
Poetry: The Creative Process: Poets discuss Poems & Creativity (Writing: Creative Process Original Series)
Explore every episode of Poetry: The Creative Process: Poets discuss Poems & Creativity
Pub. Date | Title | Duration | |
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01 Oct 2021 | (Highlights) AIMEE NEZHUKUMATATHIL | ||
“I think something happened in 2016, where I just snapped. There was a lot of a hateful news going around with American politics, and I didn’t know how to answer a lot of my kids questions then. Something I know I can do is to tell them things that I loved about this planet or things that I loved in other people because all they saw or heard about was just this weird ugliness, school shootings, leaders who were saying ‘build that wall’ to anybody who looked different than them, and so I remember the night I shut myself up in my office after the kids went to bed and just started writing about plants and animals that I loved from my childhood.” Aimee Nezhukumatathil is the author of the NYTimes best-selling illustrated collection of nature essays and Kirkus Prize finalist, World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks & Other Astonishments, which was chosen as Barnes and Noble’s and has sold 5 million copies. She has four previous poetry collections: Oceanic, Lucky Fish, At the Drive-in Volcano, and Miracle Fruit. Her most recent chapbook is Lace & Pyrite, a collaboration of epistolary garden poems with the poet Ross Gay. Her writing appears twice in the Best American Poetry Series, The New York Times Magazine, ESPN, Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, and Tin House. Honors include a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, Pushcart Prize, Mississippi Arts Council grant, and being named a Guggenheim Fellow in poetry. She’s the first-ever poetry editor for Sierra magazine, the story-telling arm of The Sierra Club. She is professor of English and Creative Writing in the University of Mississippi’s MFA program. | |||
01 Oct 2021 | AIMEE NEZHUKUMATATHIL | ||
Aimee Nezhukumatathil is the author of the NYTimes best-selling illustrated collection of nature essays and Kirkus Prize finalist, World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks & Other Astonishments, which was chosen as Barnes and Noble’s and has sold 5 million copies. She has four previous poetry collections: Oceanic, Lucky Fish, At the Drive-in Volcano, and Miracle Fruit. Her most recent chapbook is Lace & Pyrite, a collaboration of epistolary garden poems with the poet Ross Gay. Her writing appears twice in the Best American Poetry Series, The New York Times Magazine, ESPN, Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, and Tin House. Honors include a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, Pushcart Prize, Mississippi Arts Council grant, and being named a Guggenheim Fellow in poetry. She’s the first-ever poetry editor for Sierra magazine, the story-telling arm of The Sierra Club. She is professor of English and Creative Writing in the University of Mississippi’s MFA program. | |||
06 Nov 2021 | (Highlights) MARGE PIERCY | ||
“People who take care of sick people and AIDS and teachers and garbage collectors and people who work in daycare…all the things that have to happen in society we pay shit for. We pay an enormous amount of money to people who can throw a ball through a hoop. We pay an enormous amount of hedge fund people. All the people who take over corporations go in and destroy get immensely rich while the people who do what we actually need doing, what we must have to survive, the people who grow food, the independent farmers that used to exist…” Marge Piercy’s 17 novels include NYTimes Bestseller Gone To Soldiers; National Bestsellers Braided Lives and The Longings of Women; the classics Woman on the Edge of Time and He, She and It, and her critically acclaimed memoir Sleeping with Cats. She’s written 20 volumes of poetry. The most recent is On the Way Out, Turn Off the Light. Born in Detroit, educated at the University of Michigan and Northwestern, she is active in antiwar, feminist and environmental causes. · margepiercy.com | |||
05 Nov 2021 | MARGE PIERCY | ||
Marge Piercy’s 17 novels include NYTimes Bestseller Gone To Soldiers; National Bestsellers Braided Lives and The Longings of Women; the classics Woman on the Edge of Time and He, She and It, and her critically acclaimed memoir Sleeping with Cats. She’s written 20 volumes of poetry. The most recent is On the Way Out, Turn Off the Light. Born in Detroit, educated at the University of Michigan and Northwestern, she is active in antiwar, feminist and environmental causes. · margepiercy.com | |||
15 Oct 2021 | DAVID TOMAS MARTINEZ | ||
David Tomas Martinez is the author of two collections of poetry, Hustle and Post Traumatic Hood Disorder, both from Sarabande Books. Martinez is a Pushcart winner, CantoMundo fellow, a Breadloaf Stanley P. Young Fellow, NEA poetry fellow, and NEA Big Read author. Martinez lives in Brooklyn. | |||
15 Oct 2021 | (Highlights) DAVID TOMAS MARTINEZ | ||
"When I was younger, I never really thought of living past twenty-five…I felt like I was in a movie. I thought that I was living this movie idea of things and there’d be gunshots around you. You hear it hitting the concrete, and you’re like ‘Oh, shit’. Seriously, I didn’t think of it as real life. When you’re young, the idea that I’d known people that were killed early, you go to prison. These just felt like matter of fact. They seemed to be this part of life and you just accepted them.” David Tomas Martinez is the author of two collections of poetry, Hustle and Post Traumatic Hood Disorder, both from Sarabande Books. Martinez is a Pushcart winner, CantoMundo fellow, a Breadloaf Stanley P. Young Fellow, NEA poetry fellow, and NEA Big Read author. Martinez lives in Brooklyn. · davidtomasmartinez.com · www.creativeprocess.info | |||
27 Aug 2021 | The Creative Process · Poetry & Prose | ||
Yu Young Lee introduces a new series of The Creative Process Podcast.
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24 Sep 2021 | POETRY & PROSE | ||
Welcome to The Creative Process’s Poetry and Prose series. In this episode, we’ll be hearing powerful readings of poems and prose from Neil Gaiman, Marge Piercy, Alice Fulton, EJ Koh, Alice Notley, Gerald Fleming, Margo Berdeshevsky, Jess Wilber & Yu Young Lee. · www.swimtheuniverse.com · www.creativeprocess.info | |||
06 Aug 2021 | (Highlights) ALICE FULTON | ||
Alice Fulton’s books include Barely Composed, a poetry collection; The Nightingales Of Troy, linked stories; and Cascade Experiment: Selected Poems. Her book Felt received the Bobbitt Prize from the Library of Congress, awarded to the best book of poems published within a two-year period. She has received an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature and fellowships from the MacArthur Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Guggenheim Foundation, and Ingram Merrill Foundation. Her other books include Sensual Math, Powers Of Congress, Palladium, Dance Script With Electric Ballerina, and an essay collection, Feeling As A Foreign Language. She lives in Ithaca, NY.
www.creativeprocess.info | |||
06 Aug 2021 | ALICE FULTON | ||
Alice Fulton’s books include Barely Composed, a poetry collection; The Nightingales Of Troy, linked stories; and Cascade Experiment: Selected Poems. Her book Felt received the Bobbitt Prize from the Library of Congress, awarded to the best book of poems published within a two-year period. She has received an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature and fellowships from the MacArthur Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Guggenheim Foundation, and Ingram Merrill Foundation. Her other books include Sensual Math, Powers Of Congress, Palladium, Dance Script With Electric Ballerina, and an essay collection, Feeling As A Foreign Language. She lives in Ithaca, NY.
