poetry month

Anonymous Grocer 10/30: [Voice clearest the is hear cannot]

~ Cameron ~ Leave a comment

Hello friend! 
 
Welcome back to Anonymous Grocer, a 30-day audio adventure in backwards poetry. Each day: a new poem, a new collection of words in unfamiliar and spiraling patterns, a new audio message to ease you into your day. 
 
Today’s episode features the hard-of-hearing, Ukrainian poet Ilya Kaminsky. As Russian invasions continue to menace through Ukraine, Kaminsky’s poem, ‘We Lived Happily During the War’ (which was published in 2013 during the first Maidan protests), has been shared widely once again as a symbol, a talisman of poetry’s tenacious power  to rally people in times of crisis. A subversive siren, calling on us to confront who we are, where do our responsibilities lie, when will we rise up, how will we act?
 
Discover more about this poet here.
Do you have requests for poems or poets you’d like to see featured in future Anonymous Grocer episodes? I’d love to hear from you!
Peace and love,
Cam

Anonymous Grocer 9/30: [Teeth, their in limbs]

~ Cameron ~ Leave a comment

Hello friend! 
 
Welcome back to Anonymous Grocer, a 30-day audio adventure in backwards poetry. Each day: a new poem, a new collection of words in unfamiliar and spiraling patterns, a new audio message to ease you into your day. 
 
On this fine Day 9, I present you with the Korean-American poet, Jihyun Yun. After listening to today’s episode, I encourage you to pick up a copy of her collection, Some Are Always Hungry. Through recipes, rationing, and animal dismemberment, Yun presents a reclamation of identity and womanhood. She uses food in all its mythical and visceral manifestations to expose and interrogate the inequalities and sacrifices, the leavings and desires that propel humans to protect one another and tear each other apart.
 
Discover more about this poet here. 
Do you have requests for poems or poets you’d like to see featured in future Anonymous Grocer episodes? I’d love to hear from you!
Peace and love,
Cam

Anonymous Grocer 8/30: [Tongue my of shape]

~ Cameron ~ Leave a comment

Hello friend! 
 
Welcome back to Anonymous Grocer, a 30-day audio adventure in backwards poetry. Each day: a new poem, a new collection of words in unfamiliar and spiraling patterns, a new audio message to ease you into your day. 
 
We’ve arrived at Week 2 of Poetry Month – woohoo! If you’ve made it this far in the listening party, I thank you for being here! Today, we return to the poetry of yore with Rumi, a 13th-century Persian Sufi mystic and poet. (Here’s a fun fact: the beloved poet Mary Oliver would read from her Rumi collection every day!) 
 
Discover more about this poet here.
Do you have requests for poems or poets you’d like to see featured in future Anonymous Grocer episodes? I’d love to hear from you!
Peace and love,
Cam

Anonymous Grocer 7/30: [Genocide from museum]

~ Cameron ~ Leave a comment

Hello friend! 
 
Welcome back to Anonymous Grocer, a 30-day audio adventure in backwards poetry. Each day: a new poem, a new collection of words in unfamiliar and spiraling patterns, a new audio message to ease you into your day. 
 
It’s Day 7, folks! Today we celebrate with poetry by CA Conrad, whose somatic poetry rituals are spells to live and transgress by. 
 
Discover more about this poet here.
Do you have requests for poems or poets you’d like to see featured in future Anonymous Grocer episodes? I’d love to hear from you!
Peace and love,
Cam

Anonymous Grocer 3/30: [Remember is life.]

~ Cameron ~ Leave a comment

Hello friend! 
 
Welcome back to Anonymous Grocer, a 30-day audio adventure in backwards poetry. Each day: a new poem, a new collection of words in unfamiliar and spiraling patterns, a new audio message to ease you into your day. 
 
Today is Day 3 of National Poetry Month, and today we celebrate with poet and musician, Joy Harjo! Harjo was appointed as the U.S. Poet Laureate in 2019 by the Librarian of Congress, and is currently serving her third term. She is a member of the Mvskoke/Creek Nation.
 
Discover more about this poet here.
Do you have requests for poems or poets you’d like to see featured in future Anonymous Grocer episodes? I’d love to hear from you!
Peace and love,
Cam
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Anonymous Grocer 2/30: [Body the only take]

~ Cameron ~ Leave a comment
Hello friend! 
 
Welcome back to Anonymous Grocer, a 30-day audio adventure in backwards poetry. Each day: a new poem, a new collection of words in unfamiliar and spiraling patterns, a new audio message to ease you into your day. 
 
Today, Day 2, we continue the series with Lauren K. Alleyne, whose poems bear witness to many troublesome and achingly vulnerable bodily experiences on Earth, while also leaving room for the illumination of the hopeful, resilient, transcendent human spirit — a poetic swiveling that is both seamless and wants you to look, name, rub your finger over the seams.
 
Discover more about this poet here.
Need to study up on what a ghazal is? I’ve got you covered! 
Do you have requests for poems or poets you’d like to see featured in future Anonymous Grocer episodes? I’d love to hear from you!
Peace and love,
Cam
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Anonymous Grocer 1/30: [Impossibilities? No.]

~ Cameron ~ 1 Comment

Hello friend! 
 
Happy Poetry Month and welcome to Anonymous Grocer, a 30-day audio adventure in backwards poetry. Each day: a new poem, a new collection of words in unfamiliar and spiraling patterns, a new audio message to ease you into your day. 
 
Today, we kick off the series with the ebullient, open hearted poetry of Frank O’Hara, patron saint of modern art and NYC hot dogs. 
 
Discover more about this poet here.
Do you have requests for poems or poets you’d like to see featured in future Anonymous Grocer episodes? I’d love to hear from you!
Peace and love,
Cam
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Welcome to Anonymous Grocer!

~ Cameron ~ 30 Comments

Hi friends! April is National Poetry Month, and this year I’m embarking on something new: Anonymous Grocer, an audio adventure in backwards poetry.
Anonymous Grocer is a 30-day experiment in sound poetry. Each day of National Poetry Month, a hand-picked published poem, many of which you will know quite well, will be read by yours truly, word-for-word in a backwards sequence.
Along this monthlong ride, we’re gonna majorly queer up word order, deconstruct syntax, and experience some new and old favorite poems like never before. Unscrew your head one or two times, and prepare to create space for the unexpected, the dissonant, the oracular.
If you’re interested in receiving the daily Grocer poem (audio and transcription) delivered to your email, let me know in the comments or DM me, and I’ll add you to the daily email list!
Otherwise, you can always check out every episode here on ccfinch.com (I’ll be weekly updating the website with the episodes.)
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[And now for some fun monologues:]
Why Grocery? Easy. Words are food – I mean, I could surely mush them around and around in my mouth for hours, days, jovial lifetimes. Words — the sound, the feel of them — provide nourishment and pleasure and curiosity – just rolling around, experimenting.
The Anonymous bit is for the hunger pang (pain?) of the unknown. From the backwards recitation, you may experience nonsensical language, comprehension difficulty, utter weirdness and surprise. I encourage you to embrace it all – like tasting a new food for the first time or releasing yourself from quotidian labels – let the sounds of the poems-in-reverse slide onto your ear tongues, sound melting into you.
Release yourself from the need to understand. Just eat, just trust, just open yourself to the fullness of our strange concert.
Happy Poetry Month, y’all!