Woodrat Podcast category archives

A weekly virtual campfire for the sharing of poems, stories, and B.S. (Click on “Play in new window” for uninterrupted listening.) Subscribe in iTunes. The podcast is currently on summer vacation.

Woodrat podcast 18: Clayton Michaels

September 1, 2010

Clayton Michaels

At qarrtsiluni, Beth and I are really excited by this year’s winner of our poetry chapbook contest: Watermark by Clayton T. Michaels, which we just launched on Monday in dual print and online versions. As part of the latter, we put together a audiobook podcast of the author reading his poems, for which he also composed and performed an original guitar theme, but I thought it would be fun in addition to record a conversation with Clayton and find out where all this great poetry is coming from. So I called him up last Saturday, and peppered him with questions about writing poetry and music, teaching, heavy metal, comic books, and more.

Links

Theme music: “Le grand sequoia,” by Innvivo (Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike licence)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 36:49 — 42.1MB)

Also posted in Books and Music, Poets and poetry | Tagged | 1 Comment

Woodrat Podcast 17: Brent Goodman

May 12, 2010

Brent Goodman

I called up poet Brent Goodman (website/blog) in the north woods of Wisconsin and got him talking about how he ended up there; whether his day job as a copy writer for a pet supply company affects his creative writing; how blogging helped him put his first book together; his heart attack last year and how that’s effected his life and outlook; how he met his partner; what it’s like living in the boondocks as a gay man; writing poems about television; and what writers inspire him. Poems read: “Directions to My House,” “Armless Iraqi Boy Bears No Grudges for U.S. Bombing,” “The Ground Left Me,” “Man Smashes 29 Televisions at Georgia Walmart,” and “5 Poets Who Changed My Life (Postcards from Intersections).”

Theme music: “Le grand sequoia,” by Innvivo (Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike licence)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 33:39 — 30.8MB)

Also posted in Poets and poetry | Leave a comment

Woodrat Podcast 16: Alison Kent on sketching, birding, and caring for oiled wildlife

May 4, 2010
Alison Kent self-portrait

Alison Kent self-portrait (click to see larger)


I called up my long-time blogging friend Alison Kent out in Davis, California yesterday. After some reminiscing about the late, lamented Ecotone Wiki, we got into a conversation about nature blogging, sketching and birdwatching, “green” birding, caring for oiled wildlife and balancing wildlife rehabilitation with conservation needs, Alison’s assessment of preparations for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and where the blame for the spill lies, among other things.

Links:

Theme music: “Le grand sequoia,” by Innvivo (Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike licence)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 31:03 — 28.4MB)

Also posted in Birds, Blogs and Blogging | Tagged | 10 Comments

Woodrat Podcast 15: Howie Good on poetry and journalism

April 27, 2010
Howie and Barb Good

Howie Good (right, with wife Barb)

A conversation with poet and professor of journalism Howie Good. Topics and poems include: “Could Be Worse,” real life as a seedbed for poems, “Schoolyard Blues,” “Loops,” and “Pedagogy of the Possessed” (all included in Lovesick), the decline of newspapers, blogging as journalism, professionalism and ethics among citizen journalists, how to get the truth out and whether knowledge of the truth is enough to catalyze action, surrealism as a more accurate reflection of contemporary life, compiling and submitting poetry chapbooks, submitting to online versus paper journals, the value of books, “There’s No Money in Poetry, Someone Said,” and Dying Words.

Theme music: “Le grand sequoia,” by Innvivo (Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike licence)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:35 — 28.0MB)

Also posted in Poets and poetry | 7 Comments

Woodrat Podcast 14: Susan Elbe

April 20, 2010
Susan Elbe

Susan Elbe (r., with mother circa 1950)

Topics include: the AWP 2010 conference; doing web work for a living instead of teaching; poetry writing as a practice; solitude and introversion; how Eden in the Rearview Mirror came together; writing about light and darkness; being a reader and writer in a working-class family; growing up in Chicago in the 1950s.

