For this web exclusive episode of The Write Question, host Lauren Korn speaks with poet Carl Phillips, author of Scattered Snows, to the North, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Then the War and Selected Poems, 2007-2020 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). In this conversation, Carl and Lauren discuss the way his poetry reflects and/or enacts the subjects he writes about: among them, distortion and revelation, memory and vulnerability. If we remember a thing, did it happen? And if we believe it didn’t happen, does that make our belief true?
Carl will be a guest of the University of Montana’s MFA creative writing program on Wednesday, November 6, 2024; he’s giving a reading at the Missoula Art Museum at 7PM. Fact & Fiction will be selling books at the event.
This conversation has been lightly edited for time.
About Carl:
Carl Phillips is the author of 17 books of poetry, most recently Scattered Snows, to the North (2024) and Then the War: And Selected Poems 2007-2020, which won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize. His other honors include the 2021 Jackson Prize, the Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry, the Kingsley Tufts Award, a Lambda Literary Award, the PEN/USA Award for Poetry, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Library of Congress, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Academy of American Poets.
Phillips has also written three prose books, most recently My Trade is Mystery: Seven Meditations from a Life in Writing (Yale University Press, 2022); and he has translated the Philoctetes of Sophocles (Oxford University Press, 2004).
He lives on Cape Cod, in Massachusetts.
Carl Phillips recommends:
The novels of Banana Yoshimoto
Wednesday’s Child: Stories by Yiyun Li (Picador USA)
A Glass of Blessings by Barbara Pym (originally published by E. P. Dutton)
Material Witness by Aditi Machado (Nightboat Books)
Pleasure Principle by Madeleine Cravens (Scribner)
Lauren Korn recommends:
Scattered Snows, to the North, Then the War and Selected Poems, 2007-2020 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), The Art of Daring: Risk, Restlessness, Imagination (Graywolf Press), and My Trade Is Mystery: Seven Meditations from a Life in Writing (Yale University Press) by Carl Phillips
The Wild Iris (Ecco Press), Averno (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), and Meadowlands (HarperCollins) by Louise Glück
The Keys to the Jail and Beautiful in the Mouth by Keetje Kuipers (BOA Editions)
Slow Lightning by Eduardo C. Corral (Yale University Press)
Dangerous Goods by Sean Hill (Milkweed Editions)
Proxies: Essays Near Knowing and A Several World by Brian Blanchfield (Nightboat Books)
A Hundred Lovers by Richie Hofmann (Alfred A. Knopf)
Small Rain by Garth Greenwell (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
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The Write Question team for this episode was Lauren Korn, host, producer, and editor. This episode is supported by Fact & Fiction, an independent bookstore located in the heart of downtown Missoula, Montana, providing books for all ages and supporting the literary community in Montana and beyond. More information can be found at factandfictionbooks.com.
The Write Question logo and brand (2022) was designed by Molly Russell. You can see more of her work at iamthemollruss.com and on Instagram @iamthemollruss.
Additional funding for The Write Question comes from Humanities Montana; members of Montana Public Radio; and from the Greater Montana Foundation—encouraging communication on issues, trends, and values of importance to Montanans.
The Write Question is a production of Montana Public Radio.
