PennSound Daily

Video recordings of four events from the Spring 2025 semester at Kelly Writers House have landed here at PennSound, representing a range of styles and genres.

1. Figure and Trade: A poetics book launch with Julia Bloch and Sarah Dowling

February saw a celebration of in the form of a dual book launch featuring two new critical poetic titles: Julia Bloch's Lyric Trade: Reading the Subject in the Postwar Long Poem (University of Iowa Press) and Sarah Dowling's Here Is a Figure: Grounding Literary Form (Northwestern University Press).

The recording is available on both Julia Bloch and Sarah Dowling's author pages, and more information can be found on the Kelly Writers House Web Calendar entry.

2. A celebration of the life and work of Lyn Hejinian

In March the creaky chairs and wooden pews of the Arts Café hosted a different kind of celebration: a memorial for the late and beloved Lyn Hejinian. The event, hosted in tandem by Julia Bloch and Laynie Browne, featured readings and talks by seven poets: Charles Bernstein, Laynie Browne, Pattie McCarthy, Jena Osman, Ron Silliman, Claire Marie Stancek, and Syd Zolf.

Find a recording of the whole event at Lyn Hejinian's author page, and more information can be found on the Kelly Writers House Web Calendar entry.

3. Brave Testimony: M. Nzadi Keita

To kick off April, Penn's Center for Africana Studies hosted Philadelphia native (and self-proclaimed member of the "Germantown Poetry Mafia") M. Nzadi Keita, who read from her newest book, Migration Letters: Poems.

Find a recording of this event at PennSound's dedicated Brave Testimony series page, and more information can be found on the Kelly Writers House Web Calendar entry.

4. Emma Copley Eisenberg: reading and conversation

To round out the semester, Michelle Taransky's But Company Reading Series (formerly known as "Whenever We Feel Like It") featured Emma Compley Eisenberg, co-founder of Philadelphia's Blue Stoop poetry community and author of the forthcoming collection of short stories, Fat Swim (Penguin Random House).

Find a recording of this event at PennSound's dedicated But Company series page, and more information can be found on the Kelly Writers House Web Calendar entry.

Today we're happy to showcase two recent albums of poetry and music by A.L. Nielsen: Sometimes I Wonder Can a Cigar Box Hold My Blues (2021) and Spidercone — More Blues, Rage and Hollers (2022). Both albums have been available to purchase through online streaming platforms, but now, thanks to Nielsen, marks the first time they're freely available to the public, and with a handful of bonus tracks to boot.

The two jazz–poetry albums primarily feature music and poetry composed entirely by Nielsen, with the exception of "Self-Organizing Networks," where the music and performance is by Christopher Reiner (and included with permission).

You can find the full tracklisting for both albums at Nielsen's PennSound page.

Today we're spotlighting a newly archived podcast series here at PennSound affectionately dubbed Love Jawns: A Mixtape. Originally published between 2019 and 2020 in conjunction with Philadelphia Contemporary, Love Jawns: A Mixtape—or LJAM—was produced by Yolanda Wisher, Jaléssa Savage, and Wayv Wilson, and comprised two seasons, along with a collection of special episodes that effectively serves as a third season.

A love letter to the city of Philadelphia and a self-proclaimed "soundtrack of the city," each episode begins with an ethereal announcement from Wisher—"Doors are closing," a proclamation that should be instantly recognizeable to anyone who's ever taken the El in the past thirty years. An overarching soundtrack by a featured DJ then accompanies each episode, punctuated by readings by local and near-local figures, including a number of Philly's recent Poets and Youth Poets Laureate (including two former Kelly Writers House alumni, Husnaa Hashim and Wes Matthews, the latter of whom segmented audio recordings for PennSound as an undergraduate).

The full podcast series of twelve episodes, along with hi-res cover images and program notes, is available here.

Another exciting reading series has come to us thanks to Michael Cavuto and Tessa Bolsover, poets and PhD students in the English Department at Duke University. The series, called Solarities, ran for three years from 2023 to 2025 at the Nelson Reading Room at Duke, and was funded by the Franklin Humanities Institute, with support from the English Department, Gender, Feminism and Sexuality Department, Duke Arts, and the Center for Caribbean and Latin American Studies.

Included among Solarities's featured guests some familiar names: Joseph Donahue, Nathaniel Mackey, Will Alexander, Hoa Nguyen, Alice Notley, and Stacy Szymaszek. The series comprises five entries and the full collection is available at the Solarities Reading Series page.

Today’s massive new entry comes to us by way of series organizer Robert Mittenthal, who has generously supplied us with a vast collection of recordings from the Seattle-based Subtext Series. Our selection ranges from 1996 to 2009, during which the Subtext Series called three Seattle venues home: Speakeasy Cafe, Richard Hugo House, and the Chapel Performance Space at Good Shepherd Center.

Mittenthal writes:

We came up with what turned out to be a sustainable format for the series. Two person readings, once per month, on the same day, for example, the 3rd Thursday, at the same venue. One local writer, and one from out of town. Regardless of what was raised via donations at the door, we would pay the readers a nominal fixed amount, plus a small travel stipend for the visitor. We had no budget and no funding, so we focused primarily on the west coast, & tried to coordinate with writers who were traveling thru the Northwest.

Mittenthal’s “we” refers to series curators Laynie Browne, Jeanne Heuving, Herb Levy, Ezra Mark, Bryant Mason, C.E. Putnam, and Nico Vassilakis, with guest curators including Curtis Bonney, Daniel Comiskey, Joseph Donahue, Kreg Hasegawa, Drew Kunz, Will Owen, and Lou Rowan. Recordings were created for roughly half of the readings over the course of the fifteen years of the Subtext Series by Herby Levy and Bryant Mason.

You can explore the whole collection, which features 93 of the readings, split into sections based on performer, here.