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

Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).
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Read: Three Poems by Frances Klein at Cultural Daily

Purchase: Another Life (Riot in Your Throat Press, 2025)

Frances Klein is an Alaskan poet and teacher. Klein is the author of the poetry collection Another Life (Riot in Your Throat Press, 2025). She is also the author of several poetry chapbooks, including (Text) Messages from The Angel Gabriel (Gnashing Teeth, 2024). Klein is the founding editor of Flight: A Literary Sampler, and an editor at The Weight Journal. Her writing has appeared in Best Microfictions, Rattle, the Harvard Advocate, the London Magazine, HAD, and others. Klein lives in Southeast Alaska with her husband and son.

Recommended Reading:

Terrance Hayes, "Wind in a Box" (poem, also recommend book)

Jericho Brown

Marianne Baruch, Grace, Fallen from

Joshua Bennett

Robert Hass 

Lucille Clifton

Sarah Vap, End of the Sentimental Journey

James Tate

Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).
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Read: "Mother Water Ash" (Poets.org)

Purchase: MOTHER WATER ASH(Louisiana State University Press 2024)

Nicole Cooley grew up in New Orleans and is the author of seven books of poems, most recently MOTHER WATER ASH(Louisiana State University Press 2024), as well as OF MARRIAGE (Alice James Books 2018), GIRL AFTER GIRL AFTER GIRL (LSU Press 2018) and BREACH (LSU Press 2010). She has received the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets, an NEA grant, and the Emily Dickinson Award from The Poetry Society of America, and most recently a grant from the New Jersey Council for the Arts. She is a professor in the MFA Program in Creative Writing and Literary Translation at Queens College, The City University of New York and lives in NJ with her family.

Reading Recommendations:

Yannis Ritsos

Incendiary Art by Patricia Smith

The Dream of Reason by Jenny George

The Poet in the Worldby Denise Levertov

The Art of Deathby Edwidge Danticat

Against Forgetting by Carolyn Forche

Orbit by Victoria Chang

Mother Hunger by Kelly McDaniel

"A Small Needful Fact" by Ross Gay

C.D. Wright

Philip Levine

Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).
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Purchase: Water Castle by Natalie Solmer (Kelsay Books, 2024)

Read: "I Am a Great Lake" (MER)

Natalie Solmer was born and raised in South Bend, Indiana, a granddaughter of Polish and German immigrants. She worked in the field of horticulture for many years, including 13 years as a grocery store florist, before becoming a professor of English and creative writing. She teaches at Ivy Tech Community College in Indianapolis and is the founder and editor in chief of Indianapolis Review. Her work has been published in journals such as North American Review, Notre Dame Review, Pleiades, Mom Egg Review, and Tab Poetry Journal. Her debut book of poems, Water Castle, was published by Kelsay Books in the fall of 2024. You can find her poems, visual poetry, and visual art at http://www.nataliesolmer.com

Reading Recommendations:

The Indianapolis Review

Diane Seuss, Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl (Graywolf, 2018)

"Song in my Heart" by Diane Seuss

Gustav Klimt

Frida Kahlo

"The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" by Walter Benjamin

Joyelle McSweeney, Death Styles (Nightboat Books, 2024)

Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).
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Purchase: The Deletions (Editor’s Choice, Akron Poetry Prize)

Sarah Green is the author of an April 2025 release, The Deletions (Editor’s Choice, Akron Poetry Prize) and a previous collection, Earth Science. Her poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Paris Review, New Ohio Review, 32 Poems, FIELD, Copper Nickel, Gettysburg Review, Pleiades, and elsewhere. A two-time Pushcart Prize winner, she is an Associate Professor of English at St. Cloud State. 

Reading Recommendations:
Kylie Gellatly

Marie Howe

Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey

James Wright

Marianne Moore

Merriam-Webster

The Lost Words by Robert Macfarlane

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