SoundPages
SoundPages is produced by Jack Straw Cultural Center as part of the Jack Straw Writers Program. This podcast features interviews and live readings from artists in the Jack Straw Writers Program. Each year a series of twelve episodes is produced featuring the current Jack Straw Writers and curator.-
Paralegal – Anca Szilágyi
Anca Szilágyi‘s novel Paralegal looks at the runup to the 2008 financial crash through the eyes of Binnie Greenson, a diorama artist working a summer job in a corporate law firm and struggling with her identity as an artist. She talks with 2015 Jack Straw Writers Program curator Kevin Craft about Joseph Cornell, the gradually developing executive function of twenty-somethings, and how to let your characters speak for themselves.
Music by St. Helens String Quartet, produced as part of the Jack Straw Artist Support Program.
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Zac – Matthew Schnirman
Matthew Schnirman‘s poems combine humor, nostalgia, intimacy, and sex into a voice that’s by turns sardonic and sincere, ironic and heartfelt. He talks to 2015 Jack Straw Writers Program Curator Kevin Craft about his “Zac Poems,” whose titular character floats through the films of Zac Efron as viewed through Matthew’s poetic lens.
THIS PODCAST CONTAINS ADULT LANGUAGE
Music by St. Helens String Quartet, produced as part of the Jack Straw Artist Support Program.
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Mapping – Laura Da’
Laura Da’s poems explore the European-American takeover of the North American continent by examining the mapping and surveying that was an inextricable part of it. Narrative poems delve into the lives of two characters, while lyrical pieces look at the larger consequences. She talks to 2015 Writers Program Curator Kevin Craft about how she developed this approach. “I needed a lens to see how this was possible, because it was such an act of horrible cruelty and theft. . . . I came to the idea of surveying and measurement as a manageable way to look at how people justified some of the actions in history.”
Music by St. Helens String Quartet, produced as part of the Jack Straw Artist Support Program.
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Histories – Clare Johnson
Clare Johnson‘s writing delves both into the past – resurrecting voices and stories from generations past – and into her own personal experiences. She talks with 2015 Writers Program curator about the influence of travel and homesickness on her work and her process for creating these patchwork pieces, which Craft refers to as “core samples of time.”
Music by St. Helens String Quartet, produced as part of the Jack Straw Artist Support Program.
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Work – Bernard Grant
Bernard Grant‘s stories and essays are carefully constructed, his language terse and spare. Phrases like “I saw my father twice,” and “brand new screen door” instantly pull the reader into the world he’s created. He talks with 2015 Writers Program curator Kevin Craft about his craft and how he shapes his text. “When I write I sense a certain rhythm for each line, for each sentence, each paragraph, every part of it.”
Music by St. Helens String Quartet, produced as part of the Jack Straw Artist Support Program.
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Cargo – Emily Bedard
Emily Bedard’s poems are full of wild, vivid, and unusual imagery: Her disappointing moments in life gather in one room, each visible in its own horrible failure; she gives advice to younger girls about dating, sex, and love; God takes her car for a joyride and enjoys the experience.
2015 Writers Program Curator Kevin Craft asks Emily about her manuscript, Cargo, the title relating to both human trafficking at the Seattle Port and the invisible individual experiences we all carry with us throughout life. Both agree that her poems are full of “the everyday surreal.”
Music by St. Helens String Quartet, produced as part of the Jack Straw Artist Support Program.
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Shift – Martha Kreiner
Martha Kreiner‘s poetry is deeply intertwined with her work as a nurse. She sends herself poetic time surveys throughout her work day to give herself “the opportunity, just randomly, to look around the world and pay attention.” She talks with 2015 Writers Program Curator Kevin Craft about how her nursing influences her poetry and vice versa.
Music by St. Helens String Quartet, produced as part of the Jack Straw Artist Support Program.
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Darling – Ross McMeekin
Ross McMeekin is fascinated by family relationships and constantly explores them in his writing. Writing, he says, allows you to explore different careers and to “slip into the skin of a bunch of different lives that you could never have done in your own real solid skin.” He can’t escape the pull, the magnetism, of family dynamics; these themes continue to shape and direct his stories.
He reads a short story, Darling, part of a collection in the works. We meet Sammy, a young girl who is being introduced to her baby sister, and we experience all her anger and sense of injustice around this change that everyone but Sammy completely ignores.
Music by St. Helens String Quartet, produced as part of the Jack Straw Artist Support Program.
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Divorce – Jeanine Walker
Jeanine Walker, poet and musician, relates how her parents’ divorce when she was 10 has shaped her poetry. She explores family, bonding, separation, and escape in several poems containing her own experiences or imaginings of different lives. Poetry allows her to explore her own experiences and create deeper understanding of the changes in her and her family’s life.
In Divorce, the central poem of her upcoming manuscript, Jeanine captures the moment where her parents told her family of their divorce, how both parents, the children, and their home are affected by the words finally spoken aloud: “The house stood still like a horse. Big eyes ablink. In the unknowing few moments before a shot . . .”
Music by St. Helens String Quartet, produced as part of the Jack Straw Artist Support Program.
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Childhood – Erin Malone
2015 Jack Straw Writers Program Curator Kevin Craft interviews poet Erin Malone about her choice of themes for her recent works about child abduction and death. The poems she reads at the Jack Straw May Reading Series share perspectives from varying experiences: the passage of time, exposure to death, fading memories, and grief.
Music by St. Helens String Quartet, produced as part of the Jack Straw Artist Support Program.
