Tagged: poetry

  Jacqueline Kellachan from The Golden Notebook in Woodstock, NY joins us with this week's Book Picks. 

List after the break.

April is National Poetry Month, and today we’ll celebrate the likes of Whitman, Frost, and Ginsberg by welcoming readings of your favorite poems and recollections of how you discovered and fell in love with those words. 

Today in studio we welcome our very own Paul Elisha and poet Sarah Weist who will be reciting some of their poetry favorites. We will also be joined via telephone by Stu Bartow and a special guest poet. We welcome your favorites as well. WAMC's Ray Graf hosts.

    April is National Poetry Month. In this edition of A Bard's Eye View, WAMC's resident poet, Paul Elisha, sits down for a conversation with Djelloul Marbrook. They discuss Djelloul's work, Brushstrokes and glances.

Djelloul Marbrook's book of poems, Far from Algiers, won the 2007 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize and the 2010 International Book Award in poetry. He worked for many years as a reporter and editor for newspapers including the Providence Journal, Elmira Star-Gazette, Baltimore Sun, Winston-Salem Journal, Washington Star, and others. He lives in New York s mid-Hudson Valley with his wife Marilyn.

How did a prisoner of war survive six years and eight months of soul-crushing imprisonment in the Hanoi Hilton during the Vietnam War? By writing poetry. And how did he do it without pencil or paper?

Then-Captain John Borling "wrote" and memorized poems to keep his mind sharp and spirits up. He shared his creations with fellow captives by their only means of communication—the forbidden POW tap code. Rapping on the cell walls with his knuckles, he tapped poems, certainly of pain and despair, but also of humor, encouragement, and hope, to keep everyone’s strength and spirits alive.

John Borling joins us to talk about Taps on the Walls: Poems from the Hanoi Hilton.