Willie James King is a long-time contributor to Rattle, having appeared in 8 issues dating back to 1997. He's the author of five books of poetry, most recently To Be the Difference from Press 53. His poems have appeared widely in such publications as America, Appalachian Heritage, Confrontation, Cutthroat, A Journal of the Arts, New Contrast (South Africa), English Journal, Southern Poetry Review, and Urthona (UK). He has nine Pushcart Prize nominations and one Best of the Net. He resides in Montgomery, Alabama.

Find the his most recent book here:

https://www.press53.com/poetry-collections/to-be-the-difference-by-willie-james-king

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 pantoum that references your favorite shape.

Next Week’s Prompt:

Write a poem in which something is overfilled. Include as many tactile details 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.

Rex Wilder is the author of four books of poetry, most recently Rare Fuel, which was just released from Finishing Line Press. A award-winning poet and photographer, e is the author of four previously published books of poetry. His poetry collection, Open Late: New & Collected Poems (1979-2018), was published by Chatwin in 2018 and his latest book, A Quiet Place to Land was published by Chatwin in November, 2023.

Find the new book here:

https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/rare-fuel-by-rex-wilder-winner-of-the-2023-the-donna-wolf-palacio-poetry-prize/

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 wish for the New Year and features a sound you’ve never written in a poem before.

Next Week’s Prompt:

Write a pantoum that references your favorite shape.

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.

Chase Twichell is the author of eight books of poetry, most recently Things as It Is (Copper Canyon, 2018). After teaching for many years (Hampshire College, the University of Alabama, Princeton University), she left academia to found Ausable Press, a not-for-profit publisher of contemporary poetry, which was acquired by Copper Canyon in 2009. From 2013 to 2016 she served as Chair of the Kate and Kingsley Tufts Awards Jury. A longtime student in the Mountains and Rivers Order at Zen Mountain Monastery in upstate New York, she splits the year between the Adirondacks and Saratoga Springs, NY.

Find more on Chase here:

https://www.chasetwichell.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:

Recall a time that you acted poorly during winter, and write a poem that crafts a different resolution to the incident.

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.

Lexi Pelle is a poet and editor living in New Jersey. She was the winner of the 2022 Jack McCarthy Book Prize, a Pushcart Prize nominee, and a finalist for the Prufer Poetry Prize, Crosswinds Poetry Prize and the Marvin Bell Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in issue 81 of Rattle, Poets Respond, Ninth Letter, SWWIM, Sucarnochee Review, and The Shore.

Find more on Lexi here:

https://www.lexipelle.org/

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:

Think of a time you traveled. Write a poem that reimagines that journey but set in a different time period.

Next Week’s Prompt:

Recall a time that you acted poorly during winter, and write a poem that crafts a different resolution to the incident.

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.

Eric Kocher is one of the 2024 Rattle Chapbook Prize winners for Sky Mall, which was included for subscribers with our fall issue. He teaches Environmental Studies at Wofford College. Some of his poems have previously appeared in 32 Poems, Boston Review, Gulf Coast, Oversound, and A Public Space, among others. He lives in upstate South Carolina with his wife, Audrey, and their two children, Oscar and Louise.

Find the book here:

https://www.rattle.com/product/sky-mall/

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 triolet that includes a bird.

Next Week’s Prompt:

Think of a time you traveled. Write a poem that reimagines that journey but set in a different time period.

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.

Austin Alexis is the winner of the 2014 Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award for his book Privacy Issues. He has also written two chapbooks―Lovers and Drag Queens and Lincoln & Other Poems. A member of St. George’s Choral Society, one of the oldest choral societies in the United States, Austin's poem "The Concert" appears in our Tribute to Musicians issue. He has taught literature and creative writing at a number of colleges, including Long Island University, John Jay College, and Hunter College, and currently teaches at New York City College of Technology.

Find the book here:

https://wsupress.wayne.edu/9780979750984/

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 ode to the first thing you remember being thankful for.

Next Week’s Prompt:

Write a triolet that includes a 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.

Brody Parrish Craig (they/them) is a southern writer who upheaves expectations to open spaces for connection, unlearning, and change. They are the author of Boyish, the winner of the 2019 Omnidawn Poetry Chapbook Contest, and editor of TWANG, a regional collection of trans, nonbinary & gender-non-conforming creators tied to the south/midwest. Brody Parrish Craig's debut full-length collection, The Patient is An Unreliable Historian, exploring madness, harm reduction, and disability justice, is just out from Omnidawn Publishing.

Find more here:

https://www.brodyparrishcraig.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 braid poem in which three or more stories are woven together.

Next Week’s Prompt:

Write an ode to the first thing you remember being thankful 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.

This conversation with Ani DiFranco appeared in issue #85 of Rattle and was recorded on May 23, 2024. We talked about the relationship between poetry and music, creativity and the subconscious, trauma, public cancellation and more.

Widely considered a feminist icon, Grammy winner Ani DiFranco was one of the first artists to create her own record label in 1990. While she has been known as a Folksinger, her music has embraced punk, funk, hip hop, jazz, soul, electronica, and even more distant sounds. Her most recent album is Unprecedented Sh!t. Her memoir No Walls and the Recurring Dream was a New York Times Top 10 best seller, and her debut children’s book The Knowing is out now. DiFranco was starring on Broadway as Persephone in the Tony and Grammy Award-winning Best Musical, Hadestown, when this interview was conducted.

Find more at: https://anidifranco.com

Joseph Millar is the author of six books of poetry, including Dark Harvest: New & Selected Poems. His latest collection, Shine, was published in October of 2024. Millar grew up in Pennsylvania and attended Johns Hopkins University before spending 30 years in the San Francisco Bay area working at a variety of jobs, from telephone repairman to commercial fisherman. He has won fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in such magazines as DoubleTake, TriQuarterly, The Southern Review, APR, and Ploughshares. Millar teaches in Pacific University's low-residency MFA Program.

Find more here:

https://www.josephmillar.org/

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 photographic portrait featuring someone you don’t know personally, and write a short poem that explores their story.

Next Week’s Prompt:

Write a braid poem in which three or more stories are woven together.

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.

B.A. Van Sise is an author and photographic artist with three monographs: Children of Grass: A Portrait of American Poetry, Invited to Life: After the Holocaust, and On the National Language: The Poetry of America’s Endangered Tongues. He has been featured in solo exhibits at the Skirball Cultural Center, the Woody Guthrie Center, and the Rockefeller Arts Center, among other places; a number of his portraits of American poets are in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery. His writing has won the Lascaux Prize for Nonfiction, and has been a finalist for the Rattle Poetry Prize. He is a two-time winner of the Independent Book Publishers Awards gold medal: once for History and once for Poetry.

Find more here:

https://bavansise.format.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 wears a costume. Include as many sounds as possible.

Next Week’s Prompt:

Pick a photographic portrait featuring someone you don’t know personally, and write a short poem that explores their 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.