Of Poetry Podcast

Listen: On Spotify, Apple, Google, and Elsewhere

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 Diaries by Martha Wells

Stanley Kunitz

Larry Levis

Thomas Lux

Nicola Davison-Reed

Listen: On Spotify, Apple, Google, and Elsewhere

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

Listen: On Spotify, Apple, Google, and Elsewhere

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

Listen: On Spotify, Apple, Google, and Elsewhere

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

Listen: On Spotify, Apple, Google, and Elsewhere

Read: “(Dis)ambiguation” 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

Listen: On Spotify, Apple, Google, and Elsewhere

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 Morning (Bottlecap Press, 2024) by 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

Listen: On Spotify, Apple, Google, and Elsewhere

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 from ELJ Editions)

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

Listen: On Spotify, Apple, Google, and Elsewhere

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

Listen: On Spotify, Apple, Google, and Elsewhere

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)

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:

Neil Gaiman

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