Articles - December 2023

Fracas in the hinterlands (PoemTalk #191)

Kenward Elmslie, "Core Bonus" & "One Night Stand"

From left: Henry Steinberg, Simone White & Wayne Koestenbaum

Wayne Koestenbaum, Simone White, and Henry Steinberg joined Al Filreis to talk about a poem and a song lyric by Kenward Elmslie. The poem is “Core Bonus” and the song is “One Night Stand.” As of the recording we had not located published/in-print version of “Core Bonus” but Elsmlie's PennSound page includes a record of it. “One Night Stand” was included in Routine Disruptions: Selected Poems and Lyrics (Coffee House Press, 1998). “Core Bonus” was performed during a Segue eries reading at the Bowery Poetry Club in New York on April 7, 2007. “One Night Stand” was sung by Elmslie at the Kelly Writers House on November 12, 2003, for an event titled “Snippets: A Gathering of Songs, Visual Collaborations, and Poems.”

Sally Van Doren

PennSound Podcast #76

Photo of Sally Van Doren reading at the Kelly Writers House
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. 

Haun Saussy

Sounding Translation episode 3

Photo of Haun Saussy in Rwanda by Paul Farmer.

In this interview with Teresa Villa-Ignacio, Haun Saussy discusses his motivation to translate Francophone Haitian poetry, in order to give the American public a more well-rounded and positive outlook on the Haitian community during the 1980s and 1990s AIDS epidemic and refugee crisis.