Lannan Podcasts

W.S. Merwin with Michael Silverblatt, 18 April 2012 – Audio

Recorded at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico on 18 April, 2012.

W. S. Merwin, poet, translator, and environmental activist, has become one of the most widely read poets in America, with a career spanning five decades. The son of a Presbyterian minister, for whom he began writing hymns at the age of five, Merwin went to Europe as a young man and developed a love of languages that led to work as a literary translator. He currently holds the position of U.S. Poet Laureate.

Merwin’s first book of poems, A Mask for Janus, was selected by W.H. Auden for the Yale Series of Younger Poets in 1952. Numerous poetry collections have followed as well as books of essays. He is a notable translator of poetry and drama, primarily from the French and Spanish, and also the classics, with nearly twenty titles published including a much-praised translation of Dante’s Purgatorio, and more recently, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

Over the years, his poetic voice has moved from the more formal and medieval to a more distinctly American voice. W. S. Merwin’s recent poetry is perhaps his most personal, arising from his deeply held anti-imperialist, pacifist, and environmentalist beliefs. In a career spanning five decades, he has published numerous books that explore the relationship between language and landscape, including The Folding Cliffs, The River Sound, and Flower & Hand. His most recent collections are Migration: Selected Poems 1951-2001 which won the National Book Award and The Shadow of Sirius which garnered him his second Pulitzer Prize.

Edward Hirsch has written, “Merwin is our strongest poet of silence and doubt, vacancy and absence, deprival and dispossession. He is a master of erasures and negations, a visionary of discomfort and reproof, the Samuel Beckett of postwar American poetry.”

His distinctly American voice has been acknowledged with many honors including two Pulitzer Prizes, the Tanning Prize, The Bollinger Prize, a Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award, the Ruth Lilly Prize for Poetry, and the PEN Translation Prize.

He lives in Haiku, Hawaii where, over 30 years, he has created a forest of over 800 species of palm that has been turned into a nature conservancy.

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Length: 1:27:10; Size: 41.9 MB

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W.S. Merwin with Michael Silverblatt, Conversation, 18 April 2012 – Video

Recorded at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico on April 18, 2012.

W. S. Merwin, poet, translator, and environmental activist, has become one of the most widely read poets in America, with a career spanning five decades. The son of a Presbyterian minister, for whom he began writing hymns at the age of five, Merwin went to Europe as a young man and developed a love of languages that led to work as a literary translator. He currently holds the position of U.S. Poet Laureate.

Merwin’s first book of poems, A Mask for Janus, was selected by W.H. Auden for the Yale Series of Younger Poets in 1952. Numerous poetry collections have followed as well as books of essays. He is a notable translator of poetry and drama, primarily from the French and Spanish, and also the classics, with nearly twenty titles published including a much-praised translation of Dante’s Purgatorio, and more recently, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

Over the years, his poetic voice has moved from the more formal and medieval to a more distinctly American voice. W. S. Merwin’s recent poetry is perhaps his most personal, arising from his deeply held anti-imperialist, pacifist, and environmentalist beliefs. In a career spanning five decades, he has published numerous books that explore the relationship between language and landscape, including The Folding Cliffs, The River Sound, and Flower & Hand. His most recent collections are Migration: Selected Poems 1951-2001 which won the National Book Award and The Shadow of Sirius which garnered him his second Pulitzer Prize.

Edward Hirsch has written, “Merwin is our strongest poet of silence and doubt, vacancy and absence, deprival and dispossession. He is a master of erasures and negations, a visionary of discomfort and reproof, the Samuel Beckett of postwar American poetry.”

His distinctly American voice has been acknowledged with many honors including two Pulitzer Prizes, the Tanning Prize, The Bollinger Prize, a Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award, the Ruth Lilly Prize for Poetry, and the PEN Translation Prize.

He lives in Haiku, Hawaii where, over 30 years, he has created a forest of over 800 species of palm that has been turned into a nature conservancy.

In this episode he is joined in conversation with Michael Silverblatt. The companion Reading episode may be found here.

You may learn more about this event on the Lannan website; you may also listen to audio recordings of this event there.

