������

Air Dates: August 5- August 11, 2024

Tyranny comes in many forms. But Leah Umansky uses her art—poetry—to remind us that whether the tyrant is personal, societal, or political—resistance is possible.  

Leah Umansky is a poet, writer, artist and writing coach. She has been an educator for over 15 years and teaches 8th and 10th grade English at a private school in New York. She is also the author of three collections of poetry: “OF TYRANT,” “The Barbarous Century,” “Domestic Uncertainties,” and two chapbooks, “Straight Away the Emptied World” and the Mad-Men inspired “Don Dreams and I Dream.” She is also the creator of “STAY BRAVE,” a monthly newsletter for women-identifying creatives on bravery in the creative life. Her writing has been widely published in such places as The New York Times, The Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A Day, USA Today, POETRY, Guernica and American Poetry Review.  She has also been the host and curator of the NYC-based poetry series. “COUPLET,” since 2011 and is a graduate of the MFA Program in Poetry at Sarah Lawrence College.

On this episode of “Story in the Public Square,” Umansky explores how today’s growing political upheaval prompted her to write “OF TYRANT,” a collection of poems that exposes tyranny in American politics. She explains, “but I think it’s really about an abuse of power, and it’s about injustice and it’s about hatred, the opposite of hope, the opposite of love. It’s about really not caring, not being empathetic.” Umansky adds, “I was just so disgusted with the way our society was going, the way the government was going, the way the world is going now and then.”  She says, “[the collection] was really the only way I could actually cope with what I was seeing in the news, what I was seeing on social media, what all my friends and my family were talking about.”

“Story in the Public Square” broadcasts each week on public television stations across the United States. In Rhode Island and southeastern New England, the show is broadcast on Rhode Island PBS on Sundays at 11:00 a.m. and is rebroadcast Thursdays at 7:30 p.m. Check your local public teleision listings for air times near you! An audio version of the program airs Saturdays at 8:30 a.m. and 7:30 p.m. ET, Sundays at 5:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m. and Mondays at 2:30 a.m. ET on SiriusXM’s popular P.O.T.U.S. (Politics of the United States), channel 124. “Story in the Public Square” is a project of the Pell Center at ������. The initiative aims to study, celebrate and tell stories that matter.