Landlocked Music will be selling autographed copies of a new album by a renowned poet, Indiana University’s Ross Gay. Gay reads his poetry from several books with musicians’ accompaniment on each track.
On March 26, digital copies will be available, with physical copies available April 9. Publicized readings or other events may also occur with the release, although they have yet to be scheduled.
Landlocked will launch the 25th anniversary celebration of Jagjaguwar at its store by featuring “Dilate Your Heart,” which is also Jagjaguwar’s first spoken-word album since American poet Robert Creeley’s self-titled release 20 years ago.
Jagjaguwar is an American independent record label based in Bloomington, with additional offices in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Austin, London, Paris, Amsterdam and Berlin. Since 1996, Jagjaguwar has championed artists who have bent the tides of popular music. The label’s goal is not to highlight specific songs but to encourage artists working together with their neighbors.
Gay teaches at IU and has received honors for “The Book of Delights,” released in 2019. Ever reminding his readers of the pleasure of thanking and reveling in the ordinary, he has written four books of poetry: “Against Which”; “Bringing the Shovel Down”; “Be Holding”; and “Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude,” winner of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. His recent book-length poem, “Be Holding,” was released last year.
“Over the last 12 years, Ross Gay’s poems have given us indelible images and phrases of radical empathy and unabated gratitude about community, collaboration, connectedness and hard work,” said in an email press release from Jagjaguwar.
“Dilate Your Heart” does not stem from any one of Gay’s poems, and the phrase means make room, let more in, welcome the expansion of one’s community, let in what life offers, even its end.
Each track is a conversation among artists. In “Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude,” Gay’s voice gives thanks for many things as Bon Iver, an American indie folk band founded in 2006, accompanies. In “Burial” harpist and composer Mary Lattimore’s music follows Gay’s voice explaining how we exchange energy with nature. Chicago’s Angel Bat Dawid dances with the frenetic, joyous scene through which Gay leads listeners in “To the Fig Tree on 9th and Christian.” Songwriter Gia Margaret provides the environment for Gay’s “Poem to My Child If Ever You Shall Be,” a love letter to an imagined future child. Saxophonist and jazz musician Sam Gendel affects Gay’s voice in “Sorrow Is Not My Name.” Gay focuses on the treasure of life’s every day instead of its finality and throughout recites his poems in his warm, easy voice.
A founding board member of the Bloomington Community Orchard, a nonprofit that provides free fruit for all, Gay also works on The Tenderness Project with Shayla Lawson and Essence London. Cave Canem, the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference and the Guggenheim Foundation have all given him fellowships.
“Doing a project with Ross has been a goal and wish for us for many years,” Byers said. “We are delighted that Jagjaguwar is helping deliver to the world a glimpse into Ross Gay’s fantastic work.”
