Episode 2: Christopher Kempf (Of Epigraphs, Paradise Lost, and Faulknerian Time)

Christopher Kempf, author of What Though the Field Be Lost (LSU Press, 2021)

Listen here: On Apple, Spotify, or via the Web.

Read: Kempf’s poems “National Anthem” and “The Union Forever” in full, which he reads a selection from on Episode 2.

Christopher Kempf is the author of the poetry collections What Though the Field Be Lost (LSU, 2021) and Late in the Empire of Men, which won the 2015 Levis Prize from Four Way Books and has been reviewed widely, including in The New York TimesHis scholarly book, Craft Class: The Workshop in American Culture, is forthcoming from Johns Hopkins University Press.

Recipient of a Pushcart Prize, National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and Wallace Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University, his poetry and creative nonfiction have appeared in Best American Poetry (2020), Boston ReviewGeorgia ReviewGettysburg ReviewKenyon ReviewNew England ReviewThe New Republic, and PEN America, among others.  His scholarship appears in American Literary History (ALH), English Literary History (ELH), and Modernism/modernity.

Kempf holds a Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Chicago, an MFA from Cornell University, and teaches in the MFA program at the University of Illinois.

Episode 1: Jessica Cuello (Of Mothers, Brothers, and Philomel)

Jessica Cuello, author of Liar (Winner of the Barrow Street Poetry Prize, 2021)

Listen Here: On Apple, on Spotify, or via the Web.

Read one of the poems Jessica reads on Episode 1: “The Androgynous Christ.”

Jessica Cuellos manuscript, Liar, has been selected by Dorianne Laux for the 2020 Barrow Street Book Prize, forthcoming in October 2021. She is also the author of Pricking (Tiger Bark Press 2016), winner of the 2017 CNY Book Award, and Hunt (The Word Works 2017), winner of the 2016 Washington Prize. In addition, Cuello has published three chapbooks: My Father’s Bargain (2015), By Fire (2013), and Curie (2011). Cuello was the recipient of The 2018 New Ohio Review Poetry Prize, The 2013 New Letters Poetry Prize, and a 2015 Saltonstall Writing Fellowship. In 2014 she was awarded The Decker Award from Hollins University for outstanding secondary teaching. She teaches French in Central NY and is a poetry editor for Tahoma Literary Review.

Of Poetry Podcast is hosted by Han VanderHart.