In July (or so) this year, on a rainy Sunday I took the 1 train up to the offices of WKCR at Columbia University.The day alternated downpour and sprinkle. Occasional radiance. I didn't think of it at the time, but this was the neighborhood, looking over to the blue-shining Hudson between brick buildings and mossy strips of Riverside Park, that had me creating ways to describe a cloud a few years ago. I'd been freelancing in the university Trustees office.
This Sunday I left enough time to stop off and arm myself with iced coffee; the afternoon was muggy and compliantly hot (cold and muggy?) and I rattled ice cubes as I climbed stairs to the studio. Anne and I chatted. She surprised me by naming poems she'd like to hear from The Future Is Happy. She'd clearly prepared. Nervous and new to interviews I asked for a few retakes of poems I stuttered through. Indulgent and then businesslike, Anne got me talking.
"The deal of it is" (as I write in "A Clairvoyant Cartography," one of the poems Fiero requested), she's smart and funny and a dream interviewer.
From her Web site: Anne Cammon Fiero "curates a literary edition of the weekend radio show Studio A on WKCR FM New York, featuring contemporary works of poetry, fiction and new music in a choreographed, experimental format that transforms the written and spoken word into engaging cultural programming."
This will get you to Sarah Sarai as podcast. The undisguised link is http://www.annecammon.com/audio/Sarah_Sarai.mp3
Happy listening, friends.
Sarah
from "A Clairvoyant Cartography":
The deal of it is
Aristotle wrote it was heart
and not brain cranking think power,
a clairvoyant cartography of mind and body.
from The Future Is Happy (BlazeVOX)
