Celebrating National Poetry Month 2023

 

In celebration of NATIONAL POETRY MONTH, 2023, we have curated a group of video interviews from the ArtSpeak archives with prominent poets, who are connected to the Miami and South Florida areas.

Beginning March, 2020, the videos below were recorded via Zoom. Click on any video link (below the images). You must be connected to the Internet to view the videos.

 

 

For the Birds:  Art and Haikus by Necee Regis

 

NECEE REGIS has always explored creative realms, starting with the visual arts before segueing into journalism and literature.  During her pandemic isolation in Mazatlan, Mexio, Regis made watercolors and wrote haikus about the many brilliant birds that surrounded their home.

 

 

 

John Okrent: Poet & Family Doctor

 

JOHN OKRENT  is a poet and a family doctor. Okrent’s first book of poems, “This Costly Season,” about the covid pandemic in 2020, was recently published by Arrowsmith. One of the poems was first published on the front page of the “Seattle Times,” above the fold.

 

 

 

The Multi-Talented Jen Karetnick

 

JEN KARETNICK is the author/co-author of 20 books, including five full-length poetry collections. She is co-founder/co-curator of the not-for-profit organization, SWWIM (Supporting Women Writers in Miami), and co-editor of the daily online literary journal, SWWIM Every Day. Jen worked as a dining critic and food editor for Miami New Times, New Times Broward-Palm Beach, South Florida Magazine, Las Olas Magazine, Lincoln Road Magazine, and MIAMI Magazine from 1992-2020.

 

 

 

A Conversation with U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera

 

U.S. Poet Laureate JUAN FELIPE HERRERA was born in Fowler, California, in 1948. The son of migrant farmers, Herrera moved often, living in trailers or tents along the roads of the San Joaquin Valley in Southern California.  In 2015, Herrera was named Poet Laureate of the United States, for which he launched the project La Casa de Colores, which invites citizens to contribute to an epic poem

 

 

 

Poet Marie Howe: Always Worth Waiting For

 

MARIE HOWE is the author of four volumes of poetry: Magdalene: Poems (W.W. Norton, 2017); The Kingdom of Ordinary Time (W.W. Norton, 2009); What the Living Do (1997); and The Good Thief (1988). She is also the co-editor of a book of essays, In the Company of My Solitude: American Writing from the AIDS Pandemic (1994). Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Poetry, Agni, Ploughshares, Harvard Review, and The Partisan Review, among others. In August, 2012 she was named the State Poet for New York.

 

 

 

A Discussion with Billy Collins, 2x U.S. Poet Laureate

 

Dubbed “the most popular poet in America” by Bruce Weber in the New York Times, BILLY COLLINS is famous for conversational, witty poems that welcome readers with humor but often slip into quirky, tender or profound observation on the everyday, reading and writing, and poetry itself.

 

 

 

Denise Duhamel:  Poet, Educator

 

Poet DENISE DUHAMEL earned her MFA at Sarah Lawrence College. Her most recent books of poetry are Second Story; Scald; and Blowout, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her other titles include Ka-Ching!; Two and Two; Queen for a Day: Selected and New Poems; The Star-Spangled Banner; and Kinky. She and Maureen Seaton have co-authored four poetry collections, the most recent of which is CAPRICE (Collaborations: Collected, Uncollected, and New). She is a recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.

 

 

 

 

A Video Conversation with Poet Campbell McGrath

 

CAMPBELL MCGRATH grew up in Washington, D.C. where he attended Sidwell Friends School. He received his B.A. from the University of Chicago in 1984 and his MFA from Columbia University’s creative writing program in 1988. He currently lives in Miami Beach, Florida, and teaches creative writing at Florida International University.

McGrath has been recognized by some of the most prestigious American poetry awards, including the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award (for “Spring Comes to Chicago”, his third book of poems), a Pushcart Prize, the Academy of American Poets Prize, a Ploughshares Cohen Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Witter Bynner Fellowship from the Library of Congress, and a MacArthur Foundation “Genius Award.” In 2011 he was named a Fellow of United States Artists. In 2017 McGrath was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry.

 

 

 

 

Carolyn Forché: Poet, Author, Educator

 

CAROLYN FORCHÉ is a celebrated American poet, editor, professor, memoirist, essayist, translator, and a human rights advocate. She has produced poetry since her early 20s and has won several awards for her work.

 

 

 

 

From the Desert to the Sea: A Video Conversation with Mark Doty – Poet, Essayist, Memoirist

 

MARK DOTY is a poet, essayist, and memoirist. He received the National Book Award for Poetry in 2008. He is the author of nine books of poetry and four books of prose.  In 2015, W.W. Norton published Deep Lane, “which the publisher calls a book of descents: into the earth beneath the garden, into the dark substrata of a life.”  His volumes of poetry include Sweet Machine (HarperCollins, 1998), Source, (HarperCollins, 2002), School of the Arts (HarperCollins, 2005) and Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems (HarperCollins, 2008), which received the National Book Award.

 

 

 

 

Savannah Cristina: Vocalist, Songwriter, Poet

 

SAVANNAH CRISTINA is a singer, songwriter, and spoken word poet from South Florida. Cristina released her first single titled “Trust,” in August of 2016, and her first #MOODtape, “Faded” in January, 2017.

 

 

 

 

Poet P. Scott Cunningham and the O, Miami Poetry Festival

 

SCOTT CUNNINGHAM is a poet, translator, essayist, and community organizer originally from Boca Raton, FL. He is the author of Ya Te Veo (University of Arkansas Press, 2018), selected by Billy Collins for the Miller Williams Poetry Series. His work has appeared in The Awl, Harvard Review, POETRY, A Public Space, The Rumpus, Tupelo Quarterly, Monocle, RHINO, The Guardian, PANK, Electric Literature, and others. His translations of Alejandra Pizarnik, César Vallejo, and Frank Báez have appeared in Omniglots, H.O.W. Journal, Waxwing, and The Miami Rail. And he is the founder and director of O, Miami, a non-profit organization that celebrates Miami, FL through the lens of poetry.

 

 

 

 

M.J. Fièvre: Author, Poet, Editor

 

M.J. FIÈVRE was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. She moved to Miami, Florida in 2002. Her first mystery novel, Le Feu de la Vengeance, was self-published at the age of sixteen. At just nineteen years-old, she signed her first book contract with Hachette-Deschamps, in Haiti, for the publication of a Young Adult book titled La Statuette Malefique. As of today, Fièvre has authored nine books in French that are widely read in Europe and the French Antilles.

 

 

 

 

Video Chat: Richard Blanco – Poet, Author, Civil Engineer

 

Selected by President Barack Obama as the fifth inaugural poet in U.S. history, RICHARD BLANO joined the ranks of such luminary poets as Robert Frost and Maya Angelou. The youngest, first Latino, immigrant, and gay person to serve in such a role, he read his inaugural poem, One Today, at the official ceremony.

 

 

 

 

Caroline Cabrera:  Distance Valentine // Transition Spool

 

CAROLINE CABRERA is author of the poetry collection “Saint X,” winner of the Hudson prize and forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press in January 2018. Her previous collections include “The Bicycle Year,” “Flood Bloom,” and the chapbook “Dear Sensitive Beard.” She teaches with Innovations for Learning, a nonprofit focused on improving primary literacy, as well as teaching creative writing workshops with the O, Miami Poetry Foundation. She lives in Fort Lauderdale