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Sharon Israel
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Holly Gadarey
Hello everyone and welcome to nbn. I'm your host Holly Gadarey and I am really excited to be joined today by Shannon Sharon Israel to talk about her collection of poems, Voice Lesson. Sharon Israel's poems are full of song and detail, movement and color. The pleasures she brings to the page are many and varied. We are as likely to find Israel's speaker citing owls in the Catskills or helping in her dad's butcher shop. As in the world of music implied by the title in Voice Listens, Israel's urge is alchemical, so when she is behind the counter scooping shiny brains into plastic bag, she is also arranging them carefully like pale jewels. She's after a kind of transformation and urges us always make room for that singing thing inside you. And that's a quote from Sharon's poems. And that beautiful blurb I just gave is from Daisy Fried, who is the author of Women's Poetry, Poems and Advice. Sharon Israel is a Sephardic American poet and soprano was an early recipient of Brooklyn College's Leonard Hitch Poetry Explication Award. She was nominated for Best of The Net in 2016 and won 4Lines 2020 Winter Poetry Channel. Her work has most recently appeared in Loud Coffee Press, among other journals, both print and online, and anthologies. Sharon hosts the radio show and podcast Planet Poet Words in space on Wiox, 91.3 FM in the Catskills. Sharon has a BA from Brooklyn College and an Ms. From the New School of Social Research. She was a local news reporter, feature writer, and music critic for Courier Life publication Women's E. News, and the late lamented Brooklyn Phoenix. She worked as a shoe salesman, microbiology lab technician and secretary and had a short stint as a municipal bond salesperson. That's amazing. She also worked for more than two decades as a grant writer and developmental director. Sharon, that is incredible. Welcome to the show.
Sharon Israel
Halle. My life just flashed before me. Thank you. Thank you so much.
Holly Gadarey
Poets will always have the most fascinating backstories. I love it. Reading that bio when I first read it, I was like hair blowing back. It's a little bit taste melting.
Sharon Israel
I also didn't put in that as a kid. I got a scholarship to be in a microbiology lab in Brooklyn Jewish Hospital and I did an internship and they liked me so much I came back the next summer. So I was a lab technician for a while, among other things. But as you said, it's very good experience for a poet to do all kinds of things.
Holly Gadarey
Absolutely. I used I've had some of the most rare. I worked in a tanning salon. I work in a coffee shop. I've worked in a leather boutique. Like things made out of leather. I mean, the world is wherever we are and we need to get in and play in the sandbox if we're going to witness it. I'd say so. Yeah, I love that bio. It was awesome. So my first question about Voice Lesson was one that I ask all my guests, but I really do find it helps situate our listeners in the collection and maybe understand where it's coming from. For those who have not read it. So where did Voice Lesson begin for you?
Sharon Israel
It began when I I was a singer before I started writing poetry. And I it started when I was in college and I did not write poetry. I got a degree in English and Complete. And I won a poetry explication award on Richard Wilbur's poem Beasts. Richard Wilbur at the time, 1971, he was a very famous poet that is not as famous right now. But after that I sort of, I ran around, I had fun, I did different kinds of jobs and I didn't really write poetry until 9 11. I lived in downtown Brooklyn and I used to love going over the Brooklyn Bridge, walking over the Brooklyn Bridge. And then the attack came on 911 and something happened. It was like that. The pianist that was a person who was a scientist and he was struck by lightning. All of a sudden he could play the piano. I was so stunned and traumatized by 911 that I did start writing poetry. And then I stopped for a little while and then I got really serious in about 2006 and those poems sort of emerged from there and I started exploring my childhood and things that beginning poets always do. So I was very, very fortunate to be published by Post Traumatic Press. Dale Weiss and Alison Koffler are the publishers in the Catskills. And that happened after I read some of my poems and they decided to publish me. I asked them, they said yes and always pays to ask. And then I, I kept writing. I took various workshops and I started studying with Jeffrey Nutter who is an award winning poet. He teaches at nyu, he taught at Queens College. He will be going to Iowa to teach. And I really learned how to write better poetry after I started studying with him. My first collection, which was Voice Lesson, was something that was so exciting to put together as a chapbook. I didn't know I could ever do something like that. And just putting, just putting them together and getting it published and doing readings. I always worried that my poetry was not totally thematic as is. My new collection is not thematic. And I'm saying I don't have a theme. I don't have a theme. And Jeffrey said to me, you are the theme. You are the glue that puts, that keeps the poems together. That you are creating these poems creates the atmosphere, the dream, if you will. I don't know if that answers your question, Holly.
