Natures

So Far: The Catalog of the Wordplay Archive

noreply@blogger.com (jeff) — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 05:38:00 +0000

Wordplay in in the midst of its seventh season. The program airs at AshevilleFM at 5:00 PM on Sundays.

A few new shows are now up, others will be going up shortly - especially if I can recruit an intern who'd like to learn a little something about audio editing and using an FTP client.

I'll also be uploading some older shows that never found their way through the clouds to ibiblio, home of the Wordplay Archive. Most of 2008's and 2009's shows are now up, and many of 2007's, but there are raw recordings of many from 2006 as well, and a few from 2005, so I'll edit those into podcasts as time allows.

As of now, the shows below are available in the Archive; the shows' dates serve as the links to the recordings.

(Note: Before 2008, shows were thirty minutes long; shows broadcast in 2008 and after are an hour long. Clicking on the date will take you to the .mp3 file for the specified show, clicking on "(production note)", where that's an option, will take you to the original Natures note about the show, where you'll often find information about the music used and other bits of incidental intelligence. The note, though, will also contain the original link to the program on the station's server; shows stayed on that server for only two weeks, so those links have long since been broken.)

Enjoy, and thanks for listening.

2005:

November 13, 2005 Stephanie Biziewski, one of the original Wordplay team, invited Cathy Smith Bowers in for a show in the very first season of Wordplay; Gillian Coats and Lori Horvitz engineered and produced, respectively (production note).

2006:

September 3, 2006, featured Laura Hope-Gill and Sebastian Matthews

2007:

January 28, 2007 Sebastian Matthews, Laura Hope-Gill and I were co-hosting the show, and we invited Cathy Smith Bowers back a little over a year after her first appearance.

February 11,2007 featured John Crutchfield.

March 18, 2007 featured Laura Hope-Gill discussing her work with alchemy.

April 29, 2007 Laura Hope-Gill and I read and discussed the work of poet Robert Bly.

May 27, 2007 featured Samuel Adams.

June 10, 2007 featured Robert Bly reading at UNCA (production note).

June 17, 2007 featured Keith Flynn.

July 1, 2007 featured Allan Wolf.

September 2, 2007 featured Thomas Rain Crowe, and includes recordings of Crowe with his band, The Boatrockers.

September 9, 2007 featured poet Joanna Cooper.

September 16, 2007 featured a reading by Glenis Redmond at the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center.

September 23, 2007 brought Steve Godwin into the studio, and Steve, Sebastian and I talked over poems we enjoyed, from recent work by Van Jordan (Sebastian) to an HD piece from 1921 (me). Music included tracks from Neil Young and Steve Kimock.

September 30, 2007 highlighted the work of poet Audrey Hope Rinehart.

October 14, 2007 featured Gary Hawkins.

October 21, 2007 found then-Marshall poet Rose McLarney in the studio for her annual near-birthday reading of new work.

October 28, 2007 featured archival recordings of Walt Whitman, Alfred Tennyson, and other old masters.

November 4, 2007 featured Buffalo poet Jessica Smith (production note).

November 11, 2007 featured recordings of William Matthews.

November 18, 2007 featured Robert Morgan (production note), author of Gap Creek, Boone, and Terroir, among many other prose and poetry titles.

December 2, 2007 featured Laura Hope-Gill.

December 9, 2007 featured Nan Watkins presenting her translations of Yvan Goll (production note).

December 16, 2007 featured Mara Simmons.

December 23, 2007 featured Laura Hope-Gill reading "A Child's Christmas in Wales".

2008:

January 13, 2008 featured Ed Dorn (production note), another Black Mountain College poet, author of the classic Gunslinger and Recollections of Gran Apacheria, among other titles.

January 20, 2008 featured Katherine Min, author of Secondhand World.

January 27, 2008 featured Gary Hawkins and Landon Godfrey.

February 3, 2008 featured Sebastian Matthews and Dick Barnes.

February 17, 2008, featured my April, 2006 reading for the publication of Natures.

February 24, 2008 featured the very literate singer-songwriter Angela Faye Martin.

March 2, 2008 featured Thomas Rain Crowe reading from Radiogenesis, and young poet Blaise Ellery.

March 9, 2008 featured Chattanooga poet Chad Prevost (production note).

March 23, 2008 featured the great Jonathan Williams reading at Sylva's City Lights Books in May of 2005 (production note).

April 7, 2008 featured Galway Kinnell reading at Breadloaf in 2002.

April 13, 2008 featured Laura Hope-Gill reading new work and pitching on the pledge drive show.

May 25, 2008 featured Ross Gay in an interview with Joanna Cooper, and reading at Asheville's Malaprops Books (production note).

June 1, 2008 featured Coleman Barks performing at the Fine Arts Theater in April, 2008 (production note).

June 8, 2008 featured Wayne Caldwell, author of Cataloochee - and, now, 2012, also Requiem by Fire.

June 15, 2008 featured archival recordings of poet Robert Creeley, including some recorded at Black Mountain College, where he taught with Charles Olson.

June 29, 2008 featured Nan Watkins presenting her translations of Yvan Goll - the extended edition (production note).

July 6, 2008 featured Landon Godfrey (production note).

July 13, 2008 featured writer Chall Gray, now proprietor of the Magnetic Field performance space.

July 20, 2008 featured Jeffery Beam (production note).

August 3, 2008 featured Ken Rumble (production note).

August 10, 2008 Columbia, S.C., novelist Janna McMahan visited Wordplay to discuss and read from her fun, insightful coming-of-age novel Calling Home . The show featured tunes by Van Halen and even Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Free Bird" - probably the only time that song has ever been played at WPVM (now MAIN-FM) or AshevilleFM . What can I say? Are there any coming-of-age stories set after 1960 in which sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll don't play a major part? They certainly do in this one.

August 17, 2008 Long-time co-host Sebastian Matthews returned to host a show that featured recent work and recent reading.

August 24, 2008, featured Laura Hope-Gill (production note).

August 31, 2008, featured Glenis Redmond (production note).

September 7, 2008, featured poet Thomas Meyer (production note).

September 14, 2008 Asheville "investigative poet" Pat Riviere-Seel dropped by to share recent work and read from her book The Serial Killer's Daughter. A Little-Known Fact: Pat was on the original humongous Wordplay production team.

September 28, 2008 Sebastian Matthews again hosted.

October 5, 2008 Wordplay regular Rose McLarney returned to share recent work and discuss her adventures in and out of creative writing programs.

