Moons Beams #21 - Sullivan Summer

Running ultramarathons and poetry share plenty of overlap, and exploring just how much with poet, ultramarathoner, literary critic, and podcaster Sullivan Summer was a pure pleasure in episode #21 of "Moon Beams.”

In a conversation that spanned a rich variety of topics, hearing Sullivan reflect on the term "pain cave” was especially poignant, as it's a phrase any ultramarathoner knows well, and marks a visceral crossover between poets and endurance athletes that Sullivan said, "is that place where everything, everything just hurts so much, and oftentimes it’s more than just the body hurt.

“And for me, when I think about writing, and I think about poetry, this kind of like ‘soul pain’ or ‘soul hurt,’ or the very highest highs that are very difficult to describe, and very lowest lows that are also difficult to describe using the words we normally use in every day vernacular, I think that’s very similar to poetry. 

“I think a lot of poets understand that as well. It’s why we use these great metaphors and similes and those kinds of things, because regular words don’t really work.”

I was also thrilled to talk to Sullivan about her partnership with the New Books Network, an organization of over 120 podcasts covering a vast range of topics, including literature, current events, history, and science.

Sullivan has used her platform on the network to elevate the voices of Black authors writing for and about Black people in history, literature, poetry, and other fiction and nonfiction topics, which the New Books Network has fully supported, with more episodes dropping in the near future. 

We also discussed Sullivan’s entry point to poetry through the Brooklyn Poets program, the work of Warsan Shire, Frank X. Walker, Dr. Taylor Byas, Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, Evie Shockley, Ashley Jones, and the critical story of #eleanorbumpurs as told by LaShawn Harris.

To close with a high point, Sullivan’s first book of poetry, Performance Anxiety, was published in June by Black Sunflowers Poetry Press, with beautiful cover art by Hiroshi Tachibana.

“It looks at this intersection between being a woman, being a black woman, being an adopted person… and performance, in all its different iterations.”

I’m grateful to Sullivan for the top-tier energy, quality, and critical eye she’s giving on all of these fronts, and am very excited to see her break more new ground in her writing, podcasting, and running games soon.