria, which will be released in May 2025. Last year, Ong was named a United States Artists Fellow. Ong’s visual poetry has been published in many literary magazines and exhibited in galleries and museums all over the world.
To learn more about Ong's work, please visit her website (https://www.monicaong.com/).
To purchase a copy of Planetaria, visit the Proxima Vera website (https://www.proximavera.com/publication).
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Episode 86: Gwendolyn Bennett, I Build America
Gwendolyn Bennett was a poet, journalist, editor, and activist whose contributions helped to fuel the Harlem Renaissance. In this episode, we read "I Build America," a poem that exposes and critiques the exploitation and suffering of ordinary workers.
To learn more about Gwendolyn Bennett, see Heroine of the Harlem Renaissance and Beyond: Gwendolyn Bennett's Selected Writings (https://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-08096-3.html?srsltid=AfmBOoq8tb3m52BjI0wdtoiguILdKqt-HT2PdahVAq938K08Uj20668V), edited by Belinda Wheeler and Louis J. Parascandola (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2018). Thanks to Pennsylvania State University Press for granting us permission to read this poem.
You can also click here (https://poets.org/poet/gwendolyn-bennett) to read a brief biography of Bennett.
This podcast is for those who already love poetry and for those who know very little about it. In this podcast, we read a poem, discuss it, see what makes it tick, learn how it works, grow from it, and then read it one more time.
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