This week on the Sewanee Review podcast, Vievee Francis joins managing editor Eric Smith to discuss nuances of the southern landscape, influential Detroit poets, and what it means to produce earnest work. Francis posits the question: is it possible to create art without pushing boundaries? It seems the importance of poetry—what might render its integrity—blossoms from the landscape at large. “Everyone is speaking,” she says, “and that’s got to change us.”
Vievee Francis is the recipient the 2021 Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry. She is known for her poetry collections Blue-tail Fly, Horse in the Dark, and Forest Primeval, which won the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Poetry. She serves as an associate editor at Callaloo, and she is currently an associate professor in the Department of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College.
The Sewanee Review Podcast is recorded in the Ralston Listening Room at the University of the South. This episode is produced by Luke Gair and edited by ProPodcast Solutions with music by Annie Bowers. Don’t miss any of our conversations with some of today’s best writers. Subscribe to the Sewanee Review Podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.