The award-winning poet and essayist, as well as Speedway and Swan founder and former host, Brian Blanchfield joins Susan Briante to share some poems and thoughts on changing seasons and new opportunities. Featuring new poems by Duriel Harris, Alex Dimitrov, Phillip B. Williams and Julie Carr as well as poems from Garrett Lansing, Laura Riding and Adrienne Rich.
Brian Blanchfield is the creator of Speedway & Swan and author of three books of poetry and prose, most recently Proxies: Essays Near Knowing (Nightboat Books), which received a 2016 Whiting Award in Nonfiction. His book of poems A Several World (Nightboat Books) was the 2014 winner of The James Laughlin Award and a longlist finalist for The National Book Award. He teaches in the University of Idaho’s creative writing program.
With musical selections by The Latin Playboys, Pastor T.L. Barrett and the Youth for Christ Choir, Sleater-Kinney, Curtis Mayfield and more.
Gerrit Lansing |“ The Cutting of the Lotus,” Heavenly Tree, Northern Earth. North Atlantic Books, 2009.
Julie Carr |“Objects from a Borrowed Confession,” Objects from a Borrowed Confession. Ahsahta, 2017.
Phillip B. Williams | “Black Witch Moth,” Thief in the Interior. Alice James Books, 2016.
Duriel E. Harris | “No Dictionary of a Living Tongue,” No Dictionary of a Living Tongue. Nightboat Books, 2017.
Laura Riding | “Memories of Mortalities,” A Selection of the Poems of Laura Riding. Persea Books, 1997.
Alex Dimitrov| “American Nothing,” Together and By Ourselves. Copper Canyon Press, 2017.
Adrienne Rich| “What Kind of Times Are These,” Collected Poems.
SPEEDWAY & SWAN is a monthly, 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 her partners, the University of Arizona Poetry Center and KXCI 91.3 Tucson Community Radio, host Susan Briante 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.
Susan Briante’s most recent book The Market Wonders (Ahsahta Press) was a finalist for the National Poetry Series. The Kenyon Review calls it “masterful at every turn.” She is also the author of the poetry collections Pioneers in the Study of Motion and Utopia Minus (an Academy of American Poets Notable Book of 2011), both from Ahsahta Press. Briante has received grants and awards from the Atlantic Monthly, the MacDowell Colony, the Academy of American Poets, the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Memorial Fund and the US-Mexico Fund for Culture. She is an associate professor of creative writing and literature at the University of Arizona.