Is America a Really Dangerous Place?

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"I'm a human being living in this place and seeing these things happen around me," she says. "We've kind of lost the luxury of looking away, because it's always been a an unsafe place for plenty of reasons." The writer has never written so directly about what people might call political issues but i don't actually see them as political,. I dot see them as sort of flake. It's wonderful. And it's got some of your customary refusal to look away from the dark parts of life.

Welcome to the Wintering Sessions with Katherine May.

This week Katherine chats to Maggie Smith, poet, writer and editor from Columbus, Ohio.

You may know Maggie's tremendous work via her poem 'Good Bones', which she has a difficult relationship with. The poem is often referenced in times of crisis, which she thinks of as a 'disaster barometer' - she break downs this fascinating dissonance in her chat with Katherine, which reaches a wide range of topics including metpahor, the 'tasting' approach to culture, her own range of published works, America's history of being unsafe for many, being honest with children, how younger people understand pronouns so well, the divorce whisperer, prose, how the content dictates the container, the act of physically writing on paper, seasons and the beauty in the decay of Fall. So much to inspire and invigorate. A delight.

MAGGIE LINKS

KATHERINE LINKS

The Wintering Sessions