Right click here to download.
Length: 32:09; Size: 388 MB

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W.S. Merwin with Michael Silverblatt, Reading, 18 April 2012 – Video

Recorded at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico on April 18, 2012.

W. S. Merwin, poet, translator, and environmental activist, has become one of the most widely read poets in America, with a career spanning five decades. The son of a Presbyterian minister, for whom he began writing hymns at the age of five, Merwin went to Europe as a young man and developed a love of languages that led to work as a literary translator. He currently holds the position of U.S. Poet Laureate.

Merwin’s first book of poems, A Mask for Janus, was selected by W.H. Auden for the Yale Series of Younger Poets in 1952. Numerous poetry collections have followed as well as books of essays. He is a notable translator of poetry and drama, primarily from the French and Spanish, and also the classics, with nearly twenty titles published including a much-praised translation of Dante’s Purgatorio, and more recently, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

Over the years, his poetic voice has moved from the more formal and medieval to a more distinctly American voice. W. S. Merwin’s recent poetry is perhaps his most personal, arising from his deeply held anti-imperialist, pacifist, and environmentalist beliefs. In a career spanning five decades, he has published numerous books that explore the relationship between language and landscape, including The Folding Cliffs, The River Sound, and Flower & Hand. His most recent collections are Migration: Selected Poems 1951-2001 which won the National Book Award and The Shadow of Sirius which garnered him his second Pulitzer Prize.

Edward Hirsch has written, “Merwin is our strongest poet of silence and doubt, vacancy and absence, deprival and dispossession. He is a master of erasures and negations, a visionary of discomfort and reproof, the Samuel Beckett of postwar American poetry.”

His distinctly American voice has been acknowledged with many honors including two Pulitzer Prizes, the Tanning Prize, The Bollinger Prize, a Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award, the Ruth Lilly Prize for Poetry, and the PEN Translation Prize.

He lives in Haiku, Hawaii where, over 30 years, he has created a forest of over 800 species of palm that has been turned into a nature conservancy.

In this episode he is introduced by Michael Silverblatt and then reads from his work. The companion Conversation episode may be found here.

You may learn more about this event on the Lannan website; you may also listen to audio recordings of this event there.

Right click here to download.
Length: 55:23; Size: 670 MB

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Michael Ondaatje with Carolyn Forché, 15 February 2012 – Audio

Recorded at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico on February 15, 2012.

Michael Ondaatje, poet, novelist, and noted editor and filmmaker, was born in Sri Lanka in 1943, spent his teenage years in England, and moved to Canada in 1962 where he graduated from the University of Toronto and then Queen’s University, Ontario. He taught English Literature at York University, Toronto, from 1971 to 1990. While mostly known and admired as a novelist, due in part to the worldwide success of The English Patient that was awarded the Booker Prize in 1992 and was later made into the Academy Award-winning film, Ondaatje first won critical acclaim as a poet. Numerous collections include The Collected Works of Billy the Kid: Left-Handed Poems (1970), There’s a Trick With a Knife I’m Learning To Do: Poems, 1963-1978 (1979), both of which won the Canadian Governor General’s award; The Cinnamon Peeler: Selected Poems (1989); and Handwriting (1998).

Ondaatje has written six novels including Coming Through the Slaughter (1976) which won the Canada First Novel Award, Anil’s Ghost (2000) and Divisadero (2007) both of which received the Governor General’s Award, and his recently released The Cat’s Table (2011). Recognition of his work has been universal and includes the Giller Prize, (Canada), the Prix Medicis, (France), the Kiriyama Prize, (U.S.), The Irish Times International Fiction Prize, (Ireland), and the Booker Prize, (England).

With his wife, Linda Spalding, and others, Ondaatje founded and continues to co-edit Brick, A Literary Journal, and he has been poetry editor of Toronto’s independent small press, Coach House Books, for over forty years.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

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Right click here to download.
Length: 1:31:14; Size: 44 MB

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Michael Ondaatje with Carolyn Forché, Conversation, 15 February 2012 – Video

Recorded at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico on February 15, 2012.

