1. Things to Say to the Places We've Been

Episode 1: Things To Say To The Rooms We’ve Been InWelcome to the pilot episode of Things - A Poetry Podcast. This is a podcast about poetry, the things we do with words, and the artifacts those words leave behind. Hosted by Roadside Press authors Kerry Trautman and Pella Felton, this inaugural flight bridges the gap between high-level performance theory and the messy, hyper-local reality of the Midwest literary underground.In this episode, Kerry and Pella sit down on the carpet to navigate the anxieties of impending book releases—Kerry's Things To Say When You Have Nothing To Say and Pella's {f}ragile Nests. They balance the very real chaos of broken furnaces, high school musicals, and the sociopolitical dread of the current news cycle with the intimate, grounding act of reading each other's work.Inside the Room:The Ecosystems We Inhabit: Kerry takes the listener into the  claustrophobia of Prout Chapel, the dearly departed Winter Wheat Fetival, the cinematic audacity of eating Chinese food in the third row of an MFA reading, and the hilarity ofcrashing a deeply queer Bowling Green open mic looking like Jane Calamezzo. Meanwhile, Pella unpacks how we document the past, why poets can't stop using birds as a deus ex machina, how the things we leave behind shape our narratives, and why Nicholas Sparks is a fascist. Poems Read & Discussed:Listening to a Poet in a College Chapel as Autumn Rain Pelts Black Windows by Kerry Trautman The Archive and the Repertoire by Pella Felton Flightless by Kerry Trautman If You're A Bird by Pella Felton What We're Reading:Kerry: Roadside Assistance: A Roadside Press ReaderPella: Kooser, Ted - The Poetry Home Repair ManualFollow the Hosts:Kerry Trautman: Find her on Instagram at @ohiokerry and via Linktree for access to her nine (!) collections. Pella Felton: instagram @birdsarepoems"Bird By Bird: Ranking Every Avian Rerence in Kerry Trautman's 'Things To Say When You Have Nothing To Say' Subscribe to Things wherever you get your podcasts, and remember: we expect great things from you.