www.creativeprocess.info | |||
06 Nov 2020 | ALICE NOTLEY | ||
Alice Notley has published over forty books of poetry, most recently For the Ride (Penguin Books) and Eurynome’s Sandals (PURH). Notley has received many awards including the Academy of American Poets’ Lenore Marshall Prize, the Poetry Society of America’s Shelley Award, the Griffin International Prize, two NEA Grants, the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Poetry, and the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, a lifetime achievement award. She is also a visual artist and collagist, and a book of her poem-drawings is forthcoming from Archway Editions. Since 1992, Notley has lived and worked in Paris, France. | |||
06 Nov 2020 | (Highlights) ALICE NOTLEY | ||
27 Oct 2023 | Highlights - HALA ALYAN - Dayton Literary Peace Prize Winner - Palestinian-American Poet, Novelist & Clinical Psychologist | 00:09:28 | |
“We become the stories we tell ourselves…I started writing around the time I learned English because we moved to the States soon after my fourth birthday, and so I was here for kindergarten into elementary school. I grasped this new language just as I was learning how to also put things onto the page. Those two things really happened at the same time for me. I entered this world where I felt very different and very other, for all intents and purposes I was set to be raised in Kuwait. And then that of course got turned upside down after the invasion by Saddam. I think that so much of my trying to make sense of the world had to do with the displacement, exile and these experiences that my parents had experienced but then that I had as well as we were fleeing the war. It’s hard to know because I think that language was being formed in my brain at the same time that these things were happening.” Hala Alyan is the author of the novel Salt Houses, winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Arab American Book Award and a finalist for the Chautauqua Prize, as well as the forthcoming novel The Arsonists’ City, and four award-winning collections of poetry, most recently The Twenty-Ninth Year. Her work has been published by the New Yorker, the Academy of American Poets, Lit Hub, The New York Times Book Review, and Guernica. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, where she works as a clinical psychologist. · halaalyan.com | |||
27 Oct 2023 | HALA ALYAN - Palestinian-American Poet, Novelist & Clinical Psychologist - Dayton Literary Peace Prize Winner | 00:44:29 | |
Hala Alyan is the author of the novel Salt Houses, winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Arab American Book Award and a finalist for the Chautauqua Prize, as well as the forthcoming novel The Arsonists’ City, and four award-winning collections of poetry, most recently The Twenty-Ninth Year. Her work has been published by the New Yorker, the Academy of American Poets, Lit Hub, The New York Times Book Review, and Guernica. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, where she works as a clinical psychologist. · halaalyan.com | |||
09 Nov 2021 | (Highlights) ANA CASTILLO | ||
“One of the things that is dying is our planet. We hear these sirens every single day. We’re being warned daily by experts and concerned people how vast that squandering is going. It’s a case of urgency and it’s astounding and a very sad, a very pathetic comment on modern life that most people are ignoring those signs. As a poet, it seems to me that one of the tasks that the poet takes on, it’s a vocation that’s born with it, it’s this consciousness, this serving as witness.” Xicana activist, editor, poet, novelist, and artist Ana Castillo, was born and raised in Chicago. She is known for coining the term “xicanisma” which is defined in her book the Massacre of the Dreamers as, “a sociopolitical movement in the United States that analyzes the historical, cultural, spiritual, educational, and economic intersection of Mexican American women that identify as Chicana.” The term cross bred Chicana feminism, which came to include the indigenous ancestry of Mexican Americans, unifying us with our sisters on the other side of the border. · www.anacastillo.net | |||
09 Nov 2021 | ANA CASTILLO | ||
Xicana activist, editor, poet, novelist, and artist Ana Castillo, was born and raised in Chicago. She is known for coining the term “xicanisma” which is defined in her book the Massacre of the Dreamers as, “a sociopolitical movement in the United States that analyzes the historical, cultural, spiritual, educational, and economic intersection of Mexican American women that identify as Chicana.” The term cross bred Chicana feminism, which came to include the indigenous ancestry of Mexican Americans, unifying us with our sisters on the other side of the border. · www.anacastillo.net | |||
12 Nov 2021 | JERICHO BROWN | ||
Jericho Brown is author of the The Tradition (Copper Canyon 2019), for which he won the Pulitzer Prize. He is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, and the National Endowment for the Arts, and he is the winner of the Whiting Award. Brown’s first book, Please (New Issues 2008), won the American Book Award. His second book, The New Testament (Copper Canyon 2014), won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. His third collection, The Tradition won the Paterson Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. His poems have appeared in The Bennington Review, Buzzfeed, Fence, jubilat, The New Republic, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, TIME magazine, and several volumes of The Best American Poetry. He is the director of the Creative Writing Program and a professor at Emory University. · www.jerichobrown.com · www.oneplanetpodcast.org | |||
11 Nov 2021 | REBECCA WALKER | ||
Latest ARTS interview from The Creative Process’ MAIN CHANNEL. To listen to more of our interviews across the arts, visit tinyurl.com/thecreativepod, tinyurl.com/thecreativespotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. This POETRY podcast focuses on interviews with poets, but you can find hundreds more conversations across the arts, culture, society & the environment on our main channel. We hope you’ll check it out! "The idea of writing memoir is about listening carefully. The way to find a story or, at least the story that needs to be told is that moment that you’re writing is the emerges from a deep kind of inner listening and finding the memories that are charged that don’t want to leave that have a certain kind of energy to them and, if you listen to them, and you allow them to be born in the writing, you discover your own story because your story is basically made up of all the memories that continue to hold the charge for you. All the memories that are lodged in your mind that you’ve secreted away and when you can excavate that story and you can write it down, then you can make sense of it and you can understand why you’re living the way you’re living and why you feel the way you feel. And you can also decide to to release those memories so that you can have new memories that can define and can shape your life." Writer and producer Rebecca Walker has contributed to the global conversation about race, gender, power, and the evolution of the human family for three decades. Author and editor of seven bestselling books on multiracial identity, Black Cool and ambivalent motherhood, she has co-founded the Third Wave Fund, which makes grants to womxn and transgender youth working for social justice. For her efforts, she has been named by Time as one of the most influential leaders of her generation. · www.rebeccawalker.com · www.creativeprocess.info | |||
12 Nov 2021 | (Highlights) JERICHO BROWN | ||
“I just want to make the poems like a living being…There are moments that I’m not at the desk, but I’m living life. And living life is actually what leads to writing. You have to have experiences to write about. Whether or not you are aware of those experiences as you are writing them down because if you’re doing music first, maybe you’re not aware of what you’re writing. And yet, those experiences are what come to fruition in your writing. You become aware. Oh, I did come on that roller coaster that time that I haven’t thought about in twenty years. Oh I did make love to that cute person that I haven’t thought about in ten years, but you’ve got to make love, you’ve got to get on roller coasters, you’ve got to get your heart broken. You’ve got to dance. You gotta get out and do things and that, too, is a part of writing. You have to trust you’re a writer by identity. And if you can trust that you’re a writer by identity, then you don’t have to be at a desk.” Jericho Brown is author of the The Tradition (Copper Canyon 2019), for which he won the Pulitzer Prize. He is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, and the National Endowment for the Arts, and he is the winner of the Whiting Award. Brown’s first book, Please (New Issues 2008), won the American Book Award. His second book, The New Testament (Copper Canyon 2014), won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. His third collection, The Tradition won the Paterson Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. His poems have appeared in The Bennington Review, Buzzfeed, Fence, jubilat, The New Republic, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, TIME magazine, and several volumes of The Best American Poetry. He is the director of the Creative Writing Program and a professor at Emory University. · www.jerichobrown.com · www.oneplanetpodcast.org | |||
11 Nov 2021 | MASTER SHI HENG YI | ||
Latest Spirituality & Mindfulness interview from The Creative Process’ MAIN CHANNEL. To listen to more of our interviews across the arts and other disciplines, visit tinyurl.com/thecreativepod, tinyurl.com/thecreativespotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. This POETRY podcast focuses on interviews with poets, but you can find hundreds more conversations across the arts, culture, society & the environment on our main channel. We hope you’ll check it out! For more than 30 years, Master Shi Heng Yi has been studying and practicing the interaction between mind and body. His strength is the ability to smoothly combine this knowledge with physical exercises and to practice Martial art –Kung Fu and Qi Gong. He has an academic background but he prefers to live at the Shaolin Temple Europe, Monastery located in Otterberg, Germany. Since 2010 he has been taking care of the settlement and he personifies sustainable development and spreading Shaolin culture and philosophy. · www.shihengyi.online | |||
26 Apr 2022 | (Highlights) E.J. KOH | ||
“These were my bedtime stories stories. I remember listening to them before I could speak. I had delayed speech, and I had quite a bit of trouble with speaking at all and with learning and also just simply getting into school. I think I must have been five before I was uttering some of my first words and trying to articulate. Simple communication was very difficult for me and my family, especially in a family where we were speaking several languages. They hoped to instill English. It’s the language of survival. Once they immigrated to the States. And my grandmother, my father’s mother, who raised me was speaking Japanese, that was her private language. It was a remnant of the past and sort of the past of the occupation with Korea being occupied by Japan. My mother and father spoke in Korean, and this was a much more intimate language that I wanted to have access to but would also keep me away from the English that they hoped me to get. And all of this was compounded by my difficulty with speech. So there was a lot of frustration and fear in my relationship to language, and the relationship these languages had to each other, that was something I felt very sensitive to since I was young. Since before I could speak.” E. J. Koh is the author of the memoir The Magical Language of Others, winner of the Washington State Book Award and the 2021 Pacific Northwest Book Award. For her poetry collection A Lesser Love she received the Pleiades Press Editors Prize. She is the co-translator of Yi Won’s The World’s Lightest Motorcycle, forthcoming from Zephyr Press. Her poems, translations, and stories have appeared in Boston Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, and World Literature Today, among others. She earned her MFA in Literary Translation and Creative Writing from Columbia University, and is completing the PhD program at the University of Washington in Seattle. She is a recipient of MacDowell and Kundiman fellowships. IG @thisisejkoh | |||
