Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).
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Purchase: Unrivered (Sundress Publications, 2025)

Read: "Dysmorphia (Autumn)" at Harpur Palate

Donna Vorreyer is the author of four full-length poetry collections: Unrivered ( 2025), To Everything There Is (2020), Every Love Story is an Apocalypse Story (2016) and A House of Many Windows (2013), all from Sundress Publications. Recent work has appeared in Ploughshares, Pleiades, Poet Lore, Colorado Review, Harpur Palate, Baltimore Review, Salamander, and many other journals. Donna lives  in the western suburbs of Chicago and runs the online reading series A Hundred Pitchers of Honey. She is the co-founder/co-editor of Asterales: A Journal of Arts & Letters.

Reading/Listening Recommendations:

Mary Ruefle’s essay “Pause”

Diane Seuss's frank: sonnets

John Donne, Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions (1624)

Philip Sidney, Astrophil and Stella (1591)

Jane Hirshfield "Changing Everything"

Richard Wilbur, “The Beautiful Changes”

Joanne Kyger

Eileen Myles

Salvage by Heji Choi

Taylor Byas’s Resting Bitch Face

Dustin Brookshire, Wild and Precious Life Series

Robin Wall Kimmerer's The Serviceberry

Lewis Hyde's The Gift

Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).
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Purchase: Encounters for the Living and the Dead (River River Books, 2025)

Jameela F. Dallis lives in Durham, NC. Her publications include poems, interviews, arts journalism, and literary scholarship in Feminist Studies, Honey Literary, The Fight and the Fiddle, Our State, Walter, The Bloomsbury Handbook to Toni Morrison, and elsewhere. She's inspired by memory and desire, the thrill of wandering new cities, and the wonder of everyday encounters. Her work explores texture, taste, sound, sensation, and the richness of visual art. She curated Material Encounters (Peel Gallery, Carrboro, March 2024), juried Scaffold (Artspace, Raleigh, April 2023), and has served on regional curatorial and fellowship committees. Jameela has taught dozens of university courses and facilitated creative workshops for more than a decade. Originally from Chattanooga, TN, Jameela received her B.A. in English from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, and holds both an M.A. and Ph.D. in English from UNC-Chapel Hill. Encounters for the Living and the Dead is her first book of poetry. Read more at jameeladallis.com

Reading Recommendations:

Pieter Aertsen's A Meat Stall with the Holy Family Giving Alms(1551)

Henri Matisse's Les Betes de la Mer (1950)

Five Questions with Author Jameela F. Dallis: River River Books' Newsletter

Jaki Shelton Green

Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).

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Purchase: Field Notes(River River Books, 2025)

E. G. Cunningham was born in South Carolina and grew up in Italy and Florida. Her poems, essays, stories, and hybrid pieces have appeared in or are forthcoming from a wide range of national and international publications, including The Abandoned Playground, Colorado Review, The Gettysburg Review, The Nation, Poetry London, The Poetry Review, Puerto del Sol, Southern Humanities Review, and ZYZZYVA. Her most recent chapbook, Oranges for Venus, was selected as the 2023 1br/3bath Editor’s Choice from Tilted House Press. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing, Poetry from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and a PhD in English Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Georgia. Read more about her writing and music at egcunningham.com.

Reading Recommendations

"What are the United States and why are there so many of them?" essay by Heriberto Yepéz

Sonia Sanchez's essay in Civil Disobediences: poetics and politics in actions (Coffee House Press, 2004) 

Transnational Battle Field (Commune Editions, 2017) by Heriberto Yepéz 

Poem for Difficult Children (Broken Sleep Books, 2022) by Daniele Pantano

The Gleaners and I (2001, film) by Agnes Varda (watch on The Internet Archive)

Whose Justice? Which Rationality?by Alasdair MacIntyre

The Southern Reach Series by Jeff VanderMeer

Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).

