Grace Cavalieri Releases New Podcast with Jeffrey Lamar Coleman
Coleman is a professor of English at St. Mary's College of Maryland. He is the editor of Words of Protest, Words of Freedom: Poetry of the American Civil Rights Movement and Era (Duke University Press) and author of Spirits Distilled: Poems (Red Hen Press).
Grace Cavalieri's new series on the poets of Maryland, for which she was recently funded by Maryland Humanities, is off to a strong and engaging start. This week's guest, professor of English, Jeffrey Lamar Coleman, is the editor of Words of Protest, Words of Freedom: Poetry of the American Civil Rights Movement and Era and an accomplished poet in his own regard (his latest collection Spirits Distilled: Poems, is available from Red Hen Press).
In this podcast, Coleman discusses and reads many poems from his own work and from black poets of the civil rights era. Grace and Coleman also talk about the erasure of black voices from the "classic rock" canon, especially the multi-talented Prince. Coleman impresses with his unique cadence, his breadth of historical knowledge, and his passion for social justice.
DID YOU KNOW...
Grace Cavalieri's Other Voices, Other Lives includes transcripts from some of her best interviews of US Poets Laureate on "The Poet and The Poem"?
Linda Watanabe McFerrin Interviewed for Author Matthew Felix’s Video Podcast
Author and poet Linda Watanabe McFerrin sat down with Matthew Felix, himself an author of some renown, for Matthew’s video podcast this last weekend. What follows is an in-depth, thoughtful, and often irreverent look at writing, life, travel, and zombies. And more, we get to hear many of the juicy details on Linda’s new Legacy Book due out from ASP in Autumn 2019…
Fact or Fiction
…And so it is for me, as I send an invented “namesake” into worlds I know vicariously but haven’t lived—Hollywood and hippies, communes and con artists, Woodstock and the Summer of Love. In the opening of Melanie’s Song, J.J. is poised at the edge of the Pacific reflecting on where she has been and where she is going. She is endowed with a deep and spiritual connection to a native place we share, but I am also setting her free to fly into her own undiscovered territory.
Featured Poetry: “Bluebirds” by Grace Cavalieri
Other Voices, Other Lives was my introduction to Grace. Her book sits now on my shelf between The Waves and Duino Elegies, the pages are worn from thumbing-thru, it is dog-eared, destroyed in certain ways well-loved books are destroyed, aged by the eyes, like good denim, but here the creases are black underlines, and the fading is from yellow highlighter and coffee stains. So in honor of, well, my deep admiration for Grace, I’ve picked one of her poems from Other Voices, Other Lives to share. If this is the first encounter with her poetry, welcome, hello, the books page is just yonder up the screen under “books”! If you’ve long been a fan, I think “Bluebirds” is a great poem to share with those who might not yet have been introduced to Grace’s work.