Callie Gardner, "Culture Warrior"
From left: Laynie Browne, Julia Bloch, Iain Morrison
Julia Bloch, Laynie Browne, and Iain Morrison joined Al Filreis in KWH’s Wexler Studio to talk about a poem — or rather two versions of a poem — by the late Callie Gardner. One version, titled “when will my love return from the culture war?,” is 6-quatrains long. A second, for which we have a recorded performance, is four quatrains; there’s a variation on the second that seems to invite us to call it a sonnet. Callie added a version — organized in the quatrains — to their blog on May 1, 2020. On November 19, 2020, Callie read the shorter version of the poem as part of a live-streamed reading given by eight poets. Callie was the fifth to read. We link the YouTube recording HERE , and PoemTalk listeners are invited to watch and listen to our poem at 53 minutes into the group reading.
December 24, 2024
'Reading List' 2016
I was asked to write this piece in late December for the January issue of the Harriet blog The Reading List, a feature of Poetry magazine’s Editors’ Blog, a