Drunk as a Poet on Payday

Today on the show it's Natalie Shapero, and her new book, Stay Dead, her fourth full-length collection. Stay Dead was nominated for the longlist of the National Book Award in Poetry, I think even before it actually came out! And overseas, its British-published counterpart is a finalist for the equally impressive TS Eliot Prize. These are punchy poems, full of irony and humor and a sharp critical eye. We have a great talk about her poetry, the labor of working in space, washing the red item with the whites, and putting together a notes section for a book.

Natalie Shapero’s previous books include Popular Longing and Hard Child, also from Copper Canyon, and No Object, her debut, from Saturnalia books, which received the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award. Hard Child made the 2018 shortlist for the Griffin Poetry Prize. Her work has earned her a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a Ruth Lilly Fellowship and has appeared in The New Yorker, The London Review of Books, The New York Review of Books, The Paris Review, The Nation, and elsewhere. She lives in Los Angeles and teaches writing at UC Irvine.

Pick up a copy of Stay Dead here.

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Jason Gray

Jason Gray is the author of the poetry collections Radiation King and Photographing Eden. His poems and reviews have appeared in Poetry, Kenyon Review, Southern Review, Image, and elsewhere.

What is Drunk as a Poet on Payday?

Good news is sometimes hard to come by for poets, and what’s better news than a new book! Celebrate with us as Jason Gray hosts an interview podcast with poets discussing their new books. Each episode is a smart, fun look into the world of poetry, where the guests read several poems for their new work, and talk about how their books came to be, and how they write the way they do.

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What is Drunk as a Poet on Payday?