The Language of the Cat

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Martina Evans begins

And I realized poetry can do everything. So if it was point of view, if it was plot, if it was dialogue, character, I could find them in all the poems. And that was a real revelation to me.

Theme music

Seán Hewitt
Welcome to The Glimpse. I’m your host, Seán Hewitt.

Martina Evans treasures voice, humor, and cats in her works. She is the author of 13 books of poetry and prose. Her latest narrative poem, “The Coming Thing,” was shortlisted for the Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry. Born in Cork and now living in London, Martina is the poetry critic for The Irish Times and our guest today on The Glimpse.

Music ends

Seán
In her poems, Martina Evans has one of the most distinctive voices I know: self-deprecating, demotic, erudite but never showy, rich with a humor that sings off the page. To listen to Martina read is to feel animated, to feel in the best company, to be sat down and told wonderful gossip, to feel voices from history and daily life revivified in an almost uncanny way. Witty, humane, subversive, and always attuned to the minutiae of the spoken word, these poems fill our heads with voices that are indelible. Welcome, Martina; thank you for being here.

Martina
Thank you, Seán.

Seán
The thing I love about all of your poems is how I can hear you so clearly in the voice of them, even when the voice is the voice of another person or an animal. And I wanted to start by asking you about how those voices come to you and how you go about capturing them on the page.

Martina
Absolutely. I just love the sound of the way people speak, what they don't say, how they circle around, the subtext, the music of a voice. And I'm very interested in place, the way place and voice are connected. Place runs through the voice.

Seán
I think the idea of the human voice as an instrument is a really great one. And I think it captures something about how you go about, you know, learning the instrumentation of capturing a voice and dialect and the way people speak. And that comes through in the poems: not only just in the sort of language that they use, but even in intonation and syntax and the way you punctuate a poem. And I wondered if, if you would call it research, the sort of eavesdropping or reading that you do to try and capture a voice?

Martina
Yes, I honestly think it's something you inherit. Because I think my mother comes in a lot to this. Because one of the things I absolutely love is Cockney: Cockney language and how it keeps changing. And it's very much influenced by the West Indian music that…you know, since the early 20th century, there's a huge change in how Londoners speak. And I think it's just absolutely wonderful. And I would love to be able to put that into writing, but I know I'd get it wrong. You know, if I tried to speak with a Cockney accent or even if I was trying to do Northern Ireland, I might be able to get one or two or three words right, but I wouldn't attempt to do a monologue, because I just wouldn't hear it right.

And you know, I started in Cork, and—like you, Seán, you started your Irish sojourn in Cork and then went to Dublin. And as soon as I went to Dublin, they were taking off my Cork accent. But I could hear they weren't getting it right. And of course, then I came to London, where they take off Irish accents, and of course, to a native, when someone tries to do somebody else's accent, it sounds so bad. I used to just feel sorry for them, rather than angry. So I think there's a sensitivity there, and it's affected my writing, actually, because at the beginning, I was writing a lot more novels, and I did find it frustrating, because I realized I had to stick close to the voice I knew.

Seán
And one of the things that you do more than a lot of poets, I think, is inject humor into the poems and also work with narrative. Was that something that you always felt drawn to in the poem? Humor is, I think, more than comedy in your poems, because it is also a way of getting to the heart of the local, the particular grievances of a person or the character of a person. Did you start off with narratives?

Martina
That's what I wanted, that’s what I thought I would write. I, you know—poetry didn't occur to me because I thought that was just a specialized thing that I wouldn't be equipped for. And I had…even though I loved poetry, novels were what I was attracted to. And I think in a way, over decades, I have somehow come back to writing novels and poems. They are related, and I think gradually I am mixing the two together, and I had to find my own form in the long narrative poems to mix the two of them together. But I think with… some of my poems, I think, are kind of related to those kind of Irish laments that can be kind of funny as well, and when I'm being funny, I'm being very, very serious. Really, I know, it's when I'm at my most serious. Because humor is a way of dealing with things, isn't it? Difficult things. And I think it's like a kind of gallows humor.

Seán
Yeah, I think that's right. That comes through so, so well in your poems. I love the idea of a poem as kind of a crystallized form of everything you might do in a novel. You know, we began by speaking about instrumentation, or the voice as an instrument, and the musicality or the rhythm of poetry must be a great source of opportunity for capturing story and voice in a way that… I know you can have musical prose or poetic prose, but perhaps poetry lends itself to speaking in voices.

