Of Poetry Podcast

Episode 72: Han VanderHart (Of Larks, Genealogy and Truth as a Poetics, and the Line) with Guest Host Amorak Huey

Han VanderHart, author of *Larks* (OHU, 2025)

Listen: On Spotify, Apple, Google, and elsewhere

Purchase: Larks (Ohio University Press, 2025)

Read: “Larks” at Poetry Daily

Han VanderHart is 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

Episode 71: Karl Knights (Of Directness, the Music of Ordinary Language, and Writing Disability Poetics While Existing All Year)

Listen: On Spotify, Apple, Google, and elsewhere

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)

Episode 70: Danika Stegeman (Of Relentlessness, Gendered Maximalism, and Harryette Mullen and the Mirrored Cinquain)

Danika Stegeman, author of *Ablation* (11:11 Press. 2023)

Listen: On Spotify, Apple, Google, and elsewhere

Purchase: Ablation (11:11 Press)

Read: “Relentless” (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”

Episode 69: upfromsumdirt (Of Fayre Gabbro, Myth and Romance, and the Role of Counterculture)

upfromsumdirt, author of *The Second Stop is Jupiter* (Wayne State University Press, 2023)

Listen: On Spotify, Apple, Google, and elsewhere

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

Episode 68: Sarah Carey (Of Sandhill Cranes, the Pleasure of Fresh Words, and Writing after Loss)

Sarah Carey, author of *The Grief Committee Minutes* (Saint Julian Press, 2024)

Listen: On Spotify, Apple, Google, and elsewhere

Purchase: The Grief Committee Minutes (Saint Julian Press, 2024)

Read: “What We Read About Ukraine Makes Us Dream of Burning” (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

Episode 67: Corrie Williamson (Of Wilderness, Animal Bodies, and Ecotones of Harm)

Corrie Williamson, author of *Your Mother’s Bear Gun* (River River Books, 2025)

Listen: On Spotify, Apple, Google, and elsewhere

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

Episode 66: Joe Wilkins (Of Pastoral, Tender Models of Masculinity, and the Sonnet-Haunted Prairies)

Joe Wilkins, author of *Pastoral, 1994* (River River Books)

Listen: On Spotify, Apple, Google, and elsewhere

Purchase: Pastoral, 1994 (River River Books, 2025)

Read: “Limp” at The Missouri Review

Joe Wilkins was born and raised on the Big Dry of eastern Montana and now lives with his family in the foothills of the Coast Range of Oregon. He is the author of the novels Fall Back Down When I Die (2019) and The Entire Sky (2024), both published by Little, Brown and Company. A finalist for the First Novel Prize from the Center for Fiction and the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award, Fall Back Down When I Die won the High Plains Book Award. Wilkins is also the author of a memoir, The Mountain and The Fathers, and four previous collections of poetry. Wilkins directs the creative writing program at Linfield University and is a member of the low-residency MFA faculty at Eastern Oregon University.

Reading Recommendations:

James Dickey, Deliverance

Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology

Maya Jewell Zeller

Atsuro Riley

Episode 65: Abbie Kiefer (Of the Minor, a Poet’s Work Vs. Productivity, and the Poem’s Record-Keeping of Ordinary Life)

Abbie Kiefer, author of *Certain Shelter* (June Road Press, 2024)

Listen: On Spotify, Apple, Google, and elsewhere

Read: “A BRIEF HISTORY OF YANKEE THRIFT, YANKEE INGENUITY, AND YANKEE WORK ETHIC” in Sixth Finch

Purchase: Certain Shelter (June Road Press, 2024)

Abbie Kiefer is the author of Certain Shelter (June Road Press, 2024) and the chapbook Brief Histories (Whittle Micro-Press, 2024). Her work is forthcoming or has appeared in Copper Nickel, Gulf Coast, Pleiades, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, The Southern Review, and other places. She lives in New Hampshire. Find her online at abbiekieferpoet.com.

Reading Recommendations:

Edwin Arlington Robinson Wikipedia

“Richard Cory” by E.A. Robinson

Selected Poems of Anne Sexton

“The Truth the Dead Know” by Anne Sexton

“Ars Poetica” by Aracelis Girmay

frank: sonnets by Diane Seuss

Episode 64: Carolyn Oliver (Of Alcestis, Space and Star Trek, and What Would You Give Up For Love?)

Carolyn Oliver, author of *The Alcestis Machine*

Listen: On Spotify, Apple, Google, and elsewhere

Read: “Space Age” in Menagerie Magazine

Purchase: The Alcestis Machine (Acre Books, 2024)

Carolyn Oliver is the author of The Alcestis Machine (Acre Books, 2024), Inside the Storm I Want to Touch the Tremble (University of Utah Press, 2022; selected for the Agha Shahid Ali Prize), and three chapbooks. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in TriQuarterly, Image, Copper Nickel, Poetry Daily, Moist Poetry Journal, Consequence, and elsewhere. Born in Buffalo and raised in Ohio, she now lives in Massachusetts.

Recommended Reading:

The Naomi Letters by Rachel Mennies

frank: sonnets by Diane Seuss

Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis

Orlando: A Biography by Virginia Woolf

Metropolis (1927) film, Directed Fritz Lang

“Methought I Saw My Late Espoused Saint” by John Milton

Order and Disorder by Lucy Hutchinson

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin

Episode 63: River River Books (Of Writing the Rural, New Book News, and the CAHABA River)

Editors Han and Amorak tabling at Youngstown Lit Fest in October, 2024

Listen: On Spotify, Apple, Google, and elsewhere

Preorder: Corrie Williamson’s Your Mother’s Bear Gun and Joe Wilkins’ Pastoral, 1994

River River Books was founded by Amorak Huey and Han VanderHart in March 2022. Inspired by the idea that you cannot step in the same river twice, at River River Books, two poetry editors join together to publish (at least) two exceptional poetry titles a year. By limiting our press catalog, we commit to supporting our authors and their books with focused attention and joy.
Submissions (fee optional) open to full-length poetry manuscripts May 1-June 30.

Amorak Huey (uh-MOR-ack) is 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.

Han VanderHart is a queer writer living in Durham, North Carolina. Their second poetry collection Larks, winner of the 2024 Hollis Summers Poetry Prize, is forthcoming in April 2025 from Ohio University Press. Han is also the author of What Pecan Light (Bull City Press, 2021) and has work 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.