It was a joy to chat with Vicki Ziegler about reading enthusiasm, her Silent Book Club and Todays Poem, a hashtag on Twitter and Instagram she uses to post excerpts from poems daily.
Listen to the episode here.
Note of Praise
In Vicki Ziegler’s Book Gaga blog and her social media feeds, her love of reading and community shine through. The Silent Book Club is for every reader and every book. It opens rather than closes conversations and inspires curiosity and friendship.
Through BookGaga.com, Vicki writes reports, posts photos of the SBC meetings and compiles lists of books read by members, while also exploring various book-related topics, such as drinks pairing, other people’s reading lists, such as Barak Obama’s summer reading lists, and stand up routines about Ancient Greek and Roman figures. It’s basically a bibliophile’s paradise.
Today’s Poem, which began in 2011, is another wonderful way in which Vicki gathers community through her own practice of reading poetry daily and encouraging others to do the same. I am often struck by a snippet of poetry shared by those who post to the hashtag #todayspoem on Twitter and it inspires me to look up the work and poet. This is an example of the good that can be done through social media.
Thanks to Vicki for being on the show, to Jennifer Pederson for the intro and outro, to Charles Earl for processing and to you for listening to and sharing the episodes each month.
Stay tuned for future episodes with Ethel Zine, and Hem Press in 2022, plus another episode in our ongoing poetics series in December, and a whole new thread I’ll announce later for 2023.