22 Feb 2022 | ADA LIMÓN | ||
Ada Limón is the author of six books of poetry, including The Carrying, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry. Her book Bright Dead Things was nominated for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. Her work has been supported most recently by a Guggenheim Fellowship. She grew up in Sonoma, California and now lives in Lexington, Kentucky where she writes, teaches remotely, and hosts the critically-acclaimed poetry podcast, The Slowdown. Her new book of poetry, The Hurting Kind, is forthcoming from Milkweed Editions in May 2022. Photo credit: Lucas Marquardt | |||
22 Feb 2022 | (Highlights) ADA LIMÓN | ||
"This poem was written when I was having a real moment of reckoning, not that I hadn't had it earlier, but where I was doing some deep reading about the climate crisis and really reckoning with myself, with where we were and what was happening, what the truth was. And I felt like it was so easy to slip down into a darkness, into a sort of numbness, and I didn't think that that numbness and darkness could be useful." Ada Limón is the author of six books of poetry, including The Carrying, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry. Her book Bright Dead Things was nominated for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. Her work has been supported most recently by a Guggenheim Fellowship. She grew up in Sonoma, California and now lives in Lexington, Kentucky where she writes, teaches remotely, and hosts the critically-acclaimed poetry podcast, The Slowdown. Her new book of poetry, The Hurting Kind, is forthcoming from Milkweed Editions in May 2022. | |||
26 Apr 2022 | E.J. KOH | ||
E. J. Koh is the author of the memoir The Magical Language of Others, winner of the Washington State Book Award and the 2021 Pacific Northwest Book Award. For her poetry collection A Lesser Love she received the Pleiades Press Editors Prize. She is the co-translator of Yi Won’s The World’s Lightest Motorcycle, forthcoming from Zephyr Press. Her poems, translations, and stories have appeared in Boston Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, and World Literature Today, among others. She earned her MFA in Literary Translation and Creative Writing from Columbia University, and is completing the PhD program at the University of Washington in Seattle. She is a recipient of MacDowell and Kundiman fellowships. | |||
13 May 2022 | Courtney Peppernell · YA Writer & Poet · Author of “Pillow Thoughts” | ||
Best-selling author Courtney Peppernell is from Sydney, Australia. Her poetry collection Pillow Thoughts was a worldwide success. Her Young Adult novels and poetry books have struck a chord with young readers and the LGBTQ+ community. Her other works include I Hope You Stay, Watering the Soul, as well as Hope in the Morning, profits of which were donated to assist relief efforts for injured wildlife affected by Australian bushfires. “I really hope that kindness is preserved. I really think manners and being polite can go a long way. People are in such a rush these days. Everybody wants to acquire so much, and they forget to just be thankful for the little things in life. To slow down, how you move through the world and how selfless you are, holding open a door for someone, or just telling someone to have a good day. Those are all things that can have a lasting effect on another person and make them want to be better as well.” | |||
13 May 2022 | (Highlights) Courtney Peppernell · YA Writer & Poet · Author of “Pillow Thoughts” | ||
“I really hope that kindness is preserved. I really think manners and being polite can go a long way. People are in such a rush these days. Everybody wants to acquire so much, and they forget to just be thankful for the little things in life. To slow down, how you move through the world and how selfless you are, holding open a door for someone, or just telling someone to have a good day. Those are all things that can have a lasting effect on another person and make them want to be better as well.” Best-selling author Courtney Peppernell is from Sydney, Australia. Her poetry collection Pillow Thoughts was a worldwide success. Her Young Adult novels and poetry books have struck a chord with young readers and the LGBTQ+ community. Her other works include I Hope You Stay, Watering the Soul, as well as Hope in the Morning, profits of which were donated to assist relief efforts for injured wildlife affected by Australian bushfires. | |||
03 Aug 2022 | David Farrier - Author of "Anthropocene Poetics", “Footprints: In Search of Future Fossils” | 00:49:37 | |
David Farrier's books include Footprints: In Search of Future Fossils (2020) and Anthropocene Poetics (2019). Footprints won the Royal Society of Literature’s Giles St. Aubyn award and has been translated into nine languages. He is Professor of Literature and the Environment at the University of Edinburgh. "I think a poem is a wonderful device for challenging our sense of the world around us and how things are connected in particular. Whether it's through the patterning of sounds or the arrangement of line breaks, poems are always suggesting to us new and perhaps unconsidered ways in which seemingly unlike things can be drawn into a relationship with one another, perhaps have always been in a relationship that we haven't understood. In Anthropocene Poetics, I talk about the thick time of lyric poetry, how a poem can bring many different times and time scales together. A poem can help us to think about the planetary time alongside the time of a passing moment or time on a human scale, as if these things are totally at home together - which of course they are." Footprints: In Search of Future Fossils www.ed.ac.uk/profile/david-farrier | |||
03 Aug 2022 | Highlights - David Farrier - Author of "Anthropocene Poetics", “Footprints: In Search of Future Fossils” | 00:10:48 | |
"I think a poem is a wonderful device for challenging our sense of the world around us and how things are connected in particular. Whether it's through the patterning of sounds or the arrangement of line breaks, poems are always suggesting to us new and perhaps unconsidered ways in which seemingly unlike things can be drawn into a relationship with one another, perhaps have always been in a relationship that we haven't understood. In Anthropocene Poetics, I talk about the thick time of lyric poetry, how a poem can bring many different times and time scales together. A poem can help us to think about the planetary time alongside the time of a passing moment or time on a human scale, as if these things are totally at home together - which of course they are." David Farrier's books include Footprints: In Search of Future Fossils (2020) and Anthropocene Poetics (2019). Footprints won the Royal Society of Literature’s Giles St. Aubyn award and has been translated into nine languages. He is Professor of Literature and the Environment at the University of Edinburgh. Footprints: In Search of Future Fossils www.ed.ac.uk/profile/david-farrier | |||
23 Aug 2022 | Anthony Joseph - T.S. Eliot Award-winning Writer & Musician - Author of “Sonnets for Albert” | 00:47:02 | |
Anthony Joseph is a poet, novelist, academic and musician who moved from Trinidad to the UK in 1989. A lecturer in creative writing at Birkbeck College, he is particularly interested in the point at which poetry becomes music. As well as four poetry collections, a slew of albums, and three novels – most recently Kitch – Joseph has published critical work exploring the aesthetics of Caribbean Poetry among other subjects. He performs internationally as the lead vocalist for his band The Spasm Band. Sonnets for Albert is his first poetry collection since Rubber Orchestras. His most recent album is The Rich Are Only Defeated When Running for Their Lives. "The life of Caribbean people is not really documented. So this idea of Caribbean life being fragmented is something that I've had in my mind for a long time. So when I came to write this collection for my father, I realized that it was the same process and what I had were fragments, especially with him, because he wasn't around in a physical sense all the time. So all I had were little photographs, scattered memories, and remembrances. They're little parts of his life and parts of my experience with him... I never disliked my father. I always loved him and always was fascinated and captivated by him." | |||
23 Aug 2022 | Highlights - Anthony Joseph - T.S. Eliot Award-winning Writer & Musician - “Sonnets for Albert” | 00:12:06 | |
"The life of Caribbean people is not really documented. So this idea of Caribbean life being fragmented is something that I've had in my mind for a long time. So when I came to write this collection for my father, I realized that it was the same process and what I had were fragments, especially with him, because he wasn't around in a physical sense all the time. So all I had were little photographs, scattered memories, and remembrances. They're little parts of his life and parts of my experience with him... I never disliked my father. I always loved him and always was fascinated and captivated by him." Anthony Joseph is a poet, novelist, academic and musician who moved from Trinidad to the UK in 1989. A lecturer in creative writing at Birkbeck College, he is particularly interested in the point at which poetry becomes music. As well as four poetry collections, a slew of albums, and three novels – most recently Kitch – Joseph has published critical work exploring the aesthetics of Caribbean Poetry among other subjects. He performs internationally as the lead vocalist for his band The Spasm Band. Sonnets for Albert is his first poetry collection since Rubber Orchestras. His most recent album is The Rich Are Only Defeated When Running for Their Lives. | |||
26 Aug 2022 | Sonnet L’Abbé - Award-winning Poet, Songwriter, Author of “Sonnet’s Shakespeare” | 01:01:21 | |
Sonnet L'Abbé is a Canadian poet, songwriter, editor and professor. They are the author of A Strange Relief, Killarnoe, and Sonnet's Shakespeare. Sonnet's Shakespeare was a Quill and Quire Book of the Year. In 2014 they edited the Best Canadian Poetry in English anthology. Their chapbook, Anima Canadensis, won the 2017 bpNichol Chapbook Award. They teach Creative Writing and English at Vancouver Island University, and are a poetry editor at Brick Books. "Sonnet’s Shakespeare itself came out of thinking about the form of erasure, what working in that form could do and mean. And at the time there were conversations about appropriative poets where there were specific instances of pretty shady power dynamics around certain poets taking certain texts and presenting them as their own and saying, 'This is just an appropriative poetics move.’ And I was looking at critical writing about it, and I couldn't find anything that talked about the role of the poet who is doing that as censorial or as somehow violencing the original text. I was thinking about my resonance with the word erasure and thinking about censoring and deleting what somebody else has already said resonates with me as an analogy for being black, being mixed race, being racialized, and non-European in spaces that are predominantly Anglo-Canadian and in rooms where, classrooms where, playgrounds where, churches where, certain signifiers of difference would make fitting in harder. One tries very hard. At least I did as a child to just try to fit in and make my visible difference as minimal, as invisible as possible. So it's a way of thinking about erasing the self. And so I took that theme and thought, How do I show through a poetic erasure this dynamic of self-erasure and feeling erased?” https://www.instagram.com/sonnetlabbe/ https://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet-books/2017/12/tree-i-invented-a-new-form-of-poem | |||
