Poet Susan Briante joins host Brian Blanchfield for an episode that searches for “an alternative sociality” not organized around the individual, in new and recent poetry. Featuring work from the early Seventies by Ed Roberson and Judy Grahn, and new poems by Roberson, Cody-Rose Clevidence, Sarah Vap, Raúl Zurita, and Juliana Spahr.
With musical selections by the late Ralph Stanley, Angel Olsen, Archie Whitewater, Rufus Wainwright, Jónsi Birgisson, and more.
Cody-Rose Clevidence | “I Planted Fourteen Carrots,” Beast Feast. Ahsahta Press, 2015.
Sarah Vap | from Viability. Penguin Books, 2016.
Juliana Spahr | “Went Looking and Found Coyotes,” That Winter the Wolf Came. Commune Editions, 2015.
Raúl Zurita | “Camp Pisagua Prison -the hammered beaches-” and “Colonia Dignidad Prison –the barbed wire of the night- ” tr. Daniel Borzutsky. PEN Poetry Series, September 2013.
Ed Roberson | “Bearing and Ground Attitude,” from MPH: The Motorcycle Diaries, and “Ensemble: Ambient Invaded Music,” Chicago Review 59:4-60:1, Summer 2016.
Judy Grahn | “A Mock Interrogation,” from “A Woman Is Talking to Death,” The Women’s Press Collective, 1974.
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.
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.
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. HIs third book, Proxies: Essays Near Knowing, was the winner of a 2016 Whiting Award in Nonfiction. 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.