S9 Ep. 10: Maya Angelou Book Award Winner Alison C. Rollins on the Poetics of Sound, Space, and Image

2025 Maya Angelou Book Award winner Alison C. Rollins joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V. V. Ganeshananthan to discuss her 2024 poetry collection Black Bell. She explores the history and symbolism of a bell-laden iron device used to control and torture enslaved people and describes the replica she created after studying metalworking. She also recounts the story of Harriet Jacobs, who spent seven years hidden in her grandmother’s attic before escaping slavery. Rollins talks about how her poems engage in call and response with other texts, including the music of Sun Ra and Stevie Wonder and images connected to ornithology, anatomy, Afrofuturism, and the history of slavery. She reflects on who has historically been granted the title of “poet” in America and discusses the archival research behind her writing. Rollins rings a glass bell and reads several poems from Black Bell.To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/This podcast is produced by V.V. Ganeshananthan, Whitney Terrell, Amelia Fisher, Victoria Freisner, Wil Lasater, and S E Walker. Alison C. RollinsBlack BellLibrary of Small CatastrophesOthers:Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet JacobsThe Divine Comedy - Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso by Dante AlighieriThe Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. LewisThe Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. TolkienWu - Tang Clan - Enter The Wu - Tang (36 Chambers) [Full Album Mix] See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.