Episode Details

For the RtB Books in Dark Times series back in 2021, John spoke with Elizabeth Bradfield, editor of Broadsided Press, poet, professor of creative writing at Brandeis, naturalist, photographer.

Her books include Interpretive Work, Approaching Ice, Once Removed, and Toward Antarctica. She lives on Cape Cod, travels north every summer to guide people into Arctic climes, birdwatches.

Liz is in and of and for our whole natural world. Did poetry sustaining her through the darkest hours of the pandemic? What about other sources of inspiration?

Mentioned in the episode:

• Eavand Boland, “Quarantine” (from Against Love Poetry; read her NY Times obituary here)

• Maeve Binchy, “Circle of Friends“

• Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio

• Edgar Lee Masters, Spoon River Anthology

• Louise Gluck Averno and Wild Iris

• Brian Teare, Doomstead Days

• Derek Walcott, “Omeros“

• W. S. Merwin, “The Folding Cliffs”

• Natasha Trethewey, “Belloqc’s Ophelia“

• Yeats, “We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.”

• Nest, Eggs and Nestlings of North American Birds (Princeton Field Guides)

• Trixie Belden

• Shel Silverstein

• Lois Lowry, “The Giver“

• Liz equates poetry and Tetris

• Leanne Simpson, “This Accident of Being Lost“

• Elizabeth Bradfield, “We all want to see a mammal“

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