EPISODE ONE [4 September 2020]
Poets CAConrad and LeAnne Howe share an intensely personal conversation with one another about First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln, who insisted she was tormented by an Indigenous Spirit – a reminder that her husband’s record on racial equality is fraught with violence and oppression; AIDS and loving during the Reagan years; and the new horizons created by the Black Lives Matter movement. Woven through with recitations of their own poetry, the pair reflect upon each other’s work, growing up with death, and radical love in its many forms.
This episode contains sensitive content from the start.
What’s Love Got To Do With It? is programmed and curated by Beatrice Gibson, produced by Alannah Chance, and features unique compositions by Crystabel Riley and Seymour Wright. It is a commission by Bergen Kunsthall; Camden Art Centre, London; KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; and Mercer Union, a centre for contemporary art, Toronto.
—
CAConrad is the author of nine books of poetry and essays. While Standing in Line for Death (Wave Books, 2017) won a 2018 Lambda Book Award. They also received a 2019 Creative Capital grant as well as a Pew Fellowship in the Arts Award, the Believer Magazine Book Award, and the Gil Ott Book Award. They regularly teach at Columbia University in New York City, and Sandberg Art Institute in Amsterdam. Their books, essays, recordings, and the documentary The Book of Conrad (Delinquent Films, 2015) are available online at http://bit.ly/88CAConrad
LeAnne Howe is an enrolled citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. She is the Eidson Distinguished Professor of American Literature in English at the University of Georgia. Howe is the author of novels, plays and poetry, and her awards include: the American Book Award, Western Literature Association’s 2015 Distinguished Achievement Award; the inaugural 2014 MLA Prize for Studies in Native American Literatures; and a 2012 United States Artists Ford Fellowship, among others. During the Arab Spring, 2010-2011, Howe was a Fulbright Scholar at University of Jordan, Amman. Her most recent book, Savage Conversations (Coffee House Press, 2019), is the story of Mary Todd Lincoln and the Savage Indian spirit that Mary claimed tortured her nightly.
What’s Love Got To Do With It? is programmed and curated by Beatrice Gibson, produced by Alannah Chance, and features unique compositions by Crystabel Riley and Seymour Wright. Graphic design by HIT Studio. What’s Love Got To Do With It? is a commission by Bergen Kunsthall; Camden Art Centre, London; KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; and Mercer Union, a centre for contemporary art, Toronto.
EPISODES
Graphic design by HIT Studio, 2020.