Speedway & Swan Episode 9: Joey Burns

Singer/songwriter Joey Burns of Calexico joins host Brian Blanchfield for an episode that explores poetry and its methods by analogy to songwriting and painting. In celebration of Calexico’s new album, Edge of the Sun, the hour is also dedicated to the question of origins and influences and confluences, local and global. Featuring work by poets Richard Siken, Arielle Greenberg, Luís Alberto Urrea, Samaya Ramesh, Sean Singer, Norman Dubie, Eduardo C. Corral, and David Berman.

With musical selections by Calexico, Natalia Lafourcade, Villagers, Sonic Youth, Sparks, Dolly Parton and Porter Wagoner, and more.

Richard Siken | “Still Life with Skulls and Bacon,” The War of the Foxes, Copper Canyon Press, 2015.

Samaya Ramesh | “And the Word Null,” Load Poems Like Guns, ed. Farzana Marie. Holy Cow Press, 2015.

Arielle Greenberg | “Sonic Youth,” Slice. Coconut Books, 2015.

David Berman | “Tulsa,” Actual Air. Open City Books, 1999.

Sean Singer | “Franz Kafka, Serious About Your Safety,” Honey and Smoke, Eyewear Books, 2015.

Norman Dubie | “About Infinity,” The Mercy Seat: Collected & New Poems, 1967-2001. Copper Canyon Press, 2001.

Eduardo C. Corral | “Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome,” Slow Lightning. Yale University Press, 2012.

Luís Alberto Urrea | “Arizona Lamentation.” The Tijuana Book of the Dead. Soft Skull 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.

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