Lucia Perillo

01/15/2003

An interview with MacArthur "genius" award-winning poet Lucia Perillo.

Also this hour

A conversation with someone who donated one of her kidneys to a person she doesn’t know.

At 2:05pm - Living Organ Donation
It is not uncommon for a family member to donate a kidney to a loved one in need - if there is a match. But such donations are not enough for the demand. More than 53,000 people are on transplant lists for kidneys nationwide - about 800 people here in the Northwest alone. And, of the people in this region, 30 died last year while waiting. So, what if you wanted to do something? Could you donate a kidney, just like giving blood?

Stephanie Wright did. This past summer she gave the gift of one of her kidneys to a person she doesn’t know through the Benevolent Community Donor Program at Swedish Medical Center. Stephanie joins us along with Dr. William Marks, director of Organ Transplantation at Swedish.

Swedish Medical Center: Dr. William H. Marks

Kidney.org

At 2:35pm - Lucia Perillo
Every year at this time, hundreds of bald eagles congregate on the upper Skagit river to feast on the spawned-out chum salmon. Most people who go to see the eagles barely notice the dying salmon that draw the raptors there. Photographer Scott Chambers developed a series of images illustrating the in-between state of the spawned-out salmon and Olympia poet Lucia Perillo used the photos as a jumping off point to explore the Tibetan concept of "The Bardo" -- the state in between life and the next stage of being. Diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in the mid-1980's, Perillo brings personal insight and a dazzling verbal virtuousity to the subject of the final transition.

In 2000, Perillo received a "genius" grant from the MacArthur foundation. She has published three collections of poems: Dangerous Life (1989), The Body Mutinies (1996), and The Oldest Map with the Name America: New and Selected Poems (1999).