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Read: "Faith Test" at The Florida Review Online

Purchase: The Science of Things We Can Believe (Ghost Peach Press, 2024)

Christen Noel Kauffmanis author of The Science of Things We Can Believe which won the Ghost Peach Press Prize in Poetry chosen by Tiana Clark (2024) and the chapbook Notes to a Mother God (2021), which was a winner of the Paper Nautilus Debut Chapbook Series. She is a 2022 National Poetry Series Finalist and her work can be found in A Harp in the Stars: An Anthology of Lyric Essays (University of Nebraska Press), Tupelo Quarterly, Copper Nickel, The Cincinnati Review, DIAGRAM, and Smokelong Quarterly, among others. She's currently a poetry editor for Driftwood Press and lives in Richmond, Indiana.

Reading/Listening Recommendations:
Frank X Walker's Affrilachia

Sara Moore Wagner's Of Poetry Episode

upfromsumdirt's Of Poetry Episode

Joe Wilkin's Of Poetry Episode

Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).

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Purchase: Lady Wing Shot by Sara Moore Wagner (Lynx House Press, 2024)

Read: “Annie Oakley’s Bullet Inventory” Jet Fuel Review

Sara Moore Wagner is the author of three prize winning full length books of poetry, Lady Wing Shot, winner of the 2023 Blue Lynx Prize (2024), Swan Wife (Cider Press Review Editors Prize, 2022), and Hillbilly Madonna (Driftwood Press Manuscript Prize, 2022), and of two chapbooks. She is also a 2022 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award recipient, a 2021 National Poetry Series Finalist, and the recipient of a 2019 Sustainable Arts Foundation award. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in many journals and anthologies including Gulf Coast, Smartish Pace, Waxwing, Beloit Poetry Journal, and The Cincinnati Review, among others. In 2023, she became the Managing Poetry Editor of Driftwood Press. She lives in West Chester, OH with her husband and three children. 

Recommended Reading

Christen Noel Kauffman (with us in spirit on Episode 74!)

[Buffalo Bill 's] by E.E. Cummings

Lit Youngstown
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).

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Read: "Practice Elegy" at Copper Nickel

Purchase: The Naomi Letters (BOA Editions, 2021)

Rachel Mennies is the author of the poetry collections The Wolf (BOA Editions, forthcoming fall 2027); The Naomi Letters (BOA Editions, 2021); The Glad Hand of God Points Backwards, the 2014 winner of the Walt McDonald First-Book Prize in Poetry at Texas Tech University Press and finalist for a National Jewish Book Award; and No Silence in the Fields, a chapbook from Blue Hour Press. Her poetry has recently appeared at Poetry Magazine, The Believer, Kenyon Review, American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. Rachel's essays, criticism, and other articles have appeared, or will soon, at The Millions, The Poetry Foundation, LitHub, and numerous other outlets.

Reading Recommendations:

"Having it out with Melancholy" by Jane Kenyon

Portrait of a Woman on Fire, Dir. Céline Sciamma (film)

Aracelis Girmay's The Black Maria

This is How You Lose the Time Warby Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Circe by Madeline Miller

Galatea by Madeline Miller

[Eugenio] Montale in English

Adrienne Rich

Anne Sexton

Virginia Woolf

Anaïs Nin

Sylvia Plath

Today's episode of Of Poetry is hosted by Amorak Huey (uh-MOR-ack), the author of Dad Jokes from Late in the Patriarchy (Sundress Publications, 2021).
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Purchase: Larks (Ohio University Press, 2025)

Read: "Larks" at Poetry Daily

Han VanderHartis a queer writer living in Durham, North Carolina, under the pines. Their second poetry collection, Larks (Ohio University Press, 2025), was selected by Chanda Feldman as winner of the 2024 Hollis Summers Poetry Prize. Han is also the author of the chapbook Hawk & Moon (Bottlecap Press, 2025) and What Pecan Light (Bull City Press, 2021) and has essays and poetry published in Kenyon Review, The American Poetry Review, The Rumpus, AGNI, and elsewhere. Han hosts Of Poetry Podcast and, alongside Amorak Huey, co-edits the poetry press River River Books.

Amorak Huey (uh-MOR-ack) is the author of four books of poems including Dad Jokes from Late in the Patriarchy (Sundress Publications, 2021). Co-founder with Han VanderHart of River River Books, Huey teaches in the BFA and MFA programs at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. He also is co-author with W. Todd Kaneko of the textbook Poetry: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology (Bloomsbury, 2nd ed., 2024) and Slash/Slash (2021), winner of the Diode Editions Chapbook Prize. Huey is a recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts, and his poems have appeared in The Best American Poetry, American Poetry Review, The Southern Review, The Missouri Review, the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day series, and many other print and online journals.