Poems read: “Eden in the Rearview Mirror,” “Order Lepidoptera,” “Out of the Splitberry Dark,” “Chicago Union Stockyards Circa 1957,” “Sunflowers.”

Links:

Theme music: “Le grand sequoia,” by Innvivo (Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike licence)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 35:25 — 32.4MB)

Also posted in Poets and poetry | 3 Comments

Woodrat Podcast 13: Christina Pacosz, chronicler of an at-risk society

April 6, 2010

Christina Pacosz

Topics include the Womanspirit movement; lessons from Gyn/Ecology by Mary Daly; where the title “Notes from the Red Zone” came from; fear of the Other; our place in the natural world; Christina’s childhood education, her stint as a visiting artist in North Carolina community colleges and how she met Steve Sherrill; remembering William Stafford; working with “at-risk youth”; remembering Alton Fred Brown.

Links:

Theme music: “Le grand sequoia, by Innvivo (Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike licence)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 33:02 — 30.2MB)

Also posted in Poets and poetry | Tagged , , , , , | 12 Comments

Woodrat Podcast 12: Steven Sherrill, Renaissance man and recovering redneck

March 29, 2010
Steve Sherrill with his painting "Dear Abby VIII"

Steve Sherrill with his painting "Dear Abby VIII"

Steven Sherrill stopped by the house last week to read some poems and a section of his latest novel, play a little ukulele, and talk about how he went from being a redneck hellraiser and welder-in-training to a published novelist, poet, painter, and aspiring musician.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 33:09 — 30.3MB)

Also posted in Art, Books and Music, Poets and poetry | Leave a comment

Woodrat Podcast 11: Ai and the art of monologue

March 22, 2010

No guest this week, just a monologue in honor of the poet Ai, who died on Saturday. I chant Noh and read poems by Ai (obviously), Richard Shelton, and the O’odham of southern Arizona.

Links:

(Update)

(Update #2, 3/27)

(Update #3, 3/28)

Japanese temple bell audio is from Daniele Salvati on freesound.org and is licenced under a Creative Commons Sampling Plus 1.0 licence.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (23.1MB)

Also posted in Poets and poetry | 3 Comments

Woodrat Podcast 10: John Miedema on Slow Reading

March 15, 2010

Slow Reading cover
John Miedema talks about his book Slow Reading and the practice and experience of reading in general. Some of the questions he addresses include:

Is the length of a book an indication of profundity?

Are books mind-altering substances?

Which kinds of writing work better in print and which work better on the web?

How do you reconcile technophilia with bibliophilia?

Can slow reading flow from slow writing?

Should we persist in trying to make the web more print-like?

How should we read newspapers and magazines?

Is it possible to read too much?

Do slow readers make better citizens?

Is speed-reading on the web changing the way we think?

Does information overload matter?

How can readers get beyond being passive consumers of information or tourists of the reading experience?

Theme music: “Le grand sequoia, by Innvivo (Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike licence)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (28.6MB)

Also posted in Blogs and Blogging, Books and Music | Tagged | 12 Comments

Woodrat Podcast 9: A Poet’s Way in Norway

March 8, 2010

Ren (Katherine) Powell talks about how living in Norway and translating Norwegian poets, and also a Yemeni poet, have shaped her own growth as a writer

Ren Powell

Included in the conversation are readings of four poems by Odveig Klyve, two by Mansur Rajih, and three of Ren’s own poems, “It Wasn’t the Flu,” “Spring Heralds,” and “Losing My Religion.” See Ren’s website for links to more of her poems online, and Anima Poetics for her Flash animations.

Theme music: “Le grand sequoia,” by Innvivo (Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike licence).

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (30.4MB)

Also posted in Books and Music, Poets and poetry | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments
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  • "On the whole I concentrated on things and people that I found charming and splendid; my notes are also full of poems and observations on trees and plants, birds and insects."
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