Back in June 2014, Rattle unleashed its Poets Respond series, thrusting poetry into the heart of the news with raw, immediate verses that tackle the moment. Over 800 poems later, we’ve woven a vivid tapestry of our shared history, now distilled into a stunning new anthology—our first-ever Best of Rattle Awards collection. It’s as unpredictable and electric as the times we’ve lived through. Tune in to this special episode of the Rattlecast, where a stellar lineup of the anthology’s poets will join us to share their work and dive deep into the stories behind their unforgettable poems!

Buy the anthology here:

https://rattle.com/publications/best-of-pr/

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 with a specific type of poetic structure, either from the book Structure & Surprise: Engaging Poetic Turns by Michael Theune or the book’s website (https://structureandsurprise.com/).

Next Week’s Prompt:

Write a Poet’s Respond poem that is in response to an obscure/off-beat news story.

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.

This conversation with Ruth Reichl originally appeared in issue #88 of Rattle and was recorded on March 25th, 2025. As a former culinary school student and foodie herself, our associate editor, Katie Dozier, joined in on the discussion. What does food have to do with poetry? Listen in to find out!

Ruth Reichl is recognized as one of the most discerning voices in the food world, with accolades as a bestselling author, revered restaurant critic, and culinary industry influencer. Her icon status stems from groundbreaking roles in food journalism, including lead restaurant critic at the New York Times and editor-in-chief at Gourmet magazine. Ruth’s bestselling memoirs include Save Me the Plums: My Gourmet Memoir, which chronicles her tenure at the magazine and Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table. Her cookbook My Kitchen Year: 136 Recipes That Saved My Life received best cookbook accolades from industry peers and booksellers. For TV, Ruth’s PBS series Gourmet’s Adventures with Ruth featured the best cooking schools around the world.

Subscribe to Ruth's Substack here:

https://ruthreichl.substack.com/

Chad Frame is the author of Little Black Book, nominated for the Lambda Literary Award, Cryptid, and Smoking Shelter, winner of the Moonstone Chapbook Contest. He is the Director of the Montgomery County Poet Laureate Program, a Poet Laureate Emeritus of Montgomery County, a founding member of the No River Twice poetry/improv performance troupe, and the founder of the Caesura Poetry Festival. His work appears in Rattle, Strange Horizons, Pedestal, Barrelhouse, Rust+Moth, on iTunes from the Library of Congress, and is archived on the moon with The Lunar Codex.

Find his most recent book here:

https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/little-black-book-by-chad-frame/

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 something is tasted on vacation that never should have been. Include a declarative statement.

Next Prompt (for July 27th):

Write a poem with a specific type of poetic structure, either from the book Structure & Surprise: Engaging Poetic Turns by Michael Theune or the book’s website (https://structureandsurprise.com/).

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.

Michael Lavers is the author of two books of poems with the University of Tampa Press: After Earth (2019) and The Inextinguishable (2023). He has been awarded the Chad Walsh Poetry Prize, the University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor's International Poetry Prize, and the Michigan Quarterly Review Page Davidson Clayton Prize for Emerging Poets. He has degrees from Brigham Young University, Johns Hopkins University, and the University of Utah. Together with his wife, the writer and artist Claire Åkebrand, and their two children, he lives in Provo, Utah, and teaches poetry at BYU.

Find his most recent book here:

https://utampapress.org/product/the-inextinguishable

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 new rondeau that features an unusual noun that begins with the same letter of your first name.

Next Week’s Prompt:

Write a poem in which something is tasted on vacation that never should have been. Include a declarative statement.

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.

Yoda Olinyk is an author and writing coach who assists writers with book creation. Her debut memoir, Salt and Sour, took three years to write, and its release led her to help other writers. She worked as a full-time chef until 2022, then focused on writing, publishing in literary journals, including a poem in Rattle’s current food poems tribute, and released Dear Future Lover while working on her second memoir. She writes about addiction, love, and nature, often at 5:30 am. She enjoys dogs, yoga, and mental health advocacy and leads writing workshops.

Find more on her website:

https://www.doulaofwords.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 a wall comes down.

Next Week’s Prompt:

Write a new rondeau that features an unusual noun that begins with the same letter of your first name.

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.

John Poch is the author of seven collections of poems, including Poems (2004), a finalist for the PEN/Osterweil Prize; Two Men Fighting with a Knife (2008), winner of the Donald Justice Award; and Fix Quiet (2015), winner of the 2014 New Criterion Poetry Prize. He is a founding editor of 32 Poems Magazine and a co-editor of Old Flame: From the First 10 Years of 32 Poems Magazine. He is the series editor of the Vassar Miller Poetry Prize, and he recently published a book of essays, God’s Poems: The Beauty of Poetry and the Christian Imagination, and a book of aphorisms on the practice of poetry, Notes on the Poet. He teaches at Grace College in Indiana.

