Poetry

It's well-known that Oklahoma has the highest rate of female incarceration in the US. On this edition of StudioTulsa, we profile Poetic Justice, an important nonprofit that, per its website, aims to "reveal the individuality and experiences of the women who inhabit [our] state's prisons.

On this edition of StudioTulsa, we welcome the Tulsa-based composer, musician, and music teacher Noam Faingold back to our show. He's also the curator for the fifth-annual OK Electric Festival of Electroacoustic Music, which he tells us about. This special event (presented by Living Arts of Tulsa) happens tonight, Thursday the 5th, at Duet Jazz; more info, including how to get tickets, is posted here.

Our guest is the Kansas City-based poet and teacher Anne Boyer, who joins us to discuss her bold, well-written memoir of cancer.

Our guest is the award-winning spoken word performer, Shane Koyczan, whose moving and furious yet also candid and disarming storytelling (and versifying) has impressed audiences all over the globe. Winner of both the U.S. Slam Poetry Championship and the Canadian Spoken Word Olympics, Koyczan will soon be performing here on the TU campus. He's being presented by OK SO Tulsa, a storytelling organization founded in 2013 that's dedicated to letting people tell their own true stories in a "live onstage" setting.

(Note: This show first aired earlier this year.) Our guest is the bestselling young-adult writer Laurie Halse Anderson, who's widely known and appreciated for the brave manner in which she writes about, and advocates for, survivors of sexual assault. Her novel "Speak," which first appeared two decades ago, was groundbreaking in this regard.

Many of us living here in Oklahoma -- and indeed, living all over the nation -- are today both pleased and proud to affirm that Joy Harjo, the much-celebrated, 68-year-old writer and musician based in Tulsa, was recently named by the Library of Congress as the 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States. A member of the Muscogee Creek Nation, Harjo is the first Native person to be selected for this honorable role. On this edition of StudioTulsa, we listen back to a conversation that we aired with Harjo in 2012, when her well-regarded memoir, "Crazy Brave," had just appeared.

On this edition of ST, we speak with the acclaimed poet and writing instructor Quraysh Ali Lansana (born 1964 in Enid, Oklahoma). Now based in Tulsa and recently named a Tulsa Artist Fellow, Lansana has published several books over the years: poetry collections, children's books, edited or co-edited anthologies, textbooks, etc. Long based in Chicago, and greatly influenced by the African-American cultural, social, and political life of that city -- and more generally, by the Black Arts Movement in American life and letters -- Lansana has a new book out.

On this edition of ST, we welcome Carol Haralson. A former citizen of Tulsa, she is an award-winning book designer now based in Arizona. She's designed several striking book jackets over the years, across a range of literary genres. And Haralson's now written a book of her own -- a blend of memoir, fiction, poetry, personal essay, and photography titled "At the Far End of O Street." She'll appear tomorrow night, Wednesday the 17th, at a free reading and signing at Magic City Books (beginning at 7pm).

Our guest is the well-regarded Pennsylvania-based poet, Ron Silliman, who has written and edited over 30 books, and who is seen as one of the founders of the so-called Language Poetry movement in American literature. A 2003 Literary Fellow of the National Endowment for the Arts, Silliman also received the Levinson Prize from the Poetry Foundation in 2010 (among many other honors). He'll be reading from and talking about his work tonight (the 11th) as part of the 2nd Annual TulsaLitFest.

(Note: This interview first aired back in November.) Our guest is the noted playwright, Sarah Ruhl, a Tony Award nominee and the author of "100 Essays I Don't Have Time to Write," which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. She tells us about her newest book, a collection of moving and insightful letters between herself and Max Ritvo (1990-2016). Ruhl teaches at the Yale School of Drama, and Ritvo, a noted poet who died young of cancer, had been one of her favorite students.

Our guest is the bestselling young-adult writer Laurie Halse Anderson, who is widely known and appreciated for the brave manner in which she writes about, and advocates for, survivors of sexual assault. Her novel "Speak," which first appeared two decades ago, was groundbreaking in this regard.

Our guest is the New Mexico-based writer, poet, and educator Lauren Camp, whose books include "One Hundred Hungers" (winner of the Dorset Prize and a finalist for the Arab American Book Award) and "Turquoise Door." Last year, Camp presented her poems on dementia at the Mayo Clinic and also at an Alzheimer's Association Caregivers Conference. "Poetry & Dementia: A Reading with Lauren Camp" will happen on Thursday the 7th at 7pm in TU's Tyrrell Hall; the gathering is free to the public.

On this edition of our program, we offer an engaging conversatiuon with Deborah Hunter, a Behavioral Health Rehab Specialist and Case Manager at Family & Children's Services here in Tulsa. She's been with F&CS since 2011, and she is also a longtime and award-winning poet. Interestingly, Hunter also works as a social worker for the Tulsa City-County Library, mainly at the TCCL's Central Branch (and 5th and Denver).

Our guest is the noted playwright, Sarah Ruhl, a Tony Award nominee and the author of "100 Essays I Don't Have Time to Write," which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. She tells us about her newest book, a collection of moving and insightful letters between herself and Max Ritvo (1990-2016). Ruhl teaches at the Yale School of drama, and Ritvo -- a noted poet who died young of cancer -- had been one of her favorite students.

Our guest is Teresa Miller, the local author and Director Emerita of the Center for Poets and Writers at OSU. Miller is also the co-editor of a new anthology, which she tells us about: "Love Can Be: A Literary Collection about Our Animals." It's a gathering of about thirty acclaimed authors, all of them celebrating pets, animals, creatures, and other forms of life: cats, birds, frogs, butterflies, bears, dogs, raccoons, horses, etc.

