Chiwenite Onyekwelu’s debut poetry chapbook, EXILED, was published by Red Bird Chapbooks, and his work has appeared in two recent issues of Rattle. He was shortlisted for the 2024 Isele Magazine Poetry Prize. In 2023, he won the Hudson Review’s Frederick Morgan Poetry Prize, and was a finalist for the Alpine Fellowship Prize, as well as the Writivism Poetry Prize. Chiwenite served as chief editor at The School of Pharmacy, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, where he recently completed his undergraduate studies.

Find more info here:

https://linktr.ee/chiweniteonyekwelu

As always, we'll also include the live Prompt Lines for responses to our weekly prompt. A Zoom link will be provided in the chat window during the show before that segment begins.

For links to all the past episodes, visit:

https://www.rattle.com/page/rattlecast/

This Week’s Prompt:

Write a poem about a time you were haunted and how you overcame the experience.

Next Week’s Prompt:

Write a haiku sequence inspired by the seasons.

The Rattlecast livestreams on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, then becomes an audio podcast. Find it on iTunes, Spotify, or anywhere else you get your podcasts.

José Enrique Medina is winner of the 2025 Rattle Chapbook Prize for Haunt Me. He earned his BA in English from Cornell University. His poetry and fiction have appeared in Best Microfiction 2019, The Los Angeles Review, The Tahoma Review, Burnside Review, and many other publications. A VONA fellow and frequent poetry slam judge, he writes with heart, heat, and just the right amount of haunt. He is the founder of the Chickens and Poetry Residency for Writers. When he’s not wrangling words, he’s usually on his ranch in Los Angeles, chasing after bunnies and baby chicks.

Find more info here:

https://medinawrites.com/

As always, we'll also include the live Prompt Lines for responses to our weekly prompt. A Zoom link will be provided in the chat window during the show before that segment begins.

For links to all the past episodes, visit:

https://www.rattle.com/page/rattlecast/

This Week’s Prompt:

Orange you glad you get to write a prompt poem?

Next Week’s Prompt:

Write a poem about a time you were haunted and how you overcame the experience.

The Rattlecast livestreams on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, then becomes an audio podcast. Find it on iTunes, Spotify, or anywhere else you get your podcasts.

Isabella DeSendi is a Latina poet and educator, and a finalist for the 2023 Rattle Poetry Prize. Her debut poetry collection, Someone Else's Hunger, is just out from Four Way Books. Her chapbook, Through the New Body, won the Poetry Society of America's Chapbook Fellowship and was published in 2020. Recently, she has been named a 2025 New Jersey Poetry Fellow, a finalist for the Ruth Lilly Fellowship, and was included in the 2024 Best New Poets anthology, among other awards. Isabella has attended Bread Loaf Writers' Workshop, the Storyknife Writers’ Residency in Alaska, and holds an MFA from Columbia University. She currently lives in Hoboken, New Jersey.

Find more info here:

https://www.isabelladesendi.com/

As always, we'll also include the live Prompt Lines for responses to our weekly prompt. A Zoom link will be provided in the chat window during the show before that segment begins.

For links to all the past episodes, visit:

https://www.rattle.com/rattlecast/

This Week’s Prompt:

Write a persona poem that includes the word “prompt.”

Next Week’s Prompt:

Orange you glad you get to write a prompt poem?

The Rattlecast livestreams on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, then becomes an audio podcast. Find it on iTunes, Spotify, or anywhere else you get your podcasts.

Roberta Beary (they/she) first appeared on episode 133. Roberta is long-time haibun editor at Modern Haiku and travels the world as Roving Ambassador for The Haiku Foundation. Their new book, Crazy Bitches, includes 80 haibun selected from poems written over a 20-year period, 2004 through 2024. With Lew Watts and Rich Youmans, Roberta Beary is co-author of Haibun: A Writer's Guide (2023).

Find more info here:

https://robertabeary.com/

As always, we'll also include the live Prompt Lines for responses to our weekly prompt. A Zoom link will be provided in the chat window during the show before that segment begins.

For links to all the past episodes, visit:

https://www.rattle.com/rattlecast/

This Week’s Prompt:

Write a poem about a time you got more than you bargained for.

Next Week’s Prompt:

Write a persona poem that includes the word “prompt.”

The Rattlecast livestreams on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, then becomes an audio podcast. Find it on iTunes, Spotify, or anywhere else you get your podcasts.

In this special episode of the Rattlecast, we announce the winners of the 2025 Rattle Poetry Prize competition, and most of the 11 poets share their prize-winning work. The annual contest offers $25,000 in awards for individual poems.

Find more info on the prize here:

https://rattle.com/page/poetryprize/

As always, we'll also include the live Prompt Lines for responses to our weekly prompt. A Zoom link will be provided in the chat window during the show before that segment begins.

For links to all the past episodes, visit:

https://www.rattle.com/rattlecast/

This Week’s Prompt:

Pick a specific obscure award and write a poem about it.