26 Aug 2022 | Highlights - Sonnet L’Abbé - Poet, Songwriter, Editor of “Best Canadian Poetry in English” | 00:12:30 | |
"Sonnet’s Shakespeare itself came out of thinking about the form of erasure, what working in that form could do and mean. And at the time there were conversations about appropriative poets where there were specific instances of pretty shady power dynamics around certain poets taking certain texts and presenting them as their own and saying, 'This is just an appropriative poetics move.’ And I was looking at critical writing about it, and I couldn't find anything that talked about the role of the poet who is doing that as censorial or as somehow violencing the original text. I was thinking about my resonance with the word erasure and thinking about censoring and deleting what somebody else has already said resonates with me as an analogy for being black, being mixed race, being racialized, and non-European in spaces that are predominantly Anglo-Canadian and in rooms where, classrooms where, playgrounds where, churches where, certain signifiers of difference would make fitting in harder. One tries very hard. At least I did as a child to just try to fit in and make my visible difference as minimal, as invisible as possible. So it's a way of thinking about erasing the self. And so I took that theme and thought, How do I show through a poetic erasure this dynamic of self-erasure and feeling erased?” Sonnet L'Abbé is a Canadian poet, songwriter, editor and professor. They are the author of A Strange Relief, Killarnoe, and Sonnet's Shakespeare. Sonnet's Shakespeare was a Quill and Quire Book of the Year. In 2014 they edited the Best Canadian Poetry in English anthology. Their chapbook, Anima Canadensis, won the 2017 bpNichol Chapbook Award. They teach Creative Writing and English at Vancouver Island University, and are a poetry editor at Brick Books. https://www.instagram.com/sonnetlabbe/ https://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet-books/2017/12/tree-i-invented-a-new-form-of-poem | |||
18 Jan 2023 | Max Stossel - Award-winning Poet, Filmmaker, Creator of "Words That Move" | 00:50:57 | |
Max Stossel is an Award-winning poet, filmmaker, and speaker, named by Forbes as one of the best storytellers of the year. His Stand-Up Poetry Special Words That Move takes the audience through a variety of different perspectives, inviting us to see the world through different eyes together. Taking on topics like heartbreak, consciousness, social media, politics, the emotional state of our world, and even how dogs probably (most certainly) talk, Max uses rhyme and rhythm to make these topics digestible and playful. Words That Move articulates the deep-seated kernels of truth that we so often struggle to find words for ourselves. Max has performed on five continents, from Lincoln Center in NY to the Hordern Pavilion in Sydney. He is also the Youth & Education Advisor for the Center for Humane Technology, an organization of former tech insiders dedicated to realigning technology with humanity’s best interests. "I think we have such an intensity in society for trying to push us to all see things the same way. And to try to conform all our vision to one sense of right or wrong. Or this is the way we're supposed to do things, as opposed to letting our unfiltered just like - what's real for me? What wants to happen? And how am I seeing the world? And maybe I'm totally different and weird and out there and outrageous in this way? And what if that's not something to hide, but something to embrace? And I certainly enjoy in my own life being in a space where, friends and loved ones, where I can just welcome all the weird and welcome whatever idiosyncrasies and quirks are there, and not let them be anything that needs changing." www.humanetech.com www.creativeprocess.info | |||
18 Jan 2023 | Highlights - Max Stossel - Award-winning Poet, Filmmaker, Creator of "Words That Move" | 00:10:45 | |
"I think we have such an intensity in society for trying to push us to all see things the same way. And to try to conform all our vision to one sense of right or wrong. Or this is the way we're supposed to do things, as opposed to letting our unfiltered just like - what's real for me? What wants to happen? And how am I seeing the world? And maybe I'm totally different and weird and out there and outrageous in this way? And what if that's not something to hide, but something to embrace? And I certainly enjoy in my own life being in a space where, friends and loved ones, where I can just welcome all the weird and welcome whatever idiosyncrasies and quirks are there, and not let them be anything that needs changing." Max Stossel is an Award-winning poet, filmmaker, and speaker, named by Forbes as one of the best storytellers of the year. His Stand-Up Poetry Special Words That Move takes the audience through a variety of different perspectives, inviting us to see the world through different eyes together. Taking on topics like heartbreak, consciousness, social media, politics, the emotional state of our world, and even how dogs probably (most certainly) talk, Max uses rhyme and rhythm to make these topics digestible and playful. Words That Move articulates the deep-seated kernels of truth that we so often struggle to find words for ourselves. Max has performed on five continents, from Lincoln Center in NY to the Hordern Pavilion in Sydney. He is also the Youth & Education Advisor for the Center for Humane Technology, an organization of former tech insiders dedicated to realigning technology with humanity’s best interests. www.humanetech.com www.creativeprocess.info | |||
15 Apr 2023 | LOVE - What is love? Filmmakers, poets, aviators, musicians, cave divers, environmentalists, writers, and artists explore what love means to them | 00:09:15 | |
00:25 JERICHO BROWN - Pulitzer Prize-Winning Poet, Author of “The Tradition” & “The New Testament” 00:39 JILL HEINERTH - Explorer, Presenter, Author of “Into The Planet: My Life as a Cave Diver” 01:02 ALICE FULTON - Poet - Recipient of MacArthur “Genius”, NEA & Guggenheim Fellowships 01:31 BERTRAND PICCARD - Aviator of 1st Round-the-World Solar-Powered Flight, Explorer, Founder, Solar Impulse Foundation: 1000+ Profitable Climate Solutions 02:31 CHRIS BLACKWELL - Founder of Island Records - Bob Marley, U2, Cat Stevens, Grace Jones, Roxy Music, Amy Winehouse…Author of “The Islander: My Life in Music and Beyond" 03:31 ALICE NOTLEY - Poet & Artist - Academy of American Poets Award Winner 04:08 MIA FUNK - Artist, Writer & Host of The Creative Process reads “In My Dreams" 04:45 MAX STOSSEL - Award-winning Poet, Filmmaker, Speaker - Creator of "Words That Move” 05:04 GERALD FLEMING - Poet, Author of the collections “The Choreographer”, “One”, “Night of Pure Breathing”, among others 05:29 MARGO BERDESHEVSKY - Award-winning Poet - "Kneel Said the Night”,"Before The Drought”, “Between Soul & Stone” 05:56 SAM LEVY - Award-winning Cinematographer of “Lady Bird” “Frances Ha” “While We’re Young” “Confess, Fletch” 06:31 CHAYSE IRVIN - Award-winning Cinematographer - “Blonde" starring Ana de Armas, “Beyonce: Lemonade”, Spike Lee’s “BlacKkKlansman” 06:57 KARINA MANASHIL - President of Mad Solar - Creative Confidante for Kid Cudi - Executive Producer of Netflix’s “Entergalactic”, A24’s “Pearl”, “X” 07:37 CARL SAFINA - Ecologist - Founding President of Safina Center - NYTimes Bestselling Author of “Becoming Wild: How Animal Cultures Raise Families, Create Beauty, and Achieve Peace”, among others www.creativeprocess.info Flower Duet - Leo Delibes | |||
26 Apr 2023 | Earth Month Stories - Part 2 - Environmentalists, Artists, Students & Teachers Speak Out & Share How We Can Save the Planet | 00:14:31 | |
Listen to Part 2 of this Special Series with music courtesy of composer Max Richter. All voices on this episode are from our interviews for The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast: MANUELA LUCÁ-DAZIO - Executive Director, Pritzker Architecture Prize - Fmr. Exec. Director of Venice Biennale, Visual Arts & Architecture Dept. BRITT WRAY - Author of “Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Crisis”, Researcher Working on Climate Change & Mental Health, Stanford University WALTER STAHEL - Architect, Economist, Founding Father of Circular Economy - Founder-Director, Product-Life Institute MATHIS WACKERNAGEL - Founder & President of the Global Footprint Network - World Sustainability Award Winner JAY FAMIGLIETTI, Fmr. Senior Water Scientist at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Exec. Director, Global Institute for Water Security, Host of "What About Water?" Podcast RICHARD VEVERS - Founder & CEO of The Ocean Agency ARMOND COHEN - Executive Director of Clean Air Task Force PAULA PINHO - Director of Just Transition at the European Commission Directorate-General for Energy MARTIN VON HILDEBRAND - Indigenous Rights Activist - Winner of Right Livelihood & Skoll Awards - Founder of Fundacion Gaia Amazonas, named #40 NGOs of the World by The Global Journal HAROLD P. SJURSEN - Professor of Philosophy - Science, Technology, the Arts - NYU, Beihang University, East China University BILL HARE - Founder & CEO of Climate Analytics, Physicist, Climate Scientist SIR ANDY HAINES - Tyler Prize Award-winner for Environmental Achievement - Professor of Environmental Change & Public Health LISA JACKSON PULVER - Deputy Vice-Chancellor of University of Sydney's Indigenous Strategy & Services Max Richter’s music featured in this episode: “Spring 1” from The New Four Seasons – Vivaldi Recomposed Music is courtesy of Max Richter, Universal Music Enterprises, and Mute Song. www.maxrichtermusic.com www.creativeprocess.info | |||
22 Apr 2023 | Special Earth Day Stories - Environmentalists, Artists, Students & Teachers share their Love for the Planet - Part 1 | 00:15:09 | |
Today we’re streaming voices of environmentalists, artists, students, and teachers. Enjoy Part 1 of this Special Series with music courtesy of composer Max Richter. All voices on this episode are from our interviews for The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast: MAX RICHTER INGRID NEWKIRK, Founder of PETA BERTRAND PICCARD, Aviator of 1st Round-the-World Solar-Powered Flight, Explorer, Founder, Solar Impulse Foundation CARL SAFINA, Ecologist, Founding President of Safina Center CLAIRE POTTER, Designer, Lecturer, Author of “Welcome to the Circular Economy” ADA LIMÓN, U.S. Poet Laureate, Host of The Slowdown podcast CYNTHIA DANIELS, Grammy and Emmy award-winning producer, engineer, composer JOELLE GERGIS, Lead Author of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, Author of “Humanity’s Moment” KATHLEEN ROGERS, President of EARTHDAY.ORG ODED GALOR, Author of “The Journey of Humanity”, Founder of Unified Growth Theory SIR GEOFF MULGAN, Fmr. Chief Executive of Nesta, Fmr, Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit Director & Downing Street’s Head of Policy, Author of “Another World is Possible” ALAIN ROBERT, Rock & Urban Climber known for Free Solo Climbing 150+ of the World’s Tallest Skyscrapers using no Climbing Equipment NOAH WILSON-RICH, Co-founder & CEO of The Best Bees Company CHRIS FUNK, Director of the Climate Hazards Center at UC Santa Barbara, Author of Drought, Flood, Fire: How Climate Change Contributes to Recent Catastrophes DAVID FARRIER, Author of “Footprints: In Search of Future Fossils” DR. SUZANNE SIMARD, Professor of Forest Ecology, Author of “Finding the Mother Tree” PETER SINGER, “Most Influential Living Philosopher”, Author, Founder of The Life You Can Save JENNIFER MORGAN, Fmr. Executive Director of Greenpeace International, Special Envoy for International Climate Action, German Foreign Ministry www.creativeprocess.info www.maxrichtermusic.com Max Richter’s music featured in this episode are “On the Nature of Daylight” from The Blue Notebooks, “Path 19: Yet Frailest” from Sleep. Music is courtesy of Max Richter, Universal Music Enterprises, and Mute Song. | |||
