Today's episode of Of Poetry is hosted by Amorak Huey (uh-MOR-ack), the author of Dad Jokes from Late in the Patriarchy (Sundress Publications, 2021).
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Purchase: Larks (Ohio University Press, 2025)

Read: "Larks" at Poetry Daily

Han VanderHartis a queer writer living in Durham, North Carolina, under the pines. Their second poetry collection, Larks (Ohio University Press, 2025), was selected by Chanda Feldman as winner of the 2024 Hollis Summers Poetry Prize. Han is also the author of the chapbook Hawk & Moon (Bottlecap Press, 2025) and What Pecan Light (Bull City Press, 2021) and has essays and poetry published in Kenyon Review, The American Poetry Review, The Rumpus, AGNI, and elsewhere. Han hosts Of Poetry Podcast and, alongside Amorak Huey, co-edits the poetry press River River Books.

Amorak Huey (uh-MOR-ack) is the author of four books of poems including Dad Jokes from Late in the Patriarchy (Sundress Publications, 2021). Co-founder with Han VanderHart of River River Books, Huey teaches in the BFA and MFA programs at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. He also is co-author with W. Todd Kaneko of the textbook Poetry: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology (Bloomsbury, 2nd ed., 2024) and Slash/Slash (2021), winner of the Diode Editions Chapbook Prize. Huey is a recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts, and his poems have appeared in The Best American Poetry, American Poetry Review, The Southern Review, The Missouri Review, the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day series, and many other print and online journals.

Reading Recommendations:

The Dream of Reason by Jenny George

Robert Pinsky, Sounds of Poetry

James Longenbach, The Lyric Now

The Poet in the World by Denise Levertov

Annie Lauterbach

"Bewilderment" (essay) by Fanny Howe

Gwendolyn Brooks

Marianne Moore

Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).

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Read: "The Difference Between a Dog and a Biscuit Tin" (Poetry Magazine)

Purchase: Kin by Karl Knights (Winner of the New Poets Prize, 2022)

Karl Knights’s poems, critical essays, and journalism have appeared in The Guardian, Poetry Review, Poetry London, The Dark Horse, and elsewhere. His debut chapbook, Kin, (2022) was published by The Poetry Business. Knights is a Zoeglossia fellow and won a 2021 New Poets Prize. He lives in Suffolk, England.

Recommended Reading

Brian Patten

Tilling the Hard Soil: Poetry, Prose and Art by South African Writers with Disabilities, ed. Kobus Moolman (University of KwaZulu-Natal Press: 2010)

Beauty is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability, eds. Jennifer Bartlett, Sheila Black & Michael Northen (Cinco Puntos Press: 2011)

QDA: A Queer Disability Anthology, ed. Raymond Luczak (Squares & Rebels: 2015)

Stairs and Whispers: D/deaf and Disabled Poets Write Back, eds. Sandra Alland, Khairani Barokka & Daniel Sluman (Nine Arches Press: 2017)

Imaginary Safe House, eds. Shane Neilson, Roxanna Bennett & Ally Fleming (Frog Hollow Press: 2019)

Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).
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Read: "Midwinter" in The Dodge

Purchase: Songs for the Land-Bound (June Road Press, 2024)

Violeta Garcia-Mendoza is a Spanish-American poet, teacher, and suburban wildlife photographer. Her poetry has appeared in numerous literary journals, and in 2022, she received a grant from the Sustainable Arts Foundation. She is a member of the Madwomen in the Attic Writing Workshops at Carlow University. Violeta lives with her husband, children, and pack of rescue dogs on a small certified wildlife habitat in western Pennsylvania. Songs for the Land-Bound (June Road Press, 2024) is her debut collection.

Recommended Reading

"In the Bleak Midwinter" by Christina Rossetti

June Road Press

Madwomen in the Attic
Episode 57: Sebastián H. Páramo (Of Apocalypse Literature, Writing Semi-Autobiography, and Hunting Pixelated Ducks)

Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).
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Purchase: Sweet Hunter: The Complete Poems of St. Teresa of Ávila (Monkfish Book Publishing, 2024) trans. Dana Delibovi and The Widow's Crayon Box (Penguin, 2024) by Molly Peacock

Dana Delibovi is a poet, essayist, and translator. She began translating the poetry of St. Teresa of Ávila in 2019, after retiring from a hybrid career as an advertising copywriter and adjunct instructor of philosophy. Her translations of Teresa's poetry and her essays on Teresa’s legacy have appeared in Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry, The Catholic Poetry Review, U.S. Catholic, After the Art, and Confluence, with a translation forthcoming in a new anthology from Word on Fire. Delibovi's writing has also appeared in Apple Valley Review, Bluestem, Ezra Translations, Moria, Noon, Psaltery & Lyre, Salamander, Slippery Elm and many other journals. She is a 2020 Pushcart Prize nominee, a 2020 Best American Essays notable essayist, and 2023 co-winner of the Hueston Woods Poetry Contest. Delibovi is Consulting Poetry Editor at the literary e-zine Cable Street. She received her BA from Barnard College, Columbia University, and holds MA degrees from New York University (philosophy) and Bank Street College of Education (early childhood education). She lives in Lake Saint Louis, Missouri.

Molly Peacock is a poet and a biographer whose multi-genre literary life has taken her from New York City to Toronto, from poetry to prose, from lyric self-examination to curiosity about the lives of others.  Her latest poetry collection is The Widow’s Crayon Box (W.W. Norton), a  A book-length sequence of poems that dares to affirm the vast variety of emotional colors in loss and rejuvenation. Peacock is the author of eight books of poetry, including The Analyst: Poems and Cornucopia: New & Selected Poems, as well as A Friend Sails in on a Poem, about a 47-year friendship in poetry.  Peacock is the co-founder of Poetry in Motion on New York’s subways and buses, the founder of The Best Canadian Poetry series and, most recently, creator of The Secret Poetry Room at Binghamton University. Awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Canada Council, and the Leon Levy Center for Biography, Peacock is also a memoirist and biographer, author of two books about creativity in the lives of women artists Flower Diary and The Paper Garden: Mrs. Delany Begins Her Life’s Work at 72, named a Book of the Year by Booklist, The Economist, The Globe and Mail, The Irish Times, The Kansas City Star, The London Evening Standard, MacLean’s, The Pittsburgh Post Gazette and The Sunday Telegraph. A dual citizen of Canada and the United States, she lives in Toronto and teaches at 92NY.

Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).
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Read: "Inheritance" and "Homecoming, Rich Square, NC" (Fourway Review)

Purchase: Composition (Button Poetry, 2023)

Junious 'Jay' Ward is a poet and teaching artist from Charlotte, NC. He is a National Slam champion (2018), an Individual World Poetry Slam champion (2019), author of Sing Me A Lesser Wound (Bull City Press 2020) and Composition (Button Poetry 2023). Jay currently serves as Charlotte's inaugural Poet Laureate and is a 2023 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow. Ward has attended Breadloaf Writers Conference, Callaloo, The Watering Hole and Tin House Winter Workshop. His work can be found in Columbia Journal, Four Way Review, DIAGRAM, Diode Poetry Journal and elsewhere.

