Poet Laynie Browne joins host Brian Blanchfield for an episode bursting with poetry that expresses wildness in one way or another, suggesting what hasn’t been restrained in childhood, or what hasn’t been curbed in desire, or what is not encumbered by nicety. Featuring work by poets Brenda Hillman, Ronaldo Wilson, Chika Sagawa, Kevin Killian, Rosemarie Waldrop, Alice Notley, Robert Walser, Rickey Laurentiis, Rebecca Wolff, and Victoria Guerrero Peirano. Special archival performance by Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge. With musical selections by Gal Costa, Jack & the Mods, Jean Shepard and Ray Pillow, Girls, Four Tet, and more.
Alice Notley | “Would Want To Be in My Wildlife,” Mysteries of Small Houses, Penguin Press, 1998.
Rickey Laurentiis | “Mood for Love,” Boy With Thorn. University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015.
Victoria Guerrero Peirano | “1-02,” tr. Anna Guercio Rosenwong. Words Without Borders, “Geography of the Peruvian Imagination,” 2015.
Rosemarie Waldrop | “We Will Always Ask What Happened,” Love, Like Pronouns. Omnidawn, 2003.
Ronaldo V. Wilson | “For the Sky In Which You Will One Day Belong,” Farther Traveler, Counterpath Press, 2015.
Brenda Hillman | “To Leon, Born Before a Marathon,” Seasonal Works with Letters on Fire. Wesleyan University Press, 2013.
Chika Sagawa | “In White” and “Ancient Flowers,” tr. Sawaku Nakayasu. The Collected Poems of Chika Sagawa. Canarium Books, 2015.
Rebecca Wolff | “Admit No Impediment,” One Morning. Wave Books, 2015.
Mei-Mei Berssenrugge | “Duration of Water,” voca recording of University of Arizona Poetry Center reading, April 1, 1992.
Kevin Killian | “Cannot Exist.” Tweaky Village. Wonder Books, 2013.
Robert Walser | from Microscripts, tr. Christopher Middleton. New Directions, 2010.
Bernadette Mayer | “Song.” Eating the Colors of a Lineup of Words. Station Hill Press, 2015.
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.
Each show also features 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 will archive 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. A poetry editor of Fence, he teaches creative writing at the University of Arizona and runs the downtown Tucson reading series Intermezzo. Contact: speedwayandswan@gmail.com.