Trance•Cast

With the Editors of En•Trance Journal

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Our tagline is a phrase from Paul Éluard: "There's another world, and it's this one." Our interest and focus is on poetry, the lyric moment, and altered states.

Oct 18

S4: E3 Dion O'Reilly talks to Cole Swensen about Crows and more

A native of San Francisco, Cole Swensen is the author of twenty collections of poetry, most recently Veer (Alice James Books, 2026), and And And And (Shearsman Books, 2023), which was long-listed for the Griffin Prize. She has also published a volume of hybrid poetic essays on innovative landscape artists, Art in Time (Nightboat Books, 2021) and a volume of critical essays, Noise That Stays Noise (University of Michigan, 2011). She has collaborated with visual artists on a variety of artists’ books, including with Karen Randall on The Leyden Jar, (Propolis Press, 2017) and with the painter Thomas Nozkowski on Flare (Yale University Art Gallery, 2009). She co-edited the Norton anthology American Hybrid (2009) and currently serves as the translation editor for Fence magazine and curates “Publishing in Transit,” a monthly program on the Brooklyn Rail that spotlights presses and organizations that enable contemporary poetry. Much of Swensen’s work is engaged with land, from urban park design to landscape painting to a kind of activist attention to the non-human world. Her books have been awarded the National Poetry Series, the Iowa Poetry Prize, Sun & Moon’s New American Writing Award, and the San Francisco State Poetry Center Book Award and has twice been a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award and once for National Book Award. A former Guggenheim Fellow, she is also a translator of contemporary French poetry, prose, and art criticism. Her translations have won the 2004 PEN USA Award in Literary Translation, the 2024 ALTA National Translation Award, and the 2025 Stephen Mitchell Award. Recipient of the 2025 Paul Engle Prize from the Iowa City UNESCO City of Literature, she was the founding editor of La Presse, which ran from 2006 to 2020, publishing contemporary French poetry translated by English-language poets. She taught for ten years on the faculty of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and for twelve years in Brown University’s Literary Arts Department. She divides her time between Paris and California.
Oct 18

S4: E2 Ryler Dustin reads his poem, "Poem With a Deadline, or, There Are Some Crocuses at the Edge of the Driveway"

Ryler Dustin is the author of Trailer Park Psalms, winner of the University of Pittsburgh’s 2022-2023 Starrett Prize, and Heavy Lead Birdsong (Write Bloody, 2008), forthcoming in an expanded edition this fall. He represented Seattle on the final stage of the Individual World Poetry Slam, and his poems appear in places like in Verse Daily, The Slowdown, Gulf Coast, and elsewhere. After earning an MFA from University of Houston, a PhD from University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and living in a cabin in the Oregon wilderness, he returned to his hometown of Bellingham, Washington, where he’s a founding organizer for the Salish Sea Poetry Festival.
Sep 30

S4:E1 Ellen Bass Reads and Talks about "While My Daughter Is in Surgery I Think About a Night in a Hotel in Florence"

Ellen reads and disusses "While My Daughter Is in Surgery I Think About a Night in a Hotel in Florence," which first appeared in the New Yorker. Ellen Bass’s poetry collections include, Indigo, Like a Beggar, The Human Line, and Mules of Love. Her poems appear frequently in The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, and many other journals. Among her awards are Fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the NEA, and the California Arts Council, the Lambda Literary Award, and five Pushcart Prizes. She co-edited the first major anthology of women’s poetry, No More Masks!, and her nonfiction books include the groundbreaking The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse and Free Your Mind: The Book for Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Youth. A Chancellor Emerita of the Academy of American Poets, Bass founded poetry workshops at Salinas Valley State Prison and the Santa Cruz, California jails, and teaches in the MFA writing program at Pacific University.
Apr 3