Michael Ondaatje, poet, novelist, and noted editor and filmmaker, was born in Sri Lanka in 1943, spent his teenage years in England, and moved to Canada in 1962 where he graduated from the University of Toronto and then Queen’s University, Ontario. He taught English Literature at York University, Toronto, from 1971 to 1990. While mostly known and admired as a novelist, due in part to the worldwide success of The English Patient that was awarded the Booker Prize in 1992 and was later made into the Academy Award-winning film, Ondaatje first won critical acclaim as a poet. Numerous collections include The Collected Works of Billy the Kid: Left-Handed Poems (1970), There’s a Trick With a Knife I’m Learning To Do: Poems, 1963-1978 (1979), both of which won the Canadian Governor General’s award; The Cinnamon Peeler: Selected Poems (1989); and Handwriting (1998).

Ondaatje has written six novels including Coming Through the Slaughter (1976) which won the Canada First Novel Award, Anil’s Ghost (2000) and Divisadero (2007) both of which received the Governor General’s Award, and his recently released The Cat’s Table (2011). Recognition of his work has been universal and includes the Giller Prize, (Canada), the Prix Medicis, (France), the Kiriyama Prize, (U.S.), The Irish Times International Fiction Prize, (Ireland), and the Booker Prize, (England).

With his wife, Linda Spalding, and others, Ondaatje founded and continues to co-edit Brick, A Literary Journal, and he has been poetry editor of Toronto’s independent small press, Coach House Books, for over forty years.

In this episode he is joined in conversation with Carolyn Forché. The companion Reading episode may be found here.

You may learn more about this event on the Lannan website; you may also listen to audio recordings of this event there.

Right click here to download.
Length: 43:10; Size: 529 MB

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Michael Ondaatje with Carolyn Forché, Reading, 15 February 2012 – Video

Recorded at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico on February 15, 2012.

Michael Ondaatje, poet, novelist, and noted editor and filmmaker, was born in Sri Lanka in 1943, spent his teenage years in England, and moved to Canada in 1962 where he graduated from the University of Toronto and then Queen’s University, Ontario. He taught English Literature at York University, Toronto, from 1971 to 1990. While mostly known and admired as a novelist, due in part to the worldwide success of The English Patient that was awarded the Booker Prize in 1992 and was later made into the Academy Award-winning film, Ondaatje first won critical acclaim as a poet. Numerous collections include The Collected Works of Billy the Kid: Left-Handed Poems (1970), There’s a Trick With a Knife I’m Learning To Do: Poems, 1963-1978 (1979), both of which won the Canadian Governor General’s award; The Cinnamon Peeler: Selected Poems (1989); and Handwriting (1998).

Ondaatje has written six novels including Coming Through the Slaughter (1976) which won the Canada First Novel Award, Anil’s Ghost (2000) and Divisadero (2007) both of which received the Governor General’s Award, and his recently released The Cat’s Table (2011). Recognition of his work has been universal and includes the Giller Prize, (Canada), the Prix Medicis, (France), the Kiriyama Prize, (U.S.), The Irish Times International Fiction Prize, (Ireland), and the Booker Prize, (England).

With his wife, Linda Spalding, and others, Ondaatje founded and continues to co-edit Brick, A Literary Journal, and he has been poetry editor of Toronto’s independent small press, Coach House Books, for over forty years.

In this episode he is introduced by Carolyn Forché and then reads from his work. The companion Conversation episode may be found here.

You may learn more about this event on the Lannan website; you may also listen to audio recordings of this event there.

Right click here to download.
Length: 47:50; Size: 575 MB

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Kay Ryan with Atsuro Riley, Conversation, 13 April 2011 – Video

Recorded at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico on April 13, 2011.

Kay Ryan was appointed the Library of Congress's 16th Poet Laureate in 2008. She has published several collections of poetry, including The Niagara River, Say Uncle, and Flamingo Watching. A re-issue of her 2002 collection, Believe It or Not!, poems inspired by stories from the newspaper cartoon Ripley's Believe It or Not!, has recently been re-released and re-titled as The Jam Jar Lifeboat & Other Novelties Exposed.

In this episode she is joined in conversation with Atsuro Riley. The companion Reading episode may be found here.

