In this episode, Lissa sits down with poet, performer, and librettist Douglas Kearney to discuss his work. Douglas Kearney has published six books. His most recent, Buck Studies (Fence Books, 2016), was awarded the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Award, the CLMP Firecracker Award for Poetry and was a silver medalist for the California Book Award (Poetry). His other works include Mess and Mess and (Noemi Press, 2015), Patter (Red Hen Press, 2014), The Black Automaton (Fence Books, 2009), and Someone Took They Tongues (Subito Press 2016), a collection of Kearney’s Libretti.
In addition to his work as an artist and performer, Kearney teaches creative writing at the University of Minnesota. Learn more about Douglas Kearney by visiting his website: https://douglaskearney.com/
What is a Libretto?
Lissa and Douglas speak extensively on the podcast about Douglas’s work writing libretti. For those not well versed in opera, ‘libretto’ might be an unfamiliar term. According to Encyclopedia Brittanica a libretto is the “text of an opera, operetta, or other kind of musical theatre.” In other words, the words that are set to music in one of these types of performance. You can learn more about libretti here: https://www.britannica.com/art/libretto.