Talking Earth with A. Molotkov and Tim Whitsel

Airlie Press poets Anatola Molotkov and Tim Whitsel will read from their new books of poetry tonight on Talking Earth, KBOO's poetry program. The four conceptual poems in Molotkov's "The Catalog of Broken Things" question identity in the face of disaster and change, emptiness and encounter. The poems break human experience into basic components: waking, sleeping, loss, memory, imagination, empathy, responsibility to oneself and others. Whitsel's "Wish Meal' charts one man’s evolution from El Dorado pilgrim and prodigal son to a stay-at-home father, navigating from his Indiana boyhood to the family he makes in the Pacific Northwest.

Born in Russia, A. Molotkov moved to the US in 1990 and switched to writing in English in 1993. Published by Kenyon Review, Iowa Review, Cincinnati Review, Tampa Review, Raleigh Review, Cider Press Review, Pif, 2 River and elsewhere, Molotkov is the winner of several short fiction and poetry contests and a 2015 Oregon Literary Fellowship. He co-edits The Inflectionist Review. Molotkov’s translation of a Chekhov story was included by Knopf in their Everyman Series. He plays the Armenian duduk and is better at tennis than most other Portland writers.

Tim Whitsel lives on a 100-year floodplain outside Springfield, Oregon. He is passionate about western rivers, gardening, jazz, bicycling, wine and words. For six years Tim directed Windfall, a monthly reading series at the Eugene Public Library. He won first prize at the 2013 Northwest Poets’ Concord. In 2014, he was honored with an artist’s residency at PLAYA. He can be heard reading his poems on the poetryloft.net or seen on YouTube (Lane Writers Reading Series, October 25, 2015). Tim’s first collection, We Say Ourselves, was published in 2012 by Traprock Books.