04 May 2023 | What Kind of World Are We Leaving for Future Generations? - Part 3 - Activists, Environmentalists & Teachers Share their Stories | 00:17:00 | |
Listen to Part 3 of this Special Series with music courtesy of composer Max Richter. All voices on this episode are from our interviews for The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast: PAULA PINHO, Director of Just Transition at the European Commission Directorate-General for Energy PIA MANCINI, Co-founder/CEO of Open Collective - Chair of DemocracyEarth Foundation, YGL World Economic Forum JENNIFER MORGAN, Fmr. Executive Director of Greenpeace International, Special Envoy for International Climate Action, German Foreign Ministry WALTER STAHEL, Architect, Economist, Founding Father of Circular Economy, Founder-Director, Product-Life Institute MERLIN SHELDRAKE, Biologist & Bestselling Author of Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, and Shape Our Futures, Winner of the Wainwright Prize 2021 RON GONEN, Founder & CEO of Closed Loop Partners, Former Deputy Commissioner of Sanitation, Recycling & Sustainability, NYC MANUELA LUCÁ-DAZIO, Executive Director, Pritzker Architecture Prize, Fmr. Exec. Director of Venice Biennale, Visual Arts & Architecture Dept. NICHOLAS ROYLE, Co-author of "An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory”, Author of “Mother: A Memoir” MARK BURGMAN, Director, Centre for Environmental Policy, Imperial College London, Editor-in-Chief, Conservation Biology MIKE DAVIS, CEO of Global Witness JAY FAMIGLIETTI, Fmr. Senior Water Scientist at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Exec. Director, Global Institute for Water Security, Host of "What About Water?" Podcast BRITT WRAY, Author of “Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Crisis”, Researcher Working on Climate Change & Mental Health, Stanford University RICHARD VEVERS, Founder & CEO of The Ocean Agency ARMOND COHEN, Executive Director of Clean Air Task Force BILL HARE, Founder & CEO of Climate Analytics, Physicist, Climate Scientist DAVID PALUMBO-LIU, Activist, Professor & Author of “Speaking Out of Place: Getting Our Political Voices Back”, Host of Speaking out of Place Podcast IBRAHIM ALHUSSEINI, Founder & CEO of FullCycle Fund GAIA VINCE, Science Writer, Broadcaster & Author of “Transcendence” & “Adventures in the Anthropocene” INGRID NEWKIRK, Founder & President of PETA - People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals www.creativeprocess.info www.maxrichtermusic.com Max Richter’s music featured in this episode are “On the Nature of Daylight” from The Blue Notebooks, “Path 19: Yet Frailest” from Sleep. Music is courtesy of Max Richter, Universal Music Enterprises, and Mute Song. | |||
05 May 2023 | We All Live on One Planet We Call Home - Part 4 - Environmentalists, Economists, Policymakers & Architects Share their Stories | 00:22:57 | |
Listen to Part 4 of this Special Series with music courtesy of composer Max Richter. All voices on this episode are from our interviews for The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast: INGRID NEWKIRK, Founder & President of PETA - People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals JEFFREY D. SACHS, President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, Director of Center for Sustainable Development, Columbia University, Economist, Author JENNIFER MORGAN, Fmr. Executive Director of Greenpeace International, Special Envoy for International Climate Action, German Foreign Ministry MERLIN SHELDRAKE, Biologist & Bestselling Author of “Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, and Shape Our Futures”, Winner of the Wainwright Prize 2021 WALTER STAHEL, Architect, Economist, Founding Father of Circular Economy, Founder-Director, Product-Life Institute ARMOND COHEN, Executive Director of Clean Air Task Force PIA MANCINI, Co-founder/CEO of Open Collective - Chair of DemocracyEarth Foundation, YGL World Economic Forum RON GONEN, Founder & CEO of Closed Loop Partners, Former Deputy Commissioner of Sanitation, Recycling & Sustainability, NYC AIMEE NEZHUKUMATATHIL, Poet & Author of “World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks and Other Astonishments” ANA CASTILLO, Award-Winning Xicana Activist, Editor, Poet, Novelist & Artist www.creativeprocess.info www.maxrichtermusic.com Max Richter’s music featured in this episode are “On the Nature of Daylight” from The Blue Notebooks, “Path 19: Yet Frailest” from Sleep. Music is courtesy of Max Richter, Universal Music Enterprises, and Mute Song. Artwork: Saudade, Mia Funk | |||
24 May 2023 | ANDRI SNÆR MAGNASON - Icelandic Writer & Documentary Filmmaker - On Time and Water, The Casket of Time, LoveStar, Not Ok | 00:42:52 | |
Andri Snær Magnason is an award winning author of On Time and Water, The Casket of Time, LoveStar, Dreamland and The Story of the Blue Planet. His work has been published in more than 35 languages. He has a written in most genres, novels, poetry, plays, short stories, non fiction as well as being a documentary film maker. His novel, LoveStar got a Philip K. Dick Special Citation, and the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire in France and “Novel of the year” in Iceland. The Story of the Blue Planet, was the first children’s book to receive the Icelandic Literary Award and has been published or performed in 35 countries. The Blue Planet received the Janusz Korczak Honorary Award in Poland 2000, the UKLA Award in the UK and Children's book of the Year in China. His book – Dreamland – a Self Help Manual for a Frightened Nation takes on these issues and has sold more than 20.000 copies in Iceland. He co directed Dreamland - a feature length documentary film based on the book. Footage from Dreamland and an interview with Andri can be seen in the Oscar Award-winning documentary Inside Job by Charles Ferguson. His most recent book, Tímakistan, the Time Casket has now been published in more than 10 languages, was nominated as the best fantasy book in Finland 2016 with authors like Ursula K. le Guin and David Mitchell. In English six books are currently available: Bónus Poetry, The Story of The Blue Planet, LoveStar, Dreamland and The Casket of Time, (Tímakistan) and On Time and Water. "When I was writing On Time and Water somebody said this is not just one book. This is about your grandmother, about glaciers. You have to focus. You can't have this mythology and glacial and ocean sites, speculations about words like ocean acidification, and your grandfather's sister who is visiting Tolstoy. You have to focus. You can't put all this into a book. And then I thought, oh yes, I forgot my favorite uncle, who was the researcher of crocodiles. I also have to put him into the book. And when I put the crocodile's story into the book, it was like a keystone. Everything fell into a whole picture. Because we live in democratic societies and literature is an art of entertainment. People want to continue reading books, and it's based on instant ways of storytelling. Of course, it's strange to live in a society where we have to entertain ourselves to understand the most important issue in the world." www.creativeprocess.info | |||
24 May 2023 | Highlights - ANDRI SNÆR MAGNASON - Writer & Documentary Filmmaker - On Time and Water, The Casket of Time, LoveStar, Not Ok | 00:12:54 | |
"When I was writing On Time and Water somebody said this is not just one book. This is about your grandmother, about glaciers. You have to focus. You can't have this mythology and glacial and ocean sites, speculations about words like ocean acidification, and your grandfather's sister who is visiting Tolstoy. You have to focus. You can't put all this into a book. And then I thought, oh yes, I forgot my favorite uncle, who was the researcher of crocodiles. I also have to put him into the book. And when I put the crocodile's story into the book, it was like a keystone. Everything fell into a whole picture. Because we live in democratic societies and literature is an art of entertainment. People want to continue reading books, and it's based on instant ways of storytelling. Of course, it's strange to live in a society where we have to entertain ourselves to understand the most important issue in the world." Andri Snær Magnason is an award winning author of On Time and Water, The Casket of Time, LoveStar, Dreamland and The Story of the Blue Planet. His work has been published in more than 35 languages. He has a written in most genres, novels, poetry, plays, short stories, non fiction as well as being a documentary film maker. His novel, LoveStar got a Philip K. Dick Special Citation, and the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire in France and “Novel of the year” in Iceland. The Story of the Blue Planet, was the first children’s book to receive the Icelandic Literary Award and has been published or performed in 35 countries. The Blue Planet received the Janusz Korczak Honorary Award in Poland 2000, the UKLA Award in the UK and Children's book of the Year in China. His book – Dreamland – a Self Help Manual for a Frightened Nation takes on these issues and has sold more than 20.000 copies in Iceland. He co directed Dreamland - a feature length documentary film based on the book. Footage from Dreamland and an interview with Andri can be seen in the Oscar Award-winning documentary Inside Job by Charles Ferguson. His most recent book, Tímakistan, the Time Casket has now been published in more than 10 languages, was nominated as the best fantasy book in Finland 2016 with authors like Ursula K. le Guin and David Mitchell. In English six books are currently available: Bónus Poetry, The Story of The Blue Planet, LoveStar, Dreamland and The Casket of Time, (Tímakistan) and On Time and Water. www.creativeprocess.info | |||
30 May 2023 | NEIL GAIMAN - Writer, Producer, Showrunner “The Sandman”, “American Gods”, “Good Omens”, “Coraline” | 00:04:07 | |
Neil Gaiman is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of more than twenty books, including The Sandman, American Gods, Good Omens, Stardust, Coraline, Norse Mythology, Neverwhere, and The Graveyard Book. He’s adapted many of his books for television and film. Among his numerous literary awards are the Newbery and Carnegie medals, and the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, and Will Eisner awards. He is a Global Goodwill Ambassador for United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). In this episode, Gaiman reads his poems “A Writer’s Prayer” and “These Are Not Our Faces”. To hear our full interview with Neil Gaiman, visit The Creative Process Podcast: Arts, Culture & Society. www.neilgaiman.com www.creativeprocess.info | |||
31 May 2023 | ADA LIMÓN - U.S. Poet Laureate - Host of The Slowdown podcast | 00:06:50 | |
Ada Limón is the author of six books of poetry, including The Carrying, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry. Her book Bright Dead Things was nominated for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. Her work has been supported most recently by a Guggenheim Fellowship. She grew up in Sonoma, California and now lives in Lexington, Kentucky where she writes, teaches remotely, and hosts the critically-acclaimed poetry podcast, The Slowdown. Her new book of poetry, The Hurting Kind, is forthcoming from Milkweed Editions in May 2022. Photo credit: Lucas Marquardt | |||