Martina
Yes, I think it does. And I think we have to remember that the novel is such a new form. You know, in the early part of the 19th century, Walter Scott and Byron, they were the bestsellers, with their long narrative poems like Don Juan.

Seán
Yeah. I think, you know, we forget the recent popularity of of poetry, by which I mean, not only in the 19th century, but a sort of resurgence that we're having now. Particularly now, I think, that's driven by poetry as a spoken form and the acceptance of poetry as a form of speaking or “song,” as it might have been called. For our listeners, full disclosure: I used to work with Martina reviewing poetry for The Irish Times, and, aside from everything else, one of my favorite parts of that job was having phone calls with Martina, and Martina would give me updates on the cats. So I am delighted to hear directly from one of them in this poem today. Martina, would you read it for us?

Martina:

The Day My Cat Spoke to Me
for Geraldine More O'Ferrell

I was surprised not so much by the fact
that she spoke
but by the high opinion she had of me.
‘I think you’re great.’ she said
and it was at this point
I looked at her in surprise.
‘I mean,’ she continued, ‘the way
you’ve managed to write anything at all!
Fourteen court hearings
and that horrible barrister,
the way she looked at you.’
‘But you weren’t there,’ I said.
‘Oh but I can imagine it,’ said Eileen,
her yellow eyes opening wide
before narrowing into benevolent slits.
‘I only had to look at you,
gulping down your red lentil soup
when you came home after nearly three
hours in the witness box defending
your right to write.
Did anyone ever hear the like?
I could see it all in every swallow you took,
her butty legs and her manly shoulders
in that black suit, did she have dandruff?
I hope not, because it really shows up on black.
Saying those things to you,
Oh Miss Cotter we would all like the luxury
of sitting at home writing books!
Holding up paper evidence between finger
and thumb Here is another job
you failed to get, Miss Cotter.
Trying to make you go out to work
with radiation in a hospital
and who would take care of us?
What would the cats of this house
do without the sound of your pen scratching
on paper, the hum of your computer,
your lovely lap and the sound of you
on the telephone?
The big dyed blonde head of her!
And where did she think she was going?
Well, earning a lot of money for her own words
by the looks of things.
And saying them to you!
The best writer that ever heaved a can of Tuna
or opened a pack of Science Plan.
And as Mary Jenkins said about him
who paid for the horrible utterances.
It’s just as well that Shakespeare wasn’t married to him.
And then when he was in the witness box, he wished
you the best of luck with your writing...’
At this point Eileen paused, closed her eyes
I was waiting for her to say something witty herself.
After all it was a great opportunity for irony
which for some reason I have
always associated with cats.
But when she opened her eyes again
she requested a scoop of softened butter
after which she licked her lips in detail
and hasn’t opened her mouth since
if you don’t count yawning, lapping,
eating, washing, miaowing,
and screeching at intruders.

"The Day My Cat Spoke to Me" from Can Dentists Be Trusted? (Carcanet, 2004).


Seán
(He laughs.) I love that poem so much. I think it does exactly what you said your poems do, you know. It has a sort of telling-it-slant thing going on. It's both funny and serious, because in some ways it's about the cat, Eileen, but in other ways it's about the speaker's relationship to the cat. It's about the things we know beyond words, about animals or things that we spend time with. But then in other ways, it's also an account of a life or a period of a life. There's so much going on there, told through this conceit of the cat speaking. Did you know where the poem was going when you started it? I kind of want to know how it arrived. Was it a day with the cat? You know, were you just sitting beside the cat? Or, you know, how did this poem come into being?

Martina
I know exactly how it came about, because I'd been in court a lot, and it had worn me down. And there were many kind of prongs to the attacks in court, and one of them was that I should be back at work in my old job as a radiographer. But at that time, I was working on the second novel, I was teaching creative writing, and I had a young daughter to take care of. So if the other side were sending me all these ads for jobs, many of them I wasn't qualified to do, in radiography and—you know, my legal team said it doesn't go to matter, because they're going to have their day in court with you. You're going to have to go in and be in the witness box and take all this stuff and answer it, which was just awful. And this actually happened to me in real life. In fact, during the court hearing at one stage, the only time that I took her unawares was when I said, "Why are you being so mean to me?" (Seán laughs.) So anyway, that is put away, right? I had that experience; you get on with things.

