The Poetry Exchange The Poetry Exchange

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In this episode, poet Michael Mark joins us to talk about the poem that has been a friend to him: 'Little Champion' by Tony Hoagland.
Michael Mark is the author of Visiting Her in Queens is More Enlightening than a Month in a Monastery in Tibet, which won the 2022 Rattle Chapbook prize. His poems have appeared in Best American Poetry, Copper Nickel, The New York Times, Pleiades, Ploughshares, Southern Review, The Sun, 32 Poems, and The Poetry Foundation's American Life in Poetry. His two books of stories are Toba and At the Hands of a Thief (Atheneum). michaeljmark.com 
We are hugely grateful to Michael for visiting The Poetry Exchange and talking so openly and eloquently about his connection with 'Little Champion.'
You can find 'Little Champion' in Tony Hogland's collection 'Application for Release from the Dream', published by Graywolf Press (2015). Many thanks to Grawywolf Press for their support.
Michael Mark is in conversation with The Poetry Exchange team members Andrea Witzke Slot and John Prebble.
The 'gift' reading of 'Little Champion' is by John Prebble.
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Little Champion
by Tony Hoagland
When I get hopeless about human life,
which quite frankly is far too difficult for me,
I like to remember that in the desert there is
a little butterfly that lives by drinking urine.
 
And when I have to take the bus to work on Saturday,
or spend an hour opening the mail,
deciding what to keep and what to throw away,
one piece at a time,
 
I think of the butterfly following its animal around
through the morning and the night,
fluttering, weaving sideways through
the cactus and the rocks.
 
And when I have to meet all Tuesday afternoon
with the committee to discuss new bylaws,
or listen to the dinner guest explain his recipe for German beer,
 
or hear the scholar tell, again,
about her campaign to destroy, once and for all,
the cult of heteronormativity,
 
I think of that tough little champion
with orange and black markings on its wings,
resting in the shade beneath a ledge of rock
while its animal sleeps nearby;
 
and I see how the droplets hang and gleam among
the thorns and drab green leaves of desert plants
and how the butterfly alights and drinks from them
deeply, with a stillness of utter concentration.
 
Published in The Sun Magazine, November 2014 and in the collection, 'Application for Release from the Dream' (Graywolf Press, 2015).

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In this episode of The Poetry Exchange, we are thrilled to be joined by the poetry tour-de-force that is Salena Godden, to hear about the poem that has been a friend to her: 'You Don't Know What Love' Is by Kim Addonizio.
Salena spoke with Fiona Bennett and Michael Shaeffer about this elusive, gorgeous poem and the part it has played in her life.
Salena Godden FRSL is an award-winning author, poet and broadcaster of Jamaican-mixed heritage. Her debut novel Mrs Death Misses Death won the Indie Book Award for Fiction and the People’s Book Prize, and was shortlisted for the British Book Awards and the Gordon Burn Prize. Film and TV rights for Mrs Death Misses Death have been optioned by Idris Elba’s production company Green Door Pictures.
A hardback edition of Pessimism is for Lightweights - 30 Pieces of Courage and Resistance was published by Rough Trade Books in February 2023. She is currently working on a memoir and a poetry collection which are both due for publication in May 2024, plus an eagerly anticipated second novel set in the Mrs Death Misses Death universe due for publication in spring 2025.
Salena's essay Shade was published in groundbreaking anthology The Good Immigrant (Unbound 2016). Godden has had several volumes of poetry published including Under The Pier (Nasty Little Press 2011) Fishing in the Aftermath: Poems 1994-2014 (Burning Eye Books 2014), plus also a childhood memoir, Springfield Road (Unbound 2014).
After hearing this episode, you will also want to seek out and read as much as you can of Kim Addonizio's work.
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You Don't Know What Love Is
by Kim Addonizio
You don't know what love is
but you know how to raise it in me
like a dead girl winched up from a river. How to
wash off the sludge, the stench of our past.
How to start clean. This love even sits up
and blinks; amazed, she takes a few shaky steps.
Any day now she'll try to eat solid food. She'll want
to get into a fast car, one low to the ground, and drive
to some cinderblock shithole in the desert
where she can drink and get sick and then
dance in nothing but her underwear. You know
where she's headed, you know she'll wake up
with an ache she can't locate and no money
and a terrible thirst. So to hell
with your warm hands sliding inside my shirt
and your tongue down my throat
like an oxygen tube. Cover me
in black plastic. Let the mourners through.
From 'What Is This Thing Called Love' by Kim Addonizio (2005, W.W. Norton & Co.)

