A big thank you to Markus Mooslechner for inviting me to be on his Space Cafe Podcast, where we explored the intersection of space science and poetry. We talked about AI and poetry, the role poetry can play in the exploration and understanding of space, and he surprised me by asking what song I’d take on a playlist into space! So grab a latte and enjoy!
Outer Space: 100 Poems reading features poets from around the world
Despite being the moderator, I was probably the most excited attendee at this special event! Carmine Street Metrics, with hosts Anton Yakovlev and Wendy Sloan, held an online reading from Outer Space: 100 Poems (Cambridge University Press, 2022). The reading featured 12 of the contributors from across the globe! I had not met or spoken to many of them before, only communicated by email, and it was such a treat to hear these poems in the poets’ own voices, after seeing them on the page for so long!
The readers included Victoria Moul, Alice Gorman, A.M. Juster, Jay Ruzesky, John Curl, Janet Kenny, Leslie Monsour, John Foy, Donna Kane, Ned Balbo, Yun Wang, and Anton Yakovlev. In addition to their own poems, they read poems by A.E. Housman, Deborah Warren, Elizabeth Jennings, A.E. Stallings, Rebecca Elson, Catherine Chandler, and translations of Du Fu, Alexander Pushkin, and poems from Sanskrit, Mayan, Old English, and Passamaquoddy.
There are some amazing moments during the reading, including images of Valentina Tereshkova, a few lines in Mayan, and a reading of Du Fu in the original. Enjoy!
We're off to see Neil Gaiman...
Today I'm hitting the road, heading from backwoods New Hampshire down to the Big Apple, NYC, to see Neil Gaiman at The Town Hall reading from Norse Mythology. Now I know that Deadheads followed The Dead all around the country, and I've heard people talk about traveling to see other singers--Bruce Springsteen, Phish, folks like that.
But a writer? You bet! I'd drive across states to see J.K. Rowling, Barbara Kingsolver, Orson Scott Card, Neil Gaiman--and in a perfect world, Madeleine L'Engle, Louisa May Alcott, and Jane Austen--for one reason: they are GOOD STORYTELLERS, in a world that sometimes seems to have forgotten how to tell a good story. I don't need my emotions manipulated or my politics confirmed. Murky non-endings that are supposed to reflect the meaninglessness of it all just leave me bored. Give me a good story, with fascinating characters, and let me make up my own mind about what the story means to me.
So fill up the tank, grab an extra bottle of maple syrup for the road, and look out, New York, here I come!