This Choice is Who You Are has been my mantra these past years: a mantra for becoming the person I want to be. I believe that choosing to live with the attention that poetry demands is a good start.
In the podcasts, I look to other artists to learn from their experiences.
I ask poets how their work with poetry influences the choices they make in their daily lives, and how these, in turn, affect their sense of self and their relationships.
How are they using the experience of art to shape The Good Life for themselves?
Jeanetta Calhoun Mish is current Oklahoma State Poet Laureate. Her most recent books are What I Learned at the War, a poetry collection (West End Press, 2016) and Oklahomeland: Essays (Lamar University Press, 2015). Her 2009 poetry collection, Work Is Love Made Visible (West End Press) won an Oklahoma Book Award, a Wrangler Award, and the WILLA Award from Women Writing the West.
Mish has published poetry in This Land, Naugatuck River Review, Concho River Review, LABOR: Studies in Working Class History of the Americas, World Literature Today, San Pedro River Review, About Place Journal, The Fiddleback, and Yellow Medicine Journal, among others. Essays and short fiction have appeared in Oklahoma Today, Sugar Mule, Crosstimbers, Red Dirt Chronicles, Cybersoleil, and The Emily Dickinson Society International Bulletin‘s essay series, “Poet to Poet.”
Anthology publications include poems in Returning the Gift and The Colour of Resistance as well as the introductory essay for Ain’t Nobody That Can Sing Like Me: New Oklahoma Writing.
Jeanetta is editor of Mongrel Empire Press which was recognized as 2012 Publisher of the Year by the Woodcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers.
Mish serves as contributing editor for World Literature Today, Oklahoma Today, and Sugar Mule: A Literary Journal. She is also editor of Mongrel Empire Press which was recognized as 2012 Publisher of the Year by the Woodcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers.
Dr. Mish is director of The Red Earth Creative Writing MFA @ Oklahoma City University where she also serves as advisor to Red Earth Review and as a faculty mentor in writing pedagogy, professional writing, and the craft of poetry.
For more information, visit www.tonguetiedwoman.com
Poets and poetry mentioned in the podcast include:
Gary Snyder’s The Practice of the Wild
Annie Finch, the founder of the listserv Wompo (era BF: before Facebook)
William Stafford, “Allegiances”.
Gary Snyder.
Original music and artwork by Karl R. Powell.
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