Christy Davids

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Al Filreis convened Bob Holman, Christy Davids, and Herman Beavers to talk about two poems by the late June Jordan. The two poems are “Financial Planning” and “Song of the Law Abiding Citizen,” and the easiest place to find the texts of these poems is Directed by Desire: The Collected Poems of June Jordan (Copper Canyon Press, 2007), with its foreword by Adrienne Rich. Our recordings of Jordan’s performance of these poems comes from the “Poetry Spots” series which was created by our Bob Holman and aired on WNYC-TV as “non-commercial commercials” from 1987 through 1993. The original air date of the two June Jordan segments was April 26, 1989. For PoemTalk we play audio-only versions (this and this) but we want to urge our listeners to watch copies of the old videos available through YouTube. HERE is June performing “Financial Planning.” And HERE is the spot in which she presents her “Song of the Law Abiding Citizen.”

Al Filreis convened Michelle Taransky, Christy Davids, and Sally Van Doren. Sally traveled to be with us for the day: she gave a an evening reading of mostly her new poems, paired with a reading by Michelle; and she spent more time in our studio in an interview with Al about her new poems. For the PoemTalk episode — we discussed a series of numbered poems by Marjorie Welish, going under the title “Begetting Textile.”

Christy Davids returned to the Wexler Studio at Kelly Writers House earlier this year to chat with Sue Landers, whose 2016 book Franklinstein represents a documentary-poetic engagement with the Germantown neighborhood of Philadelphia. At the beginning of Franklinstein, Landers writes that the project began as a “monster” made out of language from Benjamin Franklin and Gertrude Stein.