Poets in the Conversation Room

In a spontaneous back-and-forth style, renowned poet and playwright Grace Cavalieri, recent Maryland Poet Laureate, joins Kymberly Taylor, poet and Editor-in-Chief of Annapolis Home Magazine, to discuss the nature of poetry, why poetry is needed here and now in Annapolis, and to present their launch of an exciting new poetry series.

Grace Cavalieri: Why in the world are we planning a Poetry Series in Annapolis?

Kymberly Taylor: Annapolis needs poetry. It needs this incredible art form that helps us feel things beyond what we hear and read online, on television, and in the news.

GC: You and I are writers, so we love poetry. But what makes us think that it is for everybody? I believe it is. I have never met a person who has not secretly written a poem. But what makes us think we can get enough people to attend a poetry series?

KT: We have to remind people right here and now how fabulous listening to a poem is because it helps you think about your own life in a different way. Your own perspective and other people’s. It’s like a mini revelation.

GC: I like that a lot. It is said that poetry makes us less lonely because if a poet says something and you have thought the same thing to yourself but never said it out loud, you’ll think, “Thank goodness, someone feels as I do.”

KT: Yes, you’re no longer alone in the cold, cruel universe or feeling empty.

GC: Well, I don’t think we can save people’s lives, but we can save their emotional lives for sure. Why do you write poetry?

KT: I feel like there are hidden energies in language. I need to wake them up, play with them, and bring them forward.

GC: Well, what do you discover about yourself? Because I find it is an act of discovery. I don’t know where I’m going… it’s not a chess game. I don’t know where I’m going with the poem, but when I finish, something is clearer to me than it ever was before.

Let’s tell everyone about this grand idea…. I have been a poet laureate since 2018, and Governor Moore is going to choose a new one any day. In those days, those years, I tried to garner support for poetry. I found in Annapolis, and everywhere I went, even in the most educated book clubs, they would say, “This is the first poetry reading I have ever heard.” I found that so sad. I thought, “Make a place, and people will come.”

Why do you think the community is welcome at St. John’s?

KT: President Nora Demleitner was on the cover of our Faces of Annapolis in 2022, and we had the great opportunity to interview her shortly after she arrived. One of her goals was to welcome the community into St. John’s on a regular basis, to interact.

GC: There will be a reading from a world-class poet the first Saturday of each month, starting September 7 and running through December, for the first half of our season. We even know the first few poets.

Our inaugural reader is David Keplinger; he is a very beloved poet in America and has a poem in this issue of AH. He has been named a top scholar and top teacher at AU and heads their MFA program in poetry. What do you think about distributing one of his poems to the audience?

KT: I think it is a great idea; it is not usually done at readings. Usually, the poet just reads, and the audience listens. I think it makes sense for St. John’s and think they would like to ask questions and comment on it and have a colloquy, a form they are so comfortable with.

GC: We talked to the President’s team. They did like this in terms of how it fits in with their Socratic method, and I think the poets would like to talk about their poems.

Imagine a 40-minute reading and a 20-minute Q and A in their beautiful venue called “The Conversation Room.” I think it’s going to create a tremendous audience because it’s also entertaining. Poetry speaks to how we feel and how it is to be alive in this world—and who does not want to hear that?

KT: Who’s on the roster?

GC: We have David Keplinger, then Pulitzer prize-winning poet Remica Bingham-Risher, Carolyn Forche, and something very special. The fourth poet, Andrew Wong, will read poetry from the Tang Dynasty (618-907). He will be in conversation with a St. John’s faculty member who is a Chinese translator. We hope some of the students come, that the faculty come, and that the word gets out.

Annapolis will have a poetry presence. It will be a locus, a place for poetry. And that is what has been missing. We want Annapolis to be seen as a temple carrying the light.

KT & GC: Readers of this magazine are invited and must come over to say hello to us! We will see you September 7 at 2 pm in The Conversation Room at St. John’s College.

Grace Cavalieri is an award-winning American poet, playwright, and radio host of the Library of Congress program The Poet and the Poem. In 2018, she was appointed the tenth Poet Laureate of Maryland. She has produced 24 plays and authored over 16 books of poetry, most recently the award-winning Owning The Not So Distant World. Grace holds the inaugural Columbia Award for service to poetry, the National Working Women Commission’s Award, The Pen-Fiction Award, the DC Poet Laureate Award for Poetry, and many others.

Kymberly Taylor has an MFA from Columbia University and has published poems in journals such as New American Writing, the Boston Review, Notre Dame Review, Pivot, Samizdat, The Fortnightly Review, the Hawaii Review, and the Seneca Review. Her chapbook “Extravagant Captivities” is published by Aralia Press. Poems are forthcoming in FotoSpecchio.

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