Turn Up the Volume on National Poetry Month: Free Poetry Podcasts

There’s a few more days left to celebrate National Poetry Month, so grab your headphones and take in some poetry. We’ve compiled a handy podcast list of poetry readings and panels from the library’s ALOUD archive over the the years. Your ears will ring!

Ralph Angel, Carol Muske-Dukes, Cecilia Wolloch
Imagination. Luminosity. Mystery and grief. Ghost landscapes. Joy and celebration. Join us for a reading by three award-winning California poets.

John Ashbery’s Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror
A Multi-media Reading for Six Voices Directed by Jim Paul with technical direction by Beth Thielen Readers: Joan Arnold, Tom Curwen, David Kipen, Jim Paul, Louise Steinman, Terry Wolverton.

Writing the World: A Conversation with Edward Hirsch, Eavan Boland, Peter Cole, and Adam Zagajewski
Discussing Hebrew, Polish, and Irish writers, four of the world’s best known poets examine how local politics, national realities, and cultural traditions affect great literary traditions.

The Nature of Observation: Jane Hirshfield and Sean M. Carroll
How does a poet view time, the slant of light on a windowsill? How might a theoretical cosmologist approach those same phenomena? Hirshfield and Carroll–both at the vanguard of their disciplines– discuss different (and perhaps similar) points of entry into the realm of observation and metaphor.

An Evening of Spoken Word and Cello
Selected readings from Marisela Norte’s debut collection of poetry, Peeping Tom Tom Girl, performed by long time friends and collaborators Norte y Gaitan.

Phantom Noise: An evening with Solider-Poet Brain Turner
Turner’s poems reflect his experiences as a soldier–seven years in the US Army, including a year as infantry team leader in Iraq–with penetrating lyric power and compassion.

Concrete Rivers: The Emotional Topography of LA: Wanda Coleman and Lewis MacAdams
Two celebrated poets read from their most recent work and discuss how Los Angeles has influenced their writing, how some influences overlap and others diverge.

The Rocket’s Red Glare: Politics in Art and Poetry: Edgar Arceneaux and Douglas Kearney
In an election year driven by worldwide public demonstrations, congressional stagecraft and conflicting narratives, rhetoric, aesthetics and politics are apt to collide. As part of a 2012 national series, poet-performer Douglas Kearney and artist-activist Edgar Arceneaux of the Watts House Project discuss the political impetus and implications of their work.

Gary Snyder, “Song of the Turkey Buzzard: The Poetry of Lew Welch”
Join Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Snyder and friends for an evening of spoken word to celebrate the work of Beat poet Lew Welch, on the 40th anniversary of his disappearance.

Kate Gale, Douglas Kearney, and Peggy Shumaker
Gale, editor, writer, teacher; Kearney, poet, performer, and librettist; and Shumaker, poet, author and teacher read from their work.

An Evening with Poet Galway Kinnell
In the 2003 National Book Award judges’ citation for his New Selected Poems, Kinnell was called “America’s preeminent visionary,” with work in 12 collections that, “greets each new age with rapture and abundance … [and] sets him at the table with his mentors: Rilke, Whitman and Frost.”

An Evening with Poet W.S.Merwin
In a career spanning five decades, W.S. Merwin, lauded poet, translator, and environmental activist, has become one of the most widely read poets in America.

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