# POETICS Podcast: Poetry and Freedom of the Press

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Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/poetics-poetry-podcast-7109691/poetics-podcast-poetry-and-freedom-of-the-press.md
Podcast: [POETICS: Poetry Podcast](https://stenobird.com/podcast/poetics-poetry-podcast-7109691)
Published: 2026-07-02T19:29:24+00:00
Episode link: https://bainbridgeislandpress.substack.com/p/poetics-podcast-poetry-and-freedom
Audio file: https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/204720086/c57771f4ff04739dee7e49026c22d9b8.mp3
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Duration seconds: 1967

## Resource

Poetry is a solitary practice with a communal spine. The page is quiet. The community around the page does not have to be. This week, as the United States turns 250, we follow that idea across two thousand years. A famous sentence about free speech, written by a woman named Evelyn Beatrice Hall and handed by history to Voltaire. Ovid exiled to the edge of the world for a poem. Dante writing the Divine Comedy with a death sentence at his back. Nadezhda Mandelstam carrying her husband’s life work in her memory because paper was too dangerous. Anna Akhmatova’s friends becoming living manuscripts. And Lawrence Ferlinghetti, arrested in 1957 for publishing a poem called Howl, standing in an American courtroom where the First Amendment finally held the poet back. Fair warning: I cried recording this one, and I left it in. Some episodes are about poetry. This one is about why there is any poetry left to be about. Free zine at our Grand Old Fourth booth. Come find us. Get full access to Bainbridge Island Press at bainbridgeislandpress.substack.com/subscribe

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## Transcript

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