Reading Recommendations:

The Dream of Reason by Jenny George

Robert Pinsky, Sounds of Poetry

James Longenbach, The Lyric Now

The Poet in the World by Denise Levertov

Annie Lauterbach

"Bewilderment" (essay) by Fanny Howe

Gwendolyn Brooks

Marianne Moore

Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).

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Read: "The Difference Between a Dog and a Biscuit Tin" (Poetry Magazine)

Purchase: Kin by Karl Knights (Winner of the New Poets Prize, 2022)

Karl Knights’s poems, critical essays, and journalism have appeared in The Guardian, Poetry Review, Poetry London, The Dark Horse, and elsewhere. His debut chapbook, Kin, (2022) was published by The Poetry Business. Knights is a Zoeglossia fellow and won a 2021 New Poets Prize. He lives in Suffolk, England.

Recommended Reading

Brian Patten

Tilling the Hard Soil: Poetry, Prose and Art by South African Writers with Disabilities, ed. Kobus Moolman (University of KwaZulu-Natal Press: 2010)

Beauty is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability, eds. Jennifer Bartlett, Sheila Black & Michael Northen (Cinco Puntos Press: 2011)

QDA: A Queer Disability Anthology, ed. Raymond Luczak (Squares & Rebels: 2015)

Stairs and Whispers: D/deaf and Disabled Poets Write Back, eds. Sandra Alland, Khairani Barokka & Daniel Sluman (Nine Arches Press: 2017)

Imaginary Safe House, eds. Shane Neilson, Roxanna Bennett & Ally Fleming (Frog Hollow Press: 2019)

Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).

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Purchase: Ablation (11:11 Press) 

Read: "Relentless" (at cloak.wtf, the relentless reading experience) 

Danika Stegeman’s second book, Ablation, was released by 11:11 Press November 1st, 2023. Her first book, Pilot (2020), was published by Spork Press. She’s a 2023 recipient of a grant from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund. Her video poem, “Then Betelgeuse Reappears” was an official selection for the 2021 Midwest Video Poetry Festival. She’s an assistant editor for Conduit and does light bookkeeping for Fonograf Editions. Along with Jace Brittain, she co-curates the virtual collaborative reading series It’s Copperhead Season. She currently lives in St. Paul, MN. Her website is danikastegeman.com.

Recommended Reading:

Harryette Mullen Urban Tumbleweed 

The Cinquain

Gertrude Stein

Alice Notley's Certain Magical Acts

Anne Carson’s Nox

Molly Spencer's Invitatory

Jake Skeets’ essay "Poetry as Field" and "The Memory Field"

Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).
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Purchase: The Second Stop Is Jupiter (Wayne State University Press, 2023), To Emit Teal (Broadstone Books, 2020), Deifying A Total Darkness (Harry Tankoos Books, 2020)

Read: poems from "Fayre Gabbro Suite" (Ice Floe Press)

upfromsumdirt is a speculative poet & visual artist dreaming of romanticisms and revolutionary coups. he is the author of 3 chapbooks and 3 full-length collections of poetry, Deifying A Total Darkness (Harry Tankoos Books, 2020), To Emit Teal (Broadstone Books, 2020), and The Second Stop Is Jupiter (Wayne State University Press, 2023); a fourth collection, The Shoes of the Fisherman's Wife, is forthcoming from University Press of Kentucky in Fall 2025. he is a former co-founder of the defunct literary journal, Mythium, as well as the former co-owner of The Wild Fig Books & Coffee. currently, he serves as the in-house designer for Workhorse Publishing. upfromsumdirt resides in Lexington with his fellow Affrilachian Poet partner, author & college professor, Crystal Wilkinson.

Reading Recommendations:

Saida Agostini, let the dead in

Destiny Hemphill, motherworld: a devotional for the alter-life

Ishmael Reed, Mumbo Jumbo and "I Am a Cowboy in the Boat of Ra"

Crystal Wilkinson