Post Poet Pop, Episode 29 features the work of Sara Larsen, specifically her latest book, Detonated Mirror. The book makes me ask, What is a body and what is a body’s destruction? As the work you will hear Sara Larsen read in this episode reflects how body may be parenthetical, an echo, Russian doll-esque, as poetry may also be. The work is crucial at the moment to take deeper looks at how self relates to place and how a/the body spreads, deflates, grows, decays, transfers, transitions, and that interpretation of that is completely open to being whatever it may. These poems are visionary and they are also, in Sara's words, "visionary poems".

Learn more about Detonated Mirror and get a copy from The Elephants, here (or from your local bookstore). Find out about Sara Larsen by following her on Substack (@saralarsenpoet) or visiting SaraLarsenPoet.com.

All poems are performed by Sara Larsen and all the author’s poems discussed are published in Detonated Mirror (The Elephants, 2023). The poems are the property of the author(s) and the publisher(s) listed. The song played during the introduction is “Sunday Afternoon” and is performed by The True Loves. Please support their work.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

CONTENT WARNING: Discussion of sexual assault.

What does it mean to be silent in an era of necessary refusal? This question has taken many forms of late, for me, especially following my interview with this episode's featured poet—David McLoghlin, whose third collection of poems, Crash Centre, is just out from Salmon Poetry in Ireland. To begin the book, David employs an epigraph, a Latin proverb: “He who is silent is taken to agree; he ought to have spoken when he was able to.” As a sexual assault survivor, this epigraph works hard on behalf of David's poetry. First, let’s look at the facts: over 90% of sexual assault victims are women. Only 30% of sexual assault crimes are reported to legal authorities; 1 in 5 women in college are sexually assault and 1 in 16 of men are. It seems we are surrounded on all sides by a ubiquitous patriarchal violence, by genocide, extractive economy, et cetera, so…what does it mean to be silent—does it imply complicity, does it mean you’re not doing anything or does it mean you don’t know what to do?

David’s own assault was perpetrated by a man of power, at that, a religiously-sanctioned man of power. The last line of one of the poems you will hear David read in this episode—’Hostage Walk’—goes: “No one asked: where has David gone?” As trauma goes, a person is here and not here. But, you'll hear David, here, read a handful of poems from Crash Centre and we will discuss his life in Cork, his love of being a father, and his poetics. My hope is that our conversation will hold a kind of healing space for other victims/survivors and I am very grateful to listeners out there. Learn more at DavidMcLoghlin.com, and get a copy of Crash Centre at SalmonPoetry.com or at your local bookstore.

All poems are performed by David McLoghlin and all the author’s poems discussed are published in Crash Centre (Salmon Poetry, 2024). The poems are the property of the author(s) and the publisher(s) listed. The song played during the introduction is “Sunday Afternoon” and is performed by The True Loves. Please support their work.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Post Poet Pop, Episode 27 features poems from the new anthology of Venezuelan poets living in Chile entitled A Scar Where Goodbyes Are Written (Louisiana State University Press, 2023). The anthology showcases the work of 15 poets, including: Ivana Aponte, Georgina Ramírez, Miguel Ortiz Rodríguez, Sara Emanuel Viloria (all of whose work you will hear today) and many others. The book is translated and edited by David Brunson.

This work is crucial because it elucidates the diasporic experience of being a migrant, not only to Chile, but away from a misunderstood homeland; and now—at a time when many diasporas are being ignited or re-ignited in Haiti, the Sudan, and of course the genocide in Palestine—it is even more important to become more than acquainted with that experience. The term diaspora comes from the Greek and means to scatter across but it also means to be forced to leave home. Venezuela has seen nearly 8 million of its citizens depart its borders and over 5,200 Venezuelans have been killed, extrajudicially. Chile has its own complications and repressive history and this enmeshing of two cultures at the very least sets the stage for poets to, in the words of David Brunson’s introduction, empathetically reclaim identity and more fully realize a sense of humanity.

Get an e-Book or print copy of A Scar Where Goodbyes Are Written from Louisiana State University Press (or order one from your local bookstore), and learn more about David (the book's translator and editor) at DavidMBrunson.com and Ivana (poet in the book) at CopihuePoetry.com/who-we-are.

All poems are performed by Ivana Aponte and David Brunson and all the author’s poems discussed are published in A Scar Where Goodbyes Are Written: An Anthology of Venezuelan Poets in Chile (Louisiana State University Press, 2023). The poems are the property of the author(s) and the publisher(s) listed. The song played during the introduction is “Sunday Afternoon” and is performed by The True Loves. Please support their work.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.