Alexis Sears's first book, Out of Order, won the the 2021 Donald Justice Poetry Prize and was just published by Autumn House Press. Alexis received her BA in Writing Seminars from Johns Hopkins University and her M.F.A. in poetry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her work has been widely published, including in Rattle's Poets Respond last month with her "Heartbreak Ghazal." She was a scholar at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference in 2019. Currently, she teaches 9th grade English in Oakland, California.

Find more at:

https://www.alexissears.com/

As always, we'll also include live open lines for responses to our weekly prompt or any other poems you'd like to share. A Zoom link will be provided in the chat window during the show before that segment begins.

For links to all the past episodes, visit:

https://www.rattle.com/rattlecast/

This Week's Prompt (from Katie Bickham):

Take any abstraction like sorrow, envy, loneliness, desire, homesickness, hope, etc. and make that your title. Then the body of the poem is simply a description of that abstraction using ONLY concrete images and stories. Three great examples are Anne Sexton's "Courage," Stephen Dunn's "Tenderness," and Jane Kenyon's "Happiness."

Next Week's Prompt:

Write a canzone that confesses something.

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