Recommended Reading and Listening:

Year of the Dog by Deborah Paredez (Boa Editions)

Look by Solmaz Sharif (Graywolf Press)

Zong! by M. nourbeSe philip (Graywolf Press)

Defacing the Monument by Susan Briante (Noemi Press)

Whereas by Layli Long Soldier (Graywolf)

Catherine Rockwood's Episode 44: Of Pirates, the Event of the Image, and Angelic Sex

Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).
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Read: "I Pull My Leaf Leg Stockings Off My Body" (The Boiler Journal)

Purchase: The Girl Who Became a Rabbit (HCP, 2024)

Emilie Menzel, writer and librarian of hybridities, is the author of the book-length lyric The Girl Who Became a Rabbit (Hub City Press, 2024). Their gently haunted writing features in Copper Nickel, Bennington Review, and The Offing, amongst others, and has garnered such honors as the New Southern Voices Poetry Prize, the Deborah Slosberg Memorial Award in Poetry, and the Cara Parravani Memorial Award in Fiction. Menzel holds an MFA from UMass Amherst and serves as a collections librarian at Duke University and creative resources librarian for Seventh Wave. Raised on Georgia summers, they live in Durham, North Carolina.

Recommended Reading:

The Descent of Alette by Alice Notley

"The War of Vaslav Ninjinsky" by Frank Bidart

My Life in the Nineties by Lyn Hejinian

Max Porter

Annie Dillard

Toni Morrison

Maggie Nelson

Bernadette Meyer

Sabrina Ora Mark

Lydia Davis

Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).
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Read: "Men Working Above: demolition" and "Parable of Baiting" (UCity Review)

Purchase: Altars of Spine and Fraction (Northwestern University Press, 2024)

Nicholas Molbert Born and raised on Louisiana’s Gulf Coast, Nicholas lives in Los Angeles. He is the author of Altars of Spine and Fraction(Northwestern University Press, 2024) and two poetry chapbooks from Foundlings Press: Goodness Gracious (2019) and Cocodrie Elegy (2024). You can find his work in places like The Cincinnati Review, The Greensboro Review, Mississippi Review, and Missouri Review among others. He holds a PhD from the University of Cincinnati and an MFA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign."

Recommended Reading:

Martha Serpas

Dear Memphis by Rachel Edelman

Night Angler by Geoffrey Davis

Lures by Adam Vibes

Blood Dazzler by Patricia Smith

Beyond Katrina by Natasha Trethewey

The Room Where I Was Born by Brian Teare

Larry Levis

Phillip Levine

Wanda Coleman

Unmanly Grief by Jess Williard

Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).
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Read: "Everyone Said Nature Was Healing" (Poetry Northwest)

Purchase: Portrait of Us Burning(Curbstone Books, 2023)

Sebastián H. Páramo is the author of Portrait of Us Burning (Curbstone Books, 2023) and was named a finalist for the 2023 Best First Book of Poetry by the Texas Institute of Letters. His poems have recently appeared or will appear in AGNI, Poetry Northwest, The Arkansas International, Prairie Schooner, New England Review, and elsewhere.  His work has received fellowships and support from the Dobie Paisano Fellowship Program at UT-Austin, CantoMundo, among others. He is the founding editor of The Boiler and lives in Texas.

Recommended Reading:

Apocalypse and Disaster Communities Reading List on Bookshop

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabriel Zevin

Meltwater by Claire Wahmanholm 

Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank

The World Keeps Ending, the World Goes On by Franny Choi

The Murderbot Diariesby Martha Wells

Stanley Kunitz

Larry Levis

Thomas Lux

Nicola Davison-Reed

Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).
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Read: Emily's poem "The Meat of the Plum" in Moist Poetry Journal

Emily Kramer is a poet and editor living in Boston, MA. She received her BA in English from Barnard College, and her PhD from Boston University’s Editorial Institute. Her critical edition of Arthur Henry Hallam’s collected poems is forthcoming from Oxford University Press. 

Recommended Reading:

Saskia Hamilton

Arthur Henry Hallam

Alfred, Lord Tennyson's In Memoriam

Robert Lowell

Words in Air: the complete correspondence of Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell, edited by Thomas Travisano and Saskia Hamilton

The Dolphin by Robert Lowell, edited Saskia Hamilton

Virginia Woolf's Letters with Vita Sackville-West (Paris Review)

John Keats' Letters

Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).
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Read: "Invitatory" at Poetry Daily

Purchase: Invitatory (Parlor Press, 2024)

Molly Spencer is a poet, critic, editor, and writing instructor. Her debut collection, If the House (University of Wisconsin Press, 2019) won the 2019 Brittingham Prize judged by Carl Phillips. A second collection, Hinge​ (SIU Press, 2020), a finalist for the National Poetry Series, won the 2019 Crab Orchard Open Competition judged by Allison Joseph. Invitatory, her forthcoming third collection, won the 2022 New Measure Poetry Prize and will be published in 2024 by Free Verse Editions / Parlor Press. Molly’s poetry has appeared in Blackbird, Copper Nickel, FIELD, The Georgia Review, Gettysburg Review, New England Review, Ploughshares, and Prairie Schooner. Her critical writing and essays have appeared at Colorado Review, The Georgia Review, Kenyon Review online, Literary Hub, The Writer's Chronicle, and The Rumpus, where she is a senior poetry editor. Molly's work has won a Lucile Medwick Award from the Poetry Society of America, a Glenna Luschei Award from Prairie Schooner, a Writers@Work Fellowship Award, and a faculty fellowship from the University of Michigan's Institute for the Humanities. She holds an MFA from the Rainier Writing Workshop and an MPA from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, and teaches writing at the University of Michigan's Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. ​

Further Reading:

Carl Phillips

Jorie Graham

"Home Burial" by Robert Frost

Wordsworth's Prelude, Book 1 ("Fair seedtime had my soul...")

Aracelis Girmay's essay From Woe to Wonder

Jake Skeets' essay Poetry as Field

Louise Glück

Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).
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Read: "Dawn's Fool" (author's website), also "[your mind that beautiful country]" at Malarkey Books

Purchase: But Then I Thought by Kyla Houbolt (above/ground press, 2023)

Kyla Houbolt writes poems and occasional reviews, and takes care of two goats, 11 chickens, and 8 ducks. Chapbooks But Then I Thought available from above/ground press, Tuned available from CCCP Chapbooks, Surviving Death available from The Broken Spine, and a re-issue of Dawn’s Fool(a micro chap) also available from above/ground press. 

