Episode 34: For the Love of Poetry

In this episode of The Watchung Booksellers Podcast, poets Alicia Cook and Deborah Garrison share how poetry fosters connection and their own work. Plus, at the end of the episode, listen to some of the poetry readings from our special Valentine's Day Pop-Up Poetry Booth in The Kids' Room. 

Deborah Garrison began her career at the The New Yorker, where she worked for fifteen years and where her poetry first began appearing in the late 80s. She is the author of the bestselling poetry collection A Working Girl Can’t Win, published in 1998, and joined book publishing herself in 2000, as the Poetry Editor of Alfred A. Knopf and a Senior Editor at Pantheon Books. Now editorial director of Knopf poetry, Deb also enjoys working with writers of literary fiction and biography. She is a proud Montclairian and raised her three kids here in town; their childhood and the experience of mothering them is the subject of many of the poems in her book The Second Child. Her poems have also appeared in a number of anthologies, including Garrison Keillor’s Good Poems series and Caroline Kennedy’s She Walks in Beauty: A Womans’s Journey Through Poems.

Alicia Cook is a multi-award-winning writer and mental health and addiction awareness advocate based in Newark, New Jersey. Her writing often focuses on addiction, mental health, and grief – sometimes all at once. She is the poet behind Stuff I’ve Been Feeling Lately, I Hope My Voice Doesn’t Skip, Sorry I Haven’t Texted You Back, and last year’s The Music Was Just Getting Good. Her work has also been published in numerous anthologies and outlets including The New York Times. She received an MBA from Saint Peter’s University and a bachelor’s degree in English Literature from Georgian Court University, where she currently serves on the Board of Trustees. Alica has shared her work multiple times at Watchung Booksellers and we are excited to welcome her to the podcast.

Resources:

American Guild of Musical Artists

September 1, 1939 by W. H. Auden

Mosab Toha

Books:
A full list of the books and authors mentioned in this episode is available here.

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The Watchung Booksellers Podcast is produced by Kathryn Counsell and Marni Jessup and is recorded at Watchung Booksellers in Montclair, NJ.

The show is edited by Kathryn Counsell.

Original music is composed and performed by Violet Mujica.

Art & design and social media by Evelyn Moulton. Research and show notes by Caroline Shurtleff.

Thanks to all the staff at Watchung Booksellers and The Kids’ Room!

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