POETICS: Poetry Podcast

POETICS Podcast: Poetry and Freedom of the Press

Poetry is a solitary practice with a communal spine. The page is quiet. The community around the page does not have to be. This week, as the United States turns 250, we follow that idea across two thousand years. A famous sentence about free speech, written by a woman named Evelyn Beatrice Hall and handed by history to Voltaire. Ovid exiled to the edge of the world for a poem. Dante writing the Divine Comedy with a death sentence at his back. Nadezhda Mandelstam carrying her husband’s life work in her memory because paper was too dangerous. Anna Akhmatova’s friends becoming living manuscripts. And Lawrence Ferlinghetti, arrested in 1957 for publishing a poem called Howl, standing in an American courtroom where the First Amendment finally held the poet back. Fair warning: I cried recording this one, and I left it in. Some episodes are about poetry. This one is about why there is any poetry left to be about. Free zine at our Grand Old Fourth booth. Come find us. Get full access to Bainbridge Island Press at bainbridgeislandpress.substack.com/subscribe [https://bainbridgeislandpress.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

POETICS Podcast: The Art of Book Production - host, Ben Rockwood

Every poetry book you've ever held was shaped twice. Once by the poet, once by the press. Last episode, Ben Rockwood took us into the first half of the second shaping: layout, the work of the page. Today, he widens the lens. What a press is actually looking for in a submission, how to prepare a manuscript so it survives the trip into production, and a page-by-page tour of how a poetry book gets built, from the title spread to the colophon. Practical, opinionated, and especially useful for poets getting ready to send work out. Get full access to Bainbridge Island Press at bainbridgeislandpress.substack.com/subscribe [https://bainbridgeislandpress.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

POETICS Podcast: "Muscle Memories of Love and Disaster," by Tim Mayo

Available in POETICS Bookstore: Muscle Memory of Love and Disaster, poetry by Tim Mayo [https://bainbridgeisland.press/products/muscle-memories-of-love-and-disaster] If you open this book in the bookstore, open it to "At the Chemo Clinic" –– a powerful elegy that refuses to go quietly as a father accompanies his daughter to the chemo ward, and likens it to a kind of gas station, where nurses "attach the clear plastic hose to her chest and start the pump." In his poem "Self-portrait with Trache," Mayo writes "Grief is a black parrot in my throat." But there is more than grief in these poems. They tell us how a life is carried—stubbornly, tenderly—in the body––as the lyric moment glides from still-life landscapes and winter woods to hospital rooms, rehab corridors, and how life can still be remade with meaning via the music and clarity of poetry. An insistence on attentiveness lives fiercely in these compelling poems. — Ilya Kaminsky, author of Dancing in Odessa and Deaf Republic Get full access to Bainbridge Island Press at bainbridgeislandpress.substack.com/subscribe [https://bainbridgeislandpress.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

POETICS Podcast: The Art of the Layout - designing poetry with Ben Rockwood

Ever wondered why a poem feels different on the page than it does in your head? Join Ben Rockwood for a deep dive into the silent art of the layout. From the precise geometry of margins to the philosophy behind font selection, we explore how a press transforms a raw manuscript into a physical work of art. If you've ever wanted to know how an editor actually "builds" a page for poetry, this episode is your blueprint. Get full access to Bainbridge Island Press at bainbridgeislandpress.substack.com/subscribe [https://bainbridgeislandpress.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

POETICS Podcast: Episode Scattered Rhymes: A.M. Juster's Canzoniere and the Art of Falling in Love Again

Six hundred and fifty years after his death, Petrarch is still teaching us how to navigate a hostile sea. In this rain-paired episode, Tamarah opens A.M. Juster's new translation of the Canzoniere, out this April from Liveright with an introduction by Andrew Frisardi, and finds herself unexpectedly in love with the man who invented the European love sonnet. Three things about the poems. Three surprising ways the form holds them. Three biographical facts that change every line. From Laura's name dispersed into the breeze, to the Babylon sonnets banned for two centuries, to the storm-tossed vessel of poem 189, this is a conversation about why love poetry isn't dead, and how Petrarch shows us the way home. Available Here → [https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324096498] Get full access to Bainbridge Island Press at bainbridgeislandpress.substack.com/subscribe [https://bainbridgeislandpress.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]