And I was in the roof studio of the City Lit, which is the flagship adult ed college in London and a very well-loved place where they teach everything from kung fu to dancing to poetry. And I had a great class, and they'd write every week. And then I thought, “Oh, I'll bring the Frank O'Hara one, you know, where, where the sun speaks to Frank O'Hara and tells him, ‘You know, you're quite good, you’re one of the good poets, and keep on doing what you're doing.’” And I thought it would be quite good if they got somebody—the sun or an inanimate object—to address them. And it was the first time my class were struck dumb. They couldn't write.

So I got on the 38 big red double-decker bus, sitting there thinking, “Why couldn't they write,” you know? And then I found myself pulling out my folder, and I began to write. And, of course, it was all the feelings that I had stored up from my court experience just came out. But it was because I felt I wanted them to write it, and they wouldn't write it. So my attitude on the bus was, “Well, I'll do it.”

Seán
Yeah. I think sometimes it's a great challenge to throw yourself, you know, especially if you spend a lot of time teaching, you know, you come up with these exercises. I do it too, and then I think, “Oh, could I actually do that?” But I think you pulled it off brilliantly. Do you often find yourself having that experience where you read poems, or you listen to music, or, you know, you see a piece of art or a film and a poem is jogged out of you, or, you know, you open a dialogue with another piece of art. Is that something that you do often?

Martina
I think so, like it does happen often, and then it comes in other ways. It can be this, it can be that. It can be just something somebody said, you know. It depends. I watch a lot of film, and I think film influences me an awful lot. And I feel my mother haunts my poems a lot. And it's interesting; I remember when my second book, All Alcoholics Are Charmers, was published. My mother was very put out. And after she died, I felt she was writing the books. You know, there's that Milosz quote from his poem “Ars Poetica,” about “the house is always open, the house of poetry, and people are coming and leaving at will” [sic].

Sean
I like the idea of the poem almost as, as calling up or being inhabited by other voices that can kind of wander through it. There was one thing that kind of echoed in the back of my mind with “The Day My Cat Spoke to Me,” which was obviously—it set up a chain of association, then, in my head of cat poems. So I had Christopher Smart in the back of my head, and then I went all the way back to Pangur Bán and thinking about the… for those of you who don't know it, this ninth-century Irish poem written by a monk, and his cat is called Pangur Bán and is kind of sat on his knee or walking around his writing desk. And as he writes, the cat's hunting mice becomes kind of analogous to finding the right word in a poem, or…it's a very feline text. But I wondered if you think that there's something kind of inherently feline about poetry, or poetic about cats, maybe?

Martina
I know! It's so strange, in a way, that so many poets like cats. Leonardo da Vinci said that every cat is a masterpiece. And I do think a lot of poets were just constantly admiring the masterpiece that is a cat. And I know that Emily Brontë herself, a great poet as well as a novelist, said that cats are most like humans. I think they're very supportive to poetry. And I know that Dora, my cat, she really calms down if I read poems to her. She likes them very much.

Seán
Does she have a favorite poem or poet?

Martina
Well, she's one of the main characters in the poem “The Coming Thing,” Dora, and her favorite line is “Dora was a fierce intellectual.”

Seán
(He laughs.) She definitely knows what you're saying, I think.

Martina
She definitely knows what I'm saying. And Donny, the ginger boy who's now dead, he also always knew, because once when I couldn't move when I was injured, he was meowing for food, and I said, “Oh, go and catch a mouse. That's what you're supposed to do, isn't it?” And he came back a half an hour later with a mouse hanging out of his mouth.

Seán
I think they know more than we think they know. (He laughs.) But I like that you know, there's, there's something that the poem breaks through, which is the—not the silence of a cat, because cats are not silent, but the wordlessness of a cat. And instead, it kind of taps into the language of a cat, if that makes sense. It has a real focus on their movement, their irony, the way that they might speak, if, if they could. And I think, you know, a lot of the time, the poem feels companionable to me. It's about companionship, in a way. It's about being seen by another thing, especially if you feel exposed or on your own or doubtful. There's something reassuring about the presence either of the sun or a cat, something inanimate or animate that is just there for us.