October 12, 2008 Poet Lee Ann Brown returned to Wordplay to give us a look at her recent work. Another Little-Known Fact: Lee Ann was the "guest" on the demo of Wordplay submitted to WPVM's Programming Committee way back when (production note).

November 2, 2008 Lee Ann Brown returned with British Columbia poet Peter Culley, who was completing a residency at Marshall's French Broad Institute of Time and the River.

November 9, 2008 This show featured a reading Peter Culley gave in Marshall a few days before, and some archival recordings of the modernist great, Ezra Pound (production note).

November 16, 2008 Sebastian Matthews, Landon Godfrey, Laura Hope-Gill, Glenis Redmond and I celebrated the women of Black Mountain College, including poet Denise Levertov.

November 23, 2008 Robert and Arlene Winkler dropped by to discuss their RiverSculpture project, and to introduce the Asheville reading by poet Mark Strand that they'd sponsored (production note).

December 14, 2008 North Carolina Poet Laureate Kay Byer, featured in a reading from early 2008 at the Asheville Art Museum (production note).

December 21, 2008 The extraordinary Robert Bly reading -... er, performing would be more accurate - at the Diana Wortham Theater with the Asheville world-music trio Free Planet Radio, and discussing his translations of Hafez, his trip to Iran with Coleman Barks, and other wonders. (production note).

December 28, 2008 Laura Hope-Gill, Sebastian Matthews, and Glenis Redmond dropped in for a lively show featuring their own work, the upcoming WordFest, and Sebastian's new plan for his magazine Rivendell (production note).

2009:

January 11, 2009 Tim Peeler surprised me by bringing the one-of-a-kind mythogeographer Ted Pope along, and we had a hoot talking about ancient Egypt, Antarctica, and baseball (production note).

February 15, 2009 featured Jargonaut Thomas Meyer reading his elegy for Jonathan Williams, part of which has now been published as Kintsugi (production note).

March 1, 2009 Asheville novelist Wayne Caldwell returned to share parts of Cataloochee and his then unpublished new novel, Requiem By Fire, which Random House brought out in February, 2010.

March 8, 2009 Hendersonville storyteller Karen Eve Bayne graced the show with her stories and stories about her stories, and made a pitch, too, for the Do Tell Festival of poetry and stories held on July 11th, 2009, in Hendersonville.

March 22, 2009 featured Hickory poet Scott Owens.

March 29, 2009 New Hampshire poet Mimi White, down south to fly-fish in the Davidson River, dropped by the studio to share her work, and to talk about poets, dogs, and other complex life forms.

April 5, 2009 Landon Godfrey, Gary Hawkins, Steve Samuels and I all weighed into a discussion of "nature" and what that term might mean for poetry, and read some "nature" poems by poets from Wordsworth to Frank O'Hara.

April 19, 2009, our Easter show, featured a reading by the late Sage of Scaly Mountain, Jonathan Williams, from 1981 (production note).

April 26, 2009 Performance poet Patricia Smith visited the studio to discuss her work with Glenis Redmond, Sebastian Matthews, and me, just a few hours before her reading at Wordfest 2008 (production note).

May 17, 2009 The last show for Wordplay at its old home featured great Canadian/New American poet Robin Blaser reading in 1965 and 2004, and discussing his work in a BBC interview from 1994 (production note).

September 27, 2009 brought the very literate (she cringes a bit when so described, but only a very literate chanteuse could title a song "Mary Shelly's Hair") singer-songwriter Angela Faye Martin to the studio at AshevilleFM, Wordplay's new home, to debut her new CD, Pictures From Home, produced by Sparklehorse's Mark Linkous, who died this past March. We listened to some of the CD, and Angela also sang live in the studio.

October 18, 2009 A few weeks later poet/microfictionalsit/playwright John Crutchfield visited the studio, and brought his banjo to boot. His Songs of Robert had just been selected as "Outstanding Solo Show" at the New York Fringe Festival, and he was in high spirits.

He's since had several new productions open at the new Magnetic Field performance space in Asheville's River Arts District, including Ruth and The Labyrinth. A new play, Solstice, opens this month (January, 2012).

(Here's his previous Wordplay appearance from February, 2007. )

November 15, 2009 brought Tryon poet Cathy Smith Bowers, long-time Poet-in-Residence at Queens University in Charlotte, into the studio to celebrate her birthday. We listened to George Jones, Nina Simone, and Leonard Cohen, and she read from her most recent volume, The Candle I Hold Up to See You.

A few months later, of course, she became North Carolina's Poet Laureate, and then co-hosted Wordplay once a month from February, 2010, through February, 2011.

2010:

January 10, 2010 featured Lucy Tobin, who explores a middle ground between lyric and narrative in her very interesting work. Music by Allison Kraus, the Mountain Goats, and Heretic Pride.

January 3, 2010 celebrated the publication of Thomas Rain Crowe's Blue Rose of Venice. The archiving system dropped part of the show, but what survived is worth a listen. Caleb Beissert sat in, and shared his translations of Neruda. An earlier note on the show is below, here.

January 17, 2010 brought Graham Hackett, director of Catalyst Poetix, into the studios for an interview and extraordinary performance. Really, if he was reading from anything, it must have been glued to the back of his eyelids. After serving as Acting Director of the Asheville Area Arts Council in 2011, Graham is now back with Catalyst Poetics.

February 21, 2010 Cathy Smith Bowers launched the Laureate's Radio Hour series by talking about the impact the laureateship had already had on her life, and discussing her intentions and hopes for the duration of her tenure - including featuring poets once a month on Wordplay. Musical cuts by Nina Simone and her daughter, Lisa Simone.

March 21, 2010, Cathy Smith Bowers, co-hosting once again for the Laureate's Radio Hour, welcomed her former student Stephanie Biziewski to the show, and work-shopped a poem Stephanie had underway with her.

April 18, 2010 Cathy welcomed the very versatile Michael Beadle to the show, and he read texts that ranged in voice from the personal/lyrical, through the historical, to the performative.

May 29, 2010 This time around the laureate turned the tables on the host, and wrangled me into reading some of my own work, poems from Natures and some mostly unpublished pieces (so far) I plan to include in a second book. In a fit of what must have been borderline insanity, I even threw in a few very recent pieces that prove conclusively that a sixty-five year old man can still write idiotic, jejune love poetry. Music from Pierre Bensusan, the Grateful Dead, the Allman Brothers, and the Steve Kimock Band.

July 18, 2010 For this Laureate's Radio Hour, Cathy hosted poet Katherine Soniat, author of Alluvial, A Shared Life, Notes of Departure, and other titles, including the The Swing Girl, published in 2011 by the LSU Press.

