Michael talks with Tyler Gillespie about finishing a dissertation, living again and building community in Florida, growing up queer in a Southern Baptist community and becoming a reader and writer, holding onto faith outside of that context, getting sober, concurrent interests in poetry and journalism, his new poetry collection the nature machine!, working on a comedy EP during lockdown, his relationship (and podcast) with his grandmother, Britney Spears and celebrities as metaphor, incorporating multimedia into the new book in harmony with form and content, blending smart with funny with thoughtful with playful with emotional in a poem, surprise, and more.
Tyler Gillespie is the author of the nature machine! (Autofocus Books, 2023), The Thing about Florida: Exploring a Misunderstood State (University Press of Florida, 2021), and Florida Man: Poems (Red Flag Poetry, 2018). He's a fifth-generation Floridian and currently teaches at Ringling College of Art + Design. Find out more at TylerGillespie.com.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.