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Chopsy Gutowski talks with Roxi Power about her powerful poems freshly submitted for her MFA thesis. As friends who have been writing together in Santa Cruz for years, Chopsy and Roxi laugh and dig in, plumbing the lyrical depths of Gutowski’s eco-poetry, elegies, and political poetry. Mining the difficult moves in Jorie Graham’s book,To 2040, Gutowski invites us to inhabit the present moment, however painful, to find healing and joy. She believes poems have a life of their own with a potential to honor and change the course of our lives as they conjure what is possible for our future.

Chopsy Gutowski is a poet, improv artist, and early childhood specialist who is completing her MFA in Creative Writing at Pacific University. She lives in Santa Cruz in the midst of redwoods and seasonal visits from Swainson’s thrushes. In the past month, she has read for the Poetry and Music in the Parks series in Santa Cruz County and the annual Santa Cruz “In Celebration of the Muse” reading. Her muse instructs her: “excavate what’s hidden beneath the everyday, peer into things until they give up their ghosts, then go further.”

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The Body! In all its pain and glory! Listen to this discussion with editors Pichchenda Bao, Nicole Callihan, and Jennifer Franklin as they read and talk about poems from their anthology Braving the Body. Delving into the body’s experiences, from sex to motherhood to cancer and beyond, Braving the Body culls the best poetry featuring, as Whitman wrote, “head, neck, hair, ears… mouth, tongue, lips . . . bowels sweet and clean . . . brain in its folds inside the skull frame . . . heart valves.”

Braving the Body can be purchased at ⁠Small Habor Publishing⁠ or on ⁠Amazon⁠.

Editors ⁠Pichchenda Bao⁠, ⁠Nicole Callahan⁠, and ⁠Jennifer Franklin⁠ provide candid insights into creating the anthology and read poems illustrating the breadth of content and craft on this timeless subject.

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On April 10th, 2024, Santa Cruz County’s first ever Youth Poet Laureate honor was given to Dina Lusztig Noyes at the Kuumbwa Jazz Center in Santa Cruz, CA. SC County Youth Poet Laureate finalists include Gregory Souza, Simon Ellefson, Madeline Aliah, and Sylvi Kayser. These poets read their work in conversation with Farnaz Fatemi, Santa Cruz County Poet Laureate.

More info about the program ⁠here⁠.

Follow the program on Instagram @youthpoetlaureatesantacruz

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“Over the past decade or so, nobody has done more for the Pacific Northwest than Paul Nelson.” –Sam Hamill. Paul E. Nelson talks with Roxi Power about his forthcoming book, DaySong Miracle (Past 62) from Carbonation Press. The two poet friends laugh, talk, and even sing some of Nelson’s lyrical lines in his long investigative and spiritual poems.

Ever the teacher and professional interviewer, Paul elegantly unpacks how his poetic ancestors–“antepesados”–from Michael McClure, Joanne Kyger, and Brenda Hillman–among the many poets he has interviewed, have influenced his Projective, Organic, and Poetic Cosmology involving Spiritual Ecology, bioregionalism, and connection to place.

Poet/interviewer Paul E. Nelson is the son of a labor activist father and Cuban immigrant mother. He founded the Cascadia Poetics LAB & the Cascadia Poetry Festival. Books include ⁠Cascadian Prophets (Interviews 1999-2023)⁠ (2024),  ⁠Haibun de la Serna⁠ (2022), A Time Before Slaughter/Pig War: & Other Songs of Cascadia (2020) American Prophets (interviews 1994-2012) (2018) & American Sentences (2015, 2021). Co-Editor of Cascadian Zen Volume I: Bioregional Writings on Cascadia Here and Now (2023, Watershed Press), Make it True meets Medusario (2019) (Spanish & English) and other anthologies. He’s Literary Executor for the late poet Sam Hamill and lives in Rainier Beach, alongside dəxʷwuqʷed Creek.

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Join Dion O’Reilly as she talks with Ed Hirsch about ⁠100 Poems to Break Your Heart. ⁠

⁠Edward Hirsch⁠, a MacArthur Fellow, has published ten books of poems, including The Living Fire, Gabriel: A Poem. and Stranger by Night. He has also published six prose books about poetry, among them, How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry, a national bestseller, 100 Poems to Break Your Heart, and The Heart of American Poetry. He is president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

Don’t miss this enlivening and inspiring episode of the Hive Poetry Collective on KSQD. Join host Julie Murphy as she chats with spoken word poets Tara Bracco and Suzen Baraka. They read work newly published in the debut anthology, Poetic People Power and talk about their motto– Art + Action= Change. This anthology draws from twenty years of live performances of Poetic People Power, poetry for social good. Their work explores social and political topics as well as their personal journeys.

Tara Bracco is founder and producing artistic director of Poetic People Power. She’s created, produced, and performed in 20 spoken word shows about the social and political issues of our time. She is a recognized leader in the field of art and social change and has been featured in O, The Oprah Magazine, Time Out New York, Brooklyn Rail, and HuffPost for her visionary leadership of Poetic People Power. She has spoken about art and activism at colleges, festivals, and theaters, and she is the recipient of 20 competitive grant awards. She is also the recipient of the 2015 Images and Voices of Hope Award. Her work as a journalist has been published by Cosmopolitan, American Theatre, Condé Nast Traveler, BUST, and Clamor. In 2009, she cofounded the international nonprofit The Project Solution, which serves 30,000 people in 14 countries. You can find Tara on Instagram and Facebook.   

Suzen Baraka is a two-time Emmy Award-winning poet and SAG-AFTRA actor. With a passion for performance ignited over 17 years ago, Suzen has graced stages nationwide, captivating audiences with her magnetic presence and powerful spoken word. A true advocate for the transformative power of the arts, Suzen served as an artist in residence at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, using poetry and performance to inspire and uplift underprivileged youth in Irvington and Newark. Her commitment to social justice extends beyond the stage, as evidenced by her role as the writer and face of Theraflu’s Right to Recover Campaign, championing women’s access to paid sick leave. Her work has been recognized with two regional Emmy Awards for her PSAs, titled: VOTE 2020 and My Asian.  As an American actress, poet, and proud woman of Black and Korean descent, Suzen Baraka seeks to build bridges, spark conversations, challenge norms, and pave the way for a future where art and activism converge in powerful harmony.   You can contact Suzen on her website, Instagram, and Two Stop by David Johann Kim by the Ensemble Studio Theater at Atwater Village.

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Lee Herrick⁠⁠ in conversation with ⁠Farnaz Fatemi.⁠ Lee Herrick⁠  is the California Poet Laureate. He is the author of three books of poems: Scar and Flower, finalist for the 2020 Northern California Book Award; Gardening Secrets of the Dead; and This Many Miles from Desire. His poems appear widely, in The Poetry Foundation, Academy of American Poets, The Place That Inhabits Us: Poems from the San Francisco Bay Watershed, Indivisible: Poems of Social Justice with a foreword by Common, HERE: Poems for the Planet, with a foreword by the Dalai Lama, and Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy, among others. Herrick serves on the advisory board of ⁠Terrain.org⁠ and Sixteen Rivers Press. He co-founded ⁠LitHop⁠ in Fresno. Born in Daejeon, Korea and adopted as an infant, Herrick lives with his family in Fresno, California. He served as Fresno Poet Laureate from 2015-2017 and teaches at Fresno City College and in the low-residency MFA program at University of Nevada Reno at Lake Tahoe. He is the 10th California Poet Laureate, and the first Asian American to serve in the role.   

As mentioned in this episode, Lee Herrick’s signature project as California Poet Laureate is ⁠”Our California,” with more information here.