MPR has had a keen ear for capturing the words and meter of poetry. Minnesota is home to many nationally renowned poets, city and state poet laureates, spoken word artists, and individuals young and old that have simply created work for the sake of the form. The state is also a magnet for poets all throughout the world. Here is a wonderful breadth of those readings, speeches, thoughts, and histories of the poet.
May 25, 2012 - Essayist Peter Smith shares a poem on mowing the lawn. It captures the essence of the eternal struggle of adults getting kids to actually do the task.
August 1, 2012 - For the 5th anniversary of the 35W bridge collapse, Minnesota poet laureate Joyce Sutphen reads her poem "Someone Just Like You."
September 7, 2012 - MPR’s Marianne Combs sat down with author and fiber artist Gwen Westerman, painter and sculptor Jim Denomie, actor and spoken word artist R. Vincent Moniz, Jr., and poet Heid Erdrich. The discussion included what it means to be a contemporary Native artist working in a world that still has stereotypical notions of what it means to be an American Indian.
November 30, 2012 - MPR’s David Cazares profiles all-Black jazz group Mother of Masks, a group that blends spoken word, poetry and improvised music in a blues-based fountain of black creative consciousness.
April 16, 2013 - In an unlikely collaboration double Tony Award winning actor Mark Rylance joins forces with Duluth poet Louis Jenkins to create a new play about ice fishing at the Guthrie.
September 22, 2014 - Poetry has long fascinated former Star Tribune editorial board member Jim Lenfestey, both as a reader and a writer. Back in 1970 a bookseller gave him a collection of poems by Han Shan, or Cold Mountain, a Chinese poet who lived 1400 years ago.
August 21, 2015 - A tiny publisher in Duluth has released an anthology of poetry about Minnesota's biggest lake, titled “Amethyst and Agate: Poems of Lake Superior.” The collection from Holy Cow! Press celebrates the many moods of Lake Superior, and the powerful connection it has to the people who live near its vast shoreline.
October 23, 2015 - MPR’s Doualy Xaykaothao interviews local playwright May Lee-Yang and poet/playwright Saymoukda Duangphouxay Vongsay about “Hmong-Lao Friendship Play.”
October 23, 2015 - MPR’s Doualy Xaykaothao has a conversation with two Native-American artists, playwright Rhiana Yazzie and writer R. Vincent Moniz Jr.
November 6, 2015 - MPR’s Marianne Combs profiles a group of six Black women Minnesota writers Carolyn Holbrook, Lori Young-Williams, Andrea Jenkins, Shannon Gibney, Tish Jones, and Mary Moore Easter. They gathered at the The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis for a reading series called “More Than a Single Story.”