Lisa Samuels Show Notes

In today’s episode of This is Beauty Podcast, transnational author, poet, theorist and filmmaker Lisa Samuels talks to me about the problematic relationship between concepts of beauty and the tool of language, and about how this dynamic shapes our understanding and experience of beauty, even as it limits our ability to fully ever know it. 

What is beauty’s relationship to knowledge and understanding in poetry, literature and art, and how has this relationship been shaped by beauty’s own intellectual history? Can beauty itself ever be considered a form of knowledge and, if so, then what is its role in helping the artist imagine the unknown? 

If you enjoy deep dives and fascinating discussions, then this episode for you. This one, in particular, is long-walk friendly :). So, grab your favorite cuppa and hit the trails for an episode that is sure to get the wheels of your mind turning as you learn how to perceive beauty in entirely new ways.

Also covered in this interview:

• Readings from the artist’s own work 
• Beauty as power and commodity
• The relationship between beauty and poetry 
• Aesthetics 
• Plato on beauty
• The poet Shelly on beauty

About Today’s Guest

Lisa Samuels is a transnational (US and New Zealand) poet, novelist, memoirist, editor, and theorist. She earned her PhD from the University of Virginia and currently teaches literature, theory, and creative writing at The University of Auckland, New Zealand.

Her work focuses on transformance and identity, how humans become signs and how language speaks the human and non-human world. Her critical essays engage with power and the body, transnationalism and displacement, and ‘imagining what we don’t know’ in theories such as membranism and distributed centrality.

Her many books include Tomorrowland, Symphony for Human Transport, The Long White Cloud of Unknowing and Breach, a response to the Covid lockdown. Her critical essays engage with power and the body, transnationalism and displacement, and ‘imagining what we don’t know’.

Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Something beautiful to share? Email me at Nina@ThisIsBeautyPodcast.com. 

Find More on Lisa & Her Work Here:

Electronic Poetry Center

Pennsound

Tomorrowland

Breach

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