Diane Glancy on the book of Job, Amy Hale & Timothy Liu on occultist Ithell Colquhoun & other online conversations

Each week Poets House brings you conversations about poetry, poetics, and inspiring figures in poetic history in a user-friendly online format—featuring poets, scholars, and translators speaking to you from their homes to yours. We livestream these conversations and then offer them later as videos to watch (and rewatch) via our website’s livestream program archive.

Here are just a few recent samples from the archive:

Diane Glancy, the author of numerous books of poetry and prose, discusses her new multi-genre volume,  Island of the Innocent: A Consideration of the Book of Job, in the context of Native American history, the current political crises, and the pandemic. She reads from the work, written in a variety of forms that include poetic prose, villanelles, sonnets, and more.

She says, “my grandmother was a quilt maker. In those days fabric was sparse. We held onto our clothing or she would cut it into pieces and stitch it to other pieces of fabric to make patterns for her quilts. Near death her hand kept stitching. She sewed to the end of the road. It has  occurred to me that I do the same thing. I take different stories and cut pieces from them and sew the pieces together in various patterns.”

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Anthropologist and folklorist Amy Hale joins poet Timothy Liu for a program about the British surrealist poet, painter, and occultist Ithell Colquhoun.

 

 

The author of the forthcoming biography Genius of the Fern Loved Gully, Hale provides rich context for the life and work of Colquhoun. Wielding tarot cards, Liu invokes the spirits and calls upon Colquhoun to lead him (and us viewers) through three of her books. Liu shows off his considerable tarot knowledge in a playful reading and reflection on Colquhoun’s work, with his cat Smoke making occasional appearances.

 

 

We invite you to visit our livestream program archive, where you’ll find more programs we have recorded on video for you to enjoy. And please also check our upcoming programs for the next livestream and online events!