Poetry Medicine for the Soul

Poetry Medicine for the Soul is a podcast inviting  poets to share, explore, and celebrate poetry, hosted by John Gillespie. In this episode, Kristen Lindquist reads three of her haibun (haiku-prose hybrid) poems: "Strangers on a Plane," "Natural History," and "The Way In."

Kristen Lindquist attended Middlebury College in Vermont and received her MFA in poetry from the University of Oregon. Her poetry and other writings have appeared in such venues as Down East magazine, Maine Times, and Bangor Daily News, as well as in many literary/haiku journals and anthologies. Her haiku chapbook It Always Comes Back was a winner of the 2020 Snapshot Press eChapbook Award. Her haiku collection ISLAND, published in 2023, was runner-up for the Haiku Society of America’s Merit Book Award.

Learn more at www.kristenlindquist.com, where you can sign up for Kristen's daily haiku newsletter.

This podcast is hosted and produced by John Gillespie. Check out our website or Simplecast podcast feed for more episodes.

Listen and subscribe to Poetry Medicine for the Soul in Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Learn more and get in touch: poetrymedicineforthesoul.com

Poetry Medicine for the Soul is a podcast hosted by John Gillespie that invites poets to read, explore, and celebrate poetry. While the 2025 National Poetry Month is over, this summer, Poetry Medicine for the Soul is still celebrating. Episode 32 features Meg Weston reading two poems by Aimee Nezhukumatahil: “When You are Near, I Turn into a Baja Fairyduster” and “What I Learned in Greenland.” Meg and John then discuss the question: What does national poetry month mean to you?

This is the last episode of Season 5. Poetry Medicine for the Soul will back in the fall with Season 6. 

Meg Weston is a poet, non-fiction writer, and photographer with passion for the geological processes that shape the earth and the stories that shape our lives. She has an MFA from Lesley University. As co-founder of The Poets Corner, and the Camden Festival of Poetry, and a board member of Millay House Rockland, Meg actively supports the poetry community. Images can be seen on her photography website, www.volcanoes.com. 

Meg Weston's poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. Her publications include a poetry collection, Magma Intrusions, published by Kelsay Books in 2023, a self-published chapbook, Letters from the White Queen. and a collaborative collection with poet Margaret Haberman, To the Point and Back: Swimming Poems.

This podcast is hosted and produced by John Gillespie. Check out our website or Simplecast podcast feed for more episodes.

Listen and subscribe to Poetry Medicine for the Soul in Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Learn more and get in touch: poetrymedicineforthesoul.com

Poetry Medicine for the Soul is a podcast hosted by John Gillespie that invites poets to read, explore, and celebrate poetry. While the 2025 National Poetry Month is over, this summer, Poetry Medicine for the Soul is still celebrating. Episode 31 features Annaliese Jakimides reading “What Seems Like Joy” by Kaveh Akbar, and “Feather” by Margaret Atwood. Annaliese and John then discuss the question: What does national poetry month mean to you?

Annaliese Jakimides has been cited in national competitions by poets laureate and other notable writers. Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, her prose and poetry have been published in many magazines, anthologies, and journals, including Beloit Poetry Journal and Southeast Review. She’s a member of MWPA’s community advisory board and cofounder of the Belfast Poetry Festival. After decades of living in the shadow of Mt. Katahdin in a town of 160, pumping water by hand, she now lives in an apartment in a small Maine city overlooking a library and writes in a closet. Learn more at www.annaliesejakimides.com.

This podcast is hosted and produced by John Gillespie. Check out our website or Simplecast podcast feed for more episodes.

Listen and subscribe to Poetry Medicine for the Soul in Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Learn more and get in touch: poetrymedicineforthesoul.com

Poetry Medicine for the Soul is a podcast hosted by John Gillespie that invites poets to read, explore, and celebrate poetry. While the 2025 National Poetry Month is over, this summer, Poetry Medicine for the Soul is still celebrating. Episode 30 features Mike Bove reading “The Jewel” by James Wright and “Encounter” by Czeslaw Milosz. Mike and John then discuss the question: What does national poetry month mean to you?

