If you’ve lived in the west for more than a season or two, you may have a love/hate relationship with August. It’s the last month or so of summer break for many, a busy time for road trips and back-to-school shopping. It’s hot and the sky is often hazy from wildfires, sometimes from a blaze two states away.
Smoke is our theme this month on the show. Whether that’s smoke from campfires, or smoke as a mystery, a sign of danger or foreboding. Shakespeare talks about love being a smoke made with the fume of sighs. And Van Gogh speaks of smoke as a subtle sign of the inferno within: “There may be a great fire in our soul, yet no one ever comes to warm himself at it, and the passers-by see only a wisp of smoke."
It's the first full week of August. Today, Diana Forgione reads a poem by Jordan DeLawder called “Smoke Cherries.” Delawder is a mixed-race poet, photographer, and printmaker. Their art relates to ecology, devotional practices, and queer futurity.
Our guest this month is Diana Forgione. Forgione is a poet, writer, and editor whose work can be found in Homology Lit, Reality Beach, and Cobra Milk among other places. They are the Co-Founder of Death Rattle Literary, Head Editor for OROBORO, and a judge and workshop instructor for the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards.
Something I Heard is supported by Idaho Commission on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.
