In this episode of the podcast, we welcome Michele Battiste who gave a very special, intimate reading at The Poetry Motel in Albany, NY on May 22, 2009.
Dan Wilcox was the host of the reading and also took notes for his blog:
Tonight she was promoting her new book from Black Lawrence Press, Ink for an Odd Cartography. Her performance (it’s never simply a “reading”) included a few poems from the book, but others not there, such as her signature opening piece where she literally ties the audience together with thread, like a spider. She included a new piece she wrote as a participant in a project for poets to write poems about each of the first hundred days of Barack Obama’s presidency, “What He Said”. Her poems are smart & sexy with a hard-shell humor that softens to the most liquid of tender centers.
Michele Battiste was one of the many local poets who got their start at Tom Nattell’s legendary QE2 open mic back in the 90s and she has continued to share her words all across the country ever since.
Michele Battiste is the author of Waiting for the Wreck to Burn (Trio House, 2019), Uprising ( Black Lawrence, 2014), and Ink for an Odd Cartography ( Black Lawrence, 2009). She is also the author of several chapbooks, including Left: Letters to Strangers (Grey Book, 2014). Her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, The Rumpus, Memorious, and Women’s Studies Quarterly, among others.
Michele has taught poetry workshops for Wichita State University, the Prison Arts Program in Hutchinson, KS, Gotham Writers’ Workshops, and Teen Ink. A finalist for the National Poetry Series, she has received grants and awards from the New York Foundation for the Arts, AWP, the Center for the American West, the Jerome Foundation, and the NY State Senate. She lives in Colorado where she works for The Nature Conservancy, raising money to save the planet.
You can find out more about Michele on her website https://www.michelebattiste.net/
Please welcome, next up to the mic, Michele Battiste.
Bonus Video
Music Credit
Our opening music was “Coast to Coast” by Dieljel Zambo License code: CL1AM1GRBRPMHA9X
Our closing music was “Imagination” by Danijel Zambo. License code: 44TCGFPF1L1434BE
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