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Every Wednesday at 12:00pmAbout the Show
Artspeak Radio
ARTSPEAK RADIO is a live radio program on KKFI that airs every Wednesday from 12:00 pm to 1:00 pm. Host Maria Vasquez Boyd serves up information about the visual and literary arts community including live interviews with artists, writers, and performers.
Artspeak Radio, Wednesday, noon – 1pm CST, 90.1fm KKFI Kansas City Community Radio, streaming live audio www.kkfi.org
Producer/host Maria Vasquez Boyd celebrates National Poetry Month 2023 with poets/activists Miguel Morales, Melissa Ferrer, and Andrew McIlvaine.
National Poetry Month 2023
Launched by the Academy of American Poets in April 1996, National Poetry Month is a special occasion that celebrates poets’ integral role in our culture and that poetry matters. Over the years, it has become the largest literary celebration in the world, with tens of millions of readers, students, K–12 teachers, librarians, booksellers, literary events curators, publishers, families, and—of course—poets, marking poetry’s important place in our lives.
As a special offering this April, U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón has selected twenty new poems by contemporary poets to be featured in the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day series as part of a collaboration with the Library of Congress. Thanks in part to our National Poetry Month partners and sponsors, each April the Academy is able to offer activities, initiatives, and resources so that anyone can join the celebration:
• Order (for free) and display the official National Poetry Month poster
• Learn how to celebrate at home
• Learn how to celebrate in the classroom
• Join the Academy of American Poets for its virtual Poetry & the Creative Mind gala
• Find poetry readings and events on our Poetry Near You calendar, and add your own
• Encourage students in grades five through twelve to participate in the Dear Poet Project
• Sign up for Poem-a-Day and enjoy a free daily poem in your inbox curated this April by U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón
• Follow the thousands of celebrations taking place on social media with the official hashtag #NationalPoetryMonth and follow the Academy of American Poets on Twitter and Instagram @POETSorg
• Share a #PocketPoem on Poem in Your Pocket Day
• Make a gift to the Academy of American Poets
• Add the official National Poetry Month logo to your events
www.poets.org/national -poetry-month
MIGUEL MORALES lives in Kansas and embraces his farmworker/child laborer past. As a journalist, he earned the Society of Professional Journalists’ First Amendment Award. Miguel serves on the Latino Writers Collective board and is featured in its anthologies: Primera Página: Poetry from the Latino Heartland and Cuentos del Centro: Stories from the Latino Heartland. His work also appears on the Latino Literature website, La Bloga; in From Macho to Mariposa: New Gay Latino Fiction; and in To the Stars Through Difficulty: 2012 Kansas Renga and Joto: An Anthology of Queer Ch/Xicano Poetry. Morales is a Lambda Literary Fellow and an alum of the VONA Voices and Macondo Writers Workshops. He is co-editor of Pulse/Pulso: In Remembrance of Orlando and the Fat & Queer anthology.
MELISSA FERRER (&), (she/they), formerly known as Missy T. Ferrari, is a poet, organizer, educator and musician living in KCMO. Rooted in the practical and the possible, their spoken word poems and songs are mostly responses to the world around her and their own internal journey.
Melissa received a Bachelor’s Degree in both Creative Writing and Italian from The Florida State University. She has also received her Master of Education with a specialization in Urban Education from Park University. She was also long listed for the Palette Poetry 2021 Emerging Poet Prize. Their debut chapbook “Birthing Pains” was published by Turnsol Editions in 2020.
www.melissaferrerand.com
ANDREW MCILVAINE is a Mexican American interdisciplinary artist. Born in San Antonio, Texas, and later moved to Missouri, Mcilvaine creates work about displacement and replacement and how these issues effect both cultural and personal memory, identity, and a sense of self. Mcilvaine earned his BA in studio art from the University of Missouri – Kansas City. After receiving his BA, Mcilvaine moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where he attained his MFA from Washington University in St. Louis in painting and drawing. Currently, Mcilvaine lives and works in Kansas City.
www.andrewmcilvaine.com
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