My conversation with Amit Chaudhuri at the South Street Seaport McNally-Jackson took place on September 6, 2022, celebrating the release of Sojourn from New York Review Books. We also discussed his 2021 book with NYRB, Finding the Raga: An Improvisation on Indian Music.
In 1995, Martin Spinelli and I did a series of thirty-minute radio conversations and readings with poets and writers. It was one of the first programs to be distributed nationally by satellite to public radio stations, so a precursor to podcasts. I went on to a make a related series of programs, Close Listening. All are available free to stream or download on PennSound. All in all, there have been conversations and readings by 133 poets, writers, and artists.
Editorial note: The following conversation is from Close Listening, a program hosted by Charles Bernstein and produced by Clocktower Radio, in collaboration with PennSound, on June 18, 2013, at Studio 215 in New York. It was transcribed by Mariah Macias and subsequently edited for publication. The conversation, between Charles Bernstein and Tonya Foster, discusses Foster’s then-forthcoming poetry collection, A Swarm of Bees in High Court (Belladonna*, 2015), as well as topics surrounding Foster’s writing process and African American poetry communities such as Umbra and Cave Canem.
Editorial note: The following conversation is from Close Listening, a program hosted by Charles Bernstein and produced by Clocktower Radio, in collaboration with PennSound, on June 18, 2013, at Studio 215 in New York. It was transcribed by Mariah Macias and subsequently edited for publication. The conversation, between Charles Bernstein and Tonya Foster, discusses Foster’s then-forthcoming poetry collection, A Swarm of Bees in High Court (Belladonna*, 2015), as well as topics surrounding Foster’s writing process and African American poetry communities such as Umbra and Cave Canem.
I recorded a Close Listening program with Allen Fisher on November 29, 2019, in London. We talked about the relation of decoherence and entanglement, both key terms for Fisher's collage aesthetic. Along the way, we addresses a constellation of topics, including source texts, pattern recognition, the political allegory of poetic space, performance, and the relation of Fisher's painting to his poetry.
I recorded this Close Listening conversation with Claude Royet-Journoud in Paris on November 24, 2019. We talked about his early years in London, his editing of Siècle à mains, meeting Anne-Marie Albiach, his extraordinary poetry interview program for France Culture, as well as his trips to the United States.
Kit Robinson in conversation with me on Close Listening, recorded on October 6, 2019: MP3
We talk about Robinson's early Dolch Stanzas and its vocabulary, based on a list of the most frequently used words English, his use of short lines, changes in his more recent, "late" work, his connection to Tom Raworth, and the relation of his day jobs to his work as a musician and poet.
Harold Schimmel reading his poetry in Hebrew and English (27:05): MP3; Schimmel in conversation with Charles Bernstein (46:15): MP3.
Harold Schimmel was born in 1935 in Bayonne, New Jersey, and attended Cornell University before immigrating to Israel in 1962, where he started to write in his adopted language, Hebrew. He lives in Jerusalem. Schimmel has translated Hebrew poets Uri Zvi Greenberg, Avot Yeshurun, and Yehuda Amichai. His first book, First Poems, came out in 1962 in English. He has many books in Hebrew and two in English translation: From Island to Island (Selected Poems) and Qasida (essay).
Harold Schimmel reading his poetry in Hebrew and English (27:05): MP3 Harold Schimmel in conversation with Charles Bernstein (46:15): MP3
Harold Schimmel was born in 1935 in Bayonne, New Jersey, and attended Cornell University before immigrating to Israel in 1962, where he started to write in his adopted language, Hebrew. He lives in Jerusalem. Schimmel has translated Hebrew poets Uri Zvi Greenberg, Avot Yeshurun, and Yehuda Amichai. His first book, First Poems, came out in 1962 in English. He has many books in Hebrew and two in English translation: From Island to Island (Selected Poems) and Qasida (essay), both from Ibis in 1997 and both translated by Peter Cole.
On Close Listening, Colin Browne and I talked about the founding of the Kootenay School of Writing, the limits of narrative in poetry and film and the possibilities of collage, the trickster figure in the work of Charles Edenshaw, and the overlays of personal history and cultural history in Browne’s new book about Edenshaw, a nineteenth-century indegenous artist from British Columbia.
Amit Chaudhuri in conversation with Charles Bernstein
McNally-Jackson books, NY, Sept. 6, 2022
My conversation with Amit Chaudhuri at the South Street Seaport McNally-Jackson took place on September 6, 2022, celebrating the release of Sojourn from New York Review Books. We also discussed his 2021 book with NYRB, Finding the Raga: An Improvisation on Indian Music.