Holly Gadarey
It does. And I was just gonna say, no, you're the theme. That's fine.
Sharon Israel
And I suddenly relaxed.
Holly Gadarey
Yeah, well, poetry books, I feel like, didn't used to be as reliant on them thematic ties as they are now. I'm not saying one's better than the other. I'm, you know, I'm not doing a. Back in my day, I, I don't really care. I. Good poetry is good poetry. I'M just saying whether there's a theme or not, I'm more interested in whether it makes me feel the feels. That is what I'm interested in. I'm not too concerned about. About themes. So that's. That's a really wonderful. So now that we've kind of like circled the airport, metaphorically speaking of. Of your collection, I wanted to dive into the meter and rhythm in your poetry, which is incredibly playful and sophisticated. It's a little. Yeah, it's. It's a little bit like quicksand and absorbs the reader right into the poem. It's present in your poem. I really took note of it in Aeolian Imperative, among others. And I'd love for you to talk about creating and then honoring this meter in the prosody in your work.
Sharon Israel
Hale, you've just educated me because some of my. That poem, the meter probably comes from my singing, because when you're singing, you're singing in rhythm all the time. I was quite unconscious of a lot of the meter that I was using. And I can't really explain it, I think, because it was an acrostic. I believe it goes from A to Z. The Aeolian harp, I guess, gave me the inspiration for that. But it's a very quick. A quick meter. I have to find my book and remember it, because I don't. Could you ask me another question about that answer? Does that answer you?
Holly Gadarey
It does. It does. I mean, I think a lot of. I think a lot of poets, like, even when people ask me sometimes about why something or how I did something, I'm like, I don't know. It's intrinsic. It's happening in this space before I've intellectualized why it's happening. In fact, I may never intellectualize why I'm having. The most intellectual thing that could be said is the question being asked to me, boom. I. I don't. I don't necessarily know, but some, some, I find that the more that we're into poetry, like now that I have written, you know, a one full length collection, one chat book of poetry myself, and I'm working on a third one. Shout out to the Canada Art Council for their support. But now that I'm working on a third one, I'll write something. And then I don't necessarily think about the prosody or the cadence or, or enjambment or any of those technical aspects while I'm writing it, but when I'm editing it and going through it again, I might start to think about those things at that point. Does that make sense?
Sharon Israel
It does. And I find now, as I'm an older poet and a little bit more experienced, I like to read my poems out loud a lot, after I'm writing them, during the writing process, to see how they. They have to live on the page, but they have to live as the tradition has been for thousands of years on, you know, in the voice. They have to live in the voice. They have to communicate, you know, without the reader having the poem, the listener having the poem in front of them.
Holly Gadarey
Absolutely. And I think that once you can read a poem out loud and then stop wanting to change things about it or stop tripping up over your own meter or if certain words are clunky, once you've smoothed out all of that, which for me at least, can take months, I wrote a novel in less time than it took me to write a book of poems.
Sharon Israel
Sure. Not that I understand. I've never written a novel, but I think the flow is different. Correct. In the novel, yeah.
Holly Gadarey
I mean, it's. With poetry also, every word matters so much more. The precision matters with. You know, in a novel, you can have a chapter in pages, you can have a whole book to tease out one idea, one concept to negotiate. It doesn't make it better or worse than poetry. It's just a different experience. But with poetry, I mean, you can have in three lines what somebody could not do in an entire novel. You can have that feeling distilled. And so I think that's probably why I love poetry so much, because it's such mastery of language. But I also feel like, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, that it's also like a surrendering to language and also an acknowledgement of where the limitations of language hit us. And then also using those limitations to push back against the limitations of language. Like, there's a lot of play in poetry. And like I said in my first question, I think that your poems play really wonderfully.
Sharon Israel
Thank you. I like to play when I'm writing. Play is very important. I mean, William Carlos Williams said that a poem is like a machine made of words. I like that, but it's so much more than that. A machine is much too industrial. It doesn't take the gut into consideration. And I think the poem is a conduit that allows the reader or the listener to achieve something that's beyond the words. That's the weirdness about poetry is that you can put something down. You can put down a detail, create a very, very detailed work. And suddenly, when you're writing, the metaphor will emerge out of the details. And I love writing that way. I like if something grabs me, an idea or a detail, even how a lamp sits on the desk and how the light emerges out of the shade. That is very metaphoric. But I don't want to assume what the metaphor is. I want to get that down on paper and have detailed flow into maybe a question or feeling. And then at the end, I don't want to tell the listener or the reader how to feel. I want to present the case, so to speak through the words. And Marie Howe once said that you have to look in between the words in a poem. The words are not the. The final thing. The words allow you to get where you're going. It's not narrative. It can be narrative. But to me, a poem works when it is like a dream or it takes you someplace that's timeless.
Holly Gadarey
That's such a great answer. And I do want to jump off that and get into some of the specifics and the descriptions in your work. And I want to specifically talk about the color red and heat. There's red in Tango Triolet, the heat that finishes the poem, listening to music. And then there's also the Thief of Baghdad, the red and implicit and explicit heat of love and the red coat. And I feel like this color, this heat, is beautifully and unexpectedly opposed and complemented by the breathlessness and awareness I feel in your poems. The airiness of the bird imagery and metaphysical metaphor that we find in the airiness of voice. And I would love again for you just to talk about adding these details without making the poems feel belabored by them.
Sharon Israel
Thank you so much. That's so lovely to hear.
Holly Gadarey
Oh, it was such a pleasure. I was taking notes like crazy.
Sharon Israel
Thank you. Yeah, there's a lot of red in my poems. I can read a poem that has not been published yet. It's loaded with color. If you'd like me to read that.
Holly Gadarey
Absolutely, please.
Sharon Israel
And this is a topic very close to my heart. Can you hear me okay? Yes. Called my shoes. Okay. It's a little long, but red. It's so funny you mentioned the red is the first word in the poem.
Holly Gadarey
Oh, I love it.
Sharon Israel
Red suede dancer shoes with silk bows and Victorian heels. Gold lame disco shoes that made me five inches taller. Red ballerina flats. The silver glitter heels my mother pretended to wear standing on tiptoe in front of the mirror before going out with my father. The phantom heels that transformed her into a ballerina in a jewelry box. Slingbacks decorated with Arabian Nights. Warriors wielding scimitars against deep gray silk. Tawny suede stack heels I bought in Madrid for $15 in 1969, then shipped them home. They were waiting for me when return from London. The Charles Jourdan Classic black pumps I sold at Bloomingdale's after my return. The perfect heel, the sole's perfect arc. The clinging leather on the foot that forced the leg to emerge. Gorgeous, graceful, indomitable. I sized up the customers and balanced 10 boxes in my arms. Shoes like delicious candy, like first editions, like illuminated manuscripts. Once I walked in flats through my hamlet, the headwaters in Grand Gorge. Shoes with pearl buttons, brass buttons or real seashells. Shoes like comets or dark energy. Shoes like a lapse of judgment, a sudden impulse, a heedless pleasure. Shoes like audacious power on Orchard Street. Clothes like flags hang from storefronts inside the shops. Shoes hidden like relics. Shoes topped with gold Orpheus heads. Shoes lined with pictures of liars. Fragments of giant shoes once hidden in sand like the Minoan ship of Chania City. Lace covered shoes worn by Aphrodite in her marble palace. The iron shoes of Hera that gave her strength in Olympus.
Holly Gadarey
Thank you so much. That's such a wonderful example of that rhythm cadence in your work. And I just. I just love it. I want to circle back to birds because I'm entering that beautiful millennial space in my life where at 45, birds suddenly exist. I didn't pay birds much attention in my childhood. I did. And then I lost that archaeological collection throughout my teens and twenties. And then around my early forties to now, I'm noticing birds a lot. And I heard someone say recently that, you know, like I said, I. You never notice birds in the one day a switch went off in your head and then they're everywhere. So I can't be the only one feeling this way. And that switch really went off on my. In my head after I read your poems, like I was even more in to bird. And I'd love for you to tell me about birds and how they work in your work, how you bring them into your work, their symbolic power and the way it's manifested in your words, which seem to imply this really fabulous and a little bit menacing violence as well as freedom.
Sharon Israel
Pajoritos sort of came to me fully formed somehow. I'm Sephardic Jew, which means that my. My distant ancestors were expelled from Spain in 1492. And the diaspora went from Italy to Turkey to Amsterdam, everywhere. My grandparents, three of my grandparents were born in Turkey. One was born in what was in Palestine. And I remember what my grandmother used to bake. She used to bake little cookies with, you know, delicious things with almonds, et cetera. And I don't know, ladino is like Yiddish, which is a form of. Has German in it and Hebrew, et cetera. Ladino is sort of a freeze dried version of Spanish from 1492 with Hebrew and a lot of Arabic. Arabic thrown in. For example, my grandmother, when she laughed and I didn't know this at the time, she would laugh and she'd go, mashaallah, Mashallah. And I thought that was a Ladino word. It's Arabic meaning go with God, I believe. And it was just so rich. And just talk about pajaritos and the implied violence of that poem. Not everybody mentions that, Hale. I really. I really appreciate that so much. And the small green hearts, like the pale pistachios my nonna baked inside the cookies. There's something about the small green hearts and then you're sort of biting into those hearts, biting into those almonds. Yeah. So I have a complicated relationship with my background, but it sort of seeps into. Into my poems a lot. Would you like me to read one of these poems, Hale?
Holly Gadarey
Yeah, I'd love that. Please.
Sharon Israel
Okay, I'll read Pajaritos. Pajaritos have small green hearts like the pale pistachios my nana baked inside the cookie she gave us. And their hearts pulse and call, pulse and call. But as we ate, we forgot who we were. Our Ottoman blood cooled and the music ebbed. Gallipoli dimmed although we still stirred black coffee in small cups and tasted lokum. Scattered now like verdant birds that have left their cage for strong trees and other places we shine under an American sun and sometimes flutter with forgotten feeling. And yeah, so that's. That's pajaritos.
Holly Gadarey
It leads to interesting questions and for me, just an interesting and positively unsettling. And I mean that in a good way. Unsettling. I've said it a lot on the show, but I do believe unsettling is not always a bad thing. And in fact, I think it's mostly a good thing.
Quince Brand Representative
But.
Holly Gadarey
But about how violence and freedom like they. There's different sides of the same coin. And how often can people truly have freedom without violence and wouldn't like. I. I mean, I'm talking about in reality, ideally, I'd love to have freedom without some kind of violence. Whether it's a spiritual violence and emotional violence or physical violence. I'm not simply talking about physical all the time or anything like that. But it's was interesting. One of my favorite things about poetry specifically and really all of the best kinds of writing, but I find poetry does this more often than any other form is that it asks questions and without moralizing or giving answers. And it allows us, it encourages us as readers to interrogate ourselves and our own beliefs. And that is the unsettling of which I'm speaking. Speaking of. When I say it's unsettling, it's, it's unsettling. Just these often archaic opinions I have. It's just like when I, when I say something to one of my children and I hear my father coming out of my mouth like, oh God, oh God, it's there. I didn't, I didn't realize it. Poetry can have the same effect as, you know, child rearing that way is that suddenly your, your own prejudice, your own bias, your own, you know, long held and completely like impotent and useless beliefs are, are put right in front of your face and out of your mouth and here they are. And I really, I really just adore that about your poetry. But again, you have all these salient, weighty themes and then that, that airiness which our listeners have now heard of, of the delivery of them, which is this beautiful counterbalance. So one of my last two questions for you is actually about Planet Poetry. Because listeners, this is how I came across Sharon and her work was through the Planet Poetry or Planet Poet or radio show. And I'd love to hear about how that started and why it matters to you because it's obvious you put a lot of love into your show.
Sharon Israel
Thank you, Hale. I was asked to read. It's a very tiny wiox, which is now called the Catskill Radio because we're merging with another radio station in Sullivan county in the Catskills. It's a very, very tiny station. And the visionary is Joe Piazek, who was a professional producer at WIOX Et Cetera in New York. And he came up here and he started this radio show and I was busy writing, busy doing other things. And he asked me if I wanted to have a show. And I said, well, let think about it. And I originally was one of four hosts on a show called the Writer's Voice. And I would talk about children's poetry, et cetera, et cetera. And then every other host dropped out eventually, except me. So I have the show. I rename Planet Poet Words in Space. And I always ask myself the question, how did this start? How did I. How did I start doing this and why, and I love it. And it's a lot of work. I put a lot of. As you do, Holly, I'm so touched that you spend so much time with my book. I really, really appreciate that. And I try. When poets are on the show, I immerse myself in the book and I ask the questions. But I realized that when I was in high school, I did interviews, I interviewed people, I interviewed people on newspaper. And I never really put that together, but it's my curiosity and my desire to understand why somebody is doing this. So I really began this effort and I just didn't really think about it. And all of a sudden there's a huge community out there that I'm having on my show in the Hudson Valley, some from New York City. Now, Holly, in Canada, I've met you and had a guy, elston and Margot St. Pierre, through Jeffrey Hunter, I met another Canadian poet, Lisa Richter, who's a wonderful, wonderful poet and she wrote an award winning book called Nautilus Bone. And all of a sudden I got all these friends and. And every event was filled with people that knew me and I had them on my show and I was at readings and it's a wonderful community. And we were talking, you were mentioning before how important it is to feel part of a community and your work is. Feel like your work is part of that community, aside from the extraordinary effort you have to put in for your own work and all the, all the layers of feeling and work and effort and communication that comes with completing a work and then getting it out into the world. But this has been a very joyous, very joyous thing. And I can't believe I have 168 podcasts right now that were also radio shows. So I think that answers your question, Alain, I don't.
