ep. 149 - Katie Bickham

Katie Bickham's second book of poetry, Mouths Open to Name Her, is now available from LSU Press. It was selected by former Louisiana Poet Laureate Ava Leavell-Haymon as part of the Barataria Poetry Series. Her debut collection, The Belle Mar (Pleiades 2015), won the Lena-Miles Wever Todd Prize. Katie is the recipient of The New Millenium Poetry Prize, The Lena-Miles Wever Todd Prize from Pleaides Press, The Missouri Review Editor's Prize, and Rattle's Reader's Choice Award for "The Blades." Katie teaches creative writing at Bossier Parish Community College in Bossier City, Louisiana. Find more at: http://www.katiebickham.net/ As always, we'll also include live open lines for responses to our weekly prompt or any other poems you'd like to share. A Zoom link will be provided in the chat window during the show before that segment begins. For links to all the past episodes, visit: https://www.rattle.com/rattlecast/ This Week's Prompt (from Mark Gibbons): Write a poem titled, “If This Were a _______ Poem” (insert some known artist or character: Charlie Chaplin, Madonna, Jackson Pollack, Miles Davis, Isadora Duncan, Prince, Hemingway, etc.), as in Mark Gibbons' “If This Were a Sam Shepard Poem.” Next Week's Prompt (from Katie Bickham): Take any abstraction like sorrow, envy, loneliness, desire, homesickness, hope, etc. and make that your title. Then the body of the poem is simply a description of that abstraction using ONLY concrete images and stories. Three great examples are Anne Sexton's "Courage," Stephen Dunn's "Tenderness," and Jane Kenyon's "Happiness." The Rattlecast livestreams on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, then becomes an audio podcast. Find it on iTunes, Spotify, or anywhere else you get your podcasts.