July 25, 2010 The summer brought poet Landon Godfrey to the microphone to share some of her work, including some of the poems which would be gathered in her first book, Second-Skin Rhinestone-Spangled Nude Soufflé Chiffon Gown, published early 2011. It was selected by David St. John for the Cider Press book award.

Listeners may remember that Landon's been on Wordplay several times before, back on July 6, 2008, and, with Gary Hawkins, her husband and fellow poet, on January 27, 2008, and April 5, 2009. Here's the original program note for the July '08 appearance (remember the link to the program in that note has long since expired). And she can come back any time!

August 22, 2010 Sebastian Matthews joined Cathy and me to share some of the work of his father, the poet William Matthews, and to treat us to some of his own new poems. Musical breaks by Charlie Mingus, Bill Evans, and McCoy Tyner. Another Laureate's Radio Hour.

September 19, 2010 brought a couple of Wordplay veterans, Thomas Rain Crowe and Nan Watkins, back to AshevilleFM as guests of Poet Laureate Cathy Smith Bowers, for another of her Laureate's Radio Hours. Cathy particularly wanted to celebrate their translation of Yvan and Claire Goll's 10,000 Dawns on this outing, and Crowe and Watkins were happy to oblige. Music included tracks by Paris' Swing-Era guitar masters Oscar Aleman and Django Rinehardt, and composers Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy

Crowe, an old friend, has been a frequent character here at Natures. Program Notes for two of his appearances on Wordplay can be found here (noting his show this January) and here (celebrating his Rare Birds).

Notes on Watkins' previous appearances, both featuring her work translating the poetry of Yvan Goll, can be found here and here.

September 26, 2010 This summer brought novelist Sujatha Hampton to the mountains for readings at Marshall's French Broad Institute and Asheville's Malaprops Bookstore from her As It Was Written. The day after her Malaprops reading, Sujatha visited AshevilleFM for an interview that featured not only discussion of the book, but how she came to write it, and much more.

October 17, 2010 featured Western North Carolina poet Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin on a Laureate's Radio Hour.

November 21, 2010 had Cathy interviewing Charlotte writer Jim McGavran about his lovely deeply-felt memoir In the Shadow of the Bear for one of her Laureate's Radio Hours.

December 19, 2010 brought poet Susan Lefler to the studio for a preview of her upcoming book, Rendering the Bones, since published by Wind Publications. Another Laureate's Radio Hour.

January 16, 2011 - Eastern NC poet/musician Jim Clark made the trek to the mountains to join Cathy and me in the studio for a celebration of his CD "The Service of Song." This lovely CD provides Clark's musical settings of poems by Appalachian poet Byron Herbert Reece, "the bard of the North Georgia mountains," who died in 1958 at age 40. We listened to several cuts from the disc, and some tracks, as well, from one of Jim's other CDs, "The Buried Land." You'll find links to some mp3s from both over at Clark's website. A Laureate's Radio Hour.

February 13, 2011 - Our scheduled guest came down with the flu, so this Sunday found Cathy and me alone in the studio for what would prove to be our last show together. Since it was the day before Valentines Day, we talked, not about love poetry, but about poetry that we loved, poetry that had made us want to join the ranks of poets ourselves. You'll hear us read from the work of, and discuss, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Randall Jarrell, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Creeley, Sylvia Plath, and Gary Snyder, with musical interludes by The Beatles. John Coltrane, Leonard Cohen, and the Grateful Dead. It's quite the mix! The final Laureate's Radio Hour.

And, as always, more to come ...

Asheville poets join 100,000 Poets for Change

noreply@blogger.com (jeff) — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 21:37:00 +0000

Saturday a week, the 24th of September, a good group of poets will gather at Grateful Steps to raise their voices and read poems for the international poetry initiative 100,000 Poets for Change.

(Click on the image for a readable version)

100,000 Poets for Change has certainly engaged a host of North Carolina poets, as the linked post notes, including former Poet Laureate Katherine Stripling Byer, Joseph Bathanti, Kathryn Kirkpatrick, Richard Krawiec, Dorianne Laux, Gail Peck, Chris Vitiello, Beth Browne, Valerie Nieman, Debra Kaufman, Tim Peeler, Scott Owen, and a host of others. All of them will be reading and performing other acts of poetry in places that span the state, from Wilmington to Sylva, and include venues in Charlotte, Durham, Greensboro, Hickory, Hillsborough, and Boone.

The Asheville event should be a fine occasion, so, if you're in these mountains, do put it on your calendar. And if you're not ... well, there's probably an event near you.

Big Doings in little Sylva

noreply@blogger.com (jeff) — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 20:56:00 +0000

Coming up on September 23rd, quite a gathering of writers, among them Charles Frazier, Wayne Caldwell, Thomas Rain Crowe, Keith Flynn ...

(You'll need to click twice to get a readable image, once to open the image in a separate tab - or window, depending on how your browser's configured - and then again to enlarge it.)

Some of these folks (Frazier, for example) rarely make public appearances locally, so it'll be a bit of a special night.

Wordplay: A new show with Rick Chess

noreply@blogger.com (jeff) — Wed, 18 May 2011 20:54:00 +0000

A good show with UNCA's Rick Chess this past Sunday. We got a bit into his investigations into the Kabbalah, and he read for the first time some of the poems that had come out of that work, remarkable compressed pieces of real intensity, as well as poems written in more expansive modes. Claire Burson's lovely CD Silver and Ash provided our musical interludes. It's still on the station archive, accessible from the Wordplay Program page.

Rick also invited me to talk a bit about the class I'll be doing (hopefully) this summer for the Great Smokies Writing Program offered by UNCA. The class will work with procedures as part of the arsenal of tricks poets have available to them, and my real hope is that we'll use those procedures - some developed by Black Mountain poet Jonathan Williams, others by the members of the French Oulipo workshop - to get to the heart beyond the head. Lee Ann Brown tells a good story about a discussion she had with Bernadette Mayer, one of the foremost American originators of poetic procedures, who was at the time working with text cut out of articles from the New York Times. "You know," Mayer said, "I may be working with cutout text, but I'm still writing about my mother." Whatever strategies we use, we'll be using them likewise to write about things that matter deeply to us, even if we do have some fun with language along the way.

If you're interested in exploring this territory - and I think you'll find it a fascinating trip, wherever you're coming from - please check out the Great Smokies site for more information, applications, and the like.