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In this episode, poet, radio host and editor Lois P. Jones talks about the poem that has been a friend to her: 'What Survives' by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by A. Poulin Jr.
Lois P. Jones is a luminous poet, radio host and editor, living in California. She won the 2023 Alpine Fellowship which this year takes place in Fjällnäs, Sweden. She was a finalist in the annual Mslexia Poetry Competition judged by Helen Mort and will be published in Spring 2023. In 2022 her work was a finalist for both the Best Spiritual Literature Award in Poetry from Orison Books and the Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest. Lois' first collection, 'Night Ladder' was published by Glass Lyre Press in 2017 and was a finalist for the Julie Suk Award and the Lascaux Poetry Prize for a poetry collection. Since 2007, has hosted KPFK’s Poets Café, co-produced the Moonday Poetry Series and acted as poetry editor for Pushcart and Utne prize-winning Kyoto Journal.
'What Survives' was published in The Complete French Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by A. Poulin, Jr, by Graywolf Press in 2002.
Lois P. Jones is in conversation with The Poetry Exchange hosts Fiona Bennett and Michael Shaeffer.
The 'gift' reading of 'What Survives' is by Fiona and Michael.
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What Survives
by Rainer Maria Rilke
translated by A. Poulin, Jr.
Who says that all must vanish?
Who knows, perhaps the flight
of the bird you wound remains,
and perhaps flowers survive
our caresses, in their ground.
 
It isn't the gesture that lasts,
but it dresses you again in gold
armor--from breast to knees—
and the battle was so pure
may an Angel wear it after you.
From The Complete French Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by A. Poulin, Jr. (Graywolf Press, 2002).

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In this latest episode, writer Rosie Garland talks to us about the poem that has been a friend to her: 'My Dark Horses' by Jodie Hollander.
Writer and singer with post-punk band The March Violets, Rosie Garland has a passion for language nurtured by public libraries. Her poetry collection ‘What Girls do the Dark’ (Nine Arches Press) was shortlisted for the Polari Prize 2021, & her novel The Night Brother was described by The Times as “a delight...with shades of Angela Carter.” Val McDermid has named her one of the UK’s most compelling LGBT writers. http://www.rosiegarland.com
Jodie Hollander, originally from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was raised in a family of classical musicians. She studied poetry in England, and her poems have appeared in journals such as The Poetry Review, The Yale Review and The Dark Horse. Her debut full-length collection, My Dark Horses, was published with Liverpool University Press (Pavilion Poetry) in 2017. Her second collection, Nocturne, was published with Liverpool & Oxford University Press in the spring of 2023. https://www.jodiehollander.com
Rosie Garland is in conversation with The Poetry Exchange team members Sally Anglesea and John Prebble.
In the introduction, Fiona also mentions Glyn Maxwell's extraordinary new collection, 'The Big Calls', which was published by Live Canon in March 2023.
We hope you enjoy being with all the poems featured in this episode!
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My Dark Horses
by Jodie Hollander
If only I were more like my dark horses,
I wouldn’t have to worry all the time
that I was running too little and resting too much.
I’d spend my hours grazing in the sunlight,
taking long naps in the vast pastures.
And when it was time to move along I’d know;
I’d spend some time with all those that I’d loved,
then disappear into a gathering of trees.
If only I were more like my dark horses,
I wouldn’t be so frightened of the storms;
instead, when the clouds began to gather and fill
I’d make my way calmly to the shed,
and stand close to all the other horses.
Together, we’d let the rain fall round us,
knowing as darkness passes overhead
that above all, this is the time to be still.
From 'My Dark Horses' by Jodie Hollander, Liverpool University Press, 2017.

