Stop by M. Judson for this free conversation between two poets, Eric Kocher and Mamie Morgan, as they discuss Kocher’s latest poetry collection, Sky Mall.
Like the magazine from which it takes its name, Eric Kocher’s Sky Mall is committed to “making a catalogue of things, / Strange and wonderful, terrifying and sad.” The poems are equally in awe of each object—a towering western redcedar, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the frothiness of clouds—but also worried about the estrangement and alienation that capitalism constructs between beings and the world. Out of this emerges a meditation on parenthood, on togetherness and love, that is both cosmic and absurd.
Eric Kocher teaches Environmental Studies at Wofford College. Some of his poems have previously appeared in 32 Poems, Boston Review, Gulf Coast, Oversound, and A Public Space, among others. He lives in upstate South Carolina with his wife, Audrey, and their two children, Oscar and Louise.