The turn is the destination: a conversation with Kate Kearns and Gibson Fay-LeBlanc

Poetry Medicine for the Soul is a podcast inviting poets to share and examine their work, produced and moderated by John Gillespie. Episode 23 features Kate Kearns and Gibson Fay-Leblanc. Kate reads “Love Poem with Faults” and “Mushrooms Can Consume Nuclear Waste.” Gibson reads “To My Wife” and “Lorca says, the duende loves the rim of the wound”. Kate Kearns is the author of You Are Ruining My Loneliness (Littoral Books, 2023), and a chapbook called How to Love an Introvert (Finishing Line Press, 2015). Her work has appeared in Maine Women Magazine, the Maine Sunday Telegram “Deep Waters” section, and on Maine Public Radio’s “Poems from Here”. Her poems have also been published in Salamander, Peregrine, Northern New England Review, Sugar House Review and elsewhere. Kate was a finalist for the 2024 Charles Simic Poetry Prize and the 2024 Maine Postmark Poetry Contest. She earned her MFA from Lesley University and BA from Sarah Lawrence College. Learn more at: www.katekearns.com. Gibson Fay-LeBlanc’s first collection of poems, Death of a Ventriloquist, won the Vassar Miller Prize and was featured by Poets & Writers. His second, Deke Dangle Dive, was published by CavanKerry Press in 2021. His poems have appeared in magazines including The New Republic, Tin House, The Literary Review, FIELD, Poetry Northwest and Orion. Gibson’s prose has appeared in Guernica, Kenyon Review, Publishers Weekly, Slice, and other places.  He served as the City of Portland’s fifth Poet Laureate, ending a three-year term in 2018. His projects included Written, Spoken, Rapped, a multimedia website that he collaborated on with poet Wesley McNair and that is aimed at high school teachers and students interested in writing poetry, and “Deep Water,” a column that features a poem each Sunday in the Maine Sunday Telegram and now continues with poet Megan Grumbling as editor.  With graduate degrees from UC Berkeley and Columbia University, he has taught writing at conferences, schools and universities including Fordham, Haystack, and University of Southern Maine, and helped lead community arts organizations including The Telling Room, SPACE Gallery, and Hewnoaks Artist Colony. He currently serves as executive director of the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance and lives in Portland with his family. Learn more at: www.gibsonfayleblanc.com This podcast is hosted and produced by John Gillespie. Check out our website for more episodes: https://poetry-medicine-for-the-soul.simplecast.com/Listen and subscribe to Poetry Medicine for the Soul in Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Get in touch with us at: [email protected]