Find his little book of criticism here:

https://www.measurepress.com/measure/catalog/books/notes-poet/

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 space is very important. Include a scent.

Next Week’s Prompt:

Write a poem in which a wall comes down.

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.

Rich Youmans is an editor, writer, and poet with a primary interest in haibun. From 2018 to 2019 he served on the editorial team of Haibun Today, and in 2020 he became editor in chief of Contemporary Haibun Online and its related print anthology, Contemporary Haibun. His books include Shadow Lines (1999), linked haibun with Margaret Chula, and Head-On: Haibun Stories (2019), both of which were recognized in the HSA Merit Book Awards. He is also the co-author, with Roberta Beary and Lew Watts, of Haibun: A Writer’s Guide (Ad Hoc Fiction, 2023). He lives in Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

Visit Contemporary Haibun Online here:

https://contemporaryhaibunonline.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:

Find a song lyric from a genre you don’t normally listen to, and use that as an epigraph to a poem.

Next Week's Prompt:

Write a poem in which space is very important. Include a scent.

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.

Matt Mason served as the Nebraska State Poet from 2019-2024 and has run poetry workshops in Botswana, Romania, Nepal, and Belarus for the U.S. State Department. His poetry has appeared in The New York Times and Matt has received a Pushcart Prize as well as fellowships from the Academy of American Poets and the Nebraska Arts Council. His work can be found in Rattle, Poet Lore, Prairie Schooner, and in hundreds of other publications. Mason’s 5th book, Rock Stars, was published by Button Poetry in 2023.

Find more at Matt's website:

https://midverse.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 different kind of haibun than you ever have before that features a big leap.

Next Week’s Prompt:

Find a song lyric from a genre you don’t normally listen to, and use that as an epigraph to a 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.

Kat Lehmann is winner of the 2024 Rattle Chapbook Prize and previously appeared on Rattlecast 8 in 2020. She is a founding editor of whiptail: journal of the single-line poem. Her haiku have won The Haiku Foundation Touchstone Award for Individual Poem and are featured in A New Resonance: Emerging Voices in English-Language Haiku (Red Moon Press, 2023). Kat holds a B.A. from Hampshire College and a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Utah. She lives in Connecticut at the edge of an old forest where she loves to think about the way each piece holds the whole. Find more at katlehmann.weebly.com.

For more information, visit:

https://katlehmann.weebly.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 set in a garden you’ve only been to once before and include a metaphor.

Next Week’s Prompt:

Write a different kind of haibun than you ever have before that features a big leap.

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.

For years, Jennifer Jean and Hanaa Ahmad Jabr have been exchanging poems from Mosul to Massachusetts and back, and they're now collected into a book, Where Do You Live? with translations by Wadaq Qais and Tamara Al-Attiya. They join us for a special episode at a special time (12pm ET).

Dr. Hanaa Ahmad Jabr was born in Mosul, Iraq. She is a prize-winning poet and short story writer who has participated in critical conferences and international poetry festivals. She has a PhD of Philosophy in Arabic Literature. Her books include the poetry collections I Draw My Sorrow from His Collar, and two books of criticism: The Dialectic of Poetry and Prose in Modernist Poetry, and The Poetics of the Prose Poem. Additionally, she’s released a children’s book: Sultan and Shanidar. Hanaa teaches at the University of Mosul.

Jennifer Jean first appeared in episode 76 of the Rattlecast. Her poetry collections include VOZ, Object Lesson, and The Fool. Her resource book is Object Lesson: a Guide to Writing Poetry and she’s the editor of the forthcoming anthology Other Paths for Shahrazad: a Bilingual Anthology of Poetry by Arab Women (Tupelo Press, 2026). Jennifer is an organizer for the Her Story Is collective, a faculty member at Solstice MFA, and a senior program manager at the Fine Arts Work Center.

Wadaq Qais was born in Basra, Iraq. She received a degree in accounting in 2021. Later, she found her true calling in the Translation Department at the University of Basra, College of the Arts, where she is completing her studies. Reading provided her a gateway to other worlds, allowing her to broaden her perspective and expertise in the disciplines of both literary and business translation.

For more information, visit:

https://www.arrowsmithpress.com/hanaa-ahmad-jabr-jennifer-jean

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 set in a garden you’ve only been to once before and include a metaphor.

Next Week’s Prompt:

Write a postcard poem to someone that would be very surprised to hear from you.

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.