Recommended Reading:

Lucille Clifton

Tang Dynasty poets

Gary Snyder

Frank O'Hara

Emily Dickinson

Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).
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Read: "Disambiguation" at Poetry Daily 

Purchase: Asterism by Ae Hee Lee (Tupelo Press, 2024)

Ae Hee Lee--born in South Korea and raised in Peru--is the author of ASTERISM, which was selected by John Murillo for the 2022 Dorset Prize, and the poetry chapbooks Bedtime || Riverbed (Compound Press 2017), Dear bear, (Platypus Press 2021), and  Connotary (Frost Place Chapbook Competition Winner – Bull City Press 2021). Ae Hee is a Just Buffalo Literary Center Fellow, Adroit Journal Gregory Djanikian Scholar, recipient of the James Olney Award by The Southern Review, and Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship Finalist. She has also received scholarships and honors from the Academy of American Poets, AWP, Bread Loaf, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Palm Beach Poetry Festival, among others.  

Recommended Reading:

Build Yourself a Boat by Camonghne Felix

The Body: An Essay by Jenny Boully

Ghost by Rachel Whiteread (National Gallery)

The Atomic Sonnets by Rosebud Ben-Oni

Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti

Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).

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Purchase: Ablation (11:11 Press) 

Read: "Relentless" (at cloak.wtf, the relentless reading experience) 

Danika Stegeman’s second book, Ablation, was released by 11:11 Press November 1st, 2023. Her first book, Pilot (2020), was published by Spork Press. She’s a 2023 recipient of a grant from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund. Her video poem, “Then Betelgeuse Reappears” was an official selection for the 2021 Midwest Video Poetry Festival. She’s an assistant editor for Conduit and does light bookkeeping for Fonograf Editions. Along with Jace Brittain, she co-curates the virtual collaborative reading series It’s Copperhead Season. She currently lives in St. Paul, MN. Her website is danikastegeman.com.

Recommended Reading:

Harryette Mullen Urban Tumbleweed 

The Cinquain

Gertrude Stein

Alice Notley's Certain Magical Acts

Anne Carson’s Nox

Molly Spencer's Invitatory

Jake Skeets’ essay "Poetry as Field" and "The Memory Field"

Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).
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Read: Excerpt from Beth Gilstrap's There is News Along the Ohio River (Cincinnati Review), and Lee Potts' "A Time of Splinters" (Moist Poetry Journal)

Purchase: Deadheading & Other Stories (Red Hen Press, 2021) by Beth Gilstrap and We Will Miss the Stars in the Morningby Lee Potts

Beth Gilstrap is the author of Deadheading & Other Stories (2021), Winner of the Red Hen Press Women’s Prose Prize, short-listed for the Stanford Libraries William Saroyan International Prize for Writing, finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Award, Bronze-winner of Reader Views Literary Awards, and a finalist for the 2021 Foreword Reviews Awards in Short Fiction. She is also the author of I Am Barbarella: Stories (2015) from Twelve Winters Press and No Man’s Wild Laura (2016) from Hyacinth Girl Press. Born and raised near Charlotte, she and her house full of critters now call the Charleston-metro area home. She also lives with c-PTSD and is quite vocal about ending the stigma surrounding mental illness. For the ’24/’25 academic year, she’ll be in service with Americorps/Reading Partners.

Lee Potts (he/him) is author of two poetry chapbooks: We Will Miss the Stars in the Morning (Bottlecap Press, 2024) and And Drought Will Follow (Frosted Fire, 2021). He was poetry editor at Barren Magazine from 2020 to 2023 and co-editor of the Painted Bride Quarterly back in the late 80s and early 90s. He is a Pushcart Prize and a Best of the Net nominee. His work has appeared in The Night Heron Barks, Rust + Moth, Whale Road Review, UCity Review, Firmament, Moist Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. He lives just outside of Philadelphia with his wife, the last kid still at home, and two cats named Franny and Zooey.

Further Reading:

Black Lily Zine

Stone Circle Review

Siddhartha by Herman Hesse

Circe by Madeline Miller

Andrei Tarkovsky (particularly Stalker)

Aftersun (Dir. by Charlotte Wells)

Aubrey Hirsch

Poor Things (Dir. by Yorgos Lanthimos)

Little Fiction Big Truths

Barren Magazine

Painted Bride Quarterly

Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).
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Read: "I'd Rather Be" by Mitchell Nobis and "After the Last" by Jared Beloff, both published in Moist Poetry Journal

Purchase: Who Will Cradle Your Head by Jared Beloff (and be on the lookout for Mitch Nobel's Beginning to Sense, forthcoming from ELJ Editions in 2025)

Jared Beloff is the author of the Who Will Cradle Your Head (ELJ Editions, 2023). Jared is currently a poetry editor at The Weight Journal and Poets of Queens. His poetry can be found in AGNI, Baltimore Review, Rust & Moth, Crab Creek Review and elsewhere. His work has been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. He lives with his wife and two daughters in Queens, NY.

Mitchell Nobis is a writer and K-12 teacher in Metro Detroit. His poetry has been nominated for things by Whale Road Review, Nurture Literary, and Exposition Review. His collection Beginning to Sense is forthcoming from ELJ Editions (2025), and he has two poetry manuscripts making the rounds. He facilitates the Teachers as Poets group for the National Writing Project, hosts the Wednesday Night Sessions reading series, serves as an assistant editor at Bracken Magazine, and co-founded the NAWP reading series. Find him at @MitchNobis (various platforms).

Further Reading:

NAWP

Patricia Smith

UCity Review

rob mclennan
Gabriel Garcia Márquez's Until August review

Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).
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Read: "What If Pain No Longer Ordered the Narrative" (The Sun)

Purchase: No Spare People (Black Lawrence Press, 2023)

Erin Hoover was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. She is the author of two poetry collections: Barnburner (Elixir, 2018), which won the Antivenom Poetry Award and a Florida Book Award, and No Spare People (Black Lawrence, 2023). Her poems have appeared in The Best American Poetry and in journals such as Cincinnati Review, Poetry Northwest, Shenandoah, and The Sun. Hoover lives in Tennessee and teaches creative writing at Tennessee Tech University. She curates and hosts a poetry reading series, Sawmill Poetry, and produces the “Not Abandon, but Abide” monthly interview series for the Southern Review of Books. Visit her website at erinhooverpoet.com.

