Love in all its blissful, blistering forms provides the foundation for lyrical poet Sarah Levine's new book, Each Knuckle with Sugar. A Massachusettes poet, the conversation runs from love to craft to loss. These surprising poems are made more memorable by the way Levine has skillfully built a world to hold them. You can find Levine's book at Driftwood Press: https://www.driftwoodpress.com/product-page/each-knuckle-with-sugar You can read her poem, "Forgotten Things," in the Paris American here: https://www.theparisamerican.com/sarah-levine-poetry.html ..read more

Dion O’Reilly chats with Roxi Power about her new book, The Songs that Objects Would Sing, diving deep into a work that that “is aflame, both with the literal wildfires ravaging the American West and with the slower smolder of personal grief.  Power’s response to loss and disaster is a quirky plangent song…shot through with humor and underpinned by a rippling ostinato of lyric power” (Mark Scroggins).  With ease and humor, Dion and Roxi draw on postmodern and Buddhist theories, debating whether the presences that sing within the objects of Power's lines are “essences.”  “I feel ..read more

Peter Kline is the author of two poetry collections, Mirrorforms (Parlor Press) and Deviants (SFASU Press).  A former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, he has also received residency fellowships from the Amy Clampitt House and James Merrill House, and has won the Morton Marr Prize from Southwest Review, the River Styx International Poetry Prize, and The Columbia Review Poetry Prize.  His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Poetry, Tin House, and many other journals, as well as the Best New Poets ..read more

Dion O’Reilly chats with Roxi Power about her new book, The Songs that Objects Would Sing, diving deep into a work that that “is aflame, both with the literal wildfires ravaging the American West and with the slower smolder of personal grief.  Power’s response to loss and disaster is a quirky plangent song…shot through with humor and underpinned by a rippling ostinato of lyric power” (Mark Scroggins).  With ease and humor, Dion and Roxi draw on postmodern and Buddhist theories, debating whether the presences that sing within the objects of Power's lines are “essences.”  “I feel ..read more

Andrea Hollander⁠, author of ⁠six poetry books⁠, moved to Portland, Oregon, in 2011, after living for more than three decades in the Arkansas Ozarks, where she was innkeeper of a bed & breakfast for fifteen years and Writer-in-Residence at Lyon College for twenty-two. Hollander’s newly released sixth full-length collection is ⁠And Now, Nowhere But Here (Terrapin Books, 2023)⁠. Her fifth, Blue Mistaken for Sky, was a finalist for the Best Book Award in Poetry from the American Book Fest; her fourth, Landscape with Female Figure: New & Selected Poems, 1982- 2012, was a finalist for the O ..read more

Dion O'Reilly and Pacific Northwest poet, ⁠Jeannine Hall Gailey,⁠ talk about science, science fiction, and poetry. Jeannine reads from her new book ⁠Flare Corona. ⁠ Jeannine Hall Gailey served as the second Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington. She is the author of six books of poetry: ⁠Becoming the Villainess⁠, ⁠She Returns to the Floating World⁠, which was a finalist for the 2012 Eric Hoffer Montaigne Medal and a winner of a Florida Publishers Association Presidential Award for Poetry, ⁠Unexplained Fevers⁠, ⁠The Robot Scientist’s Daughter,⁠ and winner of the Moon Ci ..read more

Farnaz Fatemi and Julia Chiapella read poems by Palestinian poets and those of Palestinian heritage to amplify and bear witness to the range of their perspectives and the richness of these voices. We found the reading of these aloud to each other to be profoundly moving. Please see the extensive show notes for links to the poets, their books, many more we couldn’t include on the show and other recent resources.   In this order--Fadwa Tuqan, Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, Zeina Azzam, Mahmoud Darwish, Mosab Abu Toha, Maya Abu Al-Hayyat, Noor Hindi, Naomi Shihab Nye ..read more

Listen in as Robin Gow and Farnaz Fatemi discuss Robin’s book Lanternfly, their experience writing a hyper-focused collection, the value of persona poems, defiance, cross-species empathy and more.  Robin Gow is a trans poet and YA/Middle Grade author from rural Pennsylvania. They are the author of several poetry collections including, most recently, Lanternfly August, from Driftwood Press, & Our Lady of Perpetual Degeneracy. Gow also writes queer YA/Middle Grade novels such as Ode to My First Car, A Million Quiet Revolutions, and Dear Mothman. He manages commu ..read more

To kick off Trans Week of Awareness (Nov. 13 - 19), Geneffa Jahan sits down with local youth poet, Madeline Aliah (age 17) to hear how poetry has given her hope and a voice. Madeline reads from her chapbook of poems, This Is My Body: Poems by a Teen Trans Fem, forthcoming from Jamii Press (2024), and additional works that take her poetry beyond identity politics. She speaks of her activism through the Queer Trans Youth Council and shares advice for allies, reminding us through her wit and wisdom that Queer kids are still just kids ..read more

Ruba Ahmed joins Julie Murphy to read "Try to Praise the Mutilated World" by Adam Zagajewski and talks about his imperative to see the beauty in the world that lies right beside the horrors. She also reads from her new book Bring Now the Angels and shares her struggle in coming to forgiveness and grief and joy. Ruba also shares some great insights on the power of repetition as well as the importance of Keat's concept of negative capability. Dilruba Ahmed is the author of Bring Now the Angels (Pittsburg Poetry). Her debut book, Dhaka Dust (Graywolf Press), won the Bakeless Prize. Her poems have ..read more