Cornell professor co-hosts London Review of Books poetry podcast

This summer, Cornell poet and critic Sandeep Parmar will explore poetry as a guiding force for understanding work, technology, divorce, sex, weather, food and money through a new podcast series, "Poetry and the Turning World," for the London Review of Books (LBR), co-hosted with the prize-winning poet Sarah Howe.

"Poetry has the ability to teach us how we relate to our past and our future," said Parmar, professor of literatures in English in the College of Arts and Sciences. "Whether that's building national histories in the past or isolated emotional expressions in the present, I think there is something about poetry that we always turn to, inevitably, to try to understand what it is we feel."

Launching on June 7 with the episode "Poetry and Work," the series comprises six studio recorded episodes and the finale, "Poetry and Sex," live from London July 8 and features some Cornell connections. A poem by Valzhyna Mort, associate professor of literatures in English, appears in the first episode and Parmar said she expects the spirit of renowned Cornell poet A. R. Ammons to help to guide the last.

Through the podcast series, Parmar and Howe want to connect urgent issues to poetry. The series title recalls T. S. Eliot's "still point of the turning world" from his Four Quartets, Parmar said. She sees poetry as "an essential, somewhat unchangeable but also responsive space for cultural discourse."

Read the full story on the College of Arts and Sciences website.