Further Reading:

Ever Baldwin

Adrienne Rich

Rachel Zucker

Diane Seuss

Bernadette Mayer

Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).
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Read: "Dream, with an interior" in Moist Poetry Journal

Purchase: World's End (ARP Books, 2023) and groundwork: The best of the third decade of above/ground press: 2013–2023 (Invisible Publishing, 2023)

Born in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, rob mclennan currently lives in Ottawa, where he is home full-time with the two wee girls he shares with Christine McNair. The author of more than thirty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, he won the John Newlove Poetry Award in 2010, the Council for the Arts in Ottawa Mid-Career Award in 2014, and was longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize in 2012 and 2017. In March, 2016, he was inducted into the VERSe Ottawa Hall of Honour. His most recent titles include the poetry collection World’s End, (ARP Books, 2023), a suite of pandemic essays, essays in the face of uncertainties (Mansfield Press, 2022) and the anthology groundworks: the best of the third decade of above/ground press 2013-2023 (Invisible Publishing, 2023). His collection of short stories, On Beauty (University of Alberta Press) will appear in fall 2024. An editor and publisher, he runs above/ground press, periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics (periodicityjournal.blogspot.com) and Touch the Donkey (touchthedonkey.blogspot.com). He is editor of my (small press) writing day, and an editor/managing editor of many gendered mothers. He spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta, and regularly posts reviews, essays, interviews and other notices at robmclennan.blogspot.com

Recommended Reading:

Midwinter Day by Bernadette Mayer

Lydia Davis

Russell Edson

Sarah Manguso

Nate Logan

Ben Niespodziany

Rosmarie Waldrop

Cole Swenson

Rachel Zucker

Lisa Robertson

Norma Cole, Writing on Writing in French

Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).
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Read: Book X and Book VII from "The Queerness of Eve"

Purchase: Nonbinary Bird of Paradise (University of Akron Press, 2024)

Emilia Phillips (they/them) is a poet, nonfiction writer, and book reviewer. They are the author of five poetry collections from the University of Akron Press, including Nonbinary Bird of Paradise (forthcoming February 2024) and Embouchure (2021), and four chapbooks. Winner of a 2019 Pushcart Prize, 2015 StoryQuarterly Nonfiction Prize, and the 2012 The Journal Poetry Prize, Phillips’s poems, lyric essays, and book reviews appear widely in literary publications including The Adroit Journal, Agni, American Poetry Review, Gulf Coast, The Kenyon Review, New England Review, The New York Times, Ploughshares, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. They are an Associate Professor of Creative Writing in the Department of English; MFA in Writing Program; and the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at UNC Greensboro, where they regularly teach MFA- and undergraduate-level poetry workshops, Queer Poetry & Poetics, and Women’s Health & Bodies. 

Recommended Reading:

Linda Gregerson

Jenny Johnson — "Fisting Party" (Cortland Review), "Bottoms" (APR)

Donika Kelly -- "On What Gay Porn Has Done For Me"

Destiny O Birdsong - "what lesbian porn has done for me" (PoFo)

Xan Phillips - "Want Could Kill Me"

Cameron Awkward-Rich

Ari Banias

Chen Chen

Chris Corlew is a writer and musician living in Chicago. His work has appeared in Cotton Xenomorph, Whisk(e)y Tit, Kicking Your Ass, Cracked.com, and elsewhere. With Bob Sykora, he co-hosts The Line Break, a podcast about poetry and basketball. With Brendan Johnson, he is ½ of Lazy & Entitled, the band that writes novels. You can find more Chris on Bluesky @thecorlew, a storiesfromvine.com, or at shipwreckedsailor.substack.com.

Bob Sykora is the author of the chapbook I Was Talking About Love–You Are Talking About Geography (Nostrovia! 2016) and the forthcoming collection Utopians in Love (Game Over Books 2025). A graduate of the UMass Boston MFA program, he teaches at community college, edits with Garden Party Collective, co-hosts The Line Break podcast, and curates the KC Poetry Calendar.

Han VanderHart is a queer writer and arts organizer living in Durham, North Carolina. Han is the author of the poetry collection What Pecan Light (Bull City Press, 2021) and the chapbook Hands Like Birds (Ethel Zine Press, 2019). They have poetry and essays published in The Boston Globe, Kenyon Review, The American Poetry Review, The Rumpus, AGNI and elsewhere. Han hosts Of Poetry Podcast, edits Moist Poetry Journal, and co-edits the poetry press River River Books with Amorak Huey.

Poems Read on the Show:

"Utopians in Love" by Bob Sykora (Cotton Xenomorph)

“Bottoms” by Jenny Johnson (American Poetry Review)

"What the Kids Don't Know" by Jill McDonough (The ThreePenny Review)

“Elusive Black Hole Pair” by Alina Pleskova (Toska, Deep Vellum)

"Last night I was sexting and reading June Jordan" by Han VanderHart (unpublished)

"human pastoral brick" by Chris Corlew

Read: Amorak Huey's "Estuary, Delta, Confluence, Mouth" and Han VanderHart's "Larks"(Up the Staircase Quarterly)

Purchase: Dad Jokes from Late in the Patriarchy (Sundress, 2021) and What Pecan Light (Bull City Press, 2021)

Amorak Huey is author of four books of poems including Dad Jokes from Late in the Patriarchy (Sundress Publications, 2021). Co-author with W. Todd Kaneko of the textbook Poetry: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology (Bloomsbury, 2018) and the chapbook Slash/Slash (Diode, 2021), Huey teaches in the BFA and MFA programs at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. His previous books are Boom Box (Sundress, 2019), Seducing the Asparagus Queen (Cloudbank, 2018), and Ha Ha Ha Thump (Sundress, 2015), as well as two chapbooks. He is recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and his poems appear in the Best American Poetry anthology, Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day, the Norton Critical Edition of The Odyssey, and many print and online journals.

Han VanderHart is a genderqueer, Southern writer living in Durham, North Carolina, under the loblolly pines. Han is the author of the poetry collection What Pecan Light (Bull City Press, 2021) and the chapbook Hands Like Birds (Ethel Zine Press, 2019). They have poetry and essays published in The Boston Globe, Kenyon Review, The American Poetry Review, The Rumpus, AGNI and elsewhere. Han hosts Of Poetry podcast and edits Moist Poetry Journal. Their aim is to live, edit, and write with transparency, care, and warmth. They love rescue pitbulls, and send a hello to your dog.

RiverRiverbooks.org

Recommended Reading/Listening

Lauren Camp

Rachel Edelman

W. Todd Kaneko

Carla Sofia Ferreira

Jennifer A Sutherland

Joe Wilkins

Corrie Williamson

The Line Break podcast with Bob Sykora and Chris Corlew 

The Black Lily Zine

Noa Fields

Nic Anstett

Jason B. Crawford

Stephen J. Furlong

Octopus Books

Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).
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Read: "Ode to the Empanadas on Pacific & Elm, with Apologies to William Carlos Williams" in Okay Donkey Mag

Purchase: A Geography That Does Not Hurt Us (River River Books, 2024)

Carla Sofia Ferreira (she/her) is the daughter of Portuguese immigrants and a teacher from Newark, New Jersey. Author of micro-chapbook Ironbound Fados (Ghost City Press, 2019) and debut poetry book A Geography That Does Not Hurt Us (River River Books, 2024), her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. You can find her writing in The Rumpus, Glamour, EcoTheo, underblong, Okay Donkey, december, and Washington Square Review, among others. On the internet, she’s @csferreira08 on Twitter and @csferreirawrites on Instagram. She believes in kindness, semicolons, and the permanent abolition of ICE. She has now successfully taught her cat Moonshadow how to fetch. She dislikes writing bios in the third person but is saving for her overthrow of societal norms for other causes.

