Speedway and Swan Episode 45
Join me and the award-winning poet Ruth Ellen Kocher as she leads us through the vital poems from the anthology Letters to the Future Black Women Radical Writing edited by poets Erica Hunt and Dawn Lundy Martin and published by (Tucson’s own) Koré Press. It’s a letter to the future, a call to action and a reminder of the work to be done.
With musical selections from Brian Eno, D’Angelo, and Como Mamas
Harryette Mullen | “Eurydice,” Letters to the Future Black Women Radical Writing, Kore Press, 2018.
Jane Miller | “Time Out,” Who is Trixie the Trasher and Other Questions, Copper Canyon Press, 2018.
Kadijah Queen | “I want to not have to write another Word about who the Cops Keep Killing,” Letters to the Future Black Women / Radical Writing, Kore Press, 2018.
Evie Shockley | “What’s not to Liken,” Letters to the Future Black Women Radical Writing, Kore Press, 2018.
r. erica doyle | Excerpts from “The Body of History,” Letters to the Future Black Women Radical Writing, Kore Press, 2018.
Jennif(f)er Tamayo | Excerpt from to kill the future in the present, Green Lantern Press, 2018.
Dawn Lundy Martin | “Tobacco Shade,” Letters to the Future Black Women Radical Writing, Kore Press, 2018.
Yona Harvey | “The Subject of Surrender,” Letters to the Future Black Women Radical Writing, Kore Press, 2018.
Philip Metres | from “Hung Lyre,” Sand Opera, 2015.
Harryette Mullen | “Once Ever After,” Letters to the Future Black Women Radical Writing, Kore Press, 2018.
Ruth Ellen Kocher is the award-winning author the books of Third Voice (Tupelo Press, 2016), Ending in Planes (Noemi Press, 2014), Goodbye Lyric: The Gigans and Lovely Gun (Sheep Meadow Press, 2014), domina Un/blued (Tupelo Press, 2013), Dorset Prize winner and the 2014 PEN/Open Book Award, One Girl Babylon (New Issues Press, 2003) Green Rose Prize winner, When the Moon Knows You’re Wandering (New Issues Press, 2002), and Desdemona’s Fire(Lotus Press 1999) Naomi Long Madgett Prize winner. Her poems appear in Angles of Ascent: A Norton Anthology of Contemporary African American Poets, and Black Nature, among many others. She has been awarded fellowships from the Cave Canem Foundation and Yaddo. She is a Contributing Editor at Poets & Writers Magazine and Professor of English at the University of Colorado where she teaches Poetry, Poetics, and Literature.
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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.