July 30, 2026
Episode 820: The Life of Eva Gore-Booth with Sonja Tiernan
In Episode 820, Jacke talks to Sonja Tiernan about her book Eva Gore-Booth: Irish Radical Poet, Rebel, and Reformer, which tells the story of a young woman who cast aside her aristocratic origins to champion the causes of barmaids, circus performers, flower sellers, and pit-brow lasses.
Living in Manchester with her partner, Esther Roper, Gore-Booth became an unsung hero of LGBTQ+ history, editing a radical journal and publishing nineteen volumes of poetry and prose that drew the admiration of fellow writers like W.B. Yeats.
For a glimpse of Gore-Booth's poetry, here's the opening stanza to her poem "Weariness":
Amid the glare of light and songAnd talk that knows not when to cease,The sullen voices of the throng,My weary soul cries out for peace,Peace and the quietness of death;The wash of waters deep and cool,The wind too faint for any breathTo stir oblivion’s silent pool,When all who swim against the stream,And they that laugh, and they that weep,Shall change like flowers in a dreamThat wither on the brows of sleep.
For more about Gore-Booth's life and works, you could browse the following:
Episode 827: American Literature's War on Crime with Theodore Martin
The second half of the twentieth century was marked by an extreme increase in America's prison population, from roughly 250,000 inmates in 1940 to well over two million by 2008. At the same time, American readers were devouring mysteries, thrillers,…
Episode 826: Washington Irving with Phillip Lopate
At the time of Washington Irving's death, he was the most famous and widely praised American writer of his or any other era. But his reputation soon dwindled, and today he's known primarily as the author of just two stories ("The Legend of Sleepy Ho…
