In this episode of Unlocking Academia, host Raja Aderdor speaks with Dr. Basma A. S. Dajani, Professor of Arabic Language and Literature, in a sweeping conversation on Arab-Andalusian love poetry and the cultural, linguistic, and emotional legacies it continues to inspire.

Rooted in her 1994 book The Arab Andalusian Love Poetry: A Study of the Interaction Between Place and Man Through Time (AU Cairo Press, 1994), Dr. Dajani traces the origins of her research back to a formative journey to Granada in the early 1990s, where she was deeply influenced by the stories of Alhambra, her father the historian Ahmad Sidqi Dajani, and conversations with philosopher Roger Garaudy and Salma Taji. Drawing on decades of scholarship, she discusses her study of classical Arabic manuscripts, including Massare’ alUshaaq by Ja’far alSarraj, and reflects on the intersections of poetry, gender, geography, and intercultural dialogue.

Together, they explore the themes of longing, nostalgia, and nature in the poetry of Al-Andalus; the contributions of women poets like Wallada bint al-Mustakfi; the influence of the Andalusian landscape on literary expression; and the enduring resonance of courtship poetry across time and cultures. Dr. Dajani also discusses the pedagogical value of teaching Andalusian texts today, the urgency of preserving classical Arabic manuscripts, and her vision for future research to spotlight overlooked voices in the tradition.

Lyrical, insightful, and deeply rooted in lived and literary history, this episode offers a rare blend of academic depth and poetic beauty.

We are Clavis Aurea: a dynamic team constantly looking for ways to help academic publishing grow and to promote groundbreaking publications to scholars, students, and enthusiasts globally. Based in the renowned publishing city of Leiden, we eat, sleep, and breathe publishing!

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NBN host Hollay Ghadery speaks with acclaimed poet Rebecca Salazar about their new poetry collection, antibody: poems (McClelland & Stewart, 2025)

A powerful follow-up to the Governor General’s Literary Award shortlisted sulphurtongue.
antibody: poems is a protest, a whisper network, a reclamation of agency, and a ritual for building a survivable world.
antibody mobilizes body horror as resistance, refusing to sanitize the atrocities of sexual violence or to silence its survivors. Challenging myths of “perfect” victimhood, this collection honours the messy, rageful, queer, witchy, disabled, and kinky grief work of enduring trauma and learning to want to live.

About Rebecca Salazar:

Rebecca Salazar (she/they) is a queer, disabled, and racialized Latinx writer currently living on the unceded territory of the Wolastoqiyik people. Their first full-length collection sulphurtongue (McClelland & Stewart) was a finalist for the Governor General’s Award for Poetry, the New Brunswick Book Awards, the Atlantic Book Awards, and the League of Canadian Poets’ Pat Lowther Memorial Award. antibody is their second poetry collection.

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For decades Frank X Walker has reclaimed essential American lives through his pathbreaking historical poetry. In this stirring new collection, he reimagines the experiences of Black Civil War soldiers—including his own ancestors—who enlisted in the Union army in exchange for emancipation.
Moving chronologically from antebellum Kentucky through Reconstruction, Walker braids the voices of the United States Colored Troops with their family members, as well as slave owners and prominent historical figures from Abraham Lincoln to Frederick Douglas and Margaret Garner. Imbued with atmospheric imagery, these persona poems and more “[clarify] not only the inextricable value of Black life and labor to the building of America, but the terrible price they were forced to pay in producing that labor” (Khadijah Queen). “How do you un-orphan a people?” Walker asks. “How do you pick up / shattered black porcelain and make / a new set of dishes fit to eat off?”
While carefully attuned to the heartbreak and horrors of war, Walker’s poems pay equal care to the pride, perseverance, and triumphs of their speakers. Evoking the formerly enslaved General Charles Young, Walker hums: “I am America’s promise, my mother’s song, / and the reason my father had every right to dream.” Expansive and intimate, Load in Nine Times is a resounding ode to the powerful ties of individual and cultural ancestry by an indelible voice in American poetry.

