You Shouldn't Let Poets Lie to You - Consortium for Gender, Sexuality, Race and Public Culture

An irreverent chat show in which hosts Amelia Ada and Alexandria Hall interview poets and invite them to tell you beautiful lies about a random assortment of subjects.

Season 2

About Reddit (w/ Natasha Rao)
About Sea-Monkeys (w/ Miller Oberman)
About the Electoral College (w/T Bambrick)
About Taking a Walk (w/Callie Siskel)

About Reddit (w/ Natasha Rao)

Greetings and blessings upon all April fools!

This episode we hear all about everyone’s favorite network of wisdom from the future Poet Laureate of the Skies and the author of Latitude (2021), Natasha Rao.

Natasha joins our educational programme to break down some important internet slang (NSFW, IRL, AMA, OP) and to debunk some common misconceptions about how to remove slugs from your garden.

We also discuss: Writing on airplanes, what counts as a “project” in “project books,” poetic color palettes, being lonely in the strip club, molten aesthetics, Bop-It, drunk slugs, gardening advice, grown-up blue, asking strangers for help, and German fashion magazines.

About Sea-Monkeys (w/ Miller Oberman)

Good morning Earthlings! Season’s greetings! Celestial seasonings!

For their last episode of 2024, Amelia and Alexandria talk about grief, 80s children’s toys, and mixed metaphors with poet Miller Oberman, author of Impossible Things, just out from Duke University Press.

We also swim around in Star Wars spoilers, fatherhood, the long-forgotten American poet icon Adelaide Crapsey, too-large koi, bibliomancy, the boogers of the Great Salt Lake, angels, and Tilda Swinton in Viktor & Rolf.

Listen to learn once and for all the answer to the most challenging and pressing question humankind faces: if they’re not monkeys, and they’re not shrimp, then what the hell are they??

As always, follow us on Instagram @poetsliepodcast and check out poetslie.biz for Poets Lie merchandise.

About the Electoral College (w/T Bambrick)

In this uniquely timely episode of Poets Lie, Alexandria and Amelia ask poet T Bambrick (author of Intimacies, Received, 2022) to explain everyone’s favorite American institution of higher learning: The Electoral College. Who goes there? How do you get in? What’s the graduation rate? How does it put the “mid” in Midwest? Listen to find out (maybe).

We also get into: “Finland,” Florida, skunks, alligators, Elizabeth Bishop and her ghost, ziplines, poetic lines, The UnTrimmed Bush, prose poems and/or essays, ex-long-distance-lovers, feeling sad.

Check in next month for something totally and refreshingly unrelated to current events.

Instagram

About Taking a Walk (w/Callie Siskel)

BLAMMO! Amelia and Alexandria are back with Season Two! Shaking off the crust of another hot goblin summer.

Did you miss us? Don’t lie.

Our guest for this very special premiere out-and-about episode is Callie Siskel, expert loop-walker and author of Two Minds (Norton 2024).

On our journey we discuss the elegiac mode, the meditative silence of art museums, the difficulty of walking and talking, good gait, snacking every quarter mile, horse idioms, secret staircases, the smell of lust, the etymology of the word “awkward,” the Los Angeles River, falling forward but not falling, and an out-and-back versus a loop. Plus, we debunk a pernicious rumor about Gene Siskel.

Season 1

Episode 10: About Conference
Episode 9: About Bogs (w/Tracy Fuad)
Episode 8: About Napoleon with Erin Marie Lynch
Episode 7: About Symbiosis with Jesse Nathan
Episode 6: About the Tarot with Elizabeth Metzger
Episode 5: About Hypnosis with Cathrine Pond and Kai Carlson-Wee
Episode 4: About Math with Adrienne Chung
Episode 3: About Cryptocurrency with Matt Broaddus
Episode 2: About Spooky Action at a Distance with Diannely Antigua
Episode 1: About Aeronautics with Austen Leah Rose
Teaser

Episode 10: About Conference

Every year, in early spring, thousands of American poets flock to a city in the continental U.S. for a gathering known as Conference. What do they do there? What kind of business do they conduct? What is a “panel”?

In this very special episode, Amelia and Alexandria travel to Kansas City, Missouri, to try and answer these questions, and more, in their first foray into investigative podcast fabulism.

Babes, it’s the season finale.

Featuring a brilliant clown car of beautiful poets:
Rebecca Bernard
Max Suzuki
Mitchell Jacobs
Jorrell Watkins
Bryan Byrdlong
Matt Broaddus
Madeleine Mori
Clancy Tripp
Alicia Wright
Kelly Hoffer
Kate Gibbel
Linda Harris-Dolan
Thomas Renjilian
Kate Greene
Rivka Clifton
and YSLPLTY intern-hopeful, Lindsey Skillen.

Will any of it make sense?

Will our intrepid hosts make it out alive?

Time to find out.

Episode 9: About Bogs (w/Tracy Fuad)

Release Date: 2/19/24

Who’s ready to get bogged up?!

This month on YSLPLTY we’re sitting down with Tracy Fuad to discuss her new book PORTAL (U Chicago Press 2024) and her deep and abiding love of land that is wet.

We also get bogged up about: The Corn Feed, Renaissance Faires, German buses, noise, permeability, (poetry) business trips, types of doors, “land that’s wet,” revenue streams, Jason’s ladder, getting really bogged up at The Corn Feed, the bog queen, the bogosphere, (de) and (re) composition, and Ye Olde Corne Feede.

“Bogs are the poets of the landscape–they’re composing.”