03 Jun 2023 | ANTHONY JOSEPH - T.S. Eliot Award-winning Poet, Novelist & Musician, Lead vocalist of The Spasm Band | 00:17:01 | |
Anthony Joseph is a poet, novelist, academic and musician who moved from Trinidad to the UK in 1989. A lecturer in creative writing at Birkbeck College, he is particularly interested in the point at which poetry becomes music. As well as four poetry collections, a slew of albums, and three novels – most recently Kitch – Joseph has published critical work exploring the aesthetics of Caribbean Poetry among other subjects. He performs internationally as the lead vocalist for his band The Spasm Band. Sonnets for Albert is his first poetry collection since Rubber Orchestras. “Calling England Home” and “Language (Poem for Anthony McNeill)” were released in 2021 by Anthony Joseph and appear on his album "The Rich Are Only Defeated When Running For Their Lives”. | |||
07 Jun 2023 | E.J. KOH - Award-Winning Memoirist & Poet - “The Magical Language of Others”, “A Lesser Love” | 00:05:02 | |
E. J. Koh is the author of the memoir The Magical Language of Others, winner of the Washington State Book Award and the 2021 Pacific Northwest Book Award. For her poetry collection A Lesser Love she received the Pleiades Press Editors Prize. She is the co-translator of Yi Won’s The World’s Lightest Motorcycle, forthcoming from Zephyr Press. Her poems, translations, and stories have appeared in Boston Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, and World Literature Today, among others. She earned her MFA in Literary Translation and Creative Writing from Columbia University, and is completing the PhD program at the University of Washington in Seattle. She is a recipient of MacDowell and Kundiman fellowships. www.miafunk.com | |||
11 Jun 2023 | ALICE FULTON - Poet - Recipient of MacArthur “Genius”, NEA & Guggenheim Fellowships | 00:08:34 | |
Alice Fulton’s books include Barely Composed, a poetry collection; The Nightingales Of Troy, linked stories; and Cascade Experiment: Selected Poems. Her book Felt received the Bobbitt Prize from the Library of Congress, awarded to the best book of poems published within a two-year period. She has received an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature and fellowships from the MacArthur Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Guggenheim Foundation, and Ingram Merrill Foundation. Her other books include Sensual Math, Powers Of Congress, Palladium, Dance Script With Electric Ballerina, and an essay collection, Feeling As A Foreign Language. She lives in Ithaca, NY. www.miafunk.com | |||
12 Jun 2023 | ALICE NOTLEY - Poet & Artist - Academy of American Poets Award Winner | 00:04:32 | |
Alice Notley has published over forty books of poetry, most recently For the Ride (Penguin Books) and Eurynome’s Sandals (PURH). Notley has received many awards including the Academy of American Poets’ Lenore Marshall Prize, the Poetry Society of America’s Shelley Award, the Griffin International Prize, two NEA Grants, the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Poetry, and the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, a lifetime achievement award. She is also a visual artist and collagist, and a book of her poem-drawings is forthcoming from Archway Editions. Since 1992, Notley has lived and worked in Paris, France. www.miafunk.com | |||
16 Jun 2023 | MARGE PIERCY - NYTimes Bestselling Novelist, Poet & Activist | 00:05:41 | |
Marge Piercy’s 17 novels include NYTimes Bestseller Gone To Soldiers; National Bestsellers Braided Lives and The Longings of Women; the classics Woman on the Edge of Time and He, She and It, and her critically acclaimed memoir Sleeping with Cats. She’s written 20 volumes of poetry. The most recent is On the Way Out, Turn Off the Light. Born in Detroit, educated at the University of Michigan and Northwestern, she is active in antiwar, feminist and environmental causes. www.miafunk.com | |||
13 Aug 2023 | JERICHO BROWN - Pulitzer Prize-winning Poet - Editor of “How We Do It: Black Writers on Craft, Practice, and Skill” | 00:49:13 | |
How do you find your voice? As a writer, how do you take what you know and what you believe to share your stories with the world? How do we let young writers know just how powerful they are and that what they do matters? In How We Do It: Black Writers on Craft, Practice, and Skill Pulitzer Prize winning, and National Book Award finalist author Jericho Brown brings together more than 30 acclaimed writers, including the likes of Tayari Jones, Jacqueline Woodson, Natasha Trethewey, among many others, to discuss, dissect, and offer advice and encouragement on the written word. Brown is author of The Tradition, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize. He is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, and the National Endowment for the Arts, and he is the winner of the Whiting Award. Brown’s first book, Please, won the American Book Award. His second book, The New Testament, won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. His third collection, The Tradition won the Paterson Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. His poems have appeared in The Bennington Review, Buzzfeed, Fence, jubilat, The New Republic, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Paris Review TIME magazine, and several volumes of The Best American Poetry. He is the director of the Creative Writing Program and a professor at Emory University. "I tried to make something that I would have needed. And because that's what I tried to make, I'm hoping readers read something that they need. You know, that's the joy of books, that you come across something that you needed that you didn't even know you needed. In order to make what you make, you have to use what you have. You have to submerge yourself, immerse yourself in what you know, in your own vernacular, in your own tone, in your own belief, in your own way of doing things and telling stories. And that's how the writing can get done." www.jerichobrown.com www.creativeprocess.info | |||
13 Aug 2023 | Highlights - JERICHO BROWN - Pulitzer Prize-winning Poet - Editor of How We Do It: Black Writers on Craft, Practice, and Skill | 00:15:16 | |
"I tried to make something that I would have needed. And because that's what I tried to make, I'm hoping readers read something that they need. You know, that's the joy of books, that you come across something that you needed that you didn't even know you needed. In order to make what you make, you have to use what you have. You have to submerge yourself, immerse yourself in what you know, in your own vernacular, in your own tone, in your own belief, in your own way of doing things and telling stories. And that's how the writing can get done." How do you find your voice? As a writer, how do you take what you know and what you believe to share your stories with the world? How do we let young writers know just how powerful they are and that what they do matters? In How We Do It: Black Writers on Craft, Practice, and Skill Pulitzer Prize winning, and National Book Award finalist author Jericho Brown brings together more than 30 acclaimed writers, including the likes of Tayari Jones, Jacqueline Woodson, Natasha Trethewey, among many others, to discuss, dissect, and offer advice and encouragement on the written word. Brown is author of The Tradition, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize. He is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, and the National Endowment for the Arts, and he is the winner of the Whiting Award. Brown’s first book, Please, won the American Book Award. His second book, The New Testament, won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. His third collection, The Tradition won the Paterson Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. His poems have appeared in The Bennington Review, Buzzfeed, Fence, jubilat, The New Republic, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Paris Review TIME magazine, and several volumes of The Best American Poetry. He is the director of the Creative Writing Program and a professor at Emory University. www.jerichobrown.com www.creativeprocess.info | |||
18 Oct 2023 | THE ART OF WRITING: NEIL GAIMAN, JERICHO BROWN, ADA LIMÓN, MARGE PIERCY, E.J. KOH & MAX STOSSEL | 00:26:05 | |
Poets, novelists, activists & translators discuss the Art of Writing and The Creative Process. This episode features: NEIL GAIMAN - Writer, Producer, Showrunner - The Sandman, American Gods, Good Omens, Coraline JERICHO BROWN - Pulitzer Prize-winning Poet: The Tradition ADA LIMÓN, U.S. Poet Laureate - The Hurting Kind, The Carrying MARGE PIERCY - Award-winning Novelist, Poet & Activist E.J. KOH - Award-Winning Memoirist & Poet - The Magical Language of Others, A Lesser Love MAX STOSSEL - Award-winning Poet, Filmmaker, Speaker www.creativeprocess.info | |||
20 Dec 2023 | How has jazz been interpreted around the world? - Highlights - BERNARDO MOREIRA | 00:10:16 | |
“I had so many people around me when I was young– famous poets like Ary dos Santos, one of Portugal’s greatest poets of the 20th century. Sometimes he would be there talking with my mother, and I had this information that was getting in, but I wasn’t aware of it. And then in the early days, when I had just started playing, I was really into modern jazz, which was very instrumental, so I didn’t really pay attention to lyrics. It took me a while to get interested in Portuguese music, and in that mixture between jazz, Fado music and Portuguese popular music. For a while I was into the importance of a good poem. Now what moves me most of the time is that mixture of cultures— trying to do something that you cannot find in other countries. If you are into a lot of American jazz, for instance, you can play great music, but you are always playing music that started elsewhere, you know? And for a European like me, it’s challenging to try and find what makes you different in such a big market. What sound can you try to create that you wouldn’t hear in France or in Japan or in New York? So that's a very difficult challenge, actually, because you try to get really into your heart and your emotion. And I think Portugal has a lot of good emotions in its popular music that you don't find elsewhere. The music I make always has a kind of nostalgic ambience. It's not always sadness. It's a melancholic approach that is very hard to put into words– you just need to feel it.” Bernardo Moreira is one of the most active Portuguese double bassists. He has performed as a guest soloist with Gulbenkian, Metropolitan de Lisboa, and Nacional do Porto orchestras, and gained prominence for his collaborations with international artists, including the legendary Benny Colson, Freddie Hubbard, Wayne Shorter, Art Farmer, and Kenny Wheeler. He is a regular collaborator with many jazz musicians in Portugal, participating in formations such as the Maria João/Mário Laginha quartet, the Mário Laginha trio, and singer Cristina Branco. In 2021, he released Enter Paredes, and in 2022, he led Cantina’s de Main and SUL. www.clavenamao.org www.creativeprocess.info António Marinheiro, Bernardo Moreira Sextet, from the album Entre Paredes PROMESSAS MIX V3 ULT from SUL | |||
20 Dec 2023 | BERNARDO MOREIRA - Portuguese Jazz Musician | 00:36:37 | |