Winner of the 2025 PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry.

A native of Danville, Kentucky, Frank X Walker is the first African American writer to be named Kentucky Poet Laureate. Walker has published thirteen collections of poetry, including Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers, which was awarded the 2014 NAACP Image Award for Poetry and the Black Caucus American Library Association Honor Award for Poetry. Voted one of the most creative professors in the south, Walker coined the term “Affrilachia” and co-founded the Affrilachian Poets Collective, the oldest continuously running predominantly African American writing group in the country. He is a Professor of English, and Director of the MFA in Creative Writing program the University of Kentucky.

You can find the host, Sullivan Summer, online, on Instagram, and at Substack, where she and Professor X continue their conversation.

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In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with former Sudbury Poet Laureate Thomas Leduc about his new collection of poetry, Palpitations (Latitude 46 Publishing, 2025). 

There are moments that change the course of a day, a year, or even a life.

Palpitations explores the journey through the twists and turns of the human experience. From childhood memories of struggling with dyslexia and what to be when one grows up, reflections on love, to the global disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Thomas Leduc delves into the shared experiences that have altered the world’s perception of itself. Full of vivid imagery and deep, thoughtful reflections, Palpitations is a tribute to that which makes us human – moments that palpitate with life, longing and change.

About Thomas L. Leduc:

Thomas Leduc was Poet Laureate of Sudbury, Ontario from 2014-2016 and the President of the Sudbury Writers’ Guild from 2017-2021. His poems and short stories have been published in various magazines and anthologies. In 2019 he released his first collection of poetry, Slagflower Poems Unearthed From A Mining Town (Latitude 46). He lives in Sudbury, Ontario.

About Hollay Ghadery:

Hollay Ghadery is an Iranian-Canadian writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity mental health, was released by Guernica Editions and won a 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award. Her poetry collection, Rebellion Box was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her short fiction collection, Widow Fantasies, with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024. Hollay is a host on The New Books Network and co-host on HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is a book publicist, the Regional Chair of the League of Canadian Poets as well as the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. www.hollayghadery.com.

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NBN host Hollay Ghadery speaks with the wonderful Ottawa writer, Christine McNair about her 2024 book of lyric essays and prose poetry, Toxemia (Book*hug Press, 2024).

In this alchemy of anger and love, history and memoir, Christine McNair delves into various forms of toxicity in the body—from the effects of two life-threatening preeclampsia diagnoses to chronic illness, sexism in medicine, and the toll of societal expectations.

With catharsis and humour, Toxemia pieces together the complexities of identity, motherhood, and living in a body to reveal deeply recognizable raw truths. McNair captures the wrenching feeling of loss of control in the face of an overwhelming medical diagnosis and the small, endless moments in life that underscore it: worrying about mortality in the middle of the night, revolving medical appointments, self-doubt, and all the ways in which illness interrupts.

Toxemia unravels the toxicities that haunt the human body from within and without. Combining lyrical essays, prose poetry, photographs, and more, this hybrid work dips between the sacred and profane, exposing—and holding—some of our greatest fears.

ABOUT CHRISTINE MCNAIR:

Christine MCNair is the author of Charm (winner of the 2018 Archibald Lampman Award) and Conflict (finalist for the City of Ottawa Book Award, the Archibald Lampman Award, and the ReLit Award for Poetry). She was also shortlisted for the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry. Her chapbook pleasantries and other misdemeanours was shortlisted for the bpNichol Chapbook Award. Her work has appeared in sundry literary journals and anthologies. McNair lives in Ottawa where she works as a book doctor.

About Hollay Ghadery:

Hollay Ghadery is an Iranian-Canadian writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity mental health, was released by Guernica Editions and won a 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award. Her poetry collection, Rebellion Box was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her short fiction collection, Widow Fantasies, with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024. Hollay is a host on The New Books Network and co-host on HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is a book publicist, the Regional Chair of the League of Canadian Poets as well as the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. www.hollayghadery.com.