Recommended Reading:

Aracelis Girmay, Kingdom Animalia

Ross Gay, Be Holding and Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude 

Gwendolyn Brooks, "Paul Robeson"

Roberto Carlos Garcia, [Elegies]

Benjamin Garcia, Thrown in the Throat

Read: "A Poem for Retired Lighthouses," Little Blue Marble

Purchase: And We Are Far From Shore: Poems for Our Flag Means Death (Ethel Zine Press, 2023)

Catherine Rockwood  (she/they) lives in Massachusetts. She reads and edits for Reckoning Magazine and reviews books for Strange Horizons. Their poetry chapbooks, And We Are Far From Shore: Poems for Our Flag Means Death (2023) and Endeavors To Obtain Perpetual Motion (2022) are available from the Ethel Zine Press.

Recommended Reading:

Our Flag Means Death: A Brief Excursus on Tailors and Tailoring by Catherine Rockwood

A review of Our Flag Means Death by Catherine Rockwood (Strange Horizons)

Ethel Zine Press

Stephanie Burt, We Are Mermaids

Brian Teare, Doomstead Days

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Read: Neutral Spaces, for more of Tom Snarsky's poetry

Purchase: Reclaimed Water (Ornithopter Press, 2023)

Tom Snarsky is the author of the chapbooks Threshold (Another New Calligraphy) & Complete Sentences (Broken Sleep Books), as well as the full-length collections Light-Up Swan and Reclaimed Water (both from Ornithopter Press). He lives in the mountains of northwestern Virginia with his wife Kristi and their cats. You can find him @tomsnarsky on Twitter, Instagram, & Bluesky, and you can find the reading series he coordinates @night_light_poems_ on Instagram and @nightlightpoems on Twitter. If you're a poet, he would love to hear from you!

Further/Recommended Reading:

The Minison

The Minison Project

C.T. Salazar

Noelle Kocot's Ascent of the Mothers (Wave Books, 2023)
Jon Anderson's The Inner Gate

Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).
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Purchase: The Second Stop Is Jupiter (Wayne State University Press, 2023), To Emit Teal (Broadstone Books, 2020), Deifying A Total Darkness (Harry Tankoos Books, 2020)

Read: poems from "Fayre Gabbro Suite" (Ice Floe Press)

upfromsumdirt is a speculative poet & visual artist dreaming of romanticisms and revolutionary coups. he is the author of 3 chapbooks and 3 full-length collections of poetry, Deifying A Total Darkness (Harry Tankoos Books, 2020), To Emit Teal (Broadstone Books, 2020), and The Second Stop Is Jupiter (Wayne State University Press, 2023); a fourth collection, The Shoes of the Fisherman's Wife, is forthcoming from University Press of Kentucky in Fall 2025. he is a former co-founder of the defunct literary journal, Mythium, as well as the former co-owner of The Wild Fig Books & Coffee. currently, he serves as the in-house designer for Workhorse Publishing. upfromsumdirt resides in Lexington with his fellow Affrilachian Poet partner, author & college professor, Crystal Wilkinson.

Reading Recommendations:

Saida Agostini, let the dead in

Destiny Hemphill, motherworld: a devotional for the alter-life

Ishmael Reed, Mumbo Jumbo and "I Am a Cowboy in the Boat of Ra"

Crystal Wilkinson

Read: Carolyn Hembree's poem April 2020

Purchase: For Today (LSU Press, 2024)

Carolyn Hembree's third poetry collection, For Today, is forthcoming from LSU Press. She is also the author of Skinny and Rigging a Chevy into a Time Machine and Other Ways to Escape a Plague, winner of the Trio Award and the Rochelle Ratner Memorial Award. Her poems appear in Beloit Poetry Journal, Copper Nickel, Poetry Daily, The Southern Review, and other publications. She teaches in the MFA program at the University of New Orleans and serves as the poetry editor of Bayou Magazine. 

Recommended Reading:

Jennifer Shaw's visual art series Flood State

Pale Horse, Pale Rider by Katherine Anne Porter (novella on the 1918 flu pandemic)

Inger Christensen's alphabet, translated Susanna Nied

Spring and All (facsimile edition with introduction by C.D. Wright) by William Carlos Williams

[By the road to the contagious hospital] by William Carlos Williams

Don't Let Me Be Lonely by Claudia Rankine

"An Anatomy of the Long Poem" by Rachel Zucker

Read: "Dear Memphis," at Terrain.org

Purchase: Dear Memphis (River River Books, 2023)

Rachel Edelman is a Jewish poet raised in Memphis, Tennessee whose writing explores diasporic living. Dear Memphis, their debut collection of poems, will be published by River River Books in 2024. Her poems have appeared in Narrative, The Seventh Wave, The Threepenny Review, West Branch, and many other journals. They have received material support from City of Seattle Office of Arts & Culture, the Academy of American Poets, Mineral School, Crosstown Arts, and Tin House and finalist commendations from the Adrienne Rich Award, the Pink Poetry Prize, and the National Poetry Series. Edelman earned a BA in English and geology from Amherst College and an MFA in poetry from the University of Washington. She teaches Language Arts in the Seattle Public Schools, where embodiment and care root her personal, poetic, and pedagogical practice.

Further Reading:

Jacob Lawrence: The Migration Series

Alicia Ostriker

Read: Four Poems by Erin Malone, in Electric Literature.

Purchase: Site of Disappearance (Ornithopter Press, 2023)

Erin Malone’s new book, Site of Disappearance, was a finalist for the National Poetry Series and is out now from Ornithopter Press. She’s also the author of Hover (Tebot Bach Press, 2015), and a chapbook, What Sound Does It Make (Concrete Wolf, 2008). Her recent honors include the Coniston Prize from Radar Poetry and the Robert Creeley Memorial Prize from Marsh Hawk Press. Erin has received grants and fellowships from Washington State Artist Trust, 4Culture, Jack Straw, and the Colorado Council of the Arts; and residency support from Kimmel-Harding Nelson Center, The Anderson Center, Ucross, and Jentel Foundations. Her poems have appeared in FIELD, New Ohio Review, Salamander, Cimarron, Beloit Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. A former editor of Poetry Northwest, Erin has taught at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, the University of Washington Rome Center, Hugo House, and with Seattle’s Writers in the Schools. She lives on Bainbridge Island, WA, and works as a bookseller.

Additional Reading:

Nox by Anne Carson

Jane, A Murder by Maggie Nelson

Read: "Here is a Sea We Cannot Call Sea" in Scalawag

Purchase: The Understudy's Handbook (WWPH, 2020).

Steven Leyva was born in New Orleans, Louisiana and raised in Houston, Texas. His poems have appeared in Smartish Pace, Scalawag, Nashville Review, jubilat, The Hopkins Review, Prairie Schooner, and Best American Poetry 2020. He is a Cave Canem fellow and author of the chapbook Low Parish and author of The Understudy’s Handbook which won the Jean Feldman Poetry Prize from Washington Writers Publishing House. Steven holds an MFA from the University of Baltimore, where he is an associate professor in the Klein Family School of Communications Design.