Three poets tonight!

noreply@blogger.com (jeff) — Fri, 06 May 2011 14:56:00 +0000

Wordfest is underway in Asheville, so souls who crave poetry have many options for the next few days. A note from the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center reminds me an event not part of Wordfest is among those options for today. Tonight at 8:00, North Carolina Poet Laureate Cathy Smith Bowers, Barbara Kremen, and Carole Boston Weatherford will be reading at the Center; notwithstanding the other fine possibilities for the evening, that's where I'll be. Hope to see you there.

Coming up this Sunday ...

noreply@blogger.com (jeff) — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 01:20:00 +0000

(Well, I ought to do at least one post this month. Clearly, my current focus on writing otherwise has cut into the time I'm able to spend here. One of these days I'll be back - or find at least some middle territory between the near-silent now and the much more steady posting of yesteryear. In the meantime, there's this:)

Claire, Steve and I have been developing and rehearsing new material for much of the last month. Part of the text I've come up with is derived from the old Latin poem "Pervigilium Veneris," which I've loved for years. Though it seems to have been written quite late, during the era in which Rome had become largely Christian, at least officially, it feels like a real survivor from the happier pagan era. It's certainly a very proper celebration of Our Lady of Love!

Of course, I've added some new sections to it, one on bonobos and another on dopamine and the other fine neurotransmitters and hormones that do such a fine job of shaping our human experience of love ... or is that "love?"

As the poster says, we''ll be getting underway at 6:00 pm in downtown Marshall, at the French Broad Institute.

Hope to see you there!

Bob Herbert says goodbye

noreply@blogger.com (jeff) — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 06:02:00 +0000

to the NY Times with one of his best columns.

Overwhelming imbalances in wealth and income inevitably result in enormous imbalances of political power. So the corporations and the very wealthy continue to do well. The employment crisis never gets addressed. The wars never end. And nation-building never gets a foothold here at home.
New ideas and new leadership have seldom been more urgently needed.

Amen to that.

Last roundup for the Laureate's Radio Hour

noreply@blogger.com (jeff) — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 16:07:00 +0000

The final shows (for now, at least) of the Laureate's Radio Hour are now up on the ibiblio archive.

January 16, 2011 - Eastern NC poet/musician Jim Clark made the trek to the mountains to join Cathy and me in the studio for a celebration of his CD "The Service of Song." This lovely CD provides Clark's musical settings of poems by Appalachian poet Byron Herbert Reece, "the bard of the North Georgia mountains," who died in 1958 at age 40. We listened to several cuts from the disc, and some tracks, as well, from one of Jim's other CDs, "The Buried Land." You'll find links to some mp3s from both over at Clark's website.

February 13, 2011 - Our scheduled guest came down with the flu, so this Sunday found Cathy and me alone in the studio for what would prove to be our last show together. Since it was the day before Valentines Day, we talked, not about love poetry, but about the love of poetry, about poetry that we loved, poetry that had made us want to join the ranks of poets ourselves. You'll hear us read from the work of, and discuss, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Randall Jarrell, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Creeley, Sylvia Plath, and Gary Snyder, with musical interludes by The Beatles, John Coltrane, Leonard Cohen, and The Grateful Dead. As you might gather, it's quite the mix!

A special thanks to all our guests over the past year, and apologies to the poets whom we didn't get to shine a light on (to use one of Cathy's favorite phrases) - and special thanks, indeed, to Cathy Smith Bowers for a year of fine radio. I wish Cathy all the best as she continues to serve the people of North Carolina, with extraordinary dedication, as Poet Laureate.

That's all for now. And thanks, as always, for listening.

The Laureate's Hour ...

noreply@blogger.com (jeff) — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 17:56:00 +0000

comes to an end. I'll be scrambling between now and Sunday to put together another show.

More down the road.

Wishing Coleman Barks the best ...

noreply@blogger.com (jeff) — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 04:03:00 +0000

would be a good thing to do right now, and for the next few months, as he works back from a stroke that deprived him of his speech. He's a lucky man in some ways; as he notes in his statement, he's fine cognitively, and has no major loss of physical function:

I can read and write just fine, and no motor functions are impaired. Arms and legs active and strong. It is really just a slightly droopy right eyelid and my having only half a smile.
...
So I have been tremendously lucky, actually. In three months, my neurologist doctor (Van Morris!) says (by early June), we will see 80% of what improvement (in my half-smile and my speech) is possible. I plan to work with speech therapists, hypnotists, and whoever else, to get better.
...
I am mostly sleeping as much as I can (grace) and listening to recordings of my old voice in my kitchen and talking along (practice). I am not answering the phone or the door, or emails (only a few). Please forgive me these reclusive measures. Think of me as an old dormant bear, healing.

The Hopi, according to the remarkable linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf, had a category of taking part in an activity that he termed "covert participation", and it included thinking good thoughts about more active participants, saying silent prayers for them, and like steps. Now might be a good time to participate covertly in Coleman's return to speech.

And I'll certainly be holding that voice in mind, and hoping that the spring which has begun to waken so many things that have been sleeping through these cold months rouses the healing power in that old dormant bear, as well.

Scenes from the Festival

noreply@blogger.com (jeff) — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 07:36:00 +0000

The Spirit of Black Mountain College Festival, that is, which took place at Lenoir-Rhyne University in September, 2008. The Arts Council of North Carolina recorded many of the performances and readings, and apparently the recordings are now up on YouTube. A new friend who was exploring the web in search of some of my work came across them, and kindly let me know.

Not sure why I chose to read all new, unpublished work this day in Hickory, but there's no denying I did. The poems have changed a bit in the years since.

There are also readings by Michael Rumaker, Lee Ann Brown, Lisa Jarnot, Thomas Meyer, and Thomas Raine Crowe from the festival. Cool, extremely cool.

Cage's 4.33'

noreply@blogger.com (jeff) — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 06:14:00 +0000

All the versions of Cage's 4.33' I've, er ..., heard have been for solo piano, perhaps because Cage was a pianist himself. I've sometimes wondered what a full orchestral version would sound like. Now I know; the BBC Symphony has done it. And, so, here it is for your delectation:

(A tip of the hat to Ryan Wasoba at Crawdaddy)

The Disturbances of Climate Change, Part 543

noreply@blogger.com (jeff) — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 17:50:00 +0000

Some yard-care guys are mowing the grass at the rental house next door. In February. In Asheville, NC, latitude 35.600N, longitude -82.554W, elevation 2,133 feet, 650 meters. Not quite right. Just sayin'.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The photo: my yard's first daffodils for this year, opened just yesterday.

Mad Hatter's Review

noreply@blogger.com (jeff) — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 08:07:00 +0000

Issue 12 is now online, and it's pretty amazing. One of the great things about web mags is they don't have to be little; they can offer much more content than traditional hardcopy literary periodicals. And that's true in spades at Mad Hatter's. I've been browsing through it for the past two weeks and don't think I've come anywhere close to the end of it.

