New Books in Poetry

By: New Books Network
Listen for free

  • Summary

  • Interview with Poets about their New Books Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/poetry
    New Books Network
    Show more Show less
Art
Show more Show less
Episodes
  • Poetry

    Poetry
    Feb 20 2025
    In this episode of High Theory, Ryan Ruby talks to us about Poetry. Our standard definition of poetry today is an institutional one, much like contemporary art: if art is what artists and museums and collectors call art, poetry is what poets and professors and publishers say is poetry. Ruby argues that this indefinable thing humans have been doing well nigh forever is better understood as a medium than a form. Poetry is a way of storing and transmitting information, a mechanism of entertainment and authority, and a speech act that attends to changes of state. In the episode, Ryan references Eric Havelock, author of The Muse Learns to Write (Yale UP, 1986), who described the Homeric poems as the encyclopedia of Bronze age Greece. He also cites Marcel Detienne’s book The Masters of Truth in Archaic Greece (trans. Janet Lloyd, Zone Books, 1996) who describes poetry as a form of “magico-religious speech.” Ryan Ruby is a writer, most recently of the book length poem Context Collapse: A Poem Containing the History of Poetry (Seven Stories Press, 2024). It got reviewed in The New York Times. He has also written a novel, titled The Zero and the One (Twelve Books, 2017), and book reviews and essays for all the fancy places: The New Yorker, Harper’s, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, Bookforum, New Left Review, etc. He is currently at work on a nonfiction narrative book about Berlin called Ringbahn for Farrar Straus, and Giroux. The image for this episode is a still from an animation of a supercomputer simulation of a pair of neutron stars colliding, merging and forming a black hole, created at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Image courtesy of the NASA Goddard Photo and Video Flickr account. This image is in the public domain. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/poetry
    Show more Show less
    23 mins
  • Natasha Ramoutar, "Baby Cerberus" (Buckrider Books, 2024)

    Natasha Ramoutar, "Baby Cerberus" (Buckrider Books, 2024)
    Feb 15 2025
    Ethereal, soul-stirring, and playful, Baby Cerberus (Buckrider Books, 2024) by Natasha Ramoutar traces joy and kinship across a multitude of lives. Flitting from myths and folklore to video games to imagined futures, each piece asks us to consider how we care for one another. As we move through sentient galleries, swashbuckling adventures, and the doors of Atlantis, the collection reorients us in each section with the riddles as two lost souls try to find each other through time. These poems tug on the invisible threads between us all, trying to find what tethers us together and, in turn, what keeps us here. While Baby Cerberus centers fun and nostalgia with allusions to video games, internet lore, and Tamagotchis, there are still heavy themes throughout which address misogyny, racism, and colonization. The unique integration of literary topics with some of the more pop culture references will distinguish the book in the minds of readers and expand what we can ask of poetry. More about Natasha Ramoutar: Natasha Ramoutar is a writer of Indo-Guyanese descent from Toronto. Her debut collection of poetry Bittersweet, published in 2020 by Mawenzi House, was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. She was the editor of FEEL WAYS, an anthology of Scarborough literature. She is a senior editor with Augur Magazine and serves on the editorial board at Wolsak & Wynn. About Hollay Ghadery: Hollay Ghadery is an Iranian-Canadian multi-genre writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, was released by Guernica Editions in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir. Her collection of poetry, Rebellion Box was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies, was released with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024. Her debut novel, The Unraveling of Ou, is due out with Palimpsest Press in 2026, and her children’s book, Being with the Birds, with Guernica Editions in 2027. Hollay is the host of the 105.5 FM Bookclub, as well as a co-host on HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is also a book publicist, the Regional Chair of the League of Canadian Poets and a co-chair of the League’s BIPOC committee, as well as the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. Learn more about Hollay at www.hollayghadery.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/poetry
    Show more Show less
    26 mins
  • Maria Zoccola, "Helen of Troy, 1993" (Scribner, 2025)

    Maria Zoccola, "Helen of Troy, 1993" (Scribner, 2025)
    Jan 15 2025
    In the hills of Sparta, Tennessee, during the early nineties, Helen decides to break free from the life that stifles her: marriage, motherhood, the monotonous duties of a Southern housewife. But leaving isn't the same thing as staying gone... Rooted in a lush natural landscape, this stunning poetry collection explores Helen's isolation and rebellion as her expansive personality clashes with the social rigidity of her small town. In richly layered poems with settings that range from football games to Chuck E. Cheese to the bathroom of a Motel 6, Helen enters adulthood as a disaffected homemaker grasping for agency. She marries the wrong man, gives birth to a child she is not ready to parent, and embarks on an affair that throws her life into chaos. But she never surrenders ownership of her story or her choices, insisting to the reader: "if you never owned a bone-sharp biography... / i don't want to hear it. i want you silent. / i want you listening to me." Blurring the line between mythology and modernity, Helen of Troy, 1993 is an unforgettable collection that shows the Homeric Helen like she's never been seen before. Maria Zoccola is a queer Southern writer and educator from Memphis, Tennessee. Maria has worked and written for nonprofits both big and small, and from 2017-2021 managed Deep Center’s Young Author Project in Savannah, Georgia, a program embedding creative writing workshops within the Savannah–Chatham County Public School System and serving 400 young people annually. Maria’s fiction and poetry can be found in such venues as Ploughshares, Fantasy Magazine, the Kenyon Review, ZYZZYVA, Electric Literature’s The Commuter, and elsewhere. Her work has been nominated Best Small Fictions and Best New Poets, has been a finalist for Best of the Net, and has received a special mention for the Pushcart Prize. Recommended Books: Alice Oswald, Memorial Rita Dove, Motherlove Ellen Bryant Voigt, Kyrie  Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is published with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/poetry
    Show more Show less
    39 mins

What listeners say about New Books in Poetry

Average customer ratings

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Audible.com reviews

Amazon reviews
No Reviews are Available