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In this latest episode of The Poetry Exchange, we revisit our conversation with the extraordinary poet & artist Rachel Eliza Griffiths about the poem that has been a friend to her: 'Remember' by Joy Harjo.
This beautiful and transformative conversation was originally released in 2020 and has been a friend to many of our listeners so far. We felt it was one to bring into the light all over again!
We are hugely grateful to Rachel Eliza Griffiths for sharing her profound story of connection with Joy Harjo's life-filled poem, and to Joy Harjo and her publisher W.W. Norton & Co. for giving us their blessing to share it with you in this way.
Rachel Eliza Griffiths is an American poet, novelist, photographer and visual artist, who is the author of five published collections of poems. In her recent book, Seeing the Body (2020), she "pairs poetry with photography, exploring memory, Black womanhood, the American landscape, and rebirth." (Sarah Herrington, Los Angeles Review of Books). Seeing the Body was the winner of the 2021 Hurston/Wright Foundation Legacy Award in Poetry, the winner of the 2021 Paterson Poetry Prize, and nominated for a 2020 NAACP Image award. Rachel Eliza's debut novel, Promise, was published by Penguin Random House in July 2023.
Joy Harjo is an internationally renowned performer and writer of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. She served three terms as the 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States from 2019-2022 and is the author of ten books of poetry, including the highly acclaimed, Weaving Sundown in a Scarlet Light: Fifty Poems for Fifty Years. Her many honors include the National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, the Academy of American Poets Wallace Stevens Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. You can find out more about Joy Harjo's work at: www.joyharjo.com.
Two poems by John Clare also feature in this episode: 'All Nature has a Feeling' and 'A Spring Morning'.
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Remember
by Joy Harjo
Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the star's stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is.
Remember the sun's birth at dawn, that is the
strongest point of time. Remember sundown
and the giving away to night.
Remember your birth, how your mother struggled
to give you form and breath. You are evidence of
her life, and her mother's, and hers.
Remember your father. He is your life, also.
Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
brown earth, we are earth.
Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their
tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,
listen to them. They are alive poems.
Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the
origin of this universe.
Remember you are all people and all people
are you.
Remember you are this universe and this
universe is you.
Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.
Remember language comes from this.
Remember the dance language is, that life is.
Remember.
'Remember' reproduced from She Had Some Horses: Poems by Joy Harjo (c) 2008 by Joy Harjo. Used with permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.

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In this latest episode of The Poetry Exchange, we revisit our conversation about 'Poem (Lana Turner Has Collapsed)' by Frank O'Hara - A Friend to Harry Jelly.
This gorgeous conversation was originally released in 2016 and has been a friend to many of our listeners so far. We felt it was one to lift up and enjoy all over again!
We are hugely grateful to Harry for sharing his story of connection with Frank O'Hara's wonderful poem, and to the John Rylands Library for hosting this conversation back in 2016.
This is the second of a trio of episodes revisiting previously released conversations - specially chosen and introduced by Fiona and Michael.
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Poem (Lana Turner Has Collapsed)
by Frank O'Hara
Lana Turner has collapsed!
I was trotting along and suddenly
it started raining and snowing
and you said it was hailing
but hailing hits you on the head
hard so it was really snowing and
raining and I was in such a hurry
to meet you but the traffic
was acting exactly like the sky
and suddenly I see a headline
LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED!
there is no snow in Hollywood
there is no rain in California
I have been to lots of parties
and acted perfectly disgraceful
but I never actually collapsed
oh Lana Turner we love you get up
’Poem (Lana Turner Has Collapsed)' by Frank O'Hara from 'Lunch Poems: Pocket Poets Number 19'. (City Lights Publishers 2014).

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