Mike Bove is the author of four books of poetry, most recently EYE. His poems have appeared in Rattle, Southern Humanities Review, Tar River Poetry, and others. He was a two-time finalist for a Maine Literary Award and won the Maine Postmark Poetry Contest in 2021. In 2024 he served as Writer-in-Residence at Acadia National Park. Currently, he is editor of Hole in the Head Review, a biannual journal of poetry. Mike lives with his family in Portland, Maine where he was born and raised, and is Professor of English at Southern Maine Community College. 

Learn more at: www.mikebove.com

This podcast is hosted and produced by John Gillespie. Check out our website or Simplecast podcast feed for more episodes.

Listen and subscribe to Poetry Medicine for the Soul in Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Learn more and get in touch: poetrymedicineforthesoul.com

Poetry Medicine for the Soul is a podcast hosted by John Gillespie that invites poets to read, explore, and celebrate poetry. While the 2025 National Poetry Month is over, this summer, Poetry Medicine for the Soul is still celebrating. Episode 29 features Katherine Berry reading “Nox borealis” by Campbell McGrath and her own poem “Northern Lights.” Katherine and John then discuss the question: What does national poetry month mean to you?

Katherine Hagopian Berry (she/her) is the author of Mast Year (Littoral Books 2020), LandTrust (NatureCulture, 2022) and Orbit (Toad Hall Editions, 2023). Katherine has appeared in literary magazines, including Café Review, SWWIM, and Feral, in the Portland Press Herald, on Maine NPR and in multiple anthologies. Her next collection, Handfast, is forthcoming from NatureCulture Books.

This podcast is hosted and produced by John Gillespie. Check out our website or Simplecast podcast feed for more episodes.

Listen and subscribe to Poetry Medicine for the Soul in Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Learn more and get in touch: poetrymedicineforthesoul.com

Poetry Medicine for the Soul is a podcast hosted by John Gillespie that invites poets to read, explore, and celebrate poetry. While the 2025 National Poetry Month is over, this summer, Poetry Medicine for the Soul is still celebrating. Episode 28 features Rosa Lane reading “Wild nights- Wild nights!” by Emily Dickinson and her own poem, “French Sardines,” from her new poetry collection Called Back, which just received the 2025 Maine Literary Book Award. Rosa and John then discuss the question: What does national poetry month mean to you?

Rosa Lane is author of four poetry collections including Called Back, published by Tupelo Press in fall 2024; Chouteau’s Chalk, winner of the Georgia Poetry Prize, published by the University of Georgia Press in 2019;Tiller North, winner of the National Indie Excellence Award, published by Sixteen Rivers Press in 2016; and Roots and Reckonings, a chapbook. 

Her work was named Best of Poetry for the 2024 Geminga Prize, chosen as winner of the 2023 Morton Marcus Memorial Poetry Prize, and selected finalist for the 2023 Gregory O’Donoghue International Poetry Competition among other awards. Rosa Lane’s poems have appeared in Cloudbank, Five Points, Nimrod, RHINO, Third Coast, and elsewhere.

Learn more at: www.rosalane.com.

This podcast is hosted and produced by John Gillespie. Check out our website or Simplecast podcast feed for more episodes.

Listen and subscribe to Poetry Medicine for the Soul in Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Learn more and get in touch: poetrymedicineforthesoul.com

Poetry Medicine for the Soul is a podcast hosted by John Gillespie inviting poets to read, explore, and celebrate poetry. While the 2025 National Poetry Month is over, this summer Poetry Medicine for the Soul is still celebrating. Episode 27 features Lauren Saxon reading “Uptown, Minneapolis, Minnesota” by Hieu Minh Nguyen. Lauren and John then discuss the question: What does national poetry month mean to you?

