Purchase: Utopians in Love (Game Over Books, 2025)

Read: "Self Portrait as Utopian" (IDK Magazine)

Bob Sykora is the author of the collection Utopians in Love (Game Over Books 2025) and the chapbook I Was Talking About Love–You Are Talking About Geography (Nostrovia! 2016). A graduate of the UMass Boston MFA program, he teaches at community college, edits with Garden Party Collective, co-hosts The Line Break podcast, and curates the KC Poetry Calendar.

Recommended Reading:

The Village by M. Night Shyamalan

Boston's Athenaeum 

Thalia Field

Susan Howe

Iris Murdoch, "The Idea of Perfection"

Lewis Hyde's The Gift

Lazy & Entitled podcast

The Line Break Podcast

The Poet in the World by Denise Levertov (and "The Untaught Teacher" essay)

Purchase: The Fall of Iris Henley (Wednesday Books, 2026)

Read/Listen: The Fall of Iris Henley (excerpt) 

Jennifer Graham graduated from Reed College and received her MFA from the University of Texas at Austin. Under the name Jennifer Donaldson, she is the author of Lies You Never Told Me and I Know You Remember. She also co-wrote the Veronica Mars duology with Rob Thomas. Jennifer currently lives in Austin with her family.

Recommended Reading:

Fanny Howe

Ann Leckie

Martha Wells

The Epiphany Machine by David Burr Gerrard

Writing for Stage and Screen by Sherry Kramer

The Triggering Town by Richard Hugo

Several Short Sentences About Writing by Verlyn Klinkenborg

Scythe by Elizabeth Sylvia

An Angel at My Table (1990 Jane Campion film)

The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein

The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty

Purchase: Fifty Mothers (River River Books, 2026)

Read: "Gridlock" and a process note! (Periodicities) 

Preeti Vangani is an Indian poet & writer based in San Francisco. She is the author of Mother Tongue Apologize (2019), winner of the RLFPA Poetry Prize. Her work has been published in AGNI, The Georgia Review, Gulf Coast, Prairie Schooner among several other places. Her debut short story won the 2021 Pen/Dau Emerging Writers Prize. Vangani has been a resident at UCross, Djerassi and Ragdale. She has received artist grants from San Francisco Arts Commission and YBCA through which she facilitates poetry workshops rooted in writing grief through joy. She holds an MFA in Writing from University of San Francisco.

Recommended Reading:

Saeed Jones

Natalie Shapera

Agha Shahid Ali

Jejuri by Arun Kolatkar (Bombay poet discussed on episode)

K Ming Chang's "Auntland" (short story)

Ross Gay

Erika Meitner

Martha Silano's Terminal Surreal

John Donne's sonnet "I am a little world made cunningly"

D.A. (Doug) Powell

Sharon Olds

Rick Barot

top pens for arthritic hands (friends recommend Dr. Grip pens by Pilot!)

Purchase: Antibody (River River Books) by Elane Kim

Read: The Body As Archive, a review of Antibody by Leah Choi (Harvard Crimson) and Kim's poem "Respite" (Poetry Foundation)

Elane Kim is a Korean American writer from California. The editor-in-chief of Gaia Lit, she is the recipient of the 2024 Roger Conant Hatch Prize for Lyric Poetry, the winner of the 2021 Columbia Journal Winter Poetry Contest, and a Davidson Fellow in Literature. Her writing can be found in Poetry, Narrative Magazine, One Teen Story, and more. She is the author of Postcards (Bull City Press, 2022) and a student at Harvard College.

Recommended Reading:

Dictee by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha

Kimberly Grey

Volta (wikipedia)

Shakespeare's Sonnets (with free, downloadable text, at Folger Library)

Jericho Brown

Diane Seuss

Naruto

Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).
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Read: "Alcestis as the Dead Woman’s Auto-Roman à Clef" and "Alcestis as Peripheral | Swift | Ominous Movement in the House" in Arcturus Magazine

Purchase: House of Myth and Necessity(River River Books, 2026)

Jennifer A Sutherlandis a poet, essayist, and attorney in Baltimore. She is the author of House of Myth and Necessity (River Riverbooks, 2026) and the lyric-hybrid, book-length poem Bullet Points, also from River River Books (2023). Her work has appeared in Birmingham Poetry Review, Hopkins Review, Best New Poets, Denver Quarterly, Cagibi, EPOCH, and elsewhere.

Recommended Reading

Robin Robertson 

Anne Carson

Claire Millikin’s TELEVISION (Unicorn Books, 2016)

Monica Youn’s Blackacre 

Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House

Tron (film, 1982)

Jameela F. Dallis

Diane Seuss's essay "Restless Herd: Some Thoughts on Order—in Poetry, in Life" (Poets & Writers, on building a bearable myth)

Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).
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Read: Four excerpts from There Is News Along the Ohio River at Heavy Feather Review

Purchase: There Is News Along the Ohio River(River River Books, 2026)

Beth Gilstrap (she/her) is a multi-genre author, copywriter, editor, and educator. Her debut hybrid/flash CNF collection, There Is News Along the Ohio River, was released February 2026 from River River Books. She is also the author of two story collections including: Deadheading & Other Stories (2021), winner of the Red Hen Press Women’s Prose Prize, shortlisted for the Stanford Libraries William Saroyan International Prize for Writing, and finalist for the Foreword 2021 Foreword Reviews Awards in Short Fiction; I Am Barbarella: Stories from Twelve Winters Press (2015), and the chapbook No Man’s Wild Laura (2016) from Hyacinth Girl Press. A true southern goth/punk gal at heart, she is the Publisher & Editor-in-chief of the goth/punk zine, Black Lily (find them on Instagram @blacklilyzine). Her essays, stories, and hybrids have appeared in Poets & Writers, Wigleaf, Craft, Bending Genres, and The Cincinnati Review, among others. She lives with her husband and a bunch of cuddly fur muppets in Charlotte, North Carolina. As a neurodivergent human who lives with c-PTSD, she is open about her struggles and fearlessly vocal about ending the stigma surrounding mental illness.