Bernardo Moreira is one of the most active Portuguese double bassists. He has performed as a guest soloist with Gulbenkian, Metropolitan de Lisboa, and Nacional do Porto orchestras, and gained prominence for his collaborations with international artists, including the legendary Benny Colson, Freddie Hubbard, Wayne Shorter, Art Farmer, and Kenny Wheeler. He is a regular collaborator with many jazz musicians in Portugal, participating in formations such as the Maria João/Mário Laginha quartet, the Mário Laginha trio, and singer Cristina Branco. In 2021, he released Enter Paredes, and in 2022, he led Cantina’s de Main and SUL. “I had so many people around me when I was young– famous poets like Ary dos Santos, one of Portugal’s greatest poets of the 20th century. Sometimes he would be there talking with my mother, and I had this information that was getting in, but I wasn’t aware of it. And then in the early days, when I had just started playing, I was really into modern jazz, which was very instrumental, so I didn’t really pay attention to lyrics. It took me a while to get interested in Portuguese music, and in that mixture between jazz, Fado music and Portuguese popular music. For a while I was into the importance of a good poem. Now what moves me most of the time is that mixture of cultures— trying to do something that you cannot find in other countries. If you are into a lot of American jazz, for instance, you can play great music, but you are always playing music that started elsewhere, you know? And for a European like me, it’s challenging to try and find what makes you different in such a big market. What sound can you try to create that you wouldn’t hear in France or in Japan or in New York? So that's a very difficult challenge, actually, because you try to get really into your heart and your emotion. And I think Portugal has a lot of good emotions in its popular music that you don't find elsewhere. The music I make always has a kind of nostalgic ambience. It's not always sadness. It's a melancholic approach that is very hard to put into words– you just need to feel it.” www.clavenamao.org www.creativeprocess.info António Marinheiro, Bernardo Moreira Sextet, from the album Entre Paredes PROMESSAS MIX V3 ULT from SUL | |||
08 Mar 2024 | Literature, Humanities & Sustainability: PAOLA SPINOZZI - Coordinator, Phd Programme, Environmental Sustainability & Wellbeing, UNIFE | 00:41:36 | |
How can we create positive change? What does it mean to have an ecological mind? How can interdisciplinary collaborations help us move beyond educational silos and create sustainable futures? Paola Spinozzi is Professor of English Literature at the University of Ferrara and currently serves as Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Internationalisation. She is the coordinator of the PhD Programme in Environmental Sustainability and Wellbeing and the co-coordinator of Routes towards Sustainability. Her research encompasses the ecological humanities and ecocriticism, utopia and sustainability; literature and the visual arts; literature and science; cultural memory. She has co-edited Cultures of Sustainability and Wellbeing: Theories, Histories and Policies and published on post/apocalyptic and climate fiction, nature poetry, eco-theatre; art and aesthetics, imperialism and evolutionism in utopia as a genre; the writing of science; interart creativity. “I want to quote a poem because it's not only a poem. It's a poem rethought by and revisited by a conceptual artist. It's called "All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace". So this originally is a 1967 poem by an American author Richard Brautigan, but then in 2021, it became a video by Turkish artist Memo Akten. This video brings together an amazing array of images in which you see different natural environments and artificial intelligence. Gradually, they come to blend, and then they melt, and then they become one.” I like to think –Richard Brautigan https://docente.unife.it/paola.spinozzi https://www.unife.it/studenti/dottorato/it/corsi/riforma/environmental-sustainability-and-wellbeing www.creativeprocess.info | |||
08 Mar 2024 | What does it mean to have an ecological mind? - Highlights - PAOLA SPINOZZI | 00:11:53 | |
“I want to quote a poem because it's not only a poem. It's a poem rethought by and revisited by a conceptual artist. It's called "All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace". So this originally is a 1967 poem by an American author Richard Brautigan, but then in 2021, it became a video by Turkish artist Memo Akten. This video brings together an amazing array of images in which you see different natural environments and artificial intelligence. Gradually, they come to blend, and then they melt, and then they become one.” I like to think –Richard Brautigan Paola Spinozzi is Professor of English Literature at the University of Ferrara and currently serves as Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Internationalisation. She is the coordinator of the PhD Programme in Environmental Sustainability and Wellbeing and the co-coordinator of Routes towards Sustainability. Her research encompasses the ecological humanities and ecocriticism, utopia and sustainability; literature and the visual arts; literature and science; cultural memory. She has co-edited Cultures of Sustainability and Wellbeing: Theories, Histories and Policies and published on post/apocalyptic and climate fiction, nature poetry, eco-theatre; art and aesthetics, imperialism and evolutionism in utopia as a genre; the writing of science; interart creativity. https://docente.unife.it/paola.spinozzi https://www.unife.it/studenti/dottorato/it/corsi/riforma/environmental-sustainability-and-wellbeing www.creativeprocess.info | |||
26 Mar 2024 | The Pursuit of Happiness - JEFFREY ROSEN - President & CEO of the National Constitution Center | 00:42:38 | |
What is the true meaning of the pursuit of happiness? What can we learn from the Founding Fathers about achieving harmony, balance, tranquility, self-mastery, and pursuing the public good? Jeffrey Rosen is President and CEO of the National Constitution Center, where he hosts We the People, a weekly podcast of constitutional debate. He is also a professor of law at the George Washington University Law School and a contributing editor at The Atlantic. Rosen is a graduate of Harvard College, Oxford University, and Yale Law School. He is the author of seven previous books, including the New York Times bestseller Conversations with RBG: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Life, Love, Liberty, and Law. His essays and commentaries have appeared in The New York Times Magazine; on NPR; in The New Republic, where he was the legal affairs editor; and in The New Yorker, where he has been a staff writer. His latest book is The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America. "Being moved to write the sonnets was an unexpected gift that I was given. I certainly didn't expect that unusual practice, but I found myself moved to sum up the wisdom in concise and distilled form just by taking notes on the daily reading that I'd done each morning after watching the sunrise. And I was surprised to learn after starting the project that many people who read this wisdom during the Founding Era were also moved to write sonnets, including Phillis Wheatley, the great poet, Mercy Otis Warren, Alexander Hamilton, and John Quincy Adams, who would read the Tusculan Disputations in the original and read Cicero in the original in the White House for consolation, write sonnets, and watch the sunrise and walk along the Potomac." https://constitutioncenter.org/about/board-of-trustees/jeffrey-rosen www.creativeprocess.info | |||
26 Mar 2024 | How to Live a Good a Life - Stoic Wisdom & the Founding Fathers - Highlights - JEFFREY ROSEN | 00:12:27 | |
"Being moved to write the sonnets was an unexpected gift that I was given. I certainly didn't expect that unusual practice, but I found myself moved to sum up the wisdom in concise and distilled form just by taking notes on the daily reading that I'd done each morning after watching the sunrise. And I was surprised to learn after starting the project that many people who read this wisdom during the Founding Era were also moved to write sonnets, including Phillis Wheatley, the great poet, Mercy Otis Warren, Alexander Hamilton, and John Quincy Adams, who would read the Tusculan Disputations in the original and read Cicero in the original in the White House for consolation, write sonnets, and watch the sunrise and walk along the Potomac." Jeffrey Rosen is President and CEO of the National Constitution Center, where he hosts We the People, a weekly podcast of constitutional debate. He is also a professor of law at the George Washington University Law School and a contributing editor at The Atlantic. Rosen is a graduate of Harvard College, Oxford University, and Yale Law School. He is the author of seven previous books, including the New York Times bestseller Conversations with RBG: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Life, Love, Liberty, and Law. His essays and commentaries have appeared in The New York Times Magazine; on NPR; in The New Republic, where he was the legal affairs editor; and in The New Yorker, where he has been a staff writer. His latest book is The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America. https://constitutioncenter.org/about/board-of-trustees/jeffrey-rosen www.creativeprocess.info | |||
24 Apr 2024 | Voices of the Earth: Reflections on Nature, Humanity & Climate Change | 00:11:43 | |
Environmentalists, writers, artists, activists, and public policy makers explore the interconnectedness of living beings and ecosystems. They highlight the importance of conservation, promote climate education, advocate for sustainable development, and underscore the vital role of creative and educational communities in driving positive change. 00:00 "The Conditional" by U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón 01:27 The Secret Language of Animals: Ingrid Newkirk, President of PETA 03:03 A Love Letter to the Living World: Carl Safina, Ecologist & Author 04:11 Exploring the Mysteries of Soil and Coral Reefs: Merlin Sheldrake, Biologist, Author of Entangled Life 04:47 Exploring Coral Reefs: Richard Vevers, Founder of The Ocean Agency 05:56 The Importance of Climate Education: Kathleen Rogers, President of EarthDay.org 07:02 The Timeless Wisdom of Turtles: Sy Montomery, Naturalist & Author 07:38 Optimism in the Face of Environmental Challenges: Richard Vevers 08:32 Urban Solutions for a Sustainable Future: Paula Pinho, Director, Just Transition, Consumers, Energy Efficiency & Innovation, European Commission 08:57 The Circular Economy: Walter Stahel, Founder & Director of the Product-Life Institute 09:39 The Power of Speaking Out for Sustainability: Paula Pinho 10:16 Empowering the Next Generation Through Education: Jeffrey Sachs, President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network www.creativeprocess.info www.maxrichtermusic.com Max Richter’s music featured in this episode are “On the Nature of Daylight” from The Blue Notebooks, “Path 19: Yet Frailest” from Sleep. Music is courtesy of Max Richter, Universal Music Enterprises, and Mute Song. | |||
01 May 2024 | Remembering PAUL AUSTER - Novelist, Poet, Director (1947-2024) | 00:49:14 | |
It is said that people never die until the last person says their name. In memory of the writer and director Paul Auster, who passed away this week, we're sharing this conversation we had back in 2017 after the publication of his novel 4 3 2 1. Auster reflects on his body of work, life, and creative process. | |||
15 May 2024 | What Lies Ahead for Bookstores in the Age of Generative AI? - DANNY CAINE, Bookseller, Poet | 00:48:22 | |
What is the future of literature in the age of generative AI? How can bookstores build community and be engines for positive social change? What does it mean to try to have a meaningful human life? Danny Caine is the author of the poetry collections Continental Breakfast, El Dorado Freddy's, Flavortown, and Picture Window, as well as the books How to Protect Bookstores and Why and How to Resist Amazon and Why. His poetry has appeared in The Slowdown, Lit Hub, Diagram, HAD, and Barrelhouse. He's a co-owner of The Raven Bookstore, Publisher's Weekly's 2022 Bookstore of the Year.
