Episode 598

with Tracy K. Smith, Saeed Jones, and Meklit

In this Black History Month special episode, former U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith discusses her memoir To Free the Captives, which looks to uncover Black strength, continuance, and community by looking back at her own family’s history; poet Saeed Jones (Alive at the End of the World) unpacks the backstories behind some of his poems involving Billie Holiday, Maya Angelou, and Luther Vandross; and Ethio-Jazz musician Meklit performs the song, “I Want to Sing for Them All” as a tribute to her musical influences.

Ep. 598: Tracy K. Smith, Saeed Jones, and Meklit
Live Wire with Luke Burbank
 

Tracy K. Smith

22nd Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize-winning author

Tracy K. Smith is a poet, memoirist, librettist, translator, and Professor of English and African and African American Studies at Harvard University. She’s the author of five acclaimed poetry collections, including Life on Mars, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Her memoir, Ordinary Light, was a finalist for the National Book Award. From 2017 to 2019, she served as the twenty-second Poet Laureate of the United States, during which she spearheaded American Conversations: Celebrating Poems in Rural Communities with the Library of Congress, created the American Public Media podcast The Slowdown, and edited the anthology American Journal: Fifty Poems for Our Time. In her new memoir, To Free the Captives: A Plea for the American Soul Tracy aims to understand the future of Black community and strength by going backwards and investigating her own family’s story. Website Instagram

 
 

Saeed Jones

Poet and author

Award-winning American poet Saeed Jones is back with Alive at the End of the World, a brand new poetry collection from Coffee House Press. He is the winner of the 2019 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction for his memoir How We Fight For Our Lives and the 2015 PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry for his poetry collection Prelude to Bruises. His work has also appeared in The New York Times, the New Yorker, and GQ magazine among many others. When he’s not writing, he’s co-hosting Vibe Check, a weekly podcast with Sam Sanders and Zach Stafford, where they make sense of what’s going on in news and culture – and how it all feels. Originally from Memphis Tennessee, he now crafts his work about the complicated affair of being alive from Columbus, Ohio. WebsiteTwitterInstagram

 
 

Meklit

Ethio-jazz singer- songwriter

Meklit Hadero, an Ethio-American vocalist, mixes the sounds of East Africa and the Bay Area so smoothly Silicon Valley should use her process to make a super blender. Her latest album When the People Move, the Music Moves Too was called “...compelling and wholly her own” by Afropop. A singer-songwriter with a love of collaboration, she’s also a TED Senior Fellow whose talk “The Unexpected Beauty of Everyday Sounds” has been viewed over 1.2 million times. Meklit is also the host of the podcast Movement where she tells stories of global migration through music. Get ready to get down with Meklit. WebsiteTwitterInstagram

 
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Episode 597