S3: E4 Roxi Power Chats with Josh Brahinksy about Speaking in Tongues and Poetry

En•Trance Journal's contributing editor, Roxi Power, chats with Josh Brahinksy about the relationship between speaking in tongues and poetry. Josh Brahinsky is a psychological anthropologist at McGill's Department of Transcultural Psychiatry and Stanford's Religious Studies department studying contemplative practices like prayer, meditation, psychedelics and breathwork using ethnography, brain imaging and detailed accounts of experience. His work examines how these practices cultivate surrender—emotionally, mentally, and physically— and how they change people's behavior. Josh teaches at UC Santa Cruz. His research can be found in podcasts as well as academic journals and in his book Tongues of Fire: How Charismatic Prayer Changes Evangelical Brains and Inspires Spirit-Filled Activism, the book we discuss in this podcast.
Apr 3

S3 E3: Danusha Laméris Reads and Discusses her Poem "U-Pick Orchards"

Danusha Laméris is a poet and essayist raised in Northern California. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Kenyon Review, and Ploughshares, among others. She is a Pushcart Prize recipient, a winner of the 2021 Northern California Book Award in Poetry, and a 2020 Lucille Clifton Legacy Award honoree. Her collections include The Moons of August (2014), chosen by Naomi Shihab Nye as winner of the Autumn House Press Poetry Prize; Bonfire Opera (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020); and Blade by Blade (Copper Canyon Press, 2024). She teaches in Pacific University's low-residency MFA program.and leads the on line Litfield Writing Community.
Apr 3

S3: E2 Jane Hirshfield Reads and Discusses Her Poem: "And if you like numbers, I will tell you that here on Earth--"

Jane reads her poem "And if you like numbers, I will tell you that here on earth." The poem is a wonderful window into the presence that poetry can bring, even as it recounts and counts the many terrors of the world. They discuss the many portals of poetry and its service to us in difficult times. Neither Jane nor Dion could remember the words to Yeats's poem, "Easter, 1916," but here's the poem for your reading pleasure: Award-winning poet, essayist, and translator Jane Hirshfield is the author of ten collections of poetry, including The Asking: New and Selected Poems (2023); Ledger (2020); The Beauty (2015), longlisted for the National Book Award; Come, Thief (2011), a finalist for the PEN USA Poetry Award; and Given Sugar, Given Salt (2001), a finalist for the National Book Critics Award. Hirshfield is also the author of two collections of essays, Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry (1997) and Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World (2015), and has edited and co-translated four books collecting the work of world poets from the past: The Ink Dark Moon: Poems by Ono no Komachi and Izumi Shikibu, Women of the Ancient Court of Japan (1990); Women in Praise of the Sacred: Forty-Three Centuries of Spiritual Poetry by Women (1994); Mirabai: Ecstatic Poems (2004); and The Heart of Haiku (2011).
Apr 3

S3 E1 Cornelius Eady talks to Paul Nelson about his poem "Proof"

Editor-at-large Paul Nelson and poet Cornelius Eady discuss "Proof," an occasional poem written for the inauguration of mayor Zohran Mamdani in New York City. Read the poem here. Poet and cofounder of Cave Canem Cornelius Eady’s published collections include Victims of the Latest Dance Craze (Omnation Press, 1986), winner of the Lamont Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets; The Gathering of My Name (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 1991), nominated for a Pulitzer Prize; Brutal Imagination (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2001), a National Book Award finalist; and Hardheaded Weather: New and Selected Poems (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2008). He is a recipient of the 2023 Pegasus Award for Service in Poetry. In 1996, Eady and poet Toi Derricote founded Cave Canem, a nonprofit organization that supports emerging African American poets through summer retreats, regional workshops, first-book prizes, annual anthologies, and events and readings across the country.
11/14/2025

