Chicago Poetry Tour Podcast
From the neighborhood library of Gwendolyn Brooks, to the Union Stock Yards, where Chicago became Carl Sandburg’s “Hog Butcher for the World,” to the birthplace of slam poetry, the Chicago Poetry Tour explores the city’s history through its dynamic poets and poetry.
Episodes
Established in 1940 by the WPA's Federal Art Project, the South Side Community Art Center has provided a second home for the city's African-American artists. Haki Madhubuti, founding editor of Third World Press, reads.
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One of the 20th century's most significant poets, Gwendolyn Brooks wrote about race in America, often from the perspective of her Bronzeville neighborhood.
Margaret Walker's signature poem "For My People" encompasses the strengths and struggles of Blacks not only in Chicago but throughout America.
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The DuSable Museum is one of the nation's premier institutions dedicated to the history, art, and culture of the African diaspora. Quraysh Ali Lansana reads from his collection They Shall Run: Harriet Tubman Poems.
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Pilsen was a diverse neighborhood in Chicago long before anybody used the word “diversity.” Stuart Dybek and Ana Castillo read poems inspired by their childhoods there.
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Marc Smith conceived the worldwide phenomenon of slam poetry at the Green Mill in the 1980s. Audience participation encouraged.
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The neighborhood of Bucktown is home to Danny's Tavern and Myopic Books, two hot spots in the local poetry scene. Srikanth Reddy and Peter O'Leary read.
The Newberry Library is an independent research library, and has twice served as the home for Poetry magazine during its prestigious and often surprising past.
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Li-Young Lee grew up in this immigrant neighborhood, and his poem "The Cleaving" depicts his struggles with identity, violence, and universality.
This tour stop includes poetry addressed to graves in Chicago's ritzy Graceland Cemetery. Carl Sandburg, Vachel Lindsay, and Harriet Monroe meditate on mortality and what should, or should not, be memorialized.
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Home to street venders and musicians alike, Maxwell Street was one of Chicago's most vibrant gathering places. Michael Anania pays homage with a poem and a touch of the blues.
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Sterling Plumpp dubs the Velvet Lounge a "shrine to jazz," and explains how jazz fuels his sense of poetic craft.
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The Great Migration gave birth to a new brand of blues in Chicago, and Chess Records helped make it famous. Sterling Plumpp and Tyehimba Jess read their bluesy poetry.
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Union Stock Yard Gate is all that remains of the mile-wide livestock market that provided Carl Sandburg with his famous epithet for Chicago, “Hog Butcher for the World.”
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Featuring Bucky Halker, Wobblies, and Studs Terkel, this segment explores the dynamic poetry and songs reflecting Chicago’s industrial labor movements.
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The El, or the elevated train system, is one of Chicago’s most distinctive features, “the sound of the city.” Reginald Gibbons and members of the Speak Easy Ensemble share their El-inspired poetry.
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Harold Washington was elected as Chicago’s first African American mayor in 1983. Gwendolyn Brooks, Edward Hirsch, and Albert Goldbarth read an array of poems celebrating progress and the pleasures of reading.
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In 1912, Harriet Monroe founded Poetry magazine as a forum for modernist poetry. Featured are poems by George Dillon and John Frederick Nims, former editors of Poetry.
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Renovated in 1898 to create studios for musicians, artists, and writers, the Fine Arts Building was a hotbed of artistic activity, home to magazines such as the Dial and the Little Review, and the offices of Frank Lloyd Wright and Edgar Lee Masters.
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In the early 20th century, the Cliff Dwellers Club hosted poets at all stages of their careers, from the towering figures of Ezra Pound and William Butler Yeats to young unknown Carl Sandburg.
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