Get Lit Minute

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In this week's episode of the Get Lit Minute, your weekly poetry podcast, we spotlight the life and work of Korean American poet, translator, columnist, and advocate for bilingual artists, Tanya (Hyonhye) Ko Hong. She is the author of four poetry collections featuring pieces in both English and Korean. Her first book, Generation One Point Five, was published in 1993 in Korean with English translations. Most recently, Hong released The War Still Within: Poems of the Korean Diaspora with KYSO F...

In this week's episode of the Get Lit Minute, your weekly poetry podcast, we spotlight the life and work of poet, Lawson Fusao Inada. A third-generation Japanese American, his collections of poetry are Before the War: Poems as They Happened (1971); Legends from Camp (1992), winner of the American Book Award; Just Into/Nations (1996); and Drawing the Line (1997). Both jazz and the experience of internment are influences in Inada’s writing. The section titles of his Legends from Camp reveal the...

In this week's episode of the Get Lit Minute, your weekly poetry podcast, we spotlight the life and work of poet, librarian, and memorist, Toyo Suyemoto. During her early years, Suyemoto published under her husband’s surname as Toyo Kawakami, Toyo S. Kawakami, and Toyo Suyemoto Kawakami, though later in life she preferred to be remembered only by her family name. Suyemoto was trained from an early age to be a poet. Her mother taught Japanese literature to her and her eight siblings as childre...

In this week's episode of the Get Lit Minute, your weekly poetry podcast, we spotlight the life and work of poet, memoirist, and editor, Garrett Hongo. His collections of poetry include Yellow Light (1982), The River of Heaven (1988), Coral Road: Poems (2011), and The Mirror Diary (2017). His poetry explores the experiences of Asian Americans in Anglo society, using lush imagery, narrative techniques, and myth to address both cultural alienation and the trials of immigrants, including the for...

In this week's episode of the Get Lit Minute, your weekly poetry podcast, we spotlight the life and work of poet, Layli Long Soldier. She is the author of the chapbook Chromosomory (2010) and the full-length collection Whereas (2017). She has been a contributing editor to Drunken Boat and poetry editor at Kore Press; in 2012, her participatory installation, Whereas We Respond, was featured on the Pine Ridge Reservation. SourceThis episode includes a reading of her poem, “Resolution (6)” ...

In this week's episode of the Get Lit Minute, your weekly poetry podcast, we spotlight the life and work of poet, writer, and activist, Alice Walker. Her books include seven novels, four collections of short stories, four children’s books, and volumes of essays and poetry. SourceThis episode includes a reading of her poem, “How Poems are Made / A Discredited View” featured in our 2021, 2022, and 2023 Get Lit Anthology.“How Poems are Made / A Discredited View”Letting goIn order to hold o...

In this week's episode of the Get Lit Minute, your weekly poetry podcast, we spotlight the life and work of poet, Claude McKay. He was a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance, a prominent literary movement of the 1920s. His work ranged from vernacular verse celebrating peasant life in Jamaica to poems that protested racial and economic inequities. His philosophically ambitious fiction, including tales of Black life in both Jamaica and America, addresses instinctual/intellectual duality, which ...

In this week's episode of the Get Lit Minute, your weekly poetry podcast, we spotlight the life and work of poet, filmmaker, educator and performer, Fatimah Asghar. Their work has appeared in many journals, including POETRY Magazine, Gulf Coast, BuzzFeed Reader, The Margins, The Offing, Academy of American Poets and many others. Their work has been featured on new outlets like PBS, NPR, Time, Teen Vogue, Huffington Post, and others. In 2011, they created a spoken word poetry group...

In this week's episode of the Get Lit Minute, your weekly poetry podcast, we spotlight the life and work of poet and writer, Carolyn Forché. Coiner of the term “poetry of witness,” she is frequently characterized as a political poet; she calls for poetry to invest in the “social.” She published her first book of poetry, Gathering the Tribes, in 1975. Forché received a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship after translating the work of Salvadoran-exiled poet Claribel Algería in 1977; the fellowship...

In this week's episode of the Get Lit Minute, your weekly poetry podcast, we spotlight the life and work of poet and writer, Joy Har­jo. She is the 23rd Poet Lau­re­ate of the Unit­ed States and a mem­ber of the Mvskoke Nation and belongs to Oce Vpofv (Hick­o­ry Ground). She is only the sec­ond poet to be appoint­ed a third term as U.S. Poet Laureate. Har­jo began writ­ing poet­ry as a mem­ber of the Uni­ver­si­ty of New Mexico’s Native stu­dent orga­ni­za­tion, the Kiva Club, in response to ...

In this week's episode of the Get Lit Minute, your weekly poetry podcast, we spotlight the life and work of poet, writer, and scholar, Lateef McLeod. He published his first poetry book entitled A Declaration of A Body Of Love in 2010 chronicling his life as a black man with a disability and tackling various topics on family, dating, religion, spirituality, his national heritage and sexuality. He also published another poetry book entitled Whispers of Krip Love, Shouts of Krip Revolution...

In this week's episode of the Get Lit Minute, your weekly poetry podcast, we spotlight the life and work of poet, W.E.B. Du Bois. William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was an American sociologist, civil rights activist, and historian. Throughout his career, Du Bois was a founder and editor of many groundbreaking civil rights organizations and literary publications, such as The Niagara Movement and its Moon Illustrated Weekly and The Horizon periodicals, as well as the hugely influential National A...

In this week's episode of the Get Lit Minute, your weekly poetry podcast, we spotlight the life and work of poet, Paige Lewis. is the author of Space Struck (Sarabande Books, 2019). Their poems have appeared in Poetry, American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Best New Poets 2017, Gulf Coast, The Massachusetts Review, The Georgia Review, The Iowa Review, Poetry Northwest, Ninth Letter, and elsewhere.This episode includes a reading of her poem, “The Moment I Saw a Pelican Devour.” Find more ...