Next Week’s Prompt:

Write a poem about a time you got more than you bargained for.

The Rattlecast livestreams on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, then becomes an audio podcast. Find it on iTunes, Spotify, or anywhere else you get your podcasts.

Matthew Thorburn's latest book is String, a novel in poems, published by Louisiana State University Press in 2023. He’s also the author of five previous books, including The Grace of Distance, a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize, and the book-length poem Dear Almost, honored with the Lascaux Prize, and two chapbooks. ​His work has been recognized with a Witter Bynner Fellowship from the Library of Congress, the Mississippi Review Prize, and fellowships from the Bronx and New Jersey arts councils and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. A native of Michigan and for many years a New Yorker, he lives and works in central New Jersey.

Find more info here:

https://www.matthewthorburn.net/

As always, we'll also include the live Prompt Lines for responses to our weekly prompt. A Zoom link will be provided in the chat window during the show before that segment begins.

For links to all the past episodes, visit:

https://www.rattle.com/rattlecast/

This Week’s Prompt:

Write a poem that features electricity.

Next Week’s Prompt:

Pick a specific obscure award and write a poem about it.

The Rattlecast livestreams on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, then becomes an audio podcast. Find it on iTunes, Spotify, or anywhere else you get your podcasts.

Richard Siken is a poet and painter. His book Crush won the 2004 Yale Series of Younger Poets prize, selected by Louise Glück, a Lambda Literary Award, a Thom Gunn Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His other books are War of the Foxes (Copper Canyon Press, 2015) and I Do Know Some Things (Copper Canyon Press, 2025). Siken is a recipient of fellowships from Lannan Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He lives in Tucson, Arizona.

Find more info here:

https://richard-siken.com/

As always, we'll also include the live Prompt Lines for responses to our weekly prompt. A Zoom link will be provided in the chat window during the show before that segment begins.

For links to all the past episodes, visit:

https://www.rattle.com/rattlecast/

This Week’s Prompt:

Write a poem that touches on hair.

Next Week’s Prompt:

Write a poem that features electricity.

The Rattlecast livestreams on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, then becomes an audio podcast. Find it on iTunes, Spotify, or anywhere else you get your podcasts.

Alora Young is a recent college graduate, actor, poet, and author of Walking Gentry Home: A Memoir of My Foremothers in Verse. She was named the 2020-2021 Youth Poet Laureate of the Southern United States, and has performed her poetry on CNN, CBS, the TEDx stage, and more. Young talks with passion and prowess about how the history and impact of spoken word poetry, generational trauma, navigating Black girlhood & womanhood in America, and neurodivergence & creativity.

Find more info here:

https://alorayoung.com/

As always, we'll also include the live Prompt Lines for responses to our weekly prompt. A Zoom link will be provided in the chat window during the show before that segment begins.

For links to all the past episodes, visit:

https://www.rattle.com/rattlecast/

This Week’s Prompt:

Write a poem in which someone is taken to a surprising school.

Next Week’s Prompt:

Write a poem that touches on hair.

The Rattlecast livestreams on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, then becomes an audio podcast. Find it on iTunes, Spotify, or anywhere else you get your podcasts.

Gregory Orr has written thirteen poetry collections, a memoir, and several books of criticism, most recently A Primer for Poets and Readers of Poetry. His poetry collections include Concerning the Book that is the Body of the Beloved and The Caged Owl: New & Selected Poems. The recipient of Fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, he lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Find more info here:

http://gregoryorr.net/

As always, we'll also include the live Prompt Lines for responses to our weekly prompt. A Zoom link will be provided in the chat window during the show before that segment begins.

For links to all the past episodes, visit:

https://www.rattle.com/rattlecast/

This Week’s Prompt:

Write an ekphrastic poem based on a well-known painting that you dislike.

Next Week’s Prompt:

Write a poem in which someone is taken to a surprising school.

The Rattlecast livestreams on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, then becomes an audio podcast. Find it on iTunes, Spotify, or anywhere else you get your podcasts.

Sneha Madhavan-Reese is an award-winning writer and author of the poetry collections Elementary Particles and Observing the Moon. Her poems have appeared in publications around the world, including The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2016. Sneha's second collection, Elementary Particles, is inspired by her South Asian heritage and passion for science, and has themes of identity and belonging, language and loss. Elementary Particles was longlisted for the Raymond Souster Award and was a finalist for the Ottawa Book Award.

Find more info here:

http://madhavan-reese.com/sneha/

As always, we'll also include the live Prompt Lines for responses to our weekly prompt. A Zoom link will be provided in the chat window during the show before that segment begins.

For links to all the past episodes, visit:

https://www.rattle.com/rattlecast/

This Week’s Prompt:

Write a sonnet in which someone sings.

Next Week’s Prompt:

Write an ekphrastic poem based on a well-known painting that you dislike.

The Rattlecast livestreams on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, then becomes an audio podcast. Find it on iTunes, Spotify, or anywhere else you get your podcasts.