Mad Hatter's is the brainchild of new Ashevillian Carol Novack, a.k.a. Loopdeeloopy Lala, the author of Giraffes in Hiding: The Mythical Memoirs of Carol Novack (Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2010), who's appeared ... er, performed? a couple of times already on Wordplay*, and will no doubt return. In addition to the Review, she also curates the Mad Hat's readings, the first two of which were hosted by the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center.

Not limited by paper page counts and formats, online mags like Mad Hatter's can offer a wonderful range of content. This issue of the journal features poetry, digital fiction, reviews, stories, creative non- fiction, drama (in audio format, yet), music, and much more - including, even, one of the pieces on Charles Olson I've been working on for the past year. Altogether, aside from the editors, there are one hundred thirty-nine (yes, if I'm counting correctly) contributors.

Oh, did I mention that its graphics are truly remarkable? The image at the top of this post, Tree, by Gene Tanta, appears on the home page of the Columns section - and there's a virtual gallery's worth of such fascinating, hallucinatory images over at the site. Anyway, do give it a look.

* One of Carol's shows is now up on the ibiblio archive: August 1, 2010, which I also rebroadcast this past Sunday, since I had to be taping downtown at airtime.

Wordplay: A classic with Holly Iglesias

noreply@blogger.com (jeff) — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 18:38:00 +0000

Thursday last week I left the mountains for a road trip to Charlotte and Tarboro, and got back into Asheville only late Sunday, so I just had time to grab the recording of a classic Wordplay show before airtime. That show, originally broadcast in October of 2010, featured Holly Iglesias. Holly spent her college years in New Orleans, and went from there into an adventurous life that took her far from the intellectual and spiritual confines of the American psyche. The show focuses on her years in New Orleans and beyond, and the work that grew out of her experience of that larger world. You'll find the stream from AshevilleFM right here, and the archived show already at ibiblio.

Last month Holly got word that she'd received an NEA Creative Writing Fellowship for 2011. The UNCA website offered this account of her plans:

In accepting the NEA award, Iglesias described the fellowship as "a kiss, an embrace, a dare… and the mandate to keep writing." She says she will use the funding to support and expand the work she is best known for, prose poems based on historical events. "Because the work is its own reward, the NEA fellowship is icing (thick butter cream) on a three-layer chocolate cake," says Iglesias. "The poems have been graced upon me; they come and go. My job continues to be staying awake and opening the door when they arrive."

Congratulations, Holly - and do plan to visit the studio again for another show!

New shows on the archive ... and more!

noreply@blogger.com (jeff) — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 21:05:00 +0000

The Laureate's Radio Hour rides again! Shows from October, November and December are now up on the Wordplay Archive. More details on these to follow, but here are the links:

October 17, 2010 featured Western North Carolina poet Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin;

November 21, 2010 had Cathy interviewing Charlotte writer James McGavran;

December 19, 2010 brought poet Susan Lefler to the studio for a preview of her upcoming book, Rendering the Bones, due soon from Wind Publications.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

For most of the last week I've been fighting off something very like the flu, so yesterday, instead of spreading the contagion, I decided to reedit and replay another Wordplay classic, a show from last January. It featured Catalyst Poetix' Graham Hackett, who since the show has gone on to become the new director of the Asheville Area Arts Council, which just celebrated its re-launch last Friday. Unfortunately, as I prepared to burn the show to CD, Windows Vista decided to go into a coma, and it took some 45 minutes and three reboots before the computer was functioning normally again, so I didn't make it to the studio till well into the show's timespot. Rather than play just part of the show, I made sure it uploaded to the stream server. My apologies if you tuned in to listen live. I'm sure the music was good, but ...

Here's where you'll find the new-old show featuring Graham Hackett. Congratulations to Graham on his new gig, and congratulations, too, to the Arts Council on the opening of The Artery.

Mad Hat Tonight

noreply@blogger.com (jeff) — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 20:07:00 +0000

(Click on the image for a larger version)

Neither rain, nor snow, nor gloom of night ...

Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, 7:00 pm.

Come and and celebrate a whole day without snow! Temperatures soaring into the 40s! Whee!

No Wordplay today ...

noreply@blogger.com (jeff) — Sun, 26 Dec 2010 18:15:00 +0000

It snowed all day yesterday here in Asheville, giving us a White Christmas even Bing Crosby would have been very happy with, and it's snowing again as I write. While the city cleared some of the main roads last night, they must have been working, given the holiday, with limited crews. The roads in my neighborhood are passable only to four wheel drive vehicles, and I haven't had one of those for four or five years, so I won't be trekking to the station this evening.

I'd planned another show featuring recordings of Charles Olson (given that tomorrow is his hundred and first birthday) and Robert Creeley, Olson's friend and editor, discussing Olson and Black Mountain College, but it'll keep.

Meanwhile, have a great evening otherwise. The Laureate's snowed in with me, and we've got firewood, food, wine, and lots of books, so we'll have a good time, too.

Adios to the Captain

noreply@blogger.com (jeff) — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 20:11:00 +0000

News today that Captain Beefheart, also known in his later years by his given name, Don Van Vliet, has passed away from multiple sclerosis. His Safe As Milk and Trout Mask Replica especially spent many hours on my turntable a few decades back, and his work was always worth some good listens.

Here's the Captain:

And here's the Captain in a mellow mood:

(great video by terr0rkitten. Fast! Bulbous!)

(Hat tip to echidne, writing over at Atrios' place.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Update 22 December, 2010: One of the "greatest poets" of "a culture that has now all but vanished"? Jon Savage has a good post on The Captain over at The Guardian UK.

New Flashes

noreply@blogger.com (jeff) — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 07:49:00 +0000

Cathy Smith Bowers, co-host of Wordplay for the monthly Laureate's Radio Hour, will be reading at Queens University in Charlotte tonight. The event marks the publication of her book Like Shining from Shook Foil, a selection of poems from her four previous collections, augmented by a score of previously uncollected poems, including two which appeared in the past year. Press 53 is the publisher, and Tom Lombardo, the press's poetry editor, a former student of Bowers, selected the work included and wrote the introduction. It's available now from the Press 53 website, and should ship to bookstores soon. Nice cover, eh?

