Drunk as a Poet on Payday

Jason Gray
  • 4.9 (7)
  • BOOKS
  • UPDATED BIWEEKLY

Good news is sometimes hard to come by for poets, and what’s better news than a new book! Celebrate with us as Jason Gray hosts an interview podcast with poets discussing their new books. Each episode is a smart, fun look into the world of poetry, where the guests read several poems for their new work, and talk about how their books came to be, and how they write the way they do.

  1. 4D AGO

    Patricia Smith

    Today's show features Patricia Smith, whose The Intentions of Thunder: New and Selected Poems, won the National Book Award for Poetry last fall. It’s a tremendous book, gathering a generous selection of her previous nine volumes along with the new pieces. Patricia Smith's previous books include Unshuttered; Incendiary Art, winner of the 2018 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize; Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah, winner of the Lenore Marshall Prize from the Academy of American Poets; and Blood Dazzler, a National Book Award finalist. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, The Paris Review, among many others, and in Best American Poetry and Best American Essays. She co-edited The Golden Shovel Anthology—New Poems Honoring Gwendolyn Brooks and edited the crime fiction anthology Staten Island Noir. Smith is a recipient of the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize for Lifetime Achievement from the Poetry Foundation, an inductee of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and Academy of American Poets Chancellor and a member of the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame. She is also a Guggenheim fellow, and a four-time individual champion of the National Poetry Slam, the most successful poet in the competition’s history. A note of caution: Patricia Smith’s second reading contains language that may be difficult for some. Please use discretion. Pick up a copy of The Intentions of Thunder here. Read more about Smith here. Subscribe to the show's Substack newsletter!https://drunkasapoetonpayday.substack.com/ Say hi to us online:Website: http://drunkasapoet.comInstagram: @drunkasapoetonpaydayBlueSky: https://drunkasapoet.bsky.social

    1h 7m

  2. FEB 26

    Matthew Francis

    The show's first overseas guest! I'm delighted to present my conversation with poet Matthew Francis, who joins me from his home in Wales to talk about his new book, The Green Month, a rendering of the Welsh poet Dafydd ap Gwilym, one of the most important figures in Welsh poetry. Matthew Francis, besides his work with Welsh poets, is the author of the poetry collections Blizzard, Dragons, Muscovy, Mandeville, among others, and works of fiction, including, The Book of the Needle and Nocturne with Gaslamps, and he edited W. S. Graham’s New Collected Poems. Pick up a copy of The Green Month here. Read more about Francis here. Subscribe to the show's Substack newsletter!https://drunkasapoetonpayday.substack.com/ Say hi to us online:Website: http://drunkasapoet.comInstagram: @drunkasapoetonpaydayBlueSky: https://drunkasapoet.bsky.social

    34 min

  3. FEB 9

    Elizabeth Bradfield

    Today our guest is Elizabeth Bradfield, author of the new book of poems, SOFAR. Bradfield is also the author of the books Toward Antarctica; Once Removed; Approaching Ice, which was a finalist from the James Laughlin award from the Academy of American Poets; and Interpretive Work, which won the Audre Lorde Prize in Lesbian Poetry. She has edited the anthologies Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, Poetry, with CMarie Fuhrman and Derek Sheffield, and Broadsided Press: Fifteen Years of Poetic/Artistic Collaboration, 2005 - 2020, co-created with Alexandra Teague and Miller Oberman. Liz works as a naturalist and field assistant at home on Cape Cod, directs the poetry concentration in Western Colorado’s low-residency MFA program, and is editor-in-chief of Broadsided. Pick up a copy of SOFAR here. Read more about Bradfield here. Subscribe to the show's Substack newsletter!https://drunkasapoetonpayday.substack.com/ Say hi to us online:Website: http://drunkasapoet.comInstagram: @drunkasapoetonpaydayBlueSky: https://drunkasapoet.bsky.social

    38 min

  4. JAN 28

    Eric Pankey

    Today on the show is poet Eric Pankey, whose recent collection, Vanishments, is out from Slant Books. Eric is the author of many books of poems, including For the New Year, which was selected as the winner of the Walt Whitman Award by Mark Strand, The Pear as One Example: New and Selected Poems, and his most recent book prior to Vanishments, The History of the Siege, to name a few. His poetry, essays, and reviews have appeared widely in such journals as The Iowa Review, The Harvard Review, The Kenyon Review, The New Yorker, and The Yale Review. His work has been supported by fellowships from Guggenheim Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, and the Brown Foundation. He is Heritage Chair in Writing and Professor Emeritus at George Mason University, and lives with his wife, the poet Jennifer Atkinson, in Fairfax, Virginia. Pick up a copy of Vanishments here. Read more about Pankey here. Subscribe to the show's Substack newsletter!https://drunkasapoetonpayday.substack.com/ Say hi to us online:Website: http://drunkasapoet.comInstagram: @drunkasapoetonpaydayBlueSky: https://drunkasapoet.bsky.socialTikTok: @jgraypoet