www.dannycaine.com www.creativeprocess.info | |||
15 May 2024 | How to Protect Bookstores and Why - Highlights - DANNY CAINE, Bookseller, Poet | 00:12:04 | |
“The thing that unites my poetry and the nonfiction writing is my main obsession as a writer. It's the question of, how do you live meaningfully in late capitalism? As corporations and global capitalist forces take over the world, what does it mean to try to have a meaningful human life? I think the proliferation of objects might reflect that. A lot of what we do in this world is collect objects, and regardless of whether it's good or bad, you build a nest. I think that in Picture Window in particular, I wanted to write about the domestic in a way that I hadn't written in so far. And then the pandemic happened, so I was forced into this weird, uneasy, claustrophobic domesticity. When your attention is so focused within your own home and within your own family, every object in your house takes on a new resonance. So, when a tennis ball that you've never seen somehow shows up in your house, that's weird. It's poetic. It feels dreamlike.” Danny Caine is the author of the poetry collections Continental Breakfast, El Dorado Freddy's, Flavortown, and Picture Window, as well as the books How to Protect Bookstores and Why and How to Resist Amazon and Why. His poetry has appeared in The Slowdown, Lit Hub, Diagram, HAD, and Barrelhouse. He's a co-owner of The Raven Bookstore, Publisher's Weekly's 2022 Bookstore of the Year. www.dannycaine.com www.creativeprocess.info | |||
06 Aug 2024 | The Architecture of Oppression with JAKE FERGUSON, ANTHONY JOSEPH & JERMAIN JACKMAN | 01:01:23 | |
How can music challenge systemic oppression and bring about social change? How can we envision alternative paths while avoiding the pitfalls of past paradigms? Jake Fergusonis an award-winning musician known for his work with The Heliocentrics and as a solo artist under the name The Brkn Record. Alongside legendary drummer Malcolm Catto, Ferguson has composed two film scores and over 10 albums, collaborating with icons like Archie Shepp, Mulatu Astatke, and Melvin Van Peebles. His latest album is The Architecture of Oppression Part 2. The album also features singer and political activist Jermain Jackman, a former winner of The Voice (2014) and the T.S. Eliot Prize winning poet and musician, Anthony Joseph. “I think as humans, we forget. We are often limited by our own stereotypes, and we don't see that in everyone there's the potential for beauty and love and all these things. And I think The Architecture of Oppression, both parts one and two, are really a reflection of all the community and civil rights work that I've been doing for the same amount of time, really - 25 years. And I wanted to try and mix my day job and my music side, so bringing those two sides of my life together. I wanted to create a platform for black artists, black singers, and poets who I really admire. Jermain is somebody I've worked with for probably about six, seven years now. He's also in the trenches of the black civil rights struggle. We worked together on a number of projects, but it was very interesting to then work with Jemain in a purely artistic capacity. And it was a no-brainer to give Anthony a call for this second album because I know of his pedigree, and he's much more able to put ideas and thoughts on paper than I would be able to.” www.creativeprocess.info | |||
06 Aug 2024 | How can music disrupt oppression & bring about social change? - Highlights - JAKE FERGUSON, ANTHONY JOSEPH & JERMAIN JACKMAN | 00:14:58 | |
“I think as humans, we forget. We are often limited by our own stereotypes, and we don't see that in everyone there's the potential for beauty and love and all these things. And I think The Architecture of Oppression, both parts one and two, are really a reflection of all the community and civil rights work that I've been doing for the same amount of time, really - 25 years. And I wanted to try and mix my day job and my music side, so bringing those two sides of my life together. I wanted to create a platform for black artists, black singers, and poets who I really admire. Jermain is somebody I've worked with for probably about six, seven years now. He's also in the trenches of the black civil rights struggle. We worked together on a number of projects, but it was very interesting to then work with Jemain in a purely artistic capacity. And it was a no-brainer to give Anthony a call for this second album because I know of his pedigree, and he's much more able to put ideas and thoughts on paper than I would be able to.” Jake Ferguson is an award-winning musician known for his work with The Heliocentrics and as a solo artist under the name The Brkn Record. Alongside legendary drummer Malcolm Catto, Ferguson has composed two film scores and over 10 albums, collaborating with icons like Archie Shepp, Mulatu Astatke, and Melvin Van Peebles. His latest album is The Architecture of Oppression Part 2. The album also features singer and political activist Jermain Jackman, a former winner of The Voice (2014) and the T.S. Eliot Prize winning poet and musician, Anthony Joseph. www.creativeprocess.info | |||
20 Aug 2024 | Natural Magic: Emily Dickinson, Charles Darwin, and the Dawn of Modern Science with RENÉE BERGLAND | 01:00:31 | |
How do the works of Emily Dickinson and Charles Darwin continue to influence our understanding of nature, ecological interdependence, and the human experience? How does understanding history help us address current social and environmental issues. How can dialogues between the arts and sciences foster holistic, sustainable solutions to global crises? Renée Bergland is a literary critic, historian of science, and educator. As a storyteller, Bergland connects the lives of historical figures to the problems of the present day. As an educator, she emphasizes the interdisciplinary connections between the sciences and humanities. A longtime professor at Simmons University, where she is the Program director of Literature and writing, Bergland has also researched and taught at institutions such as Dartmouth College, Harvard University, and MIT. Bergland’s past published titles include Maria Mitchell and the Sexing of Science: An Astronomer Among the American Romantics and The National Uncanny: Indian Ghosts and American Subjects. Her most recent book, Natural Magic: Emily Dickinson, Charles Darwin, and the Dawn of Modern Science, was published in April of 2024. It explores Dickinson and Darwin’s shared enchanted view of the natural world in a time when poetry and natural philosophy, once freely intertwined, began to grow apart. “One of the poems of Dickinson's that I think explains Darwin the best starts out, ‘There is a flower that bees prefer / and butterflies desire.’ She's talking about the clover, and in that poem she describes the clover and the grass as kinsmen. They're related to each other, but they're contending, she says, for sod and sun. They are competing to see who can get the most soil, the most nutrients, but she calls them ‘sweet litigants for life.’ And that interpretation of Darwinism, where they're sweet and they're struggling, but they're both actually litigants for life, they're both arguing for the biosphere and advocates—that takes us back to the first lines of the poem. ‘There's a flower that bees prefer / and butterflies desire.' The way that the clover and the grass compete is by trying to see who can be more beautiful, who can be more brightly colored, who can smell better, who can lure more pollinators, more insects and birds and collaborate better with them, and have a better chance of surviving. That is certainly a version of survival of the fittest, but it's not a dog eat dog violent version. It's a version where the way you get a generational advantage, and perhaps have more little clovers following in your footsteps, is by collaborating better, by making yourself more beautiful, more alluring, and more inviting, inviting pollinators to work with you. That's straight from Darwin. Darwin's very clear in On the Origin of Species that when he talks about the struggle for life, he's primarily talking about co-adaptation and collaboration between species that can learn to work together. He's the one who actually, as he explains the struggle for life, says it's nothing like two dogs fighting over a bone. That's not what it is. But unfortunately, a lot of that co-adaptation language got lost in the popular imagination. And that's one of the reasons that turning to Dickinson can help us understand—because she so beautifully depicts a Darwinian world where, yes, there's death, but there's more than anything, there's life.” www.reneebergland.com www.creativeprocess.info | |||
22 Nov 2024 | The Art of Writing w/ Neil Gaiman, Ada Limón, Jericho Brown, E.J. Koh, Marge Piercy & Max Stossel | 00:25:35 | |
This episode explores the enduring power of storytelling to shape our world and illuminate the human experience. Writers Neil Gaiman, Ada Limón, Jericho Brown, E.J. Koh, Marge Piercy, and Max Stossel discuss creativity, resilience, and the power of words to heal and bring people together. Neil Gaiman (Writer, Producer, Showrunner · The Sandman, American Gods, Good Omens, Coraline) explores the secret lives of writers, reflecting on the masks they wear in the pursuit of truth and beauty. Jericho Brown (Pulitzer Prize-winning Poet: The Tradition · Editor of How We Do It: Black Writers on Craft, Practice, and Skill) shares “Foreday in the Morning”, highlighting the hard work and resilience in Black America. He examines the vernacular of his poetry and how it intertwines themes of race, nationality, and familial love. Ada Limón (U.S. Poet Laureate · The Hurting Kind, The Carrying) presents an "apocalyptic love poem" that questions the intersection of despair and hope in today's changing world. She reflects deeply on the personal and universal struggles of finding beauty amidst environmental and existential crises. Marge Piercy (Award-winning Novelist, Poet & Activist) delves into the emotional weight of words and memories, the terror of child separation, and the impending doom facing our world due to environmental destruction and political negligence. E.J. Koh (Award-Winning Memoirist & Poet · The Magical Language of Others · A Lesser Love) recounts a haunting family history from Jeju Island in Korea, emphasizing the lasting impacts of trauma and the collective memory of ancestral sufferings. Max Stossel (Award-winning Poet, Filmmaker, Speaker, Creator of Words That Move) uses the metaphor of a boxing ring to discuss the complexities of human conflict and connection, encouraging a shift from adversarial relationships to collaborative problem-solving. To hear more from each guest, listen to their full interviews. Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast | |||
28 Nov 2024 | Art & Empathy: Filmmakers, Writers & Artists on Connecting through Creativity | 00:09:30 | |
How does art change the way we see and experience the world? Art has the power to offer transformative experiences, but what about the lives of artists who give so much of themselves? How can we balance creativity and personal well-being while still making work that is true and meaningful? David Rubin (President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences 2019-2022 · Casting Director) discusses the importance of fostering an international presence for the Motion Picture Academy. He highlights how inviting filmmakers from around the world has enriched the community and emphasizes the power of collaboration in the filmmaking industry. Later, he reflects on his journey in casting, the challenges younger people face in finding their niche, and the importance of patience and open-mindedness in discovering one's career path. Rubin highlights how negative experiences can also be valuable learning points. Jericho Brown (Pulitzer Prize-winning Poet: The Tradition · Editor of How We Do It: Black Writers on Craft, Practice, and Skill) shares his process of writing poetry, emphasizing the element of discovery and the unexpected directions a poem can take. He shares his advice to young poets, how they should aim to create original works that could become lasting cultural touchstones. Julian Lennon (Singer-songwriter · Documentary Filmmaker · Founder of The White Feather Foundation · Photographer/Author of Life’s Fragile Moments) reflects on the emotional highs and lows experienced by creatives. He discusses the significance of finding balance and happiness through artistic and charitable expression. Sam Levy (Award-winning Cinematographer of Lady Bird · Frances Ha · While We’re Young) explores the art of cinematography. Levy underscores the importance of intention in every scene, whether it’s to highlight a character’s emotions or to convey the unspoken elements of the story. Julia F. Christensen (Neuroscientist - Author of The Pathway To Flow: The New Science of Harnessing Creativity to Heal and Unwind the Body & Mind) discusses transformative experiences through art and literature. She explains how aesthetic emotions can lead to profound changes in perception and understanding, drawing from both personal and scientific insights. To hear more from each guest, listen to their full interviews. Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast |