The Interviews
What are “The Interviews”?
These are the transcribed versions of our interviews held after each poetry feature’s performance at our monthly poetry open mic series, Poets & Storytellers Open.
Why the online version of The Interviews?
We decided to transcribe the poetry feature interview + Q&A sessions in order to give these conversations a place to live online. We’re fortunate to have features who are willing to sit down and talk with us right after their performances, and some good things are shared in those following moments when their work is fresh on the mind and hanging in the air around us. We want to share those insights with our poetry and art communities—especially with those who are physically or geographically unable to join us.
How often do the interviews take place?
We sit down with each poetry feature at the end of their set at our monthly P&SO events.
How do you pick who to interview?
Our interviews are from our featured performers at P&SO. As we don’t take requests to feature at our event, we therefore don’t take requests to be interviewed. This isn’t a slight to anyone - we spend a lot of time researching and reading the work of potential features and traveling to catch their performances when possible. We have a mission at ETP to primarily elevate individuals from underrepresented groups whose work truly excites and moves us, both from our local community and outside our area. All this helps shape the sort of dialogue we’re looking to have through our P&SO program.
How long after the events will the Q&As be posted?
We can’t say how long after each P&SO event they will go up, but we aim for 1-2 weeks. -ish. We know there’s software out there that can easily transcribe everything for us and we could post that up, but we also want to spend time with the interview again ourselves to make sure everything is transcribed and formatted so that we capture the intent and nuance of what our featured performers share with us.
This seems like a lot of work… so again, why are you doing this?
P&SO is a labor of love for poetry. We really like poetry and we really like stories, and are generally just excited to be able to sit and talk with writers whose work we really enjoy. We hope to share that experience with more people through the transcriptions.
Will there be any interviews for the music features?
It’s a thought we’re kicking around, still working out how to make that happen since they get the full block of feature time to perform. For now, we’re focusing on the poets.
Do you earn any money from posting these interviews?
No, but if you would like to donate, that would be much apprecaited! Echo Thread Projects and P&SO are both labors of love and are currently financed out-of-pocket. Any donation helps offset the costs of future publications, hosting events like P&SO, and general operating costs - you can donate through our website. You can also purchase any of our releases from our store.
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