Grace Cavalieri Interviews Slam Poet Star, Mecca Verdell
The Maryland Poet Laureate talks youth, fearlessness, and colorism with slam poet, Mecca Verdell
In this new episode of Grace Cavalieri's The Poet and the Poem, the Poet Laureate sits down with 23 year-old Baltimore slam poet, Mecca Verdell, who just recently published her first collection of poems.
Grace and Mecca talk colorism, youth, and fearlessness in this 30-minute long interview which includes a handful of poems which Mecca delivers in a slam performance style. Grace, awed by Mecca's delivery and poetic voice, pronounces that, after 60 years of reading poetry, she is still learning.
Listen to the entire interview here.
Make sure you pick up Grace's book, Other Voices, Other Lives which traces here own journey in poetry and includes several interviews with poets like Rita Dove.
James J. Patterson’s Junk Shop Window on E. Ethelbert Miller’s On the Margin
By Eylie Sasajima To celebrate the upcoming release of Junk Shop Window: Essays on Myth, Life, and Literature, on June 6, ASP’s James J. Patterson was interviewed on E. Ethelbert […]
Reflections on my First AWP; or, Sleepless in SeaTac
ASP Intern and Washington College Senior Eylie Sasajima on Her First AWP Conference
An interview with the late, great Linda Pastan
Along the indifferent corridors / of space, angels could be hiding,” Linda Pastan wrote in her poem “Muse.” ASP honors the legacy of Linda Pastan (1932–2023), a former Poet Laureate of Maryland, who passed away last week. Pastan was the author of the 2018 poetry book A Dog Runs Through It, which won the Towson University Literary Award.