Holly Gadarey
It does. It does. And we were also talking about before the show about how poets operate in. I'm quoting the wonderful poet Michael Frazier here, but in the basement of the art world. And how, you know, I'm not actually being cute when I say that I actually like operating in the basement of the art world. I've had many basement apartments in my life and I did not let. But artistically, I like it. I like flying under the radar and I love the fact that there is something so special about. And I mean, I'm really applying this to poetry. But again, I could apply it to any art form, any. Whether it's visual art or theater or musical. But when there is a world of people saying nasty things in comment sections and being terrible to each other. There are other people who are scribbling a few lines of poetry at night in a notebook, and they're trying somehow to improve their own understanding of themselves in their world. And by extension, if they decide to publish that work and put it out there, they're helping other people do the same. I mean, I think that is such a beautiful and radical act, especially in this age of AI and disinformation and divisive rhetoric. I think returning to poetry especially. But any art is such a radical and beautiful act. And, I mean, that's what keeps me going. Every time I want to just be like, this is a lot of work. Is anybody out there listening? I'm just like, I don't care. I. At least one person is the person I'm talking to.
Sharon Israel
Yes. And every. In this terrible time, it's very important for poets to keep writing. And we keep the lights on. We keep the lights on. It's of utmost importance. I was speaking to a friend of mine, Andrew Icaria, who manages a bookshop in Peekskill, New York, and he's saying, we were talking about the world and poetry, and he says, young men come into the shop and ask, can you recommend something for me to read? I want to read. What can I. And I said to him, that is the most important thing. The most important thing you can do. And I think people now, in America, youth is the rage. Right, everybody? We're a cult of youth. But I think in these times, where among very young people, there's nostalgia. I think it's called anomia ananomia. Nostalgia for what? They never had the intimacy before the phone. What was life like? And I think with the people who are older, with experience are seen in a new light now, which I think is very, very encouraging. Very encouraging, because they have not. They don't know the world that we
Holly Gadarey
grew up in, that. The digital brain. Yeah. And I mean, I have two teenagers and two children who are younger than teenagers, and I have faith. I have faith in them. They're clever, they're smart, and they get. The wonderful Griffin Prize winning poet Kai Kello calls it digital nausea. They see it and they recognize digital nausea.
Sharon Israel
That's great. Boy. The other thing I have. Who is a mom.
Holly Gadarey
Yeah, yeah, they. They get it. I mean, I definitely. They definitely have, like, their phones, like, okay, we've had enough. Put them down. We have those conversations. But, yeah, I'm lucky to have them. They teach me more than I teach them, and they've definitely made the world A better place by being in it. And I wish I could take credit for it, but I can't. I can take credit for my work. I cannot take credit for that particular. These wonderful humans that I get to watch. But my final question for you, Sharon, is about what are you working on now? Where can we find your next book? What can we look forward to?
Sharon Israel
It's not quite out there in the world yet. It's called does the Sea Expect you? And I'm. This has been a work in progress. As you know, Hale, I haven't had the pleasure of reading your poetry, but putting a poetry collection, as you're saying, is very different from putting together a novel, and it's very different from putting together a chapbook. So this is a large collection. I have some of the poems from Voice Lesson, and this just came out, a lot of it from my generative work in Jeffrey Nutter's workshop, other work that I've created. And I'm excited about it. And it's sort of. A friend of mine said it's sort of like a. I can't remember the snake putting. Biting its own tail. And the guy who invented the Benzing ring, he had that image in his mind when he slept and he got up and he said, oh, yeah, the Benzing ring. That's the shape of the Benzing ring. And I was saying that I start with my childhood in going to the beach in Rockaway, and I end with another poem. And I realize after this is done, there's a lot of water in this poem. There's a theme of the sea, the ocean, the lakes, the river. The river, the Delaware River. So without realizing it, I said, I think it's a poem about my childhood and water, if that makes any sense.
