Art & Other People

How Poetry Helps Us "Make Room" For Others (Denise Saul)

What if the quiet between two people could become a room where art is made? We sit down with poet Denise Saul to explore how caregiving, aphasia, and the language of the body shaped her acclaimed collection The Room Between Us. Denise reads two luminous poems and walks us through the moment she realized her mother’s gestures were speaking, even when words could not—an insight that led her from drawing and doodling into a deliberate, spacious poetics. We get practical about process: how strict routines and late-night writing windows turned constraint into creative focus, why stanzas feel like rooms, and how giving someone space in life can become an ethics of space on the page. Denise shares the textures of care—short walks for breath, notes held in memory, and an attention that listens with more than ears. We also linger on the power of objects: a stone carried across an ocean, a ring that finds its way back, small talismans that hold memory, grief, and connection. These tangible things become portals to ancestry and identity, and they ask us to consider what we keep, what we pass on, and how we honor the voices we love. The conversation widens to heritage and community care, drawing from Guyanese traditions that treat storytelling, food, and mutual support as everyday practices. We discuss influence and craft with a nod to Pascal Petit’s fearless approach: outpace the inner censor and transform difficulty through making. By the end, poetry emerges as both architecture and ritual—something built and something felt, a craft that raises our awareness while holding another’s presence with care. If you’re navigating family, grief, or the challenge of making art in limited time, this one offers language, warmth, and a path forward. Listen, subscribe, and share your favorite image or line with us—what stayed with you after the final stanza?

Letting Go: The Art of Creating Characters and Raising Children (Jai Chakrabarti)

Award-winning author Jai Chakrabarti explores how art serves as both lifeline and caretaking tool during humanity's darkest moments, as well as during a typical day of working and parenting. Drawing from his novel "A Play for the End of the World," Chakrabarti shares the extraordinary true story of educator Janusz Korczak staging Rabindranath Tagore's play "The Post Office" with orphans in the Warsaw Ghetto just weeks before their deportation to concentration camps. When discussing his writing process, Chakrabarti reveals how fiction functions as an "empathy machine," allowing both creator and audience to cross cultural boundaries and inhabit others' experiences. He draws an illuminating parallel between creative work and parenting. Both require "a willingness to imagine them in their fullness" while accepting that children and characters alike "become who they become" regardless of our intentions.  Hear Chakrabarti read from “A Play for the End of the World,” as well as from his short story "Lilavati's Fire," from his award-winning collection “A Small Sacrifice for an Enormous Happiness.”

The Gift Exchange: Artists, Elders, and Creative Witnessing (Rowena Richie)

During COVID-19, Rowena Richie and her colleagues were struck by the unprecedented isolation faced by elders. Their response was to connect artists—suddenly without performance venues—with older adults through a project called "For You." What makes this approach unique is its focus on reciprocity. "We started calling it a gift FOR them," Ritchie explains, "but then it really became a gift WITH them."  Richie took these insights into her work with Memory Cafes, where people with dementia share poems aloud, and as a Fellow with the Atlantic Foundation's Global Brain Health Institute, where she observed different cultural approaches to care around the world. Collectively, these experience help us see what creative care can accomplish: reciprocal courage, patient listening, and the recognition that each of us—regardless of age or cognitive ability—has something valuable to give.

Care in the Chaos: A Filmmaker's Creative Journey (Sarah Gavron)

"Where are these girls on our screens?" With this question, acclaimed director Sarah Gavron embarked on creating "Rocks," a film that would transform both its young cast and conventional filmmaking approaches. In this intimate conversation, Gavron reveals how authentic storytelling demands radical vulnerability from both creator and subject. Rather than imposing narratives on teenage girls, Gavron spent months in London schools creating safe spaces for young women to share their realities through improvisation and play. The production dismantled traditional power structures—shooting chronologically, never calling "action," using continuous dual cameras, and incorporating the actors' own mobile footage. Beyond creating an award-winning film, this process sparked "Bridge," an ongoing mentorship program connecting marginalized youth with creative industry opportunities. Gavron eloquently explores the complex relationship between caregiving and creativity throughout her career. While acknowledging that parenting responsibilities reduced her film output, she notes how these experiences profoundly deepened her work: "I would never have made 'Rocks' if I hadn't had a girl growing up at home." This perspective extends to her current book project (with Sophie Herxheimer) exploring her father-in-law's imprisonment at Theresienstadt, the Nazi concentration camp where imprisoned artists continued creating under unimaginable circumstances—some documenting truth through secret drawings that eventually cost them their lives. Whether discussing Ukrainian musicians playing in bomb shelters or her mother dancing to Elvis despite illness, Gavron reminds us that art doesn't merely distract from suffering—it helps us process, ground ourselves, and create meaning within chaos.