Episode 238: After — Poetry Destroys Silence with Janet R. Kirchheimer

This episode of Across The Margin : The Podcast features an interview with poet and film producer Janet R. Kirchheimer. Janet is the author of How to Spot One of Us, a collection of poems about the Holocaust and her family (Clal, 2007). She is also the producer of the award-winning film AFTER: Poetry Destroys Silence, a cinematic performance documentary in which contemporary poets, both Jewish and non-Jewish, confront the Holocaust and its aftermath and discuss the responsibility of the spoken word to respond. The first of its kind, where poetry and cinema combine and transcend, AFTER is an exploration of poetry written about the Holocaust and unthinkable trauma in general. In it, contemporary poets talk about the importance and necessity for poetry in a world that still grapples with genocide. Rather than seeing the devastation, AFTER shows how poets respond to catastrophe and write in its aftermath. The film is ultimately about human resiliency, the power and courage to forge new lives, and the value of poetry in looking to the past to help create a better future. Named one of the best films of 2024 by Rogerebert.com, AFTER won Best Feature Documentary at the 2025 Montreal Independent Film Festival. It is a film that, dazzlingly, interlaces sequences of music, archival footage, personal photographs, and documents to offer a modern chronicle of poets examining history and the current day. AFTER serves as both a model and a warning for an increasingly divided and violent planet.

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