Elise Hu

You can find episodes of Design Matters wherever you get your podcasts.

Learn more about the TED Audio Collective at audiocollective.ted.com.

Sometimes I almost remember it like I wrote it rather than as it happened.

When I interview designers, painters, photographers, movie makers, illustrators, and other visual artists, I talk to them about their lives, their creative processes, and their work.

But because it's an audio podcast, listeners can't see what we're talking about.

When I interview musicians, some have agreed to perform a song or two in our little podcast booth, which is an extraordinary gift.

But not every musician I speak with is a singer-songwriter who can show up in person with a guitar.

But when I interview poets, I always get them to read some of their work, and poets are wonderful readers of their poems.

On this episode celebrating the 20th anniversary year of Design Matters, I'd like to play excerpts from some of the poets I've had the pleasure of talking with and listening to.

Eileen Miles has been publishing poetry for 50 years and is a literary institution in New York City's East Village.

They're also a novelist, an art journalist, and a writer of opera libretti.

If you look up the words hip or cool in my imaginary illustrated dictionary, you will find a headshot of Eileen Miles.

I spoke with them in 2017.

You moved to New York City in 1974 to be a poet.

And you said that all of your life people have asked you what you do and you say that you're a poet and they just kind of look at you like you've said you're a stripper.

Still?

You've written about how you walked into the Viselka Cafe in October of 1975.

Yes.

and met the late New York poet Paul Violi, who invited you to a workshop at St.

Mark's Church, and you went and wrote this about the experience.