Recommended Reading

Kathy Fish 

Ross Gay

Maggie Nelson

Lydia Davis

Terese Marie Mailhot, Heart Berries

Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin

Stephanie Foo, What My Bones Know

Pete Walker - Complex PTSD: from Surviving to Thriving

Tara Westover, Educated

Jen Soriano, Nervous

Rebecca Olander, Singing From the Deep End

Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).
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Read: "Listen to Yourself" (Sixth Finch)

Purchase: The Visible Field (River River Books, 2026)

Zoë Ryder White’s first full-length collection, The Visible Field, was published by River River Books in February, 2026. A chapbook, Via Post, was a finalist for Tupelo Press’ Snowbound Chapbook award and won the Sixth Finch chapbook contest in 2022. HYPERSPACE was the editors’ choice pick for the Verse Tomaž Šalamun Prize in 2020 and is available from Factory Hollow Press. She co-authored A Study in Spring (Rabbit Catastrophe Press, 2015) and Elsewhere (Sixth Finch Press, 2020) with Nicole Callihan. Her poems have appeared in Tupelo Quarterly, Iterant, Plume, and Threepenny Review, among others. A former elementary school teacher, she edits books for educators about the craft of teaching. She lives in New York’s Hudson Valley with her family.

Reading Recommendations

Vijay Seshadri

Emily Dickinson

Letters of Emily Dickinson

Nicole Callihan

Imogene's Antlers (children's book)

The Poetics of Revery by Gaston Bachelard

The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard

Molly Spencer

Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).
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Read: the title essay "Backyard Alchemy" (The Common)

Purchase: Backyard Alchemy: on life with other creatures in a time of salvage (River River Books, 2026)

J.D. Ho was born by the sea, raised on a rock, schmoozed in Hollywood, drove to Austin, Texas for an MFA, and now lives among foxes and deer on a sliver of east coast green. J.D.’s work has appeared in Georgia Review, Missouri Review, Ninth Letter, and other journals.

Reading Recommendations

Mushroom at the End of the World by Anna Tsing 

The Fall of Iris Henley by Jennifer Graham

Brilliant Minds (tv show)

Alban Fischer (Designer and editor)

Pastoral, 1994 by Joe Wilkins

Scythe by Elizabeth Sylvia

Your Mother’s Bear Gun by Corrie Williamson

EcoTheo Review

Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).
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Read: "On Learning that Kim Kardashian Exceeded her Water Allowance by 232,000 Gallons in June" (Passengers Journal)

Purchase: Scythe (River River Books, 2026)

Elizabeth Sylvia’s first book, None But Witches: Poems on Shakespeare’s Women (2022), won the 2021 3 Mile Harbor Press Book Award. Her chapbook My Little Book of Domestic Anxieties (2025) is available from Ballerini Books, and her second full-length collection, Scythe, is available now from River River Books. She has been a finalist or semi-finalist in competitions sponsored by the Burnside Review, C&R Press, DIAGRAM, Thirty West, Rare Swan, and Wolfson Press, and is a reader for SWWIM Every Day. Elizabeth has received fellowships from the New York Public Library, the West Chester University Poetry Center, and the Longleaf Writers Conference, and is the winner of the 2023 riverSedge Poetry Prize. Elizabeth grew up on Martha’s Vineyard and currently teaches in Southeastern Massachusetts, where she lives with her husband, two daughters, and an extravagantly demanding garden.

Recommended Reading:

Richard Siken's Crush
Lady Wing Shot by Sara Moore Wagner 

If Some God Shakes Your House by Jennifer Franklin

Ceive by BK Fischer

Rue by Kathryn Nuernberger

No Longer at This Address by Andrew Hemmers

The Garden Against Time by Olivia Laing 

Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).
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Read: "Ghazal: Morning" (The Offing)

Purchase: In the House of Modern Upbringing for Girls(Wandering Aengus Press, 2025) 

Majda Gama was born in Beirut to a Saudi father and American mother. Her hometown is Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and her roots Hijazi, but she also has a long, complicated relationship with Northern Virginia where her father was stationed in the 1970's. Majda is the author of In the House of Modern Upbringing for Girls (Wandering Aengus Press, 2025) and The Call of Paradise, (Two Sylvia’s, 2023). Her poetry has been honored with the Graybeal-Gowen award for Virginia poets from Shenandoah and the Gregory Djanikian scholar award for poetry from Adroit. Recent poems have appeared in, or are forthcoming from, AGNI, Ploughshares, POETRY, Prairie Schooner, Swamp Pink, Tupelo Quarterly, and TriQuarterly.

Recommended reading
2017 PEN America World Voices: Sheyr Jangi (Poetic Battles)

Lena Khalaf Tuffaha

Mahmoud Darwish

Fady Joudah

Gwendolyn Brooks

Jill Kitchen