Martina
I think the best poems come from the body, you know, and the cinema, of course, is completely tuned into the body with all its, you know, scenes, slow motion; it's how our bodies work. And I think the way cats move is incredibly inspirational. And I remember once reading that Harvey Keitel was given two pages of dialogue and he put it to one side and said, “I can show all that the way I stand.” And I mean, I just think cats, they communicate. I mean, if my cat's annoyed, she just goes and sits, very little movement, but, oh, my God, it's just oozing with expression. (Seán laughs.) You know what I'm talking about!

Seán
Yeah, I do know what you're talking about. I think, you know, I never, I never grew up with cats. I grew up with dogs, who I think are very open about their feelings. You know, you can tell a dog is happy, you can tell a dog is sad, and they don't have, I don't think they have a huge emotional, expressive range in their movements and how they behave. Nick, my partner, is obsessed with cats, and I have said to him, “I can't interpret them.” And he says, “You know, once you get to know a cat, you know everything. You will never get to the point of not knowing suddenly that the cat is about to scratch you, because you can tell if it's annoyed with you.” The thing is, I can't, I can't tell yet. (He laughs.) So I need, I need practice in the language of the cat. Martina, I think it might be a good time to take a short break, and when we come back, you're gonna read to us from Frank O'Hara and this poem in which the sun speaks.

Martina
Okay.

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Seán
So welcome back. Martina Evans, you've chosen Frank O'Hara's poem “A True Account of Talking to the Sun on Fire Island” as your inspiration, and we've already covered a bit of why this poem is sitting in the background of your poem. But I wonder if you could tell us first a little bit about this O'Hara poem: why it hooks you and what you think it is that kind of draws you to it.

Martina
I think its movement is really interesting. I mean, I think he's very interesting in his casual approach. And I think it starts so conversational, almost throw-away, you know, “The sun woke me up…Hey! I've been trying…Don't be so rude.” You know, it's almost, it's one of those ones where you hear people saying, “Is this cut-up prose?” A phrase I hate. I mean, what does that even mean?

And then I think it moves into a much darker place, because it starts off quite casually—the sun is going to look for him—but then suddenly it gets very, very hot. It's also very funny, and it ends actually in a very dark place, I think.



Seán
Yeah, it's a brilliant poem. It moves so far across just a couple of pages. Now it is quite a long poem, but it's so full of life. I'm going to ask you just to read the opening for us, and for our listeners, you'll be able to find the full poem on The Glimpse website.

Martina

A True Account of Talking to the Sun on Fire Island (excerpt)
by Frank O’Hara

The Sun woke me this morning loud
and clear, saying "Hey! I've been
trying to wake you up for fifteen
minutes. Don't be so rude, you are
only the second poet I've ever chosen
to speak to personally
so why
aren't you more attentive? If I could
burn you through the window I would
to wake you up. I can't hang around
here all day."
"Sorry, Sun, I stayed
up late last night talking to Hal."

"When I woke up Mayakovsky he was
a lot more prompt" the Sun said
petulantly. "Most people are up
already waiting to see if I'm going
to put in an appearance."
I tried
to apologize "I missed you yesterday."
"That's better" he said. "I didn't
know you'd come out." "You may be
wondering why I've come so close?"
"Yes" I said beginning to feel hot
wondering if maybe he wasn't burning me
anyway.
"Frankly I wanted to tell you
I like your poetry. I see a lot
on my rounds and you're okay. You may
not be the greatest thing on earth, but
you're different. Now, I've heard some
say you're crazy, they being excessively
calm themselves to my mind, and other
crazy poets think that you're a boring
reactionary. Not me.
Just keep on
like I do and pay no attention. You'll
find that people always will complain
about the atmosphere, either too hot
or too cold too bright or too dark, days
too short or too long.
If you don't appear
at all one day they think you're lazy
or dead. Just keep right on, I like it.

[POEM CONTINUES]

And don't worry about your lineage
poetic or natural. The Sun shines on
the jungle, you know, on the tundra
the sea, the ghetto. Wherever you were
I knew it and saw you moving. I was waiting
for you to get to work.

And now that you
are making your own days, so to speak,
even if no one reads you but me
you won't be depressed. Not
everyone can look up, even at me. It
hurts their eyes."
"Oh Sun, I'm so grateful to you!"

