Of Poetry Podcast

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

Read: Tom’s poem Gospel of Thomas, which he reads on Episode 3.

Tom Snarsky is a math teacher who writes poetry. He is a former Robert Noyce Teaching Fellow at Tufts University and a Senior Fellow at the Knowles Teacher Initiative. He is the author of two books forthcoming from Broken Sleep in 2022: Speaking Roles, a collection of poetry interviews, and Complete Sentences, a pamphlet of poems about teaching. He is also the author of the chapbook Threshold, published in 2018 by Another New Calligraphy. In addition to his work in print, several of Tom’s chapbooks and pamphlets can be found online as free .pdfs: Number Among (Epigraph), WEAKEN (The Argotist Online), 21 small poems (Binbag Press), minimal sonnets with Jo Ianni (Ghost City Press), the pamphlet Two Songs (Fathomsun Press), the self-published Two Notebook Poems, and With Sorrow as My Window and Forgiveness as My Shield, one of the winners of the Boston Uncommon Chapbook Contest at Boston Accent Lit. Along with Kristin Garth he is the co-organizer of Performance Anxiety, a monthly online poetry reading series. He teaches at Lightridge High School in Aldie, Virginia and lives in Bluemont with his wife Kristi, who all this is for.

Purchase Tom Snarsky’s debut book of poetry Light-Up Swan (Ornithopter 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 Times. His 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 Review, Georgia Review, Gettysburg Review, Kenyon Review, New England Review, The 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.

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

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

Jessica Cuello’s 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.