Poet Farid Matuk joins host Brian Blanchfield for an episode of poetry that find itself concerned with human separation and solidarity, agitations for a better future and remembrance of the lost. Featuring work by poets John Wieners, Gabriela Misral, Fred Moten, Maureen Seaton, Ghasson Zaqtan, Merrill Gilfillan, Rigoberto Gonzalez, Wong May, Tom Clark, Ching-in Chen, and C. K. Williams. With musical selections by Quincy Jones, Firehose, Duke Ellington, The Jim Carroll Band, The Child Development Group of Mississippi, and more.
John Wieners | “What Happened,” Supplication: The Selected Poems of John Wieners, Wave Books, 2015.
John Wieners | from “Quart,” Conjugal Contraries and Guart. Hanuman Books, c. 1985.
Gabriela Mistral | “In Praise of Salt,” tr. Maria Jacketti. Gabriela Mistral: A Reader, White Pine Press, 1993.
Ching-in Chen | “Day Before, New Orleans” Yellow as Turmeric, Fragrant as Cloves: A Contemporary Anthology of Asian-American Women’s Poetry. Deep Bowl Press, 2008.
Tom Clark | “Magic Arrival #7,” Light and Shade: New and Selected Poems, Coffee House Press, 2006.
C. K. Williams | “Last Things,” Repair. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999.
Wong May | “The Diploma,” Picasso’s Tears: Poems 1978-2013. Octopus Books, 2014.
Rigoberto Gonzalez | “Anaberto Skypes with His Mother,” Our Lady of the Crossword. A Midsummer Night’s Press, 2015.
Fred Moten | “B Jenkins,” B Jenkins. Duke University Press, 2010.
Merrill Gilfillan | “Ballad Circumstantial,” Small Weathers. Qua Books, 2004.
Ghasson Zaqtan | “The Song of the Drowned.” tr. Fady Joudah. Like a Straw Bird It Follows Me and Other Poems. Yale University Press, 2012.
Maureen Seaton | “Eighty-three.” Fence. vol. 17 no. 1., Spring-Summer 2015.
The FCC made me do it: Apologies for omitting a word from Maureen Seaton’s “Eighty-three.” The lines in question read, in full, “She could hide in the water, a silver perch, he would see her and want her but no one else / would see, then he walked towelless beside her with his strong cock and his lovely back / and his sheltering chest to the room at the farthest end of the foggy foreign place…”
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.