20th Anniversary celebration with renowned poets Eileen Myles, Elizabeth Alexander, Sarah Kay, and Amber Tamblyn
Design Matters with Debbie Millman
Design Matters Media
4.5 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 12 January 2026
⏱️ 56 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
For the 20th anniversary of Design Matters, Debbie Millman revisits conversations with renowned poets Eileen Myles, Elizabeth Alexander, Sarah Kay, and Amber Tamblyn. These excerpts reflect on language, identity, memory, and the lived experience that fuels their work. Together, they reveal poetry as an intimate practice that resonates beyond the page.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Sometimes I almost remember it like I wrote it rather than as it happened. |
| 0:06.3 | In the DNA of everything you write, is everything else you're ever going to write. |
| 0:12.4 | From the TED Audio Collective, this is Design Matters with Debbie Milman. |
| 0:19.7 | On Design Matters, Debbie talks with some of the most creative people in the world about what they do, how they got to be who they are, and what they're thinking about, and working on. |
| 0:29.0 | On this episode, in celebration of the 20th anniversary of Design Matters, we'll hear from some of the poets that Debbie has interviewed over the years. |
| 0:37.6 | There was an entire part of myself that was dying. |
| 0:40.6 | It felt like the whole room was communicating. |
| 0:44.0 | There is room for you. |
| 0:52.0 | When I interview designers, painters, photographers, movie makers, illustrators, and other visual artists, |
| 0:59.8 | I talked to them about their lives, their creative processes, and their work. |
| 1:04.8 | But because it's an audio podcast, listeners can't see what we're talking about. |
| 1:10.2 | When I interview musicians, some have agreed to perform a song or two in our little |
| 1:15.4 | podcast booth, which is an extraordinary gift. |
| 1:19.1 | But not every musician I speak with is a singer-songwriter who can show up in person with a guitar. |
| 1:25.6 | But when I interview poets, I always get them to read some of their work, |
| 1:30.8 | and poets are wonderful readers of their poems. On this episode celebrating the 20th anniversary |
| 1:37.8 | year of Design Matters, I'd like to play excerpts from some of the poets I've had the pleasure |
| 1:43.5 | of talking with and listening to. |
| 1:46.9 | Eileen Miles has been publishing poetry for 50 years and is a literary institution in New York City's East Village. |
| 1:55.8 | They're also a novelist, an art journalist, and a writer of Opera La libretti. If you look up the words hip or cool |
| 2:03.7 | in my imaginary illustrated dictionary, you will find a headshot of Eileen Miles. I spoke with them |
| 2:10.5 | in 2017. You moved to New York City in 1974 to be a poet. And you said that all of your life, people have asked you what you do and you say that you're a poet and they just kind of look at you like you've said you're a stripper. Still? No, they look at you like you said you were a mime. It would be cool if they looked at you if they thought you were a stripper. They just thought, why, I mean, I was just like, |
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