    38 min

  5. 11/07/2025

    Stanley Plumly / David Baker

    Today on the show we have the poet David Baker—but he joins us to talk about another poet, the late Stanley Plumly, his good friend, and whose new Collected Poems he has coedited with Michael Collier. Stanley Plumly published twelve collections of poetry along with four books of prose, including Posthumous Keats: A Personal Biography and Elegy Landscapes: Constable and Turner and the Intimate Sublime. His 2009 collection, Old Heart, won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Paterson Poetry Prize, and was a finalist for the National Book Award. He taught for many years in the MFA program at the University of Maryland, and he served as Maryland’s poet laureate as well. David Baker is the author of thirteen books of poetry (and new one is on the way!), as well as several books and anthologies of poetry criticism.  Pick up a copy of Collected Poems here. Read more about Plumly here. Subscribe to the show's Substack newsletter!https://drunkasapoetonpayday.substack.com/ Say hi to us online:Website: http://drunkasapoet.comInstagram: @drunkasapoetonpaydayBlueSky: https://drunkasapoet.bsky.socialTikTok: @jgraypoet

    55 min

  6. 10/14/2025

    Natalie Shapero

    Today on the show it's Natalie Shapero, and her new book, Stay Dead, her fourth full-length collection. Stay Dead was nominated for the longlist of the National Book Award in Poetry, I think even before it actually came out! And overseas, its British-published counterpart is a finalist for the equally impressive TS Eliot Prize. These are punchy poems, full of irony and humor and a sharp critical eye. We have a great talk about her poetry, the labor of working in space, washing the red item with the whites, and putting together a notes section for a book. Natalie Shapero’s previous books include Popular Longing and Hard Child, also from Copper Canyon, and No Object, her debut, from Saturnalia books, which received the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award. Hard Child made the 2018 shortlist for the Griffin Poetry Prize. Her work has earned her a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a Ruth Lilly Fellowship and has appeared in The New Yorker, The London Review of Books, The New York Review of Books, The Paris Review, The Nation, and elsewhere. She lives in Los Angeles and teaches writing at UC Irvine. Pick up a copy of Stay Dead here. Read more about Shapero here. Subscribe to the show's Substack newsletter!https://drunkasapoetonpayday.substack.com/ Say hi to us online:Website: http://drunkasapoet.comInstagram: @drunkasapoetonpaydayBlueSky: https://drunkasapoet.bsky.socialTikTok: @jgraypoet

    44 min

  7. 07/29/2025

    Ross White

    It’s episode 20! And a special one in many ways. It’s my first live in-person podcast recording, and it’s with my great friend Ross White! White is the author of Charm Offensive and the chapbooks Valley of Want, How We Came Upon the Colony, and The Polite Society, and is teaching faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. White also runs Bull City Press, which focuses on chapbooks of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. His poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, New England Review, Ploughshares, Tin House, and The Southern Review, among others. He also hosts a weekly trivia show and podcast, Trivia Escape Pod, which I have been lucky enough to help with for a couple years now. Pick up a copy of Charm Offensive here. And while you’re at it, grab a chapbook or three from Bull City Press. Get ready for the Sealey Challenge! Read more about White here. The show now has swag! Check out the store here: https://drunk-as-a-poet-on-payday-shop.fourthwall.com/ Subscribe to the show's Substack newsletter!https://drunkasapoetonpayday.substack.com/ Say hi to us online:Website: http://drunkasapoet.comInstagram: @drunkasapoetonpaydayBlueSky: https://drunkasapoet.bsky.socialTikTok: @jgraypoet

    1h 4m

  8. 06/11/2025

    Matt Donovan & Jenny George

    Something special today everyone! Double poet day! My guests are Matt Donovan and Jenny George, coauthors of the new chapbook, We Are Not Where We Are, published this week by Bull City Press. The book is an erasure of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden. It’s fascinating to hear the two of them, long-time friends, talk about how they worked together on the project and what they were looking to do with the work. Matt Donovan is the author of the poetry collections The Dug-Up Gun Museum and Vellum, among others, and the collection of lyric essays, A Cloud of Unusual Size and Shape: Meditations on Ruin and Redemption. He is the recipient of a Whiting Award, a Rome Prize in Literature, a Creative Capital Grant, and an NEA Fellowship in Literature. Donovan lives in Massachusetts and serves as the Director of The Boutelle-Day Poetry Center at Smith College. Jenny George is the author of After Image and The Dream of Reason and the chapbook * (asterisk). She is also a winner of the Discovery/Boston Review Poetry Prize and a recipient of fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Lannan Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, and Yaddo. Her poems have appeared in The New York Times, Ploughshares, Narrative, Granta, The Iowa Review, FIELD, and elsewhere. Jenny lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she works in social justice philanthropy. Pick up a copy of We Are Not Where We Are here. And while you’re at it, grab Donovan’s The Dug-Up Gun Museum and George’s After Image. Read more about Donovan here and George here. Subscribe to the show's Substack newsletter!https://drunkasapoetonpayday.substack.com/ Say hi to us online:Website: http://drunkasapoet.comInstagram: @drunkasapoetonpaydayBlueSky: https://drunkasapoet.bsky.socialTikTok: @jgraypoet

    45 min
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About

Good news is sometimes hard to come by for poets, and what’s better news than a new book! Celebrate with us as Jason Gray hosts an interview podcast with poets discussing their new books. Each episode is a smart, fun look into the world of poetry, where the guests read several poems for their new work, and talk about how their books came to be, and how they write the way they do.

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