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In this NBN episode, host and poet Hollay Ghadery speaks with Manahil Bandukwala about her second collection, Heliotropia (Brick Books, 2024).  This book of poems is a meditation on love during times of social and political upheaval. As a sunflower’s growth reaches toward the sun, so, she suggests, is a lover’s growth compelled by the gravitational pull and soul-light of their beloved. Many of these poems are in conversation with other poets and artists, creating a lineage of call and response. Against a backdrop of terrestrial crisis, come, spend your precious minutes in love’s Heliotropia, where we are magnetized by the unfathomable dark matter of another person, and know ourselves as celestial bodies flowering in spacetime, together.

Manahil Bandukwala is a writer and visual artist based in Mississauga and Ottawa, Ontario. She is the author of MONUMENT (Brick Books, 2022), which was shortlisted for the 2023 Gerald Lampert Award, and was selected as a Writer’s Trust of Canada Rising Star in 2023. See her work at manahilbandukwala.com.

About Hollay Ghadery:

Hollay Ghadery is an Iranian-Canadian multi-genre writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, was released by Guernica Editions in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir. Her collection of poetry, Rebellion Box was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies, was released with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024. Her debut novel, The Unraveling of Ou, is due out with Palimpsest Press in 2026, and her children’s book, Being with the Birds, with Guernica Editions in 2027. Hollay is a co-host on HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is also a book publicist, the Regional Chair of the League of Canadian Poets and a co-chair of the League’s BIPOC committee, as well as the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. Learn more about Hollay at www.hollayghadery.com.

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In this NBN Poetry podcast, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Rosa Castellano about her gorgeous debut collection, All is the Telling (Diode, 2025). 
All is the Telling is a compelling, transformative collection bridging the personal and political with an emotional intensity that lingers long after the final page. With an intimate and expansive voice, this collection speaks to the human condition in all its beauty and complexity, inviting readers to reflect on their own lives as they are drawn into the intricate web of memory, identity, and survival. The speaker’s voice is grounded in the immediacy of lived experience, yet it also reaches outward, echoing the broader struggles of our time. In a world that can often feel fractured, the poems in All Is The Telling offer a space for connection, reflection, and healing. Readers are invited to witness moments of profound emotional truth, where the boundaries between self and other, past and present, blur in disorienting and revelatory ways.
At its core, All is the Telling is a meditation on what it means to be human in a world that often demands silence from those who dare to speak their truths. It is a collection that insists on the importance of voice, of telling and retelling our stories so they are not forgotten. The collection’s emotional landscape is vast, encompassing themes of love, loss, survival, and the enduring power of storytelling itself. These poems remind us that survival is not simply to endure but to carry forward the stories that define us and to give voice to the histories that have shaped our identities, often against the odds.
This is a collection for readers who crave poetry that speaks to the soul—poetry that does not flinch in the face of brutal truths but instead transforms them into something beautiful, something that can be held, examined, and, ultimately, shared. All is the Telling will resonate with anyone who has ever grappled with the complexities of identity and sought to make sense of a world that can be both brutal and tender. It is a collection that asks us to listen—to ourselves, to each other, to the world, and in that listening, find the strength to tell our own stories. For anyone who believes in the power of words to shape lives, challenge injustices, and celebrate the human spirit, this collection will not disappoint. All is the Telling is vital, alive, and endlessly resonant.

About the Author:
Rosa Castellano, originally from Tampa, Florida, is a poet and teacher living in Richmond, VA. A finalist for Cave Canem’s Starshine and Clay Fellowship, and co-founder of the RVA Poetry Fest, her work can be found or is forth coming from RHINO Poetry, Diode, Passages North, Nimrod, The Ninth Letter, and Poetry Northwest among others. All Is The Telling is her first collection of poetry.

