Ruth Mota joins Julia and provisional Hive member Hannah Tool to read and discuss Dylan Thomas’s Fern Hill and share selections from her debut chapbook, Kitchen Table Midwife of the Dispossessed, which is available for pre-order here. You can hear more of Ruth’s poems on December 4th at “The Power of Her Voice,” a poetry benefit for Santa Cruz Community Health, at Temple Beth El in Aptos - tickets available here.

Ruth Mota currently lives in the redwoods of Santa Cruz, California after residing a decade in northeast Brazil and working as an international health trainer throughout Latin America and Africa. Now she devotes her time to writing poetry and facilitating poetry circles to groups in her community like veterans, seniors or men in jail. Her poem “The Sloth” is nominated for a Pushcart Prize by The Connecticut River Review, and over sixty of her poems have been published in online and print journals. Her first chapbook, entitled Kitchen Table Midwife of the Dispossessed, is available for pre-order now through Finishing Line Press.

Victoria Bañales joins the Hive Live! at Bookshop Santa Cruz on Tuesday Feb 10, 2026 at 7pm. Event information here. Join our non-spamming email list here to keep up with Hive events.

Victoria (Vicky) Bañales is the 2025-2027 Watsonville Poet Laureate. A Chicanx educator and writer, she is the author of the poetry collection, The Sun Will Not Harm You by Day, Nor the Moon by Night (Jamii Publishing, 2025), and the founder of Journal X, a social justice literary arts magazine, which was awarded the Superior Distinction by the National Council of Teachers of English. Her writing has been supported by Hedgebrook, Storyknife, Macondo, Vermont Studio Center, and other artist residencies. She holds a Ph.D. in Literature and Feminist Studies from UCSC, and teaches composition and creative writing at Cabrillo College, where she also serves as the Faculty Senate President. More at vickybanales.com.

Marie Howe buzzes into the Hive to read from her newest books and also to recite a little Juan Ramon Jimenez.

Marie Howe is the author of New and Selected Poems (W. W. Norton, 2024), winner of the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; Magdalene (W. W. Norton, 2017), which was long-listed for the National Book Award; The Kingdom of Ordinary Time (W. W. Norton, 2009), which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; What the Living Do (W. W. Norton, 1998); and The Good Thief (Persea Books, 1988), which was selected by Margaret Atwood for the 1987 National Poetry Series. What the Living Do is in many ways an elegy for Howe’s brother, John, who died of AIDS in 1989. In 1995, she coedited the anthology In the Company of My Solitude: American Writing from the AIDS Pandemic (Persea, 1995).

Keetje Kuipers and Dion read and discuss a poem by Ruth Schwartz and then read from Kuiper's new book, Lonely Women Make Good Lovers.

.Keetje Kuipers’ fourth collection of poetry, Lonely Women Make Good Lovers, was the recipient of the Isabella Gardner Award. Her poetry and prose have appeared in American Poetry Review, New York Times Magazine, and Poetry, and have been honored by publication in the Pushcart Prize and Best American Poetry anthologies. Keetje has been a Stegner Fellow, NEA Literature Fellow in Creative Writing, and the Margery Davis Boyden Wilderness Writing Resident. Previously a VP on the board of the National Book Critics Circle, Keetje is currently Editor of Poetry Northwest, and teaches at the dual-language writers’ gathering Under the Volcano in Tepoztlán, Mexico. She lives with her wife and children in Montana, where she co-directs the Headwaters Reading Series for Health & Well-Being and keeps an eye out for bears in her backyard.

Join Julie Murphy and Dion O'Reilly for a conversation that moves through love, loss, and wonder — from Yeats’ “The Wild Swans at Coole” to Andrea Cohen’s sharp humor in Something, Richard Siken's quiet reflections in “Kitchen Window,” and the stargazing tenderness of Keith Wilson's “there aren’t enough idioms about the stars.” We’ll also talk about Gabrielle Calvocoressi’s moving “Miss you. Would like to grab that chilled tofu we love” and the poignant beauty of  Connie Leung's “Autumn in Prison.”  These poems remind us how language can hold both the ache and the brightness of being alive.

Maxine Chernoff and Paul Hoover talk with Roxi Power in this second part of our interview, revealing their mutual love of film and poetry inspired by it. From Chernoff’s surreal meditations on François Truffaut’s French New Wave film, Jules et Jim, toHoover’s weaving of Wim Wenders’ Lisbon Story into his dreamlike language, we look through the lenses of other artforms—including the deep and unsettling Brazilian musical genre, Fado—to experience the strange and gorgeous interior worlds of these prolific and beloved Bay Area poets.

Listen to Part 1 of our interview from 8-9-25 here.

Maxine Chernoff is professor emeritus of creative writing at San Francisco State University. She is the author of 19 books of poetry and six of fiction, including recent collections from MadHat Press:  Light and Clay: New and Selected Poems (2023)and Under the Music: Collected Prose Poems (2019).  Peter Johnson called her the most important prose poet of her generation. She is a recipient of a 2013 National Endowment for the Arts in Poetry and, along with Paul Hoover, the 2009 PEN Translation Award for their translation of The Selected Poems of Friedrich Hölderlin. In 2016 she was a visiting writer at the American Academy in Rome. A former editor of New American Writing, she lives in Mill Valley. 

Paul Hoover is the author of over a dozen collections of poetry; his most recent book of poetry is O, and Green: New and Selected Poems (MadHat Press, 2021). He has also published a collection of essays and a novel, and translated or co-translated a few books, including Black Dog, Black Night: Contemporary Vietnamese Poetry.  Founding and current Editor of the literary annual, New American Writing–now published by MadHat Press–and two editions of the indispensable Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology, Hoover teaches at San Francisco State University.  He’s also won an NEA and numerous awards, including the Carl Sandberg Award in poetry which Chernoff has also won.  

Emilie joins Farnaz Fatemi to discuss her new book, how poetry helps her stay in touch with "moments [she] felt truly like herself," and giving oneself permission to be in the state--like butterflies in chrysalis--of goo. Moving, wise, and funny thoughts are everywhere when you're talking with Emilie Lygren.

Hive Live! hosts Emilie Lygren and Stephen Kuusisto at 7pm, November 4, at Bookshop Santa Cruz.

Emilie discussed the Soul Bone/Maharishi International University MFA in Creative Writing. Find out more.

Emilie Lygren's Once I Was a Stone is an intimate portrait of gender nonconformity rooted in the context of childhood and the natural world. Lygren grapples with the complexities of selfhood, power, and loss, offering a gentle yet unflinching look at what it means to be in relationship with place.

Emilie Lygren is a nonbinary poