A Sewing Chat with Rita Dove

Pulitzer Prize winner. Former U.S. Poet Laureate. Sewist extraordinaire. We are in raptures this week to be hosting RITA DOVE, all-around American genius. She is the fashioner of the most ingenious villanelles and vests alike — in lavender velvet no less! And she “walks with grace along beauty’s seam.” Together, Rita and Lisa talk salvaging materials, experimenting with pattern, and achieving the perfect tension of the stitch. What does it take to hold that balance? How does sewing work as a metaphor for poetry, and vice versa? Sewn into the dialogue, too, is the still untold story of craft in Black women’s histories. In Rita's book, that story reverberates in every visible and invisible seam. Are you listening?