Calling America: Give Us Your Stories, Poems & Essays

Series produced by Deborah Begel

Series image

Poems and stories in small nests woven with emerging writers and actors of various ages and times. A lone instrument howls, growls and muses on the ground below.

Calling America is a parade of 21 spoken word modules that send rambunctious notes of thought, reflection, and action into the air, liberating topics as familiar as fun, dreams and fantasy, as deeply felt as love, place, and dreams, in places as varied as the Maine coast and the classroom, and introducing characters who run the gamut, from farmers and soldiers to family legends.

Lengths vary, from 2:42 to 4:00.

Writer Kim Stafford (Rural Voices Radio) is the host; sound design by Stephen Erickson.

The series is evergreen, timely all year round. Modules can be aired weekdays for a month or weekly for half a year with five rollovers.


Additional Files

  • How Place Shapes Us: (caph01id.jpeg)
  • Packets of Dreams: Dreams are often wrapped in very different packages. In this Calling America, we unwrap dreams. We float among kelp with dolphins, we climb out of a pink envelope to try out for supermodel. (caph2dreams.jpg)

21 Pieces

Order by: Newest First | Oldest First
Piece image
The inner secrets of a comma, a writer, a teacher.

  • Added: Nov 13, 2008
  • Length: 03:24

  • Added: Nov 13, 2008
  • Length: 03:08

  • Added: Nov 13, 2008
  • Length: 03:36

  • Added: Nov 13, 2008
  • Length: 03:14

  • Added: Nov 13, 2008
  • Length: 03:49
Piece image
Clutter: it pursues us, fills our drawers, hides our keys.

  • Added: Nov 13, 2008
  • Length: 03:18
Piece image
The characters we tell stories about, our unforgettables

  • Added: Nov 13, 2008
  • Length: 03:07

  • Added: Nov 13, 2008
  • Length: 03:39

  • Added: Nov 12, 2008
  • Length: 03:25

  • Added: Nov 12, 2008
  • Length: 03:50
Piece image
A reminder that love keeps changing

  • Added: Nov 12, 2008
  • Length: 04:01

  • Added: Nov 12, 2008
  • Length: 03:02
Piece image
Two pictures of jobs: from the outside In and in the Imagination

  • Added: Nov 12, 2008
  • Length: 02:45
Piece image
...the flights of fancy, the follies, the letdowns, and the soft landings

Bought by KZYX


  • Added: Nov 12, 2008
  • Length: 03:44
  • Purchases: 1
Piece image
Seasons we love, as told by experts

  • Added: Nov 12, 2008
  • Length: 02:43
Piece image
We climb the stairs to old age with two women & one man

  • Added: Nov 12, 2008
  • Length: 02:54

  • Added: Nov 12, 2008
  • Length: 03:30

  • Added: Nov 12, 2008
  • Length: 03:43
  • Purchases: 1

  • Added: Nov 12, 2008
  • Length: 03:34

  • Added: Nov 12, 2008
  • Length: 03:34