Eleni Sikelianos : Memory Rehearsal
episode
Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry
2h 6m
2 speakers
8 chapters
transcribed 27 days ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
What is the overall theme of the episode and who is the guest?
Today's episode is brought to you by Water in the Desert: A Pilgrimage, by acclaimed agrarian activist and ethnobotanist Gary Paul Nabhan. Celebrated as a world visionary by Utney Reader and a lyrical poet of biodiversity by Mother Jones, Gary Paul Nabhan has authored dozens of books and been awarded a MacArthur Genius Grant. Water in the Desert is a profoundly Inspiring account of interspecies belonging, collaborative conservation, and the sacred work of caring for the earth. He traces his childhood growing up as a Lebanese American boy in the dunes along Lake Michigan's southern shore, to his interest in earth-based spiritual practices that led him to take vows as an ecumenical monk. A refreshing account of kinship with other species, water in the desert brings science to the service of land and culture, showing up what it looks like to reciprocate the gifts of nature with gifts of head, hands, and heart, writes Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass.
Water in the Desert is now available at milkweed.com. dot org. Today's conversation with Eleni Sakilianos is kind of a dream scenario for Between the Covers, as we use her hybrid genre family memoir as a portal into a conversation about poetry, about two very different poetic lineages, a conversation about archives, history, mythology, non-human intelligence, leaf blowers, quesas. For the bonus archive, Alleny performs an electrifying, extended reading from book one of HD's trilogy called The Walls Do Not Fall, one that is so mesmerizing that I instantly became not only an HD convert, but a person wondering why I haven't been reading her all this time. Yeah. It joins many incredible readings in the archive, whether Lisa Robertson reading her translation of Haggs, The Long Poem by Baudelaire, Jory Graham reading Robert Creeley and Edward Thomas, Alice Oswald reading from the Book of Job, Denez Smith giving us poetry prompts, or Jeannie Venasco's Craft Talk, How to Write Memorable Lines.
You can find out how to subscribe to the bonus audio and about all the many other possible benefits and rewards of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener supporter. whether the Milkweed Early Reader program or rare collectibles from past guests at patreon.com slash between the covers. And now for today's episode with Eleni Sakilianos.
Good morning and welcome to Between the Covers. I'm David Naaman, your host. Today's guest, poet, writer, and translator Eleni Sakilianos, is a graduate of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University, studying under the likes of Alan Ginsburg, Amiri Baraka, Bernadette Mayer, Alice Knotley, and Diane Deprima. In the 90s, she was a poet in residence at two homeless shelters in San Francisco, taught at the Teachers and Writers Collaborative, founded in New York City by writers and educators, including Grace Paley, Muriel Ruckheiser, and June Jordan, and co-ran the Wednesday night readings at St. Mark's Poetry Project. She has taught at the University of Denver, where she founded and ran their Writers in the Schools program.
and is currently a professor of literary arts at Brown University. Sekelianos is the author of ten books of poetry, most recently Your Kingdom, of which Pass Between the Covers guest Layle Longsoldier says, I am utterly awed by Eleni Sekelianos's Your Kingdom. These poems spread their mammoth wings across a singing rhythmic soundscape of language and into a Layered timescape of evolution, wherein each you is a metaphor for us, and us equals human, plant, animal, earth, land, its waters, and even the stars as relatives. This is a celebration of our forever connectivity, our collective beauty, strangeness, messiness, vibrant color, morphing, and seemingly infinite name. Thank you, Eleni, for this book, inside which I have never felt more present in the story of this world.
Her translations from French include Jacques Robot's Exchanges on Light and Sabine Macher's The L Notebook. She is a frequent collaborator across disciplines, whether with visual artist Mel Chin or musician Philip Glass.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the overall theme of the episode and who is the guest?
0:00–20:49
2
How does Eleni Sikelianos describe her poetic lineage and early career?
20:49–36:39
3
What are the three books in her hybrid memoir trilogy and what do they explore?
36:39–51:37
4
How did the Delphic festivals and Eva Palmer’s revival shape the book?
51:37–1:05:42
5
Why does the author use weaving as a metaphor for memory and resistance?
1:05:42–1:19:12
6
What is the difference between her poetic and prose approaches in Memory Rehearsal?
1:19:12–1:33:56
7
How does she engage with archives, documentary poetics, and transmission of knowledge?
1:33:56–1:49:25
8
What final insights does she offer about the title ‘Memory Rehearsal’ and the future of eco‑poetics?
1:49:25–2:04:50