Meanwhile, here in Asheville, I'll be joining the Juniper Bends Anniversary celebration at the BoBo Gallery. The reading will feature a slew of folks who've participated in the reading series over the past year, including Mesha Maren, Ingrid Carson, Katherine Min, Lori Horvitz, John Crutchfield, Julian Vorus, Antonio Del Toro, Jaye Bartell, M. Owens, and myself - and there'll be music by DJ Lorruh and the Sugarfoot Serenaders. Lots of different types of work emitting from that spectrum, so it should be an illuminating event on several wavelengths..

Friday and Saturday, of course, there's the Oulipo Conference at UNCA which Lee Ann Brown worked with university faculty from multiple departments to organize. Not to miss. Here's the page with a link for registration (it's free, but they need a head-count).

And after things Oulipo wind down, new Asheville denizen Carol Novack launches her Mad Hatter reading series at the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center on Saturday night at 7:00 pm. She'll be joined by San Francisco poet David Smith and North Carolina writers Carter Monroe and Traci O'Connor.

Friends, it's sure going to be busy the next few days. I think I'll try to catch a nap tomorrow before it all kicks off. Hope to see you somewhere along the trail.

Another one bites the dust: "Bull in a china shop"

noreply@blogger.com (jeff) — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 02:23:00 +0000

Havoc. Lots of broken china, right? So someone actually set a bull loose in a china shop to see what would happen. And then two ... (via Dailykos, of all places, which has a larger embed)

Thanks for clearing that up!

Happy ...

noreply@blogger.com (jeff) — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 02:32:00 +0000

... Samhain, y'all.

Lee Ann Brown visited the station for Wordplay today, and we had an appropriately spooky show, with lots of visits from the dead - among them the wonderfully twisted balladeer Helen Adam. As (I suppose I can say, now) usual, Lee Ann sang much of the show; given her voice, that's a treat.

