Public Conversations: Uses of Poetry is the eighteenth episode of the Podcast for Social Research and features poet, scholar, and divagator Maureen N. McLane, author of Mz N: the Serial, among other works of poetry and criticism, along with BISR faculty member Rebecca Ariel Porte. Maureen and Rebecca talk art in a time of crisis, what it means to be contemporary, how poems happen, hybrid forms, the genesis of Mz N, lyric theory, and what, in the first place, poetry is for. Recorded live at Berg’n, this episode was moderated by Christine Smallwood, a founding BISR faculty member, and marks the first event of BISR’s Public Conversations program, a series that puts members of the Institute faculty in dialogue with artists, writers, scientists, and other luminaries. Notations for this episode may be found here.