Further Reading:

Lucille Clifton's Collected Poems

Taylor Byas, "THE POETICS OF PERFORMANCE IN STEVEN LEYVA’S THE UNDERSTUDY’S HANDBOOK"
The Future of Black: Afrofuturism, Black Comics, and Superhero Poetry (Blair)

Read: "Self Portrait with Arithmetic," "Self-Portrait Without Wings," and "Self-Portrait as Smaller Moon" at The Brooklyn Quarterly

Purchase: Flutter, Kick by Anna V. Q. Ross (Red Hen Press, 2022)

Anna V.Q. Ross's previous collections include If a Storm (Anhinga Press, winner of the Robert Dana-Anhinga Prize for Poetry); Figuring (Bull City Press); and Hawk Weather (winner the New Women’s Voices Prize from Finishing Line Press and the Jean Pedrick Chapbook Award from the New England Poetry Society). 

A recipient of fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Fulbright Foundation, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Vermont Studio Center, her recent work appears in Kenyon Review, Harvard Review, The Nation, The Missouri Review, Poetry Northwest, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. She is poetry editor for Salamander Magazine and teaches at Tufts University and through the Emerson Prison Initiative. Anna lives with her family in Dorchester, where she runs the poetry and music series Unearthed Song & Poetry and raises chickens.

Reading/Viewing Recommendations:

Muriel Rukeyser's ("I lived in the first century of world wars")

Visual art by Shelly Julian Bunde ("She Left For Good One Time But Came Back")

Listen: On Apple, Spotify, Google and elsewhere

Read: "Must Learn Neither," at Poetry Daily

Purchase: An Eye in Each Square (River River Books, 2023)

Lauren Mukamal Camp, New Mexico Poet Laureate, is the author of seven poetry collections, most recently An Eye in Each Square (River River Books, 2023) and Worn Smooth Between Devourings (NYQ Books, 2023). She was awarded a 2023 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship. Other honors include a Dorset Prize and finalist citations for the Arab American Book Award, the Housatonic Book Award and the Adrienne Rich Award for Poetry. In 2022, she was Astronomer in Residence at Grand Canyon National Park. Lauren is the recipient of fellowships from Denver Botanic Gardens, The Taft-Nicholson Center for Environmental Humanities and Black Earth Institute. She was a visiting writer at the Mayo Clinic, and artist in residence at Lowell Observatory and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Her poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, Mid-American Review, Missouri Review, and The Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day.

Reading/Viewing Recommendations: 

Agnes Martin

Vija Celmins

Read: "My Devices, My" at Cagibi and excerpt from Bullet Points at Parhelion Review.

Purchase: Bullet Points (River River Books, 2023)

Jennifer A Sutherland is a poet, essayist, and attorney living in Baltimore, Maryland. Her work has appeared or will appear in Hopkins Review, Best New Poets, Denver Quarterly, I-70 Review, Cagibi, Appalachian Review, and elsewhere.

Reading Recommendation:

Hart Crane, Linda Hull, Stephanie Foo's What My Bones Know

Purchase: Wiregrass and Other Poems by Moira J. Saucer and Endeavors to Obtain Perpetual Motion by Catherine Rockwood

Moira J Saucer is a disabled poet living in the Alabama Wiregrass. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. Her worked has appeared in literary magazines and anthologies in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada including Black Bough Poetry Freedom- Rapture anthology, Visual Verse, Fly on the Wall Press, Ice Floe Press, Mooky Chick, Floodlight Editions, and Fevers of the Mind Poets of 2020.

Catherine Rockwood is a staff member of Reckoning Magazine and a reviewer for Strange Horizons. She has a Ph.D. in Renaissance Studies, and many remaining questions about everything.

Read: Read "Eucharist" in Diagram

Purchase: Maker of Heaven & at Belle Point Press

Jason Myers is the author of Maker of Heaven & (Belle Point Press, 2023) and A Place for the Genuine (Eerdmans, 2024). Myers is a National Poetry Series finalist and has published poetry and essays in The Believer, Image, Kenyon Review, Orion, The Paris Review, and numerous other magazines. His writing has been nominated for a Pushcart and Best New Poets and was introduced by Campbell McGrath as part of American Poet's Emerging Poets feature. He is co-Executive Director of EcoTheo Collective and Editor-in-Chief of EcoTheo Review. An Episcopal priest, He lives with his wife, Allison Grace Myers, and their son Robinson in Texas.

More reading recommended from this episode: Lucille Clifton's 

Collected Poems, Meik Wiking's The Little Book of Hygge

Listen:  On Apple, Spotify, Google and elsewhere

Read: "we ask mama-n-em, 'where is the motherworld?'" (Split This Rock)

Purchase: motherworld: a devotion for the alter-life (action books, 2023)

Destiny Hemphill (she/her) is a ritual worker and poet based in Durham, NC. A recipient of fellowships from Naropa University’s Summer Writing Program, Callaloo, Tin House, and Kenyon’s Writers Workshop, she is the author of the poetry chapbook Oracle: a Cosmology (Honeysuckle Press, 2018), and her debut Motherworld: a devotional for the alter-life (Actionbooks, 2023). 

More reading recommended from this episode:

Mushroom at the End of the World by Anna Tsing

Heartberries by Teresa Marie Mailhot

Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).
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Purchase: The Grief Committee Minutes by Sarah Carey (Saint Julian Press, 2024)

Read: "What We Read About Ukraine Makes Us Dream of Burning" by Sarah Carey (Gulf Coast)

Sarah Carey is an award-winning veterinary public relations specialist, science writer and Pushcart-nominated poet. She holds a master’s degree in English with a creative writing concentration from Florida State University. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous literary journals, including Gulf Coast, Sugar House Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Grist, Five Points and Redivider, among many others. Her debut full-length collection of poems, The Grief Committee Minutes, from Saint Julian Press, was published in September 2024. Her next collection, Bloodstream, will be published by Mercer University Press in 2026. She received the Concrete Wolf Chapbook Award for her last chapbook of poems, Accommodations, (2019). She also is the author of another poetry chapbook, The Heart Contracts (2016).

Recommended Reading:

"The End and the Beginning" by Wisława Szymborska

Cynthia Barnett

Jen Karetnick

Erica Wright

Chelsea Dingman

Alice Friman

Read: "Psychology for Black Folk" at Jasper Project

Purchase: Negro Asylum for the Lunatic Insane (Main Street Rag, 2023)

Len Lawson is author of Negro Asylum for the Lunatic Insane (Main Street Rag, 2023), Chime (Get Fresh Books, 2019), and the chapbook Before the Night Wakes You (Finishing Line Press, 2017). He is also co-editor of The Future of Black: Afrofuturism, Black Comics, and Superhero Poetry (Blair Press, 2021) and Hand in Hand: Poets Respond to Race (Muddy Ford Press, 2017). South Carolina Humanities awarded him a 2022 Governor's Award for Fresh Voices in the Humanities.  He has received fellowships from Tin House, Palm Beach Poetry Festival, Callaloo Barbados, Vermont Studio Center, and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts among others. His poetry appears in African American Review, Callaloo, Mississippi Review, Ninth Letter, Verse Daily, Poetry Northwest, and has been translated internationally. Len earned a Ph.D. in English Literature and Criticism at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. A South Carolina native, he is currently Assistant Professor of English at Newberry College. 