"Thanks and remember I'm watching. It's
easier for me to speak to you out
here. I don't have to slide down
between buildings to get your ear.
I know you love Manhattan, but
you ought to look up more often.
And
always embrace things, people earth
sky stars, as I do, freely and with
the appropriate sense of space. That
is your inclination, known in the heavens
and you should follow it to hell, if
necessary, which I doubt.
Maybe we'll
speak again in Africa, of which I too
am specially fond. Go back to sleep now
Frank, and I may leave a tiny poem
in that brain of yours as my farewell."

"Sun, don't go!" I was awake
at last. "No, go I must, they're calling
me."
"Who are they?"
Rising he said "Some
day you'll know. They're calling to you
too." Darkly he rose, and then I slept.

"A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island" by Frank O'Hara from The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara (Knopf, 1971).


Seán
It's so good, and the character of the sun, you know, it has such personality. You know, in some ways, this poem seems to me to be about the pressure of writing or the pressure of living. In fact, it becomes about the pressure of living, but it begins perhaps about the pressure of writing, or the doubt that we all feel as writers. Why bother? Why start? There's always someone better. There's always someone doing something in a, in a way that you think is more important than the way that you do things. I wonder if this is a poem that you return to or carry with you through those doubts. You know, it's sometimes nice to know that Frank O'Hara doubts himself as well.

Martina
Oh, absolutely. And I think the burning is quite interesting in it. I spent all my time devoted to this, this art, and I'm not any good. In some ways, you know, writing is pretty harmless, but in other ways, you can get burned by it. Winnicott, the psychologist, talks about artists being people who are caught between the desire to hide and the desire to be seen. And he says something like, “it's a joy to be hidden but a disaster not to be found.” And I think that sums it up for us.

Seán
Yeah.

Martina
And there's a lot of hiding, and being seen or not being seen. And the sun, of course, is in the spotlight being seen. And it's actually terrifying and painful for us, and we want to hide, and yet somehow we're drawn to get sunburned.

I loved…in the second half, he says, “Thanks and remember I'm watching. It's / easier for me to speak to you out / here. I don't have to slide down / between buildings to get your ear. / I know you love Manhattan, but / you ought to look up more often.”

And then he talks about embracing the world, and I find that really cinematic as well. And he's reacting to Mayakovsky, who was a very cinematic poet and a filmmaker, you know, and it's cartoonish. And I make all these associations, which I think we all do when we read poems and when we write poems, and before I finish, I must talk about listening, because I think that's really important. “I don't have to slide down / between buildings to get your ear.”

I think when we're writing poems, we're listening. I talk about this very thing, that you're actually listening. You're listening for the poem. Mary Ruefle talks about it; it's listening to get it right.

Seán
Wow, yeah. I loved, you know, the idea of listening. I was once reading an interview with Alice Oswald, I think, and she said that the last thing she asks herself before she starts a poem is, “Am I listening?” And I think that's right, you know, to try and find the note or the rhythm that you're trying to, to get out onto the page, the thing that you're listening out for.

You just mentioned Mary Ruefle there, and with Winnicott, which is one of my favorite quotes. I was actually going to use it as an epigraph to something once, the “it's a joy to be hidden and a disaster not to be found.” Mary Ruefle has a great essay or a lecture in that book Madness, Rack & Honey called "On Secrets", and she talks in that lecture about every poem having a secret, but the trick of a poem is wanting both to give away and to keep the secret at the same time. So they're kind of things of revelation and also concealment. And we want to keep those two things in tandem, you know; the same time as you want to express something, to give something away, you run away and hide it. And you like the idea of the poem as a place of safety, or being, you know, in which you can kind of disguise things as well as give them away.

I think one thing that I was thinking about with this poem and your cat and O'Hara's sun, and this idea of writing about inanimate things as companionable things, or, or speaking things, is that all of these poems seem to me to be poems of friendship in a way, or mutual concern, between the sun and O'Hara or the cat and the speaker of your poem. And I wonder if they’re, in some ways, a sort of secular version of mystical poems. And, you know, in another time, would a poet maybe have imagined a saint or God appearing and speaking to them and offering them advice or correcting their way of life, or, you know, guiding them? Does that seem right to you? Do you think that these forms are kind of filling in as sort of religious?

Martina
I think it's very true. And Ireland was originally the cult of St. Brigid, was sun worshippers. It's hard to remember what I was thinking on that day, but I'm sure I would have just dismissed God because I just can't believe him anymore. But I think it's very true, and actually, the sun is the source of all life. If we were supposed to adore anything, that would be the right place to put our adoration, not some strange man in a white beard, you know?

