Susan Cohen's most recent book is Democracy of Fire. She is the author of two chapbooks and two previous full-length collections of poems, as well as co-author of a non-fiction book. She was a newspaper reporter, contributing writer to the Washington Post Magazine, and faculty member of the University of California Graduate School of Journalism before studying bioethics and poetry at Stanford University while on a John S. Knight fellowship for mid-career journalists. Her numerous journalism honors include a grant from the Fund for Investigative Reporting and two Science in Society Awards from the National Association of Science Writers. In 2013, she turned her full writing attention to poetry and earned an MFA from Pacific University. Her second full-length collection, A Different Wakeful Animal, won the 2015 David Martinson-Meadowhawk prize from Red Dragonfly Press. She lives in Berkeley, California,

For more information, visit:

https://www.susancohen-writer.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 with “self-portrait” in the title that features an odd bird.

Next Week’s Prompt:

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

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.

Li-Young Lee is the author of six books of poetry, most recently The Invention of the Darling. A collection of his new and selected mother poems, I Ask My Mother to Sing, is out this summer from Wesleyan University Press. He has received many honors for his writing including the 2024 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, a Lannan Literary Award, a Whiting Award, the American Book Award, and more. He lives in Chicago.

Find The Invention of the Darling here:

https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393867190

Find I Ask My Mother to Sing here:

https://www.weslpress.org/9780819502032/i-ask-my-mother-to-sing/

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 unrequited love for something other than a human.

Next Week’s Prompt:

Write a poem with “self-portrait” in the title that features an odd bird.

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.

Dion O'Reilly first appeared on episode 173. Her new book, Limerence, is just out from Floating Bridge Press. She is the author of two previous poetry collections: Sadness of the Apex Predator, a finalist for the Steel Toe Book Prize and the Ex Ophidia Prize; Ghost Dogs, winner of the Pinnacle Book Achievement Award, The Independent Press Award for Poetry, and shortlisted for the Eric Hoffer Poetry Award and The Catamaran Poetry Prize. She is a podcaster at The Hive Poetry Collective, leads poetry workshops, and is a reader for Catamaran Literary Reader. She splits her time between a ranch in the Santa Cruz Mountains and a residence in Bellingham, Washington.

Find more here:

https://www.dionoreilly.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 had to do someone else’s job and found the result surprising.

Next Week’s Prompt:

Write a poem about unrequited love for something other than a human.

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.

Dave Newman is the 2024 Rattle Poetry Prize Readers' Choice Award winner. He's worked as a truck driver, a book store manager, an air filter salesman, a house painter, and a college teacher. Dave is the author of seven books, including The Same Dead Songs: a memoir of working-class addictions (J.New Books, 2023), East Pittsburgh Downlow (J. New Books, 2019), The Poem Factory (White Gorilla Press, 2015), the novels Raymond Carver Will Not Raise Our Children (Writers Tribe Books, 2012), Two Small Birds (Writers Tribe Books, 2014), Please Don’t Shoot Anyone Tonight (World Parade, 2010) and the collection The Slaughterhouse Poems (White Gorilla Press, 2013), named one of the best books of the year by L Magazine. Winner of numerous awards, including the Andre Dubus Novella Prize, he lives in Trafford, PA, the last town in the Electric Valley, with his wife, the writer Lori Jakiela, and their two children. Before starting at Pitt-Greensburg, he worked in medical research, serving elders.

Pre-order his forthcoming book here:

https://www.magicaljeep.com/product/newman/191

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 an echo you’ve heard more than a few times. Include as many sounds as possible.

Next Week’s Prompt:

Write a poem about a time you had to do someone else’s job and found the result surprising.

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.

Susan Browne first appeared on Rattlecast 29. Her fourth collection, Monster Mash, was just released from Four Way Books. She's published three previous books of poetry, Buddha’s Dogs, Zephyr, and Just Living. Awards include prizes from Four Way Books, the Los Angeles Poetry Festival, the River Styx International Poetry Contest, The Fischer Poetry Prize, and the James Dickey Poetry Prize. She received a fellowship from the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center. She has also collaborated to create a word/music CD. She lives in Northern California.

Find more about Susan and all of her books here:

https://www.susanbrownepoems.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 makes a mistake that leaves an impression.

