From left: Michelle Taransky, Sally Van Doren, Christy Davids
Al Filreis convened Michelle Taransky, Christy Davids, and Sally Van Doren. Sally traveled to be with us for the day: she gave a an evening reading of mostly her new poems, paired with a reading by Michelle; and she spent more time in our studio in an interview with Al about her new poems. For the PoemTalk episode — we discussed a series of numbered poems by Marjorie Welish, going under the title “Begetting Textile.”
Photo of Sally Van Doren reading at the Kelly Writers House
In this PennSound podcast, Sally Van Doren joins Al Filreis in the Wexler Studio at the Kelly Writers House for a discussion of her newest book, Sibilance (LSU Press, 2023). Van Doren reads aloud from her work, and the two discuss the practices of visual art and asemic writing that structure her life as an artist and inform her approach to poetry.
Susan Schultz, Sally Van Doren, and Huda Fakhreddine joined Al Filreis to talk about Sylvia Plath’s poem “The Stones.” It was written in October or early November of 1959 and appears as the seventh poem in a seven-part sequence called “Poem for a Birthday.” The recording the group hears at the start of the conversation comes from a studio performance Plath did for BBC Records between 1960 and 1962 (and this particular performance probably dates from 1962). The most readily accessible copy of the audio has been posted at YouTube.