Episode 8: About Napoleon with Erin Marie Lynch

Release Date: 01/15/2024

Would you like it if we told you? If we told you about Napoleon? Would, would you like it?

On this episode we invite the poet Erin Marie Lynch, author of Removal Acts (Graywolf 2023), to debunk common misunderstandings about everyone’s favorite short king. Or was he really a toxic tall?

We also get into the weeds with Amelia’s favorite Gertrude Stein recording, Alexandria’s inevitable conquering of The Great British Bake Off, ABBA, family hauntings, internet archives, the essential tenets of lawn care, Scientologist yoga studios, and billiards.

Episode 7: About Symbiosis with Jesse Nathan

Release Date: 12/11/2023

This month we get symbiotic with Jesse Nathan, author of Eggtooth (Unbound Edition 2023), who tells us sweet lies about interspecies cooperation, dependence, and all kinds of dynamic relation.

Biological metaphors abound.

Also discussed: Discourse Barbie, making Dogs, cat litter(ature), Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, dreaming relevantly, lying rhymes, the singing of the frog, the little shovel, and being used well.

Episode 6: About the Tarot with Elizabeth Metzger

Release Date: 10/16/2023

Let’s get mystical! Elizabeth Metzger — author of Lying In (Milkweed 2023) — tells it slant, brings us deep into the five-layer dip of consciousness, and reads Amelia and Alexandria (for filth??).

Also discussed: perfumery; head, heart, and base notes; the inevitable Emily Dickinson, inventor of tarot; wallpaper glue, bed rest, the unborn and the dead; and Amelia’s bearded grandmother.

Time to ask the cards. Bug — Land — Moon —

Episode 5: About Hypnosis with Cathrine Pond and Kai Carlson-Wee

Release Date: 10/16/2023

You find yourself at the watering hole … with YSLPLTY’s first poet-couple dual interview … Catherine Pond, author of Fieldglass (Crab Orchard Series 2021) and Kai Carlson-Wee, author of Rail (BOA Editions 2018) …

Imagine … we discuss Kai’s culinary elan, the metal content of animals, a pet squirrel named Chauncey, Drop Dead Gorgeous, volleyball with Vanguard, confession and risk, potential reality TV shows about poets, hippos at the watering hole (hipponosis), and being crazy, lazy and in love …

You are getting sleepy … very sleepy …

Episode 4: About Math with Adrienne Chung

Release Date: 08/29/2023

Question: Three poets are lying about ‘rithmetic. If each is traveling at different speeds, and Amelia has two apples, Alexandria has eight cats and two dogs, and Adrienne has four leather jackets, when will we arrive at the truth?

On our latest episode, we invite Adrienne Chung, author of the forthcoming National Poetry Series-winning book Organs of Little Importance (Penguin, 2023), to lie to us about every poet’s favorite subject: Math!

Also discussed: All the infinities, eurythmy, hot yoga, Jungian dream analysis, dickmatization, SAT tutoring, black leather jackets in Berlin, form and formulas, and the Donut of Desire.

When do we buy the blouse?! Listen to find out.

Episode 3: About Cryptocurrency with Matt Broaddus

Release Date: 08/11/2023

Amelia and Alexandria are back! From the bottom of the well! With a new episode featuring Matt Broaddus, author of Temporal Anomalies (Ricochet Editions 2023).

We do a deep dive into the shady and fantastical world of cryptic currency, and discuss along the way gray goblins, improv poker, things falling out of the sky, gossip, the Gospel of Gretchen, and a singularity of lies. And we introduce the Misha Moment™.

We really want a bitcoin

P.S. The sun has returned to Los Angeles since this episode was recorded. This episode is its own temporal anomaly.

Episode 2: About Spooky Action at a Distance with Diannely Antigua

Release Date: 06/09/2023

In our second episode, we get spooky with Diannely Antigua.

We talk about Diannely’s first book Ugly Music, her forthcoming book Good Monster, and her work as Poet Laureate of Portsmouth, NH. Lies ensue about physics, distance, and food delivery.

“To be close to someone is to decide to allow your spaces to collide.”

Also discussed: Hot Goblin Summer™, LoTR, Yoga Toes, Capri Sun, pandemic romances, and husband material (plumbers).

PS: Amelia sends her greetings from the bottom of the well where she recorded this interview #HotGoblinSummer.

Episode 1: About Aeronautics with Austen Leah Rose

Release Date: 04/23/2023

For our inaugural episode, we talked with poet Austen Leah Rose about her new book Once, This Forest Belonged to a Storm, and invited her to lie to us about aeronautics. What is flight? “Air in conversation with air. That’s flying.”We also discuss: storms, motherhood, mushrooms, sky dancers, physics and Cocteau’s La Belle et la Bête.PS: We know the Björk video is from the 80s, not the 90s—this is a podcast of LIES! Please don’t @ us. Follow us @poetsliepodcast, check out poetslie.biz.

Teaser

Release Date: 04/15/2023

In anticipation of the first YSLPLTY episode, Amelia and Alexandria introduce themselves, and try to figure out what a podcast is… where do they grow? Who made the first one? Is this one?? Spoiler alert: the Poddy is in the bag.Follow us @poetsliepodcast, check out poetslie.biz, and stay tuned NEXT WEEK for Episode 1!

Gender & Sexuality Studies
University of Southern California
Mark Taper Hall of Humanities, 422
3501 Trousdale Parkway
Los Angeles, California 90089-4352

gssconsortium@usc.edu