No link yet, but it'll be up on the station website tomorrow.

~~~~~~~~

Update November 5, 2010: Here's the link to Lee Ann's Halloween show.

New shows on the archive ...

noreply@blogger.com (jeff) — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 18:03:00 +0000

A passel of new Wordplay shows now up on the ibiblio archive, including another Laureate's Radio Hour. Just click on the date to go to the show:

September 27, 2009 brought the very literate (she cringes a bit when so described, but only a very literate chanteuse could title a song "Mary Shelly's Hair") singer-songwriter Angela Faye Martin to the studio to debut her new CD, Pictures From Home, produced by Sparklehorse's Mark Linkous, who died this past March. We listened to some of the CD, and Angela also sang live in the studio.

This was one of the very first shows at Wordplay's new home, AshevilleFM.

October 18, 2009 A few weeks later poet/microfictionalsit/playwright John Crutchfield visited the studio, and brought his banjo to boot. His Songs of Robert had just been selected as "Outstanding Solo Show" at the New York Fringe Festival, and he was in high spirits.

He's got a new production, Solstice, scheduled to open at the new Magnetic Field performance space in Asheville's River Arts District next month.

(Here's his previous Wordplay appearance from February, 2007. )

January 17, 2010 brought Graham Hackett, director of Catalyst Poetix, into the studios for an interview and extraordinary performance. Really, if he was reading from anything, it must have been glued to the back of his eyelids. Graham has since gone on to become the Program Director of the Asheville Area Arts Council.

July 25, 2010 This past summer brought poet Landon Godfrey to the microphone to share some of her work, including some of the poems which will be gathered in her first book, Second-Skin Rhinestone-Spangled Nude Soufflé Chiffon Gown, due early next year. It was selected by David St. John for the Cider Press book award.

Listeners may remember that Landon's been on Wordplay several times before, back on July 6, 2008, and, with Gary Hawkins, her husband and fellow poet, on January 27, 2008, and April 5, 2009. Here's the original program note for the July '08 appearance (remember the link to the program in that note has long since expired). And she can come back any time!

September 19, 2010 brought a couple of Wordplay veterans, Thomas Rain Crowe and Nan Watkins, back to AshevilleFM as guests of Poet Laureate Cathy Smith Bowers, for another of her Laureate's Radio Hours. Cathy particularly wanted to celebrate their translation of Yvan and Claire Goll's 10,000 Dawns on this outing, and Crowe and Watkins were happy to oblige. Music included tracks by Paris' Swing-Era guitar masters Oscar Aleman and Django Rinehardt, and composers Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy

Crowe, an old friend, has been a frequent character here at Natures. Program Notes for two of his appearances on Wordplay can be found here (noting his show this January) and here (celebrating his Rare Birds).

Notes on Watkins' previous appearances, both featuring her work translating the poetry of Yvan Goll, can be found here and here.

September 26, 2010 This summer brought novelist Sujatha Hampton to the mountains for readings at Marshall's French Broad Institute and Asheville's Malaprops Bookstore (right now the site generates a Google malware warning, so I'd wait to visit it) from her As It Was Written. The day after her Malaprops reading, Sujatha visited AshevilleFM for an interview that featured not only discussion of the book, but how she came to write it, and much more.

That's all for today, but there are many more to come.

Re-Viewing Black Mountain College a week away ...

noreply@blogger.com (jeff) — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 21:18:00 +0000

(Click on the image for a larger, actually legible version)

I'll be joining a few other poets downtown at 5 Walnut for a reading at 9:45 pm Friday, and participating in a panel on the Black Mountain poets at UNCA at 1:30 Saturday. The full schedule is online at the Center website.

Season VI Begins: Catalog of the Wordplay Archive

noreply@blogger.com (jeff) — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 20:19:00 +0000

Wordplay has kicked off its sixth season. The program's now at AshevilleFM, and airs at 5:00 PM on Sundays. Some new shows are now up, others will be going up shortly.

I'll also be uploading some older shows that, for whatever reason, never found their way through the clouds to ibiblio. Most of 2008's and 2009's shows are now up, and many of 2007's, but there are raw recordings of many from 2006 as well, and a few from 2005, so I'll be editing those into podcasts in the coming weeks and months, as time allows.

As of now, the shows below are available in the Archive; the shows' dates serve as the links to the recordings.

(Note: Before 2008, shows were thirty minutes long; shows broadcast in 2008 and after are an hour long. Clicking on the date will take you to the .mp3 file for the specified show, clicking on "(production note)", where that's an option, will take you to the original Natures note about the show, where you'll often find information about the music used and other bits of incidental intelligence. The note, though, will also contain the original link to the program on the station's server; shows stayed on that server for only two weeks, so those links have long since been broken.)

Enjoy, and thanks for listening.

2005:

November 13, 2005 Stephanie Biziewski, one of the original Wordplay team, invited Cathy Smith Bowers in for a show in the very first season of Wordplay; Gillian Coats and Lori Horvitz engineered and produced, respectively (production note).

2006:

September 3, 2006, featured Laura Hope-Gill and Sebastian Matthews

2007:

January 28, 2007 Sebastian Matthews, Laura Hope-Gill and I were co-hosting the show, and we invited Cathy Smith Bowers back a little over a year after her first appearance.

February 11,2007 featured John Crutchfield.

March 18, 2007 featured Laura Hope-Gill discussing her work with alchemy.

April 29, 2007 Laura Hope-Gill and I read and discussed the work of Robert Bly.

May 27, 2007 featured Samuel Adams.

June 10, 2007 featured Robert Bly reading at UNCA (production note).

June 17, 2007 featured Keith Flynn.

July 1, 2007 featured Allan Wolf.

September 2, 2007 featured Thomas Rain Crowe, and includes recordings of Crowe with his band, The Boatrockers.

September 9, 2007 featured poet Joanna Cooper.

September 16, 2007 featured a reading by Glenis Redmond at the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center.

September 23, 2007 brought Steve Godwin into the studio, and Steve, Sebastian and I talked over poems we enjoyed, from recent work by Van Jordan (Sebastian) to an HD piece from 1921 (me). Music included tracks from Neil Young and Steve Kimock.

September 30, 2007 highlighted the work of poet Audrey Hope Rinehart.

October 14, 2007 featured Gary Hawkins.

October 21, 2007 found then-Marshall poet Rose McLarney in the studio for her annual near-birthday reading of new work. (Update, October 21, 2009: and she'll soon be back)

October 28, 2007 featured archival recordings of Walt Whitman, Alfred Tennyson, and other old masters.

November 4, 2008 featured Buffalo poet Jessica Smith (production note).

November 11, 2007 featured recordings of William Matthews.

November 18, 2007 featured Robert Morgan (production note).

December 2, 2007 featured Laura Hope-Gill.

December 9, 2007 featured Nan Watkins presenting her translations of Yvan Goll (production note).

December 16, 2007 featured Mara Simmons.

December 23, 2007 featured Laura Hope-Gill reading "A Child's Christmas in Wales".

2008:

January 13, 2008 featured Ed Dorn (production note).

January 20, 2008 featured Katherine Min.

January 27, 2008 featured Gary Hawkins and Landon Godfrey.

February 3, 2008 featured Sebastian Matthews and Dick Barnes.

February 17, 2008, featured my April, 2006 reading for the publication of Natures.

February 24, 2008 featured the very literate singer-songwriter Angela Faye Martin.

March 2, 2008 featured Thomas Rain Crowe reading from Radiogenesis, and young poet Blaise Ellery.

March 9, 2008 featured Chattanooga poet Chad Prevost (production note).

March 23, 2008 featured Jonathan Williams reading at Sylva's City Lights Books in May of 2005 (production note).

April 7, 2008 featured Galway Kinnell reading at Breadloaf in 2002.

April 13, 2008 featured Laura Hope-Gill reading new work and pitching on the pledge drive show.

May 25, 2008 featured Ross Gay in an interview with Joanna Cooper, and reading at Asheville's Malaprops Books (production note).

June 1, 2008 featured Coleman Barks performing at the Fine Arts Theater in April, 2008 (production note).

June 8, 2008 featured Wayne Caldwell, author of Cataloochee.

June 15, 2008 featured archival recordings of Robert Creeley, including some recorded at Black Mountain College.

June 29, 2008 featured Nan Watkins presenting her translations of Yvan Goll - the extended edition (production note).

July 6, 2008 featured Landon Godfrey (production note).

July 13, 2008 featured Chall Gray.

July 20, 2008 featured Jeffery Beam (production note).

August 3, 2008 featured Ken Rumble (production note).

August 10, 2008 Columbia, S.C., novelist Jenna McMahan visited Wordplay to discuss and read from her fun, insightful coming-of-age novel Calling Home . The show featured tunes by Van Halen and even Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Free Bird" - probably the only time that song has been played at WPVM. What can I say? Are there any coming-of-age stories set after 1960 in which sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll don't play a major part? They certainly do in this one.

