Jaime Shearn Coan interviews Brian Teare

PennSound podcast #53

Photo of Brian Teare (right) by Ryan Collerd, courtesy of the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage.

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Brian Teare came back to the Kelly Writers House on October 30, 2015, to speak with Jaime Shearn Coan about his new collection of poetry, The Empty Form Goes All the Way to Heaven, published in 2015 by Ahsahta Press. Shearn Coan describes Teare’s collection as one that imagines “how to language what is un-languageable.” In this PennSound podcast, Teare and Shearn Coan talk about writing out of chronic illness, the book’s engagement with the work of American abstract painter Agnes Martin, and how poetry explores what sorts of shared communal narratives are possible.

Brian Teare, who conducted two interviews in the Wexler Studio in spring 2015 (Rachel Zolf, PennSound podcast #48, and Brent Armendinger, PennSound podcast #51), is an assistant professor of English at Temple University and the author of five books of poetry, including The Empty Form Goes All the Way to Heaven and Companion Grasses, as well as a number of chapbooks. He also makes books by hand in Philadelphia for his micropress, Albion Books.

Jaime Shearn Coan lives in Brooklyn, New York. His writings on dance and performance can be found regularly in The Brooklyn Rail. Jaime has been in residence at Poets House, VCCA, Mt. Tremper Arts, and the Saltonstall Foundation, and is the recipient of a Jerome Foundation Travel and Study Grant. A PhD student in English at the Graduate Center, CUNY, Jaime teaches at Hunter College and serves as the 2015–2016 Curatorial Fellow at Danspace Project. His poetry chapbook, Turn It Over, was published by Argos Books in 2015.

A transcription of this conversation can be found here.