Sema Sema

Mairead Case talks with CL Young about relationality in life and after death, embodiment, moving through sadness, and grieving and writing about suicide.

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Mairead Case writes and teaches in Denver. She is the author of Tiny and See You In the Morning (featherproof), TENDERNESS (Meekling), and To The Teeth, a column at Entropy. Mairead publishes and edits widely, with work most recently in POETRY, JSTOR Daily, and The Los Angeles Review of Books, and at Public Media Institute, Public Collectors, and Maggot Brain, where she is the Associate Editor. She teaches at Naropa University, the Colorado School of Mines, and inside the Denver Women's Jail. Mairead holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a PhD from the University of Denver. She has been a Legal Observer with the NLG for over a decade. | https://maireadcase.com/

Tiny by Mairead Case: http://www.featherproof.com/catalog/tiny-mairead-case

Close to the Knives: A Memoir of Disintegration by David Wojnarowicz: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/193049/close-to-the-knives-by-david-wojnarowicz/

Gaylord Phoenix by Edie Fake: https://www.printedmatter.org/catalog/47744/

Sema’s music is from a song by Teal Gardner called “Joy Heraldic.” You can find more of her music here: https://spirit88.bandcamp.com/album/free-in-the-open-field

Camille T. Dungy talks with CL Young about loss as an ambient presence, climate crisis, having children, cross-generational relationships, and the importance of storytelling.

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Camille T. Dungy’s debut collection of personal essays is Guidebook to Relative Strangers (W. W. Norton, 2017), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She is also the author of four collections of poetry, most recently Trophic Cascade (Wesleyan UP, 2017), winner of the Colorado Book Award. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2019. https://camilledungy.com/

Plastic: An Autobiography by Allison Cobb: https://nightboat.org/book/plastic-an-autobiography/

Iep Jaltok: Poems From A Marshallese Daughter by Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner: http://www.kathyjetnilkijiner.com/book/iep-jaltok-poems-from-a-marshallese-daughter/

Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler: https://www.octaviabutler.com/parableseries

“Let Me” in the New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/04/12/let-me

Sema’s music is from a song by Teal Gardner called “Joy Heraldic.” You can find more of her music here: https://spirit88.bandcamp.com/album/free-in-the-open-field

To join the mailing list, request an episode transcript, or share your insights, please send an email to: sema.readingseries@gmail.com.

Erinrose Mager talks with CL Young about the unknowingness associated with adoption and parental estrangement, the interplay between potentiality and failure, and ritual as a presencing practice.

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Erinrose Mager is a writer, editor, and teacher living in Brooklyn, NY. She was born in and adopted from Korea. Her work appears in jubilat, Fence, DIAGRAM, Prelude, and elsewhere, and she’s a doctoral candidate in Literary Arts at the University of Denver. She is at work on a full-length collection.

Erinrose Mager and Mary-Kim Arnold in Pulpmouth: https://www.pulpmouth.net/issue3-erinrose-mager-and-mary-kim-

Sema’s music is from a song by Teal Gardner called “Joy Heraldic.” You can find more of her music here: https://spirit88.bandcamp.com/album/free-in-the-open-field

To join the mailing list, request an episode transcript, or share your insights, please send an email to: sema.readingseries@gmail.com.

Cedar Brant talks with CL Young about newborn loss, place, and the erasure of self that accompanies deep grief and parenthood.

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Cedar Brant grew up in northern Montana and worked for many years as a field botanist. She is the author of the book of poems ‘Like Any Other Dream Will Do.’ She currently lives in Moab, Utah where she is training as a birth story listener focusing on birth trauma with the Birth Story Medicine School, homesteading in a trailer on a creek, and spending time in the canyons with her husband, her child, and her dog. 


Sema’s music is from a song by Teal Gardner called “Joy Heraldic.” You can find more of her music here: https://spirit88.bandcamp.com/album/free-in-the-open-field 

To join the mailing list, request an episode transcript, or share your insights, please send an email to: sema.readingseries@gmail.com.

Bridge episode with somatic practice.

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To join the mailing list, request an episode transcript, or share your insights, please send an email to: sema.readingseries@gmail.com.

Tyler Brewington talks with CL Young about Boise, time, grief rhythms, and friendship.

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Tyler Brewington is the author of the chapbook Dear Stray Volcano (alice blue, 2015) and, with Kelly Schirmann, the collections Nature Machine and Boyfriend Mountain (Poor Claudia, 2015). His poems have appeared in PEN America’s PEN Poetry Series, Salt Hill, Powder Keg, Sixth Finch, COAST|noCOAST, and elsewhere. He received an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts and he is from Boise, Idaho.

Sema’s music is from a song by Teal Gardner called “Joy Heraldic.” You can find more of her music here: https://spirit88.bandcamp.com/album/free-in-the-open-field

To join the mailing list, request an episode transcript, or share your insights, please send an email to: sema.readingseries@gmail.com.