About Hollay Ghadery:

Hollay Ghadery is an Iranian-Canadian writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity mental health, was released by Guernica Editions and won a 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award. Her poetry collection, Rebellion Box was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her short fiction collection, Widow Fantasies, with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024. Hollay is a host on The New Books Network and co-host on HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is a book publicist, the Regional Chair of the League of Canadian Poets as well as the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. www.hollayghadery.com.

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In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Calgary poet Kyle Flemmer about his collection of poetry, Supergiants (Wolsak & Wynn, 2025). 

For millennia humanity has looked upwards and traced stories in the night sky, projecting our human wants and desires outward. In Supergiants, Kyle Flemmer turns his gaze in the other direction. What does our reach for the stars say about us? Working with the technical language of engineering and astrophysics, Flemmer reorients the reader within our galaxy. Families of asteroids expand to contain their physical attributes, the mythic stories of their names and the histories of real people. We see the course of lunar exploration through the fate of the flags planted on each mission. Nebulae, blue giants and black holes enfold us. Interspersed throughout are a series of found/collage poems that visually reconfigure the elements of space exploration and our understanding of it. Through it all, Flemmer shows how we turn to the stars to make sense of ourselves and our place in the universe.

About Kyle Flemmer:

Kyle Flemmer is a writer, publisher, and digital media artist from Calgary in Treaty 7 territory. He founded The Blasted Tree Publishing Co. in 2014 and released his first book, Barcode Poetry, in 2021. Flemmer is the author of many chapbooks and his work has appeared in anthologies and exhibitions in Canada and abroad. Supergiants is Kyle's first trade book of poetry, and his next, The Wiki of Babel, is forthcoming from the University of Calgary Press.

About Hollay Ghadery:

Hollay Ghadery is an Iranian-Canadian multi-genre writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, was released by Guernica Editions in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir. Her collection of poetry, Rebellion Box was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies, was released with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024. Her debut novel, The Unraveling of Ou, is due out with Palimpsest Press in 2026, and her children’s book, Being with the Birds, with Guernica Editions in 2027. Hollay is a co-host on HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is also a book publicist, the Regional Chair of the League of Canadian Poets and a co-chair of the League’s BIPOC committee, as well as the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. Learn more about Hollay at www.hollayghadery.com.

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In this episode of High Theory, Jason Schneiderman talks about Nothingism. A term of his own coinage, a tongue-in-cheek manifesto, nothingism is an invitation to refuse the values of digital culture in favor of the values of print.

You can read more about poetry at the end of print culture in Jason’s new book, entitled Nothingism (Michigan UP, 2025).

In the episode Jaason refers to M.B. Parkes’s book Pause and Effect An Introduction to the History of Punctuation in the West and the poetry of his teacher Agha Shahid Ali.

Jason Schneiderman is a poet and teacher. He is the author of five poetry collections, most recently Self Portrait of Icarus as a Country on Fire (Red Hen, 2024). He also edited an anthology of queer theory for first year writing courses called Queer: A Reader for Writers (Oxford, 2016). He works as a Professor of English at CUNY’s BMCC and in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.

The image for this episode was made by Saronik Bosu. It shows a blue blur on a pink floral print background.

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Lauren k. Watel's Book of Potions (Sarabande Books, 2025) is the winner of the 2023 Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry, selected by Ilya Kaminsky. Written with tremendous urgency and ferocious candor, the prose poems of Book of Potions captures a woman caught in the middle of life: no longer young, not yet old, trapped between generations, locked in stereotyped roles and stultifying social norms, confined by other people's expectations and their projections of what a woman should be. By turns enraged, funny, frustrated, astute and joyful, these short hybrid pieces (potion = poem + fiction) combine the lyric compression of poetry with the narrative expansiveness of prose. Readers will meander, spellbound, through a wildly imaginative dream world of fairy-tale landscapes, allegorical insights, social satire, thought experiments and vivid surreal imagery, scenes of otherworldly strangeness and haunting beauty. These potions are elixirs in language, some healing, some poisonous, all magical.

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