Since 2018, The Slowdown has been listener’s companion to the cacophony of the world, in five minutes of poetry and reflection every weekday. After over 1300 episodes, and now helmed by Nashville resident Major Jackson, The Slowdown continues to show us a way through our chaotic times. It is a guide to allowing poetry to become a window, both into our inner lives, and out towards the community we share.

Join us at Analog at Hutton Hotel for an evening that uses the attention of The Slowdown to celebrate the intersections of life and literature in Nashville. Major Jackson and Jad Abumrad, alongside readings from local poets, will join forces in an expansive conversation that explores the daily noise we interact with -- how sharing poetry, stories, and reflection can shape our experience of the everyday. How do we collage our own pasts and our presents, alongside the many voices that we engage with?

GA tickets are free with RSVP. Limited VIP seats available for $30 each.

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Major Jackson is the host of The Slowdown and the author of six books of poetry, as well as the editor of several collected volumes. Jackson is a recipient of fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. He has been awarded a Pushcart Prize, a Whiting Writers’ Award, and has been honored by the Pew Fellowship in the Arts and the Witter Bynner Foundation in conjunction with the Library of Congress. He is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in the Humanities at Vanderbilt University. He also serves as the Poetry Editor of The Harvard Review.

Jad Abumrad makes audio stories and is a musician. His shows, Radiolab, More Perfect, Dolly Parton’s America, Unerased, and The Vanishing of Harry Pace, have been downloaded over a billion times. Jad is the recipient of three Peabody Awards, and in 2011, was named a MacArthur Fellow. He is currently a Distinguished Professor of Research at Vanderbilt University. He’s working on a new audio project that will debut in late 2025.

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