Poet and editor Danniel Schoonebeek joins host Brian Blanchfield for an episode of poetry that pauses and reconsiders what’s being said on whose behalf, claiming and disclaiming collectivity. Energies here of protest, isolation, renunciation, reclamation, inclusion. Featuring poetry by Alice Notley, Jamaal May, Liz Waldner, Renee Gladman, Frank Bidart, Kirill Medvedev, Lynn Xu, and W.S. Merwin.
With musical selections by Sham 69, Nina Simone, Band of Horses, Willie Nelson, and more.
Kirill Medvedev | Untitled [“In the Smolenski supermarket”], tr. Keith Gessen, It’s No Good. Ugly Duckling Presse, 2012.
Alice Notley | “We Thought We Were Own” Certain Magical Acts. Penguin Press, 2016.
W. S. Merwin | “My Friends,” The Moving Target. Atheneum, 1963.
Lynn Xu | Untitled [“Language exists”], Debts and Lessons. Omnidawn, 2013.
Jamaal May | “There Are Birds Here,” The Big Book of Exit Strategies, Alice James Books, 2016.
Frank Bidart | “Advice to the Players,” Star Dust. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005.
Liz Waldner | “With the Jar of Janesalt, the Jar of Dulse Flakes, the Mason Jar of Nutritional Yeast,” Little House, Big House (How I am an American). Noemi Press, 2016.
Renee Gladman | from “I Began the Day,” Calamities. Wave Books, 2016.
SPEEDWAY & SWAN is a fortnightly, one-hour free-format radio program that presents contemporary poetry against a context of variously compatible and offbeat musical selections. Culling from the exceptional libraries of his partners, the University of Arizona Poetry Center and KXCI 91.3 Tucson Community Radio, creator and host Brian Blanchfield is joined in conversation each episode by a rotating guest co-host who brings to the hour a selection of poetry from his or her personal canon, which, along with the freshest and best from the "new shelves," they read live.
Most episodes also feature a recorded performance from Voca, the Poetry Center's audio archive of its legendary poetry readings since 1963. SPEEDWAY & SWAN represents a partnership between the Poetry Center, which archives the show in listenable format with an annotated playlist, and KXCI, where the show streams live.
Since 1983, KXCI 91.3 FM has been committed to connecting Tucson and Southern Arizona to one another and to the world with informative, engaging, and creative community-based radio programming.
Brian Blanchfield is a poet and writer whose two books of poetry, Not Even Then and A Several World, have won him The James Laughlin Award, a Howard Foundation fellowship, and recognition as longlist finalist for the National Book Award. His third book, Proxies: Essays Near Knowing, was the winner of a 2016 Whiting Award in Nonfiction. Contact: speedwayandswan@gmail.com.