The Laureate's Radio Hour: A Catalog

Here's a catalog of the Laureat's Radio Hour Archive, Wordplay shows featuring N.C. Poet Laureate Cathy Smith Bowers and her special guests:

February 21, 2010 Cathy launched the series by talking about the impact the laureateship had already had in 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 welcomed her former student Stephanie Biziewski to the show, and work-shopped 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 devious 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turned the tables on the host, and wrangled me into reading some of my own work, both poems from Natures and so far unpublished pieces I plan to include in a second book.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 by Pierre Bensusan, the Grateful Dead, the Allman Brothers, and the Steve Kimock Band.

July 18, 2010 For this program, Cathy hosted poet Katherine Soniat, author of Alluvial, A Shared Life, Notes of Departure, and other titles, including the upcoming The Swing Girl, due next year from LSU Press.

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, some of Bill's favorite jazz masters.

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.


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

November 21, 2010 had Cathy interviewing Charlotte writer Jim McGavran about his lovely deeply-felt memoir In the Shadow of the Bear.

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.

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 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 Laureate's Hour "aired" on the Internet at 5:00 PM Sundays, via AshevilleFM, as part of the weekly show Wordplay. Wordplay continues to offer fun, informal, and informed discussions of poetry and creative prose with those who are becoming, or have become, masters of its making.

A special thanks to all our guests over the year the show was produced, apologies to 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.

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 ...

"The juggling life" - Another notice for the Laureate

The juggling life - CharlotteObserver.com

Nice story by Michael Chitwood.

Given my involvement with the station, I'm grateful that it gives mention to AshevilleFM, home of the new "Laureate's Radio Hour."

An earlier story in the Observer repeated the error of the Raleigh News & Observer in reporting that the laureate position is an "unpaid two year appointment." Perhaps it was, at one time. Thankfully, though, it's now not. Anyone not independently wealthy who would accept it as an unpaid position would likely be too deranged to fulfill its duties.

Today on Wordplay

... Wayne Caldwell will read from his new novel Requiem by Fire, which carries the saga of the mountain community of Cataloochee and its citizens into the era which witnessed the community's dwindling. It's got lots of good stories, told with a pitch-perfect ear for the language of the time and place, and a scrupulous attention to the details of daily life.

Hope you'll join us at 6:00 at AshevilleFM.org ... and, as always, thanks for listening!

Cathy Smith Bowers joins Wordplay!

Would be one way of putting it. And she will, in fact, be joining me in the studios of AshevilleFM once a month, beginning February 21st, to host a "Poet Laureate's Radio Hour" - though that may or may not be what we call it. Tune in and find out, dear reader.

That she'll be doing a radio show was one thing that the Raleigh News & Observer actually got right in its article announcing her appointment as laureate; but, of course, they had interviewed her, and had it from the horse's mouth. Not so right: the laureateship isn't actually a volunteer job that honored poets accept from the goodness of their hearts. The job's way more demanding than that, and it's actually a paid position.

And Cathy has four, not three, books out, all published by Iris Press: The Love That Ended Yesterday in Texas, Traveling in Time of Danger, A Book of Minutes, and The Candle I Hold Up to See You - though the Iris bio page itself mentions just the first three. That's probably where the News & Observer reporter got her information, so I suppose we'll have to forgive her. All Cathy's books, needless to say, are well worth delving into.

It'll be a pleasure to welcome Cathy into the studio again, this time as host.

Cool Radio

Not one but two programs airing tonight, one on AshevilleFM, the other on WCQS, will repay your attention, dear Reader - especially if you're interested in photography and/or music as those two arts are practiced in the great small city of Asheville, NC, USA, third planet from the Sun.

At 6:00PM, photographers Rob Amberg and Tim Barnwell sit down for an interview with David Hurand, long-time host of WCQS' "Conversations". Both these fine lens masters actually focus (if you will) their work beyond the city, in the rural countryside and within the small communities that have persisted there, despite all the pressures otherwise, for many decades, in some cases since the mountains were first settled. Both have new books coming out. It should be a fascinating conversation.

At 8:00, AshevilleFM's Jonathan Price welcomes the world-class musicians of Free Planet Radio to his program "Tenor to Tabla". I had the pleasure of recording the session with Free Planet, so I know that he'll be featuring the rehearsal of two songs and his own insightful interview. Who knows, though, what else Jonathan will throw into the mix? He promises "plenty of non-Western nuggets from my own collection", so it's bound to be worth a listen.

Not sure how long the Amberg/Barnwell show will be archived, and AshevilleFM's archive is not yet up (though I'll try to make sure this one gets uploaded somewhere as soon as possible), so you might just need to tune in, either on the FM dial (WCQS still has a terrestrial signal, at 88.1, but also provides an internet stream), or on your trusty computer (that's the high-bandwidth stream; if you need low-bandwidth, click here).

Enjoy!

(Tap) (tap) Is this thing on? Wordplay returns

Wordplay begins its fifth season this Sunday with a program featuring Black Mountain poet Charles Olson and Charles Boer, Olson's student and friend, and also his executor.

This summer, while I was in Storrs, Connecticut, delving into the Olson archives, I had the pleasure of spending an evening talking with Boer - "The Professor", as some of his neighbors know him - about Olson, and about his own work as a translator and poet. Boer was a student of Olson's in Buffalo for the whole of Olson's tenure there, and went on to become a friend and supporter until Olson's death in 1970; it was Boer who helped make the arrangements for Olson to teach at the University of Connecticut in the fall of 1969, in what proved to be his last academic appointment.

After Olson's death, he served as executor of Olson's estate -- helping rescue, in the process, some of the material which has now found its way into the Olson archives.

Aside for his connection to Olson, Boer is a poet and scholar of real accomplishment; his translations of the Homeric Hymns and the Metamorphoses of Ovid rank with the most vital and useful of our era, and his own work is distinct and lively.

Listen this Sunday as Boer reflects on his friendship with Olson, and shares memories as well of Frank O'Hara, Louis Zukofsky, and others who helped define American poetry in the second half of the twentieth century.

And, thanks to the marvels of the recording technology of that era, we'll hear from Olson himself.

As you probably know, Wordplay's now at www.ashevillefm.org (there should be a "stream" button on the site by tomorrow), and airs at 6:00 PM. Though the station is internet-only for now (and may remain that way, given that new digital radio receivers can play internet radio streams), it's much more internet-capable than ... that other station, where Wordplay used to be produced. Though I didn't know it at the time, the other station's site supported streaming for a maximum of thirty listeners. Thirty. The new station's site can support many times that number, so you don't have to get there early.

Hope you'll tune in!

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Microphone photo by wickman2k, from Photobucket.

Asheville FM: 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4 ....

Yes, it's that close. Tomorrow Asheville's new community internet radio station blasts off. So far, all systems are go. Come visit us Saturday from 12:00 noon to 7:00 pm (and then party on at the Gray Eagle).

Get your tickets now ...

Going live ...

Asheville's about to have a new internet radio option: AshevilleFM. It's another of those things that I (and lots of other folks) have been working on for the past several months. We've now got space for studios, are looking for equipment, and will be holding the first public meeting at Izzy's in West Asheville tomorrow evening at 6:00 PM. It's at 373 Haywood Street in West Asheville, so come on out if you'd like to learn what we're up to, or help to found a new real community radio station. There's lots of work still to do.

We're shooting to be on the air ... er, internet, that is, by the middle of August.

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Photo of Izzy's, our humble home-to-be, by Greg Lyon.