Lauren Saxon is a queer, Black poet and engineer living in Portland, ME. She loves her cats, her Subaru, and being chronically online. Lauren’s work is featured in Barrelhouse, Empty Mirror, Across the Margin, Homology Lit, and more. Her debut chapbook, You’re My Favorite, won the 2023 Maine Literary Award for Book of Poetry, and is out now with Thirty West Publishing.

Learn more at: www.laurenmsaxon.com.

This podcast is hosted and produced by John Gillespie. Check out our website or Simplecast podcast feed for more episodes.

Listen and subscribe to Poetry Medicine for the Soul in Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Learn more and get in touch: poetrymedicineforthesoul.com

Poetry Medicine for the Soul is a podcast hosted by John Gillespie that invites poets to read, explore, and celebrate poetry. While the 2025 National Poetry Month is over, Poetry Medicine for the Soul is still celebrating. Season 5, Episode 26 features Kristen Case reading “The Idea of Order at Key West” by Wallace Stevens.  

Kristen Case is a poet and scholar. She is the author of American Pragmatism and Poetic Practice: Crosscurrents from Emerson to Susan Howe, and three books of poetry - most recently, Daphne. She has co-edited several essay collections on American writers. Most recently, the Oxford Handbook of Henry David Thoreau. She lives in Maine. 

Learn more at: www.kristencase.com

This podcast is hosted and produced by John Gillespie. Check out our website or Simplecast podcast feed for more episodes.

Listen and subscribe to Poetry Medicine for the Soul in Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Learn more and get in touch: poetrymedicineforthesoul.com

Poetry Medicine for the Soul is a podcast hosted by John Gillespie that invites poets to share and examine poetry. While the 2025 National Poetry Month is over, Poetry Medicine for the Soul is still celebrating.  Episode 25 features Jefferson Navicky reading “Life Status” by Adrian Blevins. Jefferson and John then explore the question: What does National Poetry Month mean to you? 

Jefferson Navicky was born in Chicago and grew up in Southeastern Ohio. He earned his M.F.A. from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodies Poetics at Naropa University. He is the author of four books, most recently Head of Island Beautification for the Rural Outlands (2023), a Finalist for the 2023 Big Other Book Award for Fiction. Antique Densities: Modern Parables & Other Experiments in Short Prose (2021) won the 2022 Maine Literary Award for Poetry.

Jefferson’s work has received several acknowledgments and awards, including an American Rescue Plan/Maine Project Grant, a Maine Arts Commission grant, and three Maine Literary Awards. His plays have been produced throughout New England. Jefferson is proud to be a member of Maine’s literary arts community and is active in several volunteer boards, committees, and community projects. He is the archivist for the Maine Women Writers Collection.

Learn more at: www.jeffersonnavicky.com.

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This podcast is hosted and produced by John Gillespie. Check out our website or Simplecast podcast feed for more episodes.

Listen and subscribe to Poetry Medicine for the Soul in Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Learn more and get in touch: poetrymedicineforthesoul.com

Poetry Medicine for the Soul, a podcast hosted by John Gillespie, invites poets to share and examine poetry. While the 2025 National Poetry Month is over, Poetry Medicine for the Soul is still celebrating. Episode 24 features Margaret Haberman reading “Rounding Ballast Key” by George Murphy. Margaret and John then explore the question: What does National Poetry Month mean to you?

Margaret A. Haberman lives and writes in Belfast, Maine. Her poems have appeared in the Island Journal, the journals Spiritus, and kerning/ a space from here. Her poems have also been selected for the Maine Public Radio program Poems from Here. Margaret and Meg Weston co-authored a book of poems, To the Point and Back: Swimming Poems, which came out in 2024. 

This podcast is hosted and produced by John Gillespie. Check out our website or Simplecast podcast feed for more episodes.

Listen and subscribe to Poetry Medicine for the Soul in Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Learn more and get in touch: poetrymedicineforthesoul.com