30 Poets in 30 Days

Welcome to Larksong's celebration of National Poetry Month - 30 Poets in 30 Days! This annual event brings together poets from all over the country with poets local to Nebraska. This year we asked Larksong members first to fill half the reading slots, and the other half we filled during a visit to the Associated Writing Program's Conference and Book Fair in Seattle. Most of those were new acquaintances and this event was their introduction to Larksong. The mix of new and familiar allowed us to reach in this one program one of the primary objectives of all the programs we offer: to bring new voices to Nebraska audiences and help send Nebraska voices out into the world. Nebraska has a rich and active literary life and this 30 Poets program is designed to celebrate it.

We recorded 30 poets for this event - 31 actually, there's a bonus double reading on April 6! We reached them via Zoom, visited them in their homes, found them at work, at the airport, and at the Associated Writing Program Conference in Seattle. The poems range from heartbreaking to laugh-out-loud funny, and like such emotions in life they are all mixed up in this list, so you never know what you'll find when you click on a link and start watching. Be ready for anything!

The link to each daily reading will become "live" at 3 am CST on the date they're listed. To watch, click on the 30 Poets 30 Day thumbnail image. The video will play in your browser. Once live the link will stay live so you can watch as many times as you like. You can also find them on YouTube on Larksong's channel under 30 Poets in 30 Days. There's even a playlist!

A big thank you to all the poets involved!

Enjoy!

April 21 - Wandeka Gayle

Friday, April 21, 2023

Wandeka Gayle When we met Wandeka Gayle at the AWP Book Fair she said she was not a poet. Fiction is her thing, she said, though she did have a few poems she had published. We asked her to read for us and we discovered her poems were so beautiful we can’t wait to read her fiction too!

Wandeka is a Jamaican writer, visual artist, and Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Spelman College. She has been awarded writing fellowships from Kimbilio Fiction, Callaloo, the Hurston/Wright Foundation, and the Martha's Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. Gayle has a PhD in English/Creative Writing from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

Her collection of short stories, Motherland and Other Stories, was published by Peepal Tree Press in 2020. Other writing has appeared in Prairie Schooner, The Rumpus, Transition, Interviewing the Caribbean and other journals and magazines. She is currently working on her first novel, My Name Is Sweet Thing. Her art has been featured on Smile Jamaica, It's Morning Time (TVJ), in Focus Magazine, Da Vibe Magazine, and the Southwestern Review.

www.wandekagayle.com