Welcome back! (Or just plain old welcome, if you're here for the first time.)
Here at Lucky Words, I'm trying for a podcast a day during National Poetry Month, which is April every year. It's a bit like NaNoWriMo, except for podcasts, and poetry, and no one else in the world does it except me. I hope you enjoy it.
If you've got suggestions, corrections, comments, or criticism, I'd love to hear it. Seriously: even the angry stuff. If you want to say something, say it. Send an email to luckywordspodcast@gmail.com.
A little background on Lucky Words the podcast
Lucky Words started as a series of posts on Facebook back in 2015 or so. In 2017, I started recording some of my poetry analysis as a podcast, just to get more people involved. It worked: there are now hundreds of people around the world who are listening to Lucky Words, only one of whom is my mother (Hi, Mom!).
I discovered quickly that sitting at a desk and recording was unpleasant for me. I can't teach sitting behind a desk or a lectern, I need to be pacing around the room. I need to move my body. And if I could do it in interesting places, all the better. So I started integrating my experiences in the outdoors with my reading and talking about poems.
Right now, sometimes I take time on a hike to record a podcast, and sometimes I make recording a podcast an excuse for a hike. Regardless, any environmental sounds are real and recorded at the time. Also, I can have lousy microphone technique because I am legitimately out of breath. I'm climbing a mountain!
A word on fair use
Most of the poetry here is in the public domain. That's the easy part. Some of it is not. I consider any non-public domain works to be covered by fair use. My purpose is education, and there is no negative effect upon the market value of the works I chose to read here.
Are you a poet I featured here? Are you a publisher of a poet I featured here? Please let me know if (a) you would prefer that I take it down or (b) you would like to give me some sponsorship or a publishing deal. Either one is fine with me, but if I had my druthers I'd prefer B.
Who am I?
Briefly, I'm a middle aged guy who has studied and taught literature at various universities in the United States. OK, it's only two universities: The Ohio State and Brigham Young. My masters and doctoral work was on early modern drama and poetry, which is still a favorite of mine.
But who am I kidding: I love poetry from all the eras. I'm a bit of a sucker for mid-20th century poetry, even though I don't have any real scholarly background in the period. I mean: I lived it, but that doesn't count.
I live in Utah, and I love the American southwest. Hence the hiking, etc. I never want to move from here.
What's next?
In addition to the podcast, I'm starting a weekly newsletter which will cover many of the same things that I talk about in my poetry analyses. You can sign up for that just as soon as I've got it up and running. Stay tuned.
And now: go listen to some poetry. Get outside. Do both at the same time: it's magic!