Wordplay: Accidentally for Easter

Charleston poets Richard Garcia and Katherine Williams were in Asheville visiting the guests I'd scheduled this week, Gary Hawkins and Landon Godfrey. What the heck, I said, bring them in too. You'll have to share the two guest mics, but ...

And we all did an impromptu Easter show. Gary provided a couple of poems featuring dogwoods, and Richard had a poem in which Jesus played a significant part, so ...

Landon, sadly, was overcome by the vapors (or maybe it was the near-90 degree heat of the studio)*, so couldn't take part in the festivities; I'll try to get her back soon.

Music was provided for the occasion by the Malagasy artist Rossy ("I''m a Lonesome Fugitive", from A World Out of Time, Volume 2), Janet Robbins ("Nibiru's Crossing", from Carrying the Bag of Hearts Interpreting the Birth of Stars, Volume III)**, and Pierre Bensusan ("Kadourimdou", from Intuite) (Note: there's auto-playing audio at the link, just so you don't get surprised).

The show's playing all this week over on AshevilleFM's Wordplay page, so click over and give it a listen.

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* We haven't done on-air fundraisers at the station, but now would be an ideal time to help out with a donation if you enjoy hearing poetry over the Internet's airwaves - and would like to keep our poets cool so they don't keel over in the studio.

** It's "Nibiru's Crossing" that I'm talking over unintelligibly at about the halfway mark. Note to self: must wear headphones when mixing ...

Wordplay welcomes Peter Culley ... and Ezra Pound!

For this week's fall fundraiser we featured the British Columbia author of The Age of Briggs and Stratton, who read just over a week ago at The French Broad Institute of Time and the River. A project of Lee Ann Brown and Tony Torn, the Institute is definitely putting new life in the nightlife of Marshall, NC.

Peter's done several residencies in the Smokies, now, and they're beginning to find their way into his work.

We sometimes do archival shows on Wordplay, and have featured readings by Whitman, Tennyson, Yeats, and others whose voices recording technologies have happily saved from time during our three years of broadcasting. Today we featured the great Ezra Pound in readings from 1938 to 1967; he was 82 in the latter year, but still had a strong, complex voice. His reading of Canto LXXXI is exquisite, and poetry doesn't get much better than that. "What thou lovest well remains, the rest is dross..."

A huge thanks to PennSound for making its Pound archive available through the 'net.

By the way, you might notice a few pops and distortions during the first minute of Peter's reading. I'd set up that night to record the stage, but everyone decided to perform on the floor instead. What you hear is me moving the mics to get a more balanced recording. Sorry about that.

Music for today's show included tunes from the remarkable Anni Rossi, who performed at the Institute as part of the program which included Peter, and California flutist Suzanne Teng.

Do lend it an ear (.mp3 file)

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Photo by Tony Torn, borrowed from Peter's EPC page, linked above.