"The poem is in a sense — although not quite exactly — the title poem in a much-admired book published in 1974," Filreis notes in his Jacket2 blog post announcing the new episode, before giving us a little geographic context: "Steveston sits at the mouth of the South Arm of the Fraser River, near Vancouver, British Columbia." He also discusses the publication history of the poem and offers this interesting note regarding something relatively unprecedented in PoemTalk's history: "This time we're returning to the poetry of Daphne Marlatt just fifteen months after an episode about her poem 'Arriving' from Here and There of 1981. Those fifteen months not unwittingly bracket either side of the several collateral-effect crises caused by the 2020–21 pandemic and several new rounds of global awareness about impending climate change and its causes."
You can listen to this latest program and read more about the show here. PoemTalk is a joint production of PennSound and the Poetry Foundation, aided by the generous support of Nathan and Elizabeth Leight. You can browse the full PoemTalk archives, spanning more than a decade, by clicking here.