More reading recommended from this episode:

Joshua Bennett's Being Property Once Myself

Nikky Finney's Love Child's Hotbed of Occasional Poetry: Poems and Artifacts
Honorée Fannon Jeffers The Age of Phillis

Read: “put ur phone down for a sec” from night mode in Blush Lit

Purchase: night mode (Everybody Press, 2023)

Caelan Ernest is a poet and a performer. They are the author of two forthcoming collections: night mode and ICONOCLAST, being published in 2023 and 2024 respectively by Everybody Press. They received their MFA in Writing from Pratt Institute. They are Publicist at Graywolf Press. They live in Brooklyn with their cat named Salad.

More reading and viewing recommendations from this episode:

Donna Haraway's A Cyborg Manifesto 

Bladerunner

r. erica doyl's Proxy

Wings of Desire

Carl Phillips' My Trade is Mystery

Read: "Whale Watch" at Turbine

Purchase: We Are Mermaids (Graywolf Press, 2022)

Stephanie Burt is Professor of English at Harvard and the author of several books of poems and literary criticism, most recently WE ARE MERMAIDS (Graywolf, 2022), AFTER CALLIMACHUS: Poems and Translations (Princeton UP, 2020) and DON'T READ POETRY: A Book About How to Read Poems (Basic, 2019). In addition to poetry things, she writes about trans stuff and pop music and comic book superheroes for Comicsxf.com, the New Yorker and other fun venues. Her podcast about tabletop role-playing games is Team-Up Moves (teamupmoves.com). 

More reading and viewing recommendations from this episode:

On a Sunbeam by Tillie Walden

Spinning by Tillie Walden

Jem and the Holograms (Thompson and Campbell)

The Fire Never Goes Out ND Stevens

She-Ra

Sara Lefsyk is Head Ethel over at Ethel Zine & Micro Press. Her book We Are Hopelessly Small and Modern Birds is published with Black Lawrence Press, 2018, and she has work previously published in Bateau, The Greensboro Review, The New Orleans Review, Phoebe, Poetry City, and Tinderbox among others.

Read: "When They Taught Me How to Slit the Bird," at Tinderbox

Purchase: We Are Hopelessly Small and Modern Birds (Black Lawrence Press, 2018) and the Ethel Zine!

Read Also:

Leonora Carrington's short stories

Margaret Cavendish's The Blazing-World 

Read: "Family of Origin Rewrite: 1982" in The Common

Purchase: Short Film Starring My Beloved's Red Bronco (Milkweed Editions, 2023)

K. Iver is a nonbinary trans poet from Mississippi. Their poems have appeared in Boston Review, Gulf Coast, Puerto del Sol, Salt Hill, TriQuarterly, The Adroit, and elsewhere. Their book Short Film Starring My Beloved’s Red Bronco won the 2022 Ballard Spahr Prize for Poetry and is forthcoming from Milkweed Editions. Iver is the 2021-2022 Ronald Wallace Fellow for Poetry at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. They have a Ph.D. in Poetry from Florida State University.

Read: "War Machine" at The Tiny Mag

Purchase: Making Water (Futurepoem, 2022)

Laura Jaramillo is a poet and critic from Queens, New York living in Durham, North Carolina. Her books include Material Girl (subpress, 2012) and Making Water (Futurepoem, 2022). She holds a PhD in critical theory from Duke University. She co-runs the North Carolina-based reading and performance series Paradiso.

Read More:

Lyn Hejinian: My Life and My Life in the Nineties

Mina Loy: Anglo-Mongrels and the Rose (Part I)

Listen: On the web, or at your favorite player (Google, Apple, Spotify)

Read: "Flowers as Mind Control" at Queen Mob's Teahouse. 

Purchase: Flowers as Mind Control (BkMk Press, 2021)

Laura Minor’s critically acclaimed debut book of poems, Flowers as Mind Control, won the 2020 John Ciardi Poetry Prize and is published by the University of Arkansas Press, 2022. Laura won the I.L.A.’s Rita Dove Poetry Award (chosen by Marilyn Nelson) and the Emerging Writers Spotlight Award (chosen by poet D.A. Powell). She teaches poetry at Oklahoma State University.

Also please check out:

Sean Singer's Today in the Taxi (Tupelo Press, 2022)

Rosemary Tonks - read more here

Read: "Moon Without Possible Approach" at Tin Fish Press.

Purchase: The Silk the Moths Ignore (Inlandia Books, 2021)

Bronwen Tate teaches poetry, creative nonfiction, and creative writing pedagogy at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. She is the author of the poetry collection The Silk the Moths Ignore and a contributor to the collaborative book-length poem Midwinter Constellation. Bronwen’s poems and essays have appeared in Bennington Review, CV2, Grain, The Rumpus, Journal of Modern Literature, and Contemporary Literature. Her substack newsletter Ok, But How? goes deep on process and includes snacks. 

Read: Shelley Wong's poem "To Yellow," which she reads on Episode 24.

Shelley Wong is the author of As She Appears (YesYes Books, May 2022), winner of the 2019 Pamet River Prize. Her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Best American Poetry, Kenyon Review, and New England Review. She is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and fellowships from Kundiman, MacDowell, and Vermont Studio Center. She is an affiliate artist at Headlands Center for the Arts and lives in San Francisco.

Purchase: As She Appears(YesYes Books, 2022). 

Listen: On Apple, Spotify, Google and elsewhere

Read: "Unicorn Kidz Dance Under the Moonlight, Too" at SplitLip

jason b. crawford (They/Them) is a writer born in Washington DC, raised in Lansing, MI. Their debut chapbook collection Summertime Fine is out through Variant Lit. Their second chapbook Twerkable Moments is out from Paper Nautilus Press. Their third chapbook, Good Boi, is out from Neon Hemlock press. Their debut Full Length Year of the Unicorn Kidz will be out in 2022 from Sundress Publications. crawford holds a Bachelor of Science in Creative Writing from Eastern Michigan University and is the co-founder of The Knight’s Library Magazine. crawford is the winner of the Courtney Valentine Prize for Outstanding Work by a Millennial Artist, Vella Chapbook Contest, and Variant Lit Chapbook Contest. They were a finalist for the Tom Howard/Margaret Reid 2021 Poetry Contest and the 2021 OutWrite chapbook contest winner in poetry. Their work can be found in Split Lip Magazine, Glass Poetry, Four Way Review, Voicemail poems, FreezeRay Poetry, HAD, among others. They are a current poetry MFA candidate at The New School.