Holly Gadarey
It reminds me of a line in a poem by the wonderful poet Patrick Grace. And the line is, my insides chime. They're separate lakes. And I think of it as like our. Our unconscious waters, our insights or our intuition, that intrinsic logic in ourselves speaking in conversation with itself. Again without this, like, rational, awake mind always justifying every single thing. So when you're like, oh, there's a lot of water, it's like, yeah, it's just like there's a lot of red. There's a lot of heat. You know, it's. There's some kind of intrinsic logic, intrinsic force pushing this stuff out, but we're not necessarily. Necessarily aware of it. And that's. That's not a bad thing. I don't want to be aware of it. I think Being aware of it would ruin it. I love it.
Sharon Israel
I agree. I think also I've gotten more in touch with my family history through doing. It's a. It's the sort of mysticism involved. And I'm not a religious person and I'm really not very educated in Kabbalah or Talmud or the Old and New Testament, but I feel an affinity for the distant past and it comes out in my work. And there's one poet, he was a mystic. His name was Abraham Abulafia, and Abulafia is a real Sephardic name. And Louis Abulafia was quite a famous poet on the Lower east side in the 90s. He died very young, but he is definitely related. And I might be related to the great mystic Kabbalah poet Abraham Abelaphia, who lived in Spain and he died in exile, but he was there to witness the beginning of the Inquisition. And he wrote something. It's very loosely translated. I must write our name in ink, in blood. The blood is the ink. The ink is the blood.
Holly Gadarey
Yeah. That's powerful. Yeah, I love that. And I really hope to have you back on the show to talk about your newest work. Whenever it is out, you have my email. Just contact me. Sharon.
Sharon Israel
Oh, thank you so much, Hale. This has been such a pleasure. Thank you.
Holly Gadarey
Thank you. And it was so great to talk to you. Could you just shout out where people can get voice lessons from? I'm assuming anywhere books are bought or borrowed.
Sharon Israel
Well, actually, you can go to posttraumaticpress.com and my friend Dale Weiss was a vet, a veteran, and he had ptsd, and he decided to start this press to give veterans a poetic voice. He started writing poetry to sort of deal with his demons. And then he developed this press for veterans who write poetry. And he has many, many activities that still go on. And then he opened the press up to just, you know, ordinary writers. And so you can go to posttraumaticpress.com and my book should be there. It's listed and you can get it from them.
Holly Gadarey
That's perfect. Let's support these wonderful independent presses and the vital work they do in uplifting and celebrating voices we might not otherwise hear. Sharon, thank you so much for joining me on NBN today to talk about voice lessons and again, hope to have you back soon.
Sharon Israel
Thank you. It was such an honor being on your show and having you talk so beautifully about my. And so with such erudition about my work. Thank you, Hale.
Holly Gadarey
Well, I don't know if I've ever been accused of coherency before. But I thank you for that. Thank you for listening to this episode of the New Books Network. We are an academic podcast network with the mission of public education. If you liked this episode, please share it with a friend and rate us on your preferred podcast platform. You can browse all of our episodes on our website newbooksnetwork.com Connect with us on Instagram and BlueSky with the handle ew booksnetwork, and subscribe to our weekly Substack newsletter at newbooksnetwork.substack.com to get episode recommendations straight to your inbox.
Title: Sharon Israel, "Voice Lesson" (Post Traumatic Press, 2017)
Date: May 15, 2026
Host: Holly Gadarey
Guest: Sharon Israel
This episode features poet and soprano Sharon Israel discussing her poetry collection Voice Lesson. The conversation explores Israel’s creative journey, musical background, poetic process, Sephardic heritage, and the significance of community through poetry and podcasting. Israel also reads select poems and reflects on recurring themes and her current projects.
This conversation between Holly Gadarey and Sharon Israel offers listeners a deep and personal glimpse into the making of Voice Lesson, the alchemy of poetic craft, and the necessity of community, both in and outside the literary world. Sharon’s passionate readings and reflections illuminate her work’s themes—sensuality, memory, play, and transformation—while emphasizing poetry’s enduring role in forging human connection and understanding.