Conversations about Poetry & Creative Influence
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The Melody or Witchcraft Podcast is based on the idea that poetry can be a launchpoint to discuss the pressing issues of today, that poets are the truthtellers.
On the podcast we hear a poet read a work of their own and an Emily Dickinson poem of their choosing that contributed to their work. The conversations delve into questions like where creative influence arrives from, how the past lives in the creative present, and why literary ancestors matter. Along the way, I try to dip into my history as a former guide at the Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst, Massachusetts to unpack just a wee bit about some of the reasons one particular 19th Century poet has had the lasting, international impact that she has. These are conversations that start within the frame of Emily Dickinson and bust out of that frame to talk more broadly about creative influence.
“The Past is such a curious Creature,” Dickinson wrote. (J1203). What if Then and Now is just one more binary that doesn’t serve us anymore?
The name “Melody or Witchcraft” comes from an April 25, 1862 letter Dickinson wrote to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, where she asked a question of this man who would become one of her lifelong correspondents and an editor of her posthumously-collected works. In her letter, she says, “I would like to learn – Can you tell me how to grow – or is it unconveyed – like Melody or Witchcraft?” (L 261)
**To get the full show notes with links and photos, become a free or paid subscriber to the Melody or Witchcraft Podcast through the Ask the Poet Substack.**
(Also see Season 1 and Season 2.)
Season 3 Trailers:
Season 3 Poets
Episode 13, Jane Wong: “the ugly cry”
LISTEN to the full episode NOW
Jane & I get emotional! Lots of talk about emotion, bewilderment, wayward artists, resistance, rebellion, and the necessity of all of the above.
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Photo Credit: Gritchelle Fallesgon
Jane Wong is the author of the memoir Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City (Tin House, 2023). She also wrote two poetry collections: How to Not Be Afraid of Everything (Alice James, 2021) and Overpour (Action Books, 2016). Her poetry installations which engage haunting and nourishment have been exhibited at the Frye Art Museum, the Richmond Art Gallery, and the Asian Art Museum.
Episode 14, Evie Shockley: “the selective poet”
Available July 20
Evie & I talk about an inviolate interior, the traditions of experimental poetry, our changing relationship with death as we age, and how some Poets of Color might reconcile with Dickinson’s choice to avoid the discussion of race.
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Poet & scholar Evie Shockley thinks, creates, and writes with her eye on a Black feminist horizon. Her books of poetry include suddenly we (NAACP Image Award; National Book Award Finalist), semiautomatic (Hurston/Wright Legacy Award; Pulitzer Prize finalist), and the new black (Hurston/Wright Legacy Award). Her literary criticism includes Renegade Poetics: Black Aesthetics and Formal Innovation in African American Poetry and numerous essays. Most recently, she is editor of the Norton Library edition of Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Among the honors for her body of work in poetry are the Academy Fellowship for Distinguished Poetic Achievement, the Shelley Memorial Award, the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry, the Holmes National Poetry Prize, and the Stephen Henderson Award. Her joys include participating in poetry communities such as Cave Canem and collaborating with artists working in various media. Shockley is the Zora Neale Hurston Distinguished Professor of English at Rutgers University.
Episode 15, Diane Seuss: “strange freedom”
Available July 27
Diane & I go deep into the poems and come out with lessons around narrative, death, poetry’s power against same, and who cares if they’re remembered.
Diane Seuss is the author of six books of poetry, including Modern Poetry (2024), a finalist for the National Book Award and the Griffin Poetry Prize; and frank: sonnets (2021), winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Pulitzer Prize. Seuss was a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow, and she is a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. Her seventh collection, Althea: Poems, is forthcoming from Graywolf Press in 2027.
Episode 16, James Allen Hall: “dissident queen”
Available August 3
James & I romp through a conversation that touches on multiplicity, queer Dickinson, Mario Lopez, and the dangers and portals of erasure.
James Allen Hall is the author of two books of poetry and a book of lyric memoir, most recently Romantic Comedy from Four Way Books. With the poet Aaron Smith, they cohost Breaking Form: A Poetry & Culture Podcast.
Episode 17, Pádraig Ó Tuama: “the baboon of the past”
Available August 10
Pádraig & I ruminate on authenticity in ritual, time and the presence of the past, baboons, large cats, and the importance of context.
Photo credit: David Pugh
Pádraig Ó Tuama (b. 1975, Ireland) is a poet with interests in language, violence, power, and religion. He is the host of On Being’s Poetry Unbound and has published volumes of poetry, essays, a memoir and theology. Kitchen Hymns (2025; Copper Canyon, CHEERIO) was shortlisted for the Lambda Literary Award. His two anthologies from the Poetry Unbound series have gathered widespread praise, with author Elif Shafak calling it “Mesmerising, magical, deeply moving…” In Autumn 2026, his collection Love Between Men will be published, and he will take up the role as Professor in the Practice of Spirituality at Yale Divinity School.
Episode 18, Kemi Alabi: “sound as a bridge to the beyond”
Available August 17
Kemi & I are all about sonics! Religious rebels have a moment with those from the beyond, and Kemi talks about reclaiming the body as a culture worker.
Photo credit: Ally Almore
Kemi Alabi is the author of Against Heaven (Graywolf Press, 2022), selected by Claudia Rankine as winner of the Academy of American Poets First Book Award, and co-editor of The Echoing Ida Collection (Feminist Press, 2021). Kemi’s work appears in The Nation, The Atlantic, The Guardian, the Grammy-nominated album Difficult Grace and elsewhere. Born in Wisconsin on a Sunday in July, they now live in Chicago, IL.
Episode 19, Brenda Hillman: “life loaded and unloaded”
Available August 24
Brenda & I unload ideas about our sister Emily’s influence, agree accessibility is the devil’s work, talk the long poem, the (short) chapbook, and much more!
Photo credit: Robert Haas
Brenda Hillman was born in Tucson, Arizona and has been an active part of the Bay Area literary community since 1975. She has published chapbooks with Penumbra Press, a+bend press, EmPress, A Minus Press, and Albion Books. And has published twelve full-length collections with Wesleyan University Press, including her upcoming title, Still House in the Desert: An eco-contemplation (September 2026), and her recent collections, In A Few Minutes Before Later (2022); Seasonal Works with Letters on Fire (2013), which received the International Griffin Poetry Prize; and Extra Hidden Life, among the Days (2018), winner of the Northern California Book Award.