Seán
Yeah, it always seems to me a strange dismissal, you know, when you see those stupid kind of colonial cartoons or something. You know, “before we came, you were worshiping the sun.” And yes! This makes much more sense, to worship the sun, if anything.

Martina
And Apollo is the god of poetry as well, isn’t he.

Seán
Yeah, yeah. I mean, sometimes poetry is just to give you that sense of wonder in something that otherwise seems normal. And there's nothing normal about a cat or the sun. You know, they're incredible and strange and the stuff of poems.

Martina, you know we, we are thinking here about lineages, in a way—your poem echoing back to O'Hara, O'Hara's poem echoing back to Mayakovsky—and I wonder if you think about yourself as a poet with a lineage, or if you're conscious of these other voices in the background. Who would be there at the family gathering of a Martina Evans poem?

Martina
Oh God, I don't know. I find it really hard, because I read an awful lot and widely, and—I mean, Frank O'Hara would be really important. And when you mentioned secrets, Stanley Kunitz is a huge figure, and he spoke about “a poem should never give up all its secrets.”

Seán
Yeah.

Martina
he's got a wonderful, wonderful, wondrous poem called “The Abduction,” where he had just been reading a book on UFOs and things like that, and he merges it with some other more mystical kind of experience, and it's terrific and haunting. So I love him, but sometimes I think the poets that I love are nothing like me.

Seán
I think that's often the case. I think I find myself drawn too to poets completely different to me. Perhaps if you read poets who are very similar to you, you kind of…I don't know if you get this experience of the cringe. You know, that you recognize yourself too much, and you can kind of see something of what you're doing in someone else. So if you read someone very far away from you, I think you've more to learn from them, perhaps.

Martina
Yeah, it's such a cliché, maybe. Well, maybe not. But I just love Shakespeare, and he's timeless. And I've often enjoyed Shakespeare as a book of poems…or a play of Shakespeare's, to me, is just a long narrative poem. I think he may have influenced me in that way. Yeah, so he's somebody I really, really love, which I suppose you wouldn't associate with me. I think Frank O'Hara is obvious. I think James Joyce is a huge influence.

Sean
In some ways, Shakespeare should be so many people's answers, but I don't think many people are brave enough to give the answer of Shakespeare. Not because, you know, we're comparing ourselves to him, but sometimes it seems that we take it for granted just how renewable and strange and powerful those plays are. And I think having a constant text, you know—if you take all of Shakespeare as, as a life's work, you could spend your life inside it, and happily.

Martina
One poet I listen to all the time is Yusef Komunyakaa, and I think June Jordan and Lucille Clifton would be huge influences, as well. If you think about the demotic and, you know, having that courage, just, you know—”homage to my hips.”

Seán
Yeah, I can hear June Jordan in the back of your poems, I think. I can hear them in the speaking voice. She's such a brilliant poet.

Martina
Yeah, so, and June Jordan's “A Poem about Intelligence for My Brothers and Sisters,” that’s a poem I really love.

Sean
Martina Evans, it has been such a pleasure to speak to you. Thank you for coming on The Glimpse.

Martina
Thank you so much, Seán.

Seán
Thanks for joining us today. I’m your host, Seán Hewitt.

Martina’s poem "The Day My Cat Spoke to Me" comes from her collection of poems titled Can Dentists Be Trusted? It was published in 2004 and aired with permission from Carcanet.

Frank O'Hara’s poem "A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island" is from The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara, published in 1971, and was aired with permission from Knopf.

Coming up next week, poet Stephen Sexton muses about the afterlife through a capitalist lens, his love of American poetry, and a lonely yak in Batesville, Virginia.

Make sure to subscribe to The Glimpse wherever you get your podcasts. You can also find episodes on our website, brinkerhoffpoetry.org/podcast. We’d also love to hear from you. Drop us an email at theglimpsepoetrypodcast@gmail.com.

The Glimpse is a production of the Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation. I’m your host, Seán Hewitt. Our Senior Producer is Jennifer Wolfe, Kat Yore is our technical director and mixing engineer. Editorial Director Amanda Glassman is our curator and production coordinator. Amy Holmes is the foundation’s Executive Director, and our co-founders are Cathy and Peter Halstead.

Thanks for listening.