Our guest is Jill Bialosky, a writer based in NYC who's published several collections of poetry as well as the bestselling memoir, "History of a Suicide: My Sister's Unfinished Life." She joins us to discuss her latest book, an engaging memoir/anthology titled "Poetry Will Save Your Life." Per The Chicago Tribune: "A delightfully hybrid book: part anthology, part critical study, part autobiography.... Candid and canny.... Bialosky's erudite and instructive approach to poetry [is] itself a refreshing tonic." Please note that Ms. Bialosky, who is also an editor at W. W.

On this edition of ST, we speak once again with Michael Chaiken, the curator of the Tulsa-based Bob Dylan Archive, which is currently located at the University of Tulsa's Helmerich Center for American Research at Gilcrease Museum, and which houses some 6,000 items related to Dylan's life and career in music -- nearly six decades of writings, recordings, memorabilia, film, and more. This facility is meant for researchers and scholars; it is not open to the public.

We learn about a striking show on view at the Gilcrease Museum here in Tulsa; "T.C. Cannon: At the Edge of America" will run through October 7th of this year. It is, per the Gilcrease website, "the first major traveling exhibition of Cannon's work since 1990 and explores the dynamic creative range and legacy of an artist whose life was cut short at age 31.

On this edition of ST, we learn about the first-ever Tulsa Lit.Fest, an impressive array of free-to-the-public events that will happen here in our community from tomorrow (the 19th) through Sunday (the 22nd).

On this edition of StudioTulsa, we offer a recently posted edition of the Museum Confidential podcast, which is co-created every other week by Jeff Martin (of Philbrook Museum) and Scott Gregory (of Public Radio Tulsa; Scott is also StudioTulsa's longtime editor and producer). On this particular podcast, we explore the bookish side of museum-going in a revealing conversation with the NYC-based poet Kenneth Goldsmith, who in 2013 was the first and only Poet Laureate at the Museum of Modern Art.

On this edition of ST, we speak with the locally based poet, poetry teacher, and literary activist, Victoria McArtor. She tells us about her new book, "Reverse Selfie," which is a collection of poems written in response to -- or in conversation with, or in tribute to -- various Tulsa landmarks. This book, which actually began as a write-one-poem-every-day-for-a-month project back in 2015, also features striking photographs by Matthew Phipps, thereby capturing in both words and images the vitality, beauty, wonder, and strangeness of the City of Tulsa.

On this edition of our show, we learn about the next concert to be staged by the Signature Symphony at TCC, "Yevtushenko and Shostakovich," which will happen on Saturday night, the 4th, at 7:30pm (at the Van Trease PACE on East 81st Street). This concert will honor the life and work of Yevgeny Yevtushenko, the late poet and author who died earlier this year, and who taught at the University of Tulsa and contributed to our city's cultural life over the last 30 years.

On this edition of our program, we chat with Eilis O'Neal, the editor-in-chief of TU's long-running literary publication, Nimrod International Journal. Nimrod will soon host its 2017 Write Night (tomorrow night, the 20th) at the Tulsa Garden Center, which will be followed (on the 21st) by the day-long Conference for Readers and Writers at the Allen Chapman Student Union. As we learn from Ms.

This edition of ST features a discussion with José Torres-Tama, the New Orleans-based performance artist who will soon present his Taco Truck Theater / Teatro Sin Fronteras project at Living Arts of Tulsa. This production will be staged on Thursday and Friday, the 18th and 19th, with both shows starting at 8pm. Also on our program is the local poet Amairani Perez, who will be one of the Tulsa-based artists participating in this project.

On this edition of ST, we welcome Billy Collins back to our show. He is the winner of the Tulsa Library Trust's 2016 Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award, and he'll be reading from his work at an event here in Tulsa on Saturday the 3rd at the downtown Central Library. (This event begins at 10:30am and is free to the public.) Known and loved by readers everywhere for his accessible, conversational, clearly rendered, and often witty poems, Collins has been called "the most popular poet in America" by The New York Times.

On this installment of StudioTulsa, we're talking about the Bob Dylan Archive, that widely-reported-on treasure trove of 6,000+ items documenting the entirety of the legendary singer-songwriter's still-active career. This archive was purchased earlier this year by the George Kaiser Family Foundation and The University of Tulsa; it will be housed at TU's Helmerich Center for American Research (which is located within the Gilcrease Museum).

On today's ST, we learn about a new musical -- a "bro-mantic" comedy, no less -- loosely based on the thousand-year-old epic poem, "Beowulf." It's the still-in-development "Beowulf, Lord of the Bros," and it will be workshopped at a pair of free-to-the-public performances on Friday and Saturday, the 30th and 31st, at the Theatre Two space in Kendall Hall on the TU campus, with both shows starting at 7pm.

On this installment of ST, we speak with the poet and performance/conceptual artist, Kenneth Goldsmith, who has appeared on The Colbert Report, held a poetry reading in the White House, and published more than ten books. He's also the first-ever poet laureate to be selected by The Museum of Modern Art -- and he'll offer a free-to-the-public poetry reading tonight, Tuesday the 22nd, at 9pm in Tyrell Hall on the TU campus.

On this installment of StudioTulsa, we learn about Poetic Justice, an ongoing writing project for incarcerated women at the David L. Moss Criminal Justice Center in Tulsa. This writing-workshop program began about 18 months ago and has been very popular from the outset. Our guest is Ellen Stackable, a high school English and World Studies teacher at the Tulsa School of Arts and Sciences, who directs the program and serves as one of its educators.