Ephraim Scott Sommers joins Timothy Green on The Rattlecast for a conversation about poetry, chronic illness, gratitude, music, and his new collection, Diabetic Gumdrops. A poet, essayist, singer-songwriter, and associate professor of English at Winthrop University, Sommers is the author of the award-winning collections The Night We Set the Dead Kid on Fire and Someone You Love Is Still Alive. His poetry has appeared in Rattle and many other literary journals.
Written during the first six months after Sommers was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, Diabetic Gumdrops is a collection of 24 poems of praise that tests how far the ode can stretch—making room for needles, glucose monitors, doctors, spouses, fear, anger, humor, gratitude, and joy. In this episode, we’ll talk about writing poetry from illness, the ode as a poetic form, finding hope without denying difficulty, and how writing the book changed Sommers’s own relationship to his diagnosis. We’ll also discuss the relationship between poetry and music and hear work from across his career. As always, we’ll open the lines for this week’s prompt-based poetry reading.
Find more on the guest here:
https://ephraimscottsommers.com/
This Week’s Prompt from Katie Dozier:
Write an informal formal sonnet.
Next Week’s Prompt:
Write a poem in which you lose something but ultimately gain.
Submit your poem through Submittable by midnight Sunday for a chance to be invited on the show:
https://rattle.submittable.com/submit/269309/rattlecast-prompt-poems-online
The Rattlecast livestreams every Monday on YouTube, Facebook, and X, then becomes available as an audio podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you listen.
