Tag: Agnes Vojta

Friday Five: recent reads, watches, and listens

Happy Friday, readers! Here are five things that have captured my attention lately:

  1. Reading: My friend and neighbor Agnes Vojta‘s latest collection of poetry, Love Song to Gravity. Agnes is a poet and a physicist, so the title of this collection makes sense. In Love Song…, Agnes explores grief, nature, the change of seasons, time, love, and many other things that make us human and connect us to each other and to our world, including, of course, gravity. You can read some selected poems from this book, and listen to Agnes read some of them. You can also read, right here on this website, my Friday Five Q&A with Agnes from March 2024.
  2. Watching: A great, short (under 10-minute) TED Talk titled “A meditation on Rumi and the power of poetry,” delivered in December 2023 by Iranian-born author and translator Leili Anvar. In this talk, she reflects on the poetry of Rumi, a 13th-century mystic Persian poet, and the power of poetry and language.
  3. Listening to: This podcast interview by organizational psychologist Adam Grant with the very funny Ed Helms (who played Andy Bernard, aka the ‘Nard Dog, on The Office) about learning through failure, with mentions of Helms’ book about failure, SNAFU: The Definitive Guide to History’s Greatest Screwups. Helms cut his teeth as a standup comedian, and if there’s any occupation that submits itself to failure and humiliation more regularly than a writer, it’s that of standup comedian. I recommend every writer give this a listen.
  4. Reading: Debuting at 70, an essay by Ruth Bonapace, who published her debut novel, The Bulgarian Training Manual, last year as a newly minted septuagenarian. (I’m closing in on age 65, so there’s hope for me yet.)
  5. Reading and listening to: Handmade Playlist Box Set: The Complete Works of Summer, a nostalgia-inducing essay by writer and music lover Michael Chabon (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Wonder Boys, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, etc.) on the music of summer seasons past and present, complete with Spotify playlists. (This reminds me: years ago, before I moved on to Apple Music for much of my listening, I put together a summer playlist of my own, called #summersongs, and made it open for collaboration, so if you want to add to it, feel free to do so. Or just have a listen if you’re so inclined, and marvel at my impeccable taste in music.)

Have a good weekend, and try to enjoy these waning days of summer.

Top image: Me poolside with my copy of Agnes Vojta’s latest collection of poems, Love Song to Gravity.

Friday Five: Q&A with poet Agnes Vojta

‘You don’t need anybody’s permission to be a poet. You just need to love it.’

Agnes Vojta
Agnes Vojta

Continuing this blog’s celebration of women authors throughout Women’s History Month, and furthering my desire to use this platform to highlight other authors, I’m delighted today to share this email interview with Agnes Vojta, a poet who happens to live in my neck of the woods here in Missouri and who also happens to teach physics at Missouri University of Science and Technology.

A native of Germany, Agnes is the author of three books of poetry — Porous Land, The Eden of Perhaps, and A Coracle for Dreams — all published by Spartan Press in 2019, 2020, and 2022, respectively. More recently, she and eight other poets from Missouri and Arkansas collaborated to create the anthology Wild Muse: Ozarks Nature Poetry, published in December 2022 by Cornerstone Press. Agnes also serves as an associate editor for Thimble Literary Magazine and hosts Poetry at the Pub, a local reading and open mic event. She and her husband, Thomas, a professor and chair of physics at Missouri S&T, are avid hikers and kayakers who share their passion for the outdoors and information about Ozarks trails and more at RollaHiking.info.

Continue reading “Friday Five: Q&A with poet Agnes Vojta”