S2: E2 Pauls' Corner: Paul Nelson Chats with Sharon Thesen

Sharon Thesen grew up in small towns across Western Canada, and for many years she taught English and Creative Writing at Capilano College in North Vancouver and was an active member of the poetry scene in the Lower Mainland. Since 2003 she has lived in the Central Okanagan and is Emeritus Professor of Creative Writing at UBC’s Okanagan campus. She is the editor of two editions of The New Long Poem Anthology, and was an editor of The Capilano Review and co-editor of Lake: A Journal of Arts and Environment. She has also co-edited, with Ralph Maud, two editions of the correspondence between Charles Olson and Frances Boldereff. Her recent poetry books include A Pair of Scissors, The Good Bacteria, and Oyama Pink Shale, from House of Anansi in Toronto, and The Receiver, from New Star in Vancouver.
11/14/2025

S2 E1: From Kansas to Oz in Kim Addonizio's poem

We hear Kim read from her newest poetry collection, Exit Opera. She reads Kansas 4:00 am, which originally appeared in The New Yorker. In this version, a sound accompaniment is provided by Kim's partner, the musician Danny Caron. We then discuss the mythic, musical, and trancelike elements of the poem and the way, in the final analysis, poetry originates from a kind of wordless listening. Kim Addonizio's is the author of nine poetry collections, two novels, two story collections, and two books on writing poetry, The Poet’s Companion (with Dorianne Laux) and Ordinary Genius. She has received fellowships from the NEA and Guggenheim Foundation, Pushcart Prizes in both poetry and the essay, and her work has been widely translated and anthologized. Tell Me was a National Book Award Finalist in poetry. Her new poetry collection, Exit Opera, is out from W.W. Norton. She lives in Oakland, CA
05/23/2025

S1 E3: Jan Beatty Reads and Discusses "Mission" and "Chalk Outline"

Jan Beatty and Dion read and discuss two poems that appear in the first issue of En•Trance Journal--"Mission" and "Chalk Outline." The conversation touches on the numinous moments in the poems as well as some practical elements of craft. Jan's rich and adventurous life feeds energy into these poems, bringing the whole range of human emotion and experience. Jan Beatty’s⁠ eighth book, ⁠Dragstripping⁠, was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, September, 2024. Her memoir, American Bastard, won the Red Hen Nonfiction Award. Recent books include The Body Wars and a chapbook, Skydog (Lefty Blondie Press, 2022). Other work includes Jackknife: New and Selected Poems (University of Pittsburgh, 2018 Paterson Prize) named by Sandra Cisneros on LitHub as her favorite book of 2019. Beatty worked as a waitress, abortion counselor, and in maximum security prisons. She is Professor Emerita at Carlow University, where she directed creative writing, the Madwomen in the Attic workshops, and the MFA program.
05/23/2025

S1 E2 Paul Corner: Paul Nelson Chats with Andrew Schelling

This is a snippet of a longer conversation between Paul Nelson and Andrew Schelling. Andrew reads from his poem, "The Bristlecone"--a poem about a dream in which Michael McClure appears. Paul Nelson is En•trance Journal's poet at large and contributing editor.
05/23/2025

S1 E1: Ellen Bass Talks about Her Prose Poem "You're the Top"

Ellen Bass and Dion O'Reilly discuss Bass's poem, "You're the Top." We discuss the unique characteristics of the prose poem--how humble and quirky it is. We take a look at the narrator's altered state in the poem, where she is destabilized, terrified, disoriented, and ultimately exhilarated in a moment of cosmic consciousness. It's a heady ride! We also discuss how and why Bass enters a trance state as a way to dramatize her life's experience and create her fabulous poems. She offers a few easy tips for ways to enter a creative trance and also reminds us of the joy of doing so.

12 Episodes

Our tagline is a phrase from Paul Éluard: "There's another world, and it's this one." Our interest and focus is on poetry, the lyric moment, and altered states.

Creator

With the Editors of En•Trance Journal
Years Active

2025 - 2026
Episodes

12
Rating

Clean
Copyright

© With the Editors of En•Trance Journal
Show Website

Trance•Cast