Next Week’s Prompt:

Write a poem about an echo you’ve heard more than a few times. Include as many sounds as possible.

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.

Partridge Boswell is author of the 2023 Fool for Poetry Prize-winning chapbook Levis Corner House (Southword Editions, Munster Literature Centre) and Grolier Poetry Prize-winning collection Some Far Country Partridge is co-founder of Bookstock Literary Festival and teaches at Vallum Society for Education in Arts & Letters in Montreal. His poems have recently found homes in Poetry, American Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, Poetry Ireland Review, Southword and The Moth. He lives with his family in Vermont and troubadours widely with the poetry/music group Los Lorcas, whose debut release Last Night in America is available on Thunder Ridge Records.

Find more about the band here:

https://loslorcas.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 includes a prank and ends with a question.

Next Week’s Prompt:

Write a poem in which someone makes a mistake that leaves an impression.

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.

Lew Watts was born and raised in Cardiff, Wales. He lived and worked for many years in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa before moving to the United States in 2002. He is the author of the novel, Marcel Malone, and three poetry collections—his most recent, Eira, a collection of haibun and haiku, received a 2024 Touchstone Award. Lew is also the co-author, with Roberta Beary and Rich Youmans, of Haibun: A Writer’s Guide, and serves as the haibun co-editor of Frogpond, the journal of the Haiku Society of America. Beyond poetry, he is ex-chair of the World Bank’s external panel on climate change, and a past board member of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the home of the Doomsday Clock; he currently sits on various corporate and non-profit boards. He divides his time between Chicago and West Michigan with his wife, Roxanne, and his rascal-of-a-dog, Willis. His other passions are four granddaughters, fly fishing (anytime, anywhere), rugby, jazz guitar, tango music, and gin martinis.

Find Eira here:

https://www.snapshotpress.co.uk/books/eira.htm

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 specific type of phobia you do not personally have but know of someone that does.

Next Week’s Prompt:

Write a poem that includes a prank and ends with a question.

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.

Tiana Clark is the author of the poetry collection, I Can’t Talk About the Trees Without the Blood, winner of the 2017 Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize, and Equilibrium, selected by Afaa Michael Weaver for the 2016 Frost Place Chapbook Competition. Clark is a winner for the 2020 Kate Tufts Discovery Award, a 2019 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow, and the 2015 Rattle Poetry Prize. She is a recipient of the 2021-2022 Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Scholarship and 2019 Pushcart Prize. Clark is the 2017-2018 Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute of Creative Writing. Clark is a graduate of Vanderbilt University (M.F.A) and Tennessee State University (B.A.) where she studied Africana and Women's studies. Her new book is Scorched Earth.

Find more at:

https://www.tianaclark.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 an ekphrastic poem based on a work of art by an artist that shares your first or last name.

Next Week’s Prompt:

Write a poem about a specific type of phobia you do not personally have but know of someone that does.

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.

Stephen Gibson is the author of several poetry collections, including Self-Portrait in a Door-Length Mirror, selected by Billy Collins as the winner of the 2017 Miller Williams Poetry Prize; Rorschach Art Too, winner of the Donald Justice Prize; and Rorschach Art. His most recent book is Frida Kahlo in Fort Lauderdale. Gibson, who retired in 2015, taught at Palm Beach State College for thirty-two years. He lives in West Palm Beach, Florida.

Find more the new book at:

https://www.stephen-gibson.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 references small talk in a big way.

Next Week’s Prompt:

Write an ekphrastic poem based on a work of art by an artist that shares your first or last 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.

Keetje Kuipers is the author of four books of poems, all from BOA Editions. Her most recent collection, Lonely Women Make Good Lovers (2025), was the winner of the Isabella Gardner Award. Her first book, Beautiful in the Mouth, was selected by Thomas Lux as the winner of the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize. Named one of the top ten debut poetry books of 2010 by Poets & Writers, her first book also appeared in the top ten on the contemporary poetry bestseller list. Her second collection, The Keys to the Jail (2014), was a book club selection for The Rumpus, and her third book, All Its Charms (2019), was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award and includes poems honored by publication in both The Pushcart Prize and Best American Poetry anthologies.

Find more information at:

https://keetjekuipers.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 that you carried more than you ever thought possible, and include a reference to temperature.

Next Week’s Prompt:

Write a poem that references small talk in a big way.

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.