I’m always lucky to be with my dear friend and mentor, the poet Sharon Olds. I sat down with her during a visit to New York City, in her apartment on Washington Square, with my 4yo daughter, Odette in tow, and we discussed the complexities of thought and identity during the isolation of the pandemic, self-reflection, biography, poetic form, and I share four questions from some Twitter followers and get the down-low on Sharon’s favorite ice cream…..
Listeners will have the treat of hearing three unpublished poems from her new manuscripts, Balladz.
Please enjoy, and you can buy Sharon’s most recent book, Aria’s, here.
Photo: Hillery Stone
Sharon Olds is the winner of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for her most recent collection, “Stag’s Leap,” she has been the recipient of several other honors and awards, including the National Book Critics Circle Award and the T. S. Eliot Prize. Her work, often autobiographical in nature, is well known for its treatment of marriage, motherhood, intimacy, and the human condition. Olds’ poems have been anthologized in more than a hundred collections. She was the Poet Laureate of New York from 1998 to 2000, and held the position of Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 2006 to 2012. She most recently published the poetry collection “Arias.” Her next book, “Balladz,” is forthcoming in 2022.