August 17, 2008 Long-time co-host Sebastian Matthews returned to host a show that featured recent work and recent reading.

August 24, 2008, featured Laura Hope-Gill (production note).

August 31, 2008, featured Glenis Redmond (production note).

September 7, 2008, featured Thomas Meyer (production note).

September 14, 2008 Asheville poet Pat Riviere-Seel dropped by to share recent work and read from her upcoming book, The Serial Killer's Daughter. A Little-Known Fact: Pat was on the original enormous Wordplay production team.

September 28, 2008 Sebastian Matthews again hosted.

October 5, 2008 Wordplay regular Rose McLarney returned to share recent work and discuss her adventures in and out of creative writing programs.

October 12, 2008 Lee Ann Brown returned to Wordplay to give us a look at her recent work. Another Little-Known Fact: Lee Ann was the "guest" on the demo of Wordplay submitted to WPVM's Programming Committee way back when (production note).

November 2, 2008 Lee Ann returned with British Columbia poet Peter Culley, who was completing a residency at Marshall's French Broad Institute of Time and the River.

November 9, 2008 This show featured a reading Peter Culley gave in Marshall a few days before, and some archival recordings of the modernist great, Ezra Pound (production note).

November 16, 2008 Sebastian Matthews, Landon Godfrey, Laura Hope-Gill, Glenis Redmond and I celebrated the women of Black Mountain College, including poet Denise Levertov.

November 23, 2008 Bob and Arlene Winkler dropped by to discuss their RiverSculpture project, and to introduce the Asheville reading by poet Mark Strand that they'd sponsored (production note).

December 14, 2008 North Carolina Poet Laureate Kay Byer, featured in a reading from early 2008 at the Asheville Art Museum (production note).

December 21, 2008 The extraordinary Robert Bly reading -... er, performing would be more accurate - at the Diana Wortham Theater with the Asheville world-music trio Free Planet Radio, and discussing his translations of Hafez, his trip to Iran with Coleman Barks, and other wonders. (production note).

December 28, 2008 Laura Hope-Gill, Sebastian Matthews, and Glenis Redmond dropped in for a lively show featuring their own work, the upcoming WordFest, and Sebastian's new plan for his magazine Rivendell (production note).

2009:

January 11, 2009 Tim Peeler surprised me by bringing the one-of-a-kind mythogeographer Ted Pope along, and we had a hoot talking about ancient Egypt, Antarctica, and baseball (production note).

February 15, 2009 featured Jargonaut Thomas Meyer reading his elegy for Jonathan Williams, part of which has now been published as Kintsugi (production note).

March 1, 2009 Asheville novelist Wayne Caldwell returned to share parts of Cataloochee and his unpublished new novel, Requiem By Fire, which is scheduled to appear in early 2010.

March 8, 2009 Hendersonville storyteller Karen Eve Bayne graced the show with her stories and stories about her stories, and made a pitch, too, for the Do Tell Festival of poetry and stories coming up on July 11th in Hendersonville.

March 22, 2009 featured Hickory poet Scott Owens.

March 29, 2009 New Hampshire poet Mimi White, down south to fly-fish in the Davidson River, dropped by the studio to share her work, and to talk about poets, dogs, and other complex life forms.

April 5, 2009 Landon Godfrey, Gary Hawkins, Steve and I all weighed into a discussion of "nature" and what that term might mean for poetry, and read some "nature" poems by poets from Wordsworth to Frank O'Hara.

April 19, 2009, our Easter show, featured a reading by the late Sage of Scaly Mountain, Jonathan Williams, from 1981 (production note).

April 26, 2009 Performance poet Patricia Smith visited the studio last spring to talk about her work with Glenis Redmond, Sebastian Matthews, and me, just a few hours before her reading at Wordfest 2008 (production note).

May 17, 2009 The last show for Wordplay at its old home featured great Canadian/New American poet Robin Blaser reading in 1965 and 2004, and discussing his work in a BBC interview from 1994 (production note).

September 27, 2009 brought the very literate (she cringes a bit when so described, but only a very literate chanteuse could title a song "Mary Shelly's Hair") singer-songwriter Angela Faye Martin to the studio to debut her new CD, Pictures From Home, produced by Sparklehorse's Mark Linkous, who died this past March. We listened to some of the CD, and Angela also sang live in the studio.

This was one of the very first shows at Wordplay's new home, AshevilleFM.

October 18, 2009 A few weeks later poet/microfictionalsit/playwright John Crutchfield visited the studio, and brought his banjo to boot. His Songs of Robert had just been selected as "Outstanding Solo Show" at the New York Fringe Festival, and he was in high spirits.

He's got a new production, Solstice, scheduled to open at the new Magnetic Field performance space in Asheville's River Arts District in November, 2010.

(Here's his previous Wordplay appearance from February, 2007. )

November 15, 2009 brought Tryon poet Cathy Smith Bowers, long-time Poet-in-Residence at Queens University in Charlotte, into the studio to celebrate her birthday. We listened to George Jones, Nina Simone, and Leonard Cohen, and she read from her most recent volume, The Candle I Hold Up to See You.

(A few months later, of course, she became North Carolina's Poet Laureate, and now co-hosts Wordplay once a month).

2010:

January 10, 2010 featured Lucy Tobin, who explores a middle ground between lyric and narrative in her very interesting work. Music by Allison Kraus, the Mountain Goats, and Heretic Pride.

January 3, 2010 celebrated the publication of Thomas Rain Crowe's Blue Rose of Venice. The archiving system dropped part of the show, but what survived is worth a listen. Caleb Beissert sat in, and shared his translations of Neruda. An earlier note on the show is below, here.

January 17, 2010 brought Graham Hackett, director of Catalyst Poetix, into the studios for an interview and extraordinary performance. Really, if he was reading from anything, it must have been glued to the back of his eyelids. Graham has since gone on to become the Program Director of the Asheville Area Arts Council.

February 21, 2010 Cathy Smith Bowers launched the Laureate's Radio Hour series by talking about the impact the laureateship had already had on her life, and discussing her intentions and hopes for the duration of her tenure - including featuring poets once a month on Wordplay. Musical cuts by Nina Simone and her daughter, Lisa Simone.

March 21, 2010, Cathy Smith Bowers, co-hosting once again for the Laureate's Radio Hour, welcomed her former student Stephanie Biziewski to the show, and workshopped a poem Stephanie had underway.

April 18, 2010 Cathy welcomed the very versatile Michael Beadle to the show, and he read texts that ranged in voice from the personal/lyrical, through the historical, to the performative.

May 29, 2010 This time around the laureate turned the tables on the host, and wrangled me into reading some of my own work, both poems from Natures and so far unpublished pieces I plan to include in a second book. Music from Pierre Bensusan, the Grateful Dead, the Allman Brothers, and the Steve Kimock Band.

July 18, 2010 For this Laureate's Radio Hour, Cathy hosted poet Katherine Soniat, author of Alluvial, A Shared Life, Notes of Departure, and other titles, including the upcoming The Swing Girl, due in 2011 from LSU Press.

July 25, 2010 This past summer brought poet Landon Godfrey to the microphone to share some of her work, including some of the poems which will be gathered in her first book, Second-Skin Rhinestone-Spangled Nude Soufflé Chiffon Gown, due early next year. It was selected by David St. John for the Cider Press book award.

Listeners may remember that Landon's been on Wordplay several times before, back on July 6, 2008, and, with Gary Hawkins, her husband and fellow poet, on January 27, 2008, and April 5, 2009. Here's the original program note for the July '08 appearance (remember the link to the program in that note has long since expired). And she can come back any time!

August 22, 2010 Sebastian Matthews joined Cathy and me to share some of the work of his father, the poet William Matthews, and to treat us to some of his own new poems. Musical breaks by Charlie Mingus, Bill Evans, and McCoy Tyner. Another Laureate's Radio Hour.

September 19, 2010 brought a couple of Wordplay veterans, Thomas Rain Crowe and Nan Watkins, back to AshevilleFM as guests of Poet Laureate Cathy Smith Bowers, for another of her Laureate's Radio Hours. Cathy particularly wanted to celebrate their translation of Yvan and Claire Goll's 10,000 Dawns on this outing, and Crowe and Watkins were happy to oblige. Music included tracks by Paris' Swing-Era guitar masters Oscar Aleman and Django Rinehardt, and composers Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy

Crowe, an old friend, has been a frequent character here at Natures. Program Notes for two of his appearances on Wordplay can be found here (noting his show this January) and here (celebrating his Rare Birds).

Notes on Watkins' previous appearances, both featuring her work translating the poetry of Yvan Goll, can be found here and here.

September 26, 2010 This summer brought novelist Sujatha Hampton to the mountains for readings at Marshall's French Broad Institute and Asheville's Malaprops Bookstore (right now the site generates a Google malware warning, so I'd wait to visit it) from her As It Was Written. The day after her Malaprops reading, Sujatha visited AshevilleFM for an interview that featured not only discussion of the book, but how she came to write it, and much more.

And, as always, more to come ...