You may learn more about this event on the Lannan website; you may also listen to audio recordings of this event there.

Right click here to download.
Length: 36:29; Size: 445 MB

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Kay Ryan, Reading, 13 April 2011 – Video

Recorded at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico on April 13, 2011.

Kay Ryan was appointed the Library of Congress's 16th Poet Laureate in 2008. She has published several collections of poetry, including The Niagara River, Say Uncle, and Flamingo Watching. A re-issue of her 2002 collection, Believe It or Not!, poems inspired by stories from the newspaper cartoon Ripley's Believe It or Not!, has recently been re-released and re-titled as The Jam Jar Lifeboat & Other Novelties Exposed.

In this episode she is introduced by Atsuro Riley and then reads from her work. The companion Conversation episode may be found here.

You may learn more about this event on the Lannan website; you may also listen to audio recordings of this event there.

Right click here to download.
Length: 52:33; Size: 638 MB

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Kay Ryan with Atsuro Riley, 13 April 2011 – Audio

Recorded at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico on April 13, 2011.

Kay Ryan was appointed the Library of Congress's 16th Poet Laureate in 2008. She has published several collections of poetry, including The Niagara River, Say Uncle, and Flamingo Watching. A re-issue of her 2002 collection, Believe It or Not!, poems inspired by stories from the newspaper cartoon Ripley's Believe It or Not!, has recently been re-released and re-titled as The Jam Jar Lifeboat & Other Novelties Exposed. Her most recent publication is The Best of It: New and Selected Poems. A longtime resident of Marin County, she was born in California in 1945 and grew up in the small towns of the San Joaquin Valley and the Mojave Desert. About her work, J.D. McClatchy has said: "Her poems are compact, exhilarating, strange affairs, like Erik Satie miniatures or Joseph Cornell boxes. She is an anomaly in today's literary culture: as intense and elliptical as Dickinson, as buoyant and rueful as Frost." Ryan's poems and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Poetry, The Yale Review, The Paris Review, and The Threepenny Review, among other journals and anthologies. She was named to the "It List" by Entertainment Weekly and one of her poems has been permanently installed at New York's Central Park Zoo. Ryan was elected a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets in 2006. In October 2009, Kay Ryan launched her project "Poetry for the Mind's Joy," an initiative through which she hopes to draw national attention to community colleges, as well as drawing the colleges' attention to poetry.

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You may learn more about this event on the Lannan website.

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Length: 1:29:14; Size: 81.8 MB

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Peter Reading, Vendange Tardive, Reading, 2010 – Video

Recorded at the home of Peter Reading in October, 2010.

Peter Reading is one of Britain’s most original and controversial poets: angry, uncompromising, gruesomely ironic, hilarious, and heartbreaking. In Spring 2001, the Lannan Foundation traveled to England and recorded Peter Reading reading his entire body of poetry to that time, i.e. through the collection Faunal. In 2010 the Lannan Foundation commissioned British filmmaker Pamela Robertson-Pearce to record Mr. Reading reading from his subsequent collections at his home in Ludlow, Shropshire, England. The Lannan Foundation is delighted to bring the voice and work of Peter Reading to a world-wide audience.

Vendange Tardive is a late harvest of vintage Reading in disaster mode. Here is a rueful crop of valedictory poems in which man reaps what he sows: shipwreck, ruin, death, war, ignomony and extinction. But somehow, amid all that, there is still the fruit of the vine and the bittersweet spirit of life. - Bloodaxe Books

A vendange tardive is a late-harvest wine, and the title poem records the gift of a bottle on the poet's 62nd birthday. Another poem, "All Is Safely Gathered In", in which he offers thanks for a birthday bottle of champagne, bluntly begins: "Morituri te salutant" (we who are about to die salute you). While this book marks Reading's return to a collection of individual pieces, it still coheres as he weaves multiple threads in which deaths of family members and friends mix with the deleterious effects of oil-dependent economies, compounded by a day-to-day awareness that not only is the self at the age of "late harvest", but in the face of climate change, so is the whole human race. - Carrie Etter, The Guardian.

You may learn more about this event on the Lannan website.

Right click here to download.
Length: 29:21; Size: 337 MB

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