interview w/ ivoh magazine

"When the Las Vegas shooting happened a couple of weeks ago, U.S. media was awash with all sorts of headlines exploring everything from who the shooter was to profiles of victims to pleas for tighter gun control. The stories took the form of traditional news shorts, narrative features, think pieces, first person essays, infographics, videos, and more. All of which, said Elle Aviv Newton, co-founder of Poets Reading the News, traditionally fall short.

“There are now a thousand ways to read the news, and yet so few ways to reckon with it,” said Newton. “The repetitions, surprises, scale, complexity—processing all of this needs to happen somewhere.”

A Bay Area-based digital publication where, you guessed it, poets interpret current events, Poets Reading the News offers another way to engage what’s going on around us. In response to the Las Vegas shooting, for example, Catherine Strayhall’s “Not The Time” interrogates the refrain often heard from politicians regarding gun legislation..."

Read the full interview with Celeste Hamilton Dennis for Ivoh Magazine here.