Purchase: Year of the Unicorn Kidz(Sundress Publications, 2022)

Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).
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Purchase: Your Mother's Bear Gun (River River Books, 2025)

Read: "You're Hoarding Guns, I'm Growing Herbs" (Kenyon Review)

Corrie Williamson was born on a small farm in southwestern Virginia. She is the author of three books of poetry, most recently Your Mother’s Bear Gun, which is newly out from River River Books. Her other books are The River Where You Forgot My Name, in the Crab Orchard Series, which was named a 2019 Montana Book Award Honor Book by the Montana Library Association; and Sweet Husk, which won the 2014 Perugia Press Prize, and was a finalist for the 2015 Library of Virginia Poetry Award. She is also co-editor, with poets Anne Haven McDonnell and Kamella Cruz, of the in-progress eco-poetry anthology A Literary Field Guide to the Rocky Mountains.

She completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Virginia, with a BA in Poetry and Anthropology, and her MFA in Poetry from the University of Arkansas, where she was a recipient of the Walton Fellowship, and a Director of the Writers in the Schools Program. She has taught writing at the University of Arkansas, Helena College, and Carroll College, and worked as an educator in Yellowstone National Park. She was the recipient of the 2020 PEN Margery Davis Boyden Wilderness Writing Residency, spending seven and a half months writing and living off-grid in a remote section of the Rogue River in southwest Oregon. Her poems have appeared in journals such as The Southern Review, Ecotone, The Kenyon Review, The Missouri Review, AGNI, Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and many others. You can also find her work in anthologies such as Cascadia Field Guide; Environmental and Nature Writing Volume II: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology; The Ecopoetry Anthology: Volume II; and Bright Bones: An Anthology of Contemporary Montana Writing. She lives in Lewistown, Montana.

Recommended Reading:

Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and The Abundance

Elizabeth Bradfield

The Poem’s Country: Place & Poetic Practice

Charles Wright

Read: "Hurricane Family," published at Moist Poetry Journal.

Marlanda Dekine’s debut full-length poetry collection, Thresh & Hold, is the winner of Hub City Press's 2021 New Southern Voices Poetry Prize and is forthcoming in March 2022.

MARLANDA DEKINE’S WORK HAS BEEN PUBLISHED OR IS FORTHCOMING IN OXFORD AMERICAN, POETRY, EMERGENCE MAGAZINE, BEESTUNG, ANNULET, SHUDDHASHAR MAGAZINE, AND ELSEWHERE. THEY ARE THE 2021-2022 CASTLE OF OUR SKINS SHIRLEY GRAHAM DU BOIS CREATIVE-IN-RESIDENCE, A RECIPIENT OF THE 2022 PALM BEACH POETRY FESTIVAL LANGSTON HUGHES FELLOWSHIP, A 2021 TIN HOUSE SCHOLAR, AND A WATERING HOLE FELLOW. CURRENTLY, MARLANDA SERVES AS HEALING JUSTICE FELLOW WITH GENDER BENDERS AND IS WORKING WITH THE AWARD-WINNING COMPOSER/PERFORMER COLLECTIVE, COUNTER)INDUCTION, ON A MUSO-POETIC WORK ENTITLED ARS POETICA. THEY ARE A GRADUATE OF FURMAN UNIVERSITY (B.A. PSYCHOLOGY) AND THE UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA (MASTER OF SOCIAL WORK). THEY LIVE IN GEORGETOWN, SOUTH CAROLINA WITH THEIR AMAZING DOG, MALACHI. 

Purchase: Thresh & Hold (Hub City Press, 2022)

Listen: On Apple, Spotify, Google, and more

Read: a selection of haiku by Lenard D. Moore at the North Carolina Haiku Society

Lenard D. Moore is an internationally acclaimed poet and anthologist. His literary works have been published in more than sixteen countries and translated into more than twelve languages.

His poems, essays, short stories and book reviews have appeared in more than 400 publications. His poems have appeared in more than 100 anthologies.  He has taught Creative Writing and African American Literature.  He is a U.S. Army Veteran.  Moore is the author of Long Rain; The Geography Of Jazz; A Temple Looming; Desert Storm: A Brief History; Forever Home; The Open Eye, among other books.  He is the editor of All The Songs We Sing; One Window’s Light: A Collection of Haiku, and other books.  He has collaborated with poets, visual arts, musicians and dancers on several projects.  He is the founder and executive director of the Carolina African American Writers’ Collective and co-founder of the Washington Street Writers Group. He also is the longtime Executive Chairman of the North Carolina Haiku Society.  He is the First African American President of the Haiku Society of America, serving two terms. Among his numerous awards are the North Carolina Award for Literature; Furious Flower Laureate Ring; Haiku Museum of Tokyo Award; Margaret Walker Creative Writing Award; Cave Canem Fellowships, and a Soul Mountain Retreat Fellowship.  He earned his Master of Arts in English and African American Literature, from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University. He also earned his Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Studies with a minor in English (Magna Cum Laude) from Shaw University.

Purchase: Long Rain (Wet Cement Press, 2021) and The Geography of Jazz (Blair, 2018)

Listen: On Apple, Spotify, Google and elsewhere. 

Read: Amanda Moore's poem "Labor as an Exotic Vacation," which she reads on Episode 20.

Amanda Moore’s debut collection of poetry, Requeening, was selected for the 2020 National Poetry Series by Ocean Vuong and published by HarperCollins/Ecco in October 2021. Her poems have appeared in journals and anthologies including Best New Poets, ZZYZVA, and Mamas and Papas: On the Sublime and Heartbreaking Art of Parenting, and her essays have appeared in The Baltimore Review, Hippocampus Magazine, and on the University of Arizona Poetry Center’s blog. She is the recipient of writing awards, residencies, and fellowships from The Brown Handler Residency, In Cahoots, The Writers Grotto, The Writing Salon, Brush Creek Arts Foundation, and The Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts. Poetry Co-editor at Women’s Voices for Change and a reader at VIDA Review and INCH, Amanda is a high school English teacher and lives by the beach in the Outer Sunset neighborhood of San Francisco with her husband and daughter. 

Purchase: Requeening (HarperCollins/Ecco, 2021)

Check out: Aganetha Dyck's collaborative sculptures with bees!

Donna Vorreyer is the author of To Everything There Is (2020), Every Love Story is an Apocalypse Story (2016) and A House of Many Windows (2013), all from Sundress Publications. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Ploughshares, Waxwing, Poet Lore, Cherry Tree, Salamander, Harpur Palate, and other journals. She lives in the suburbs of Chicago where she serves as an associate editor for Rhino Poetry and hosts the monthly online reading series A Hundred Pitchers of Honey.

Purchase: To Everything There Is (Sundress Publications, 2020) and Donna's other full-lengths at Sundress Publications.

Also Donna's visually collaborative chapbook Encantado, which we talk about on the episode, from Red Bird Press.

Check out Christine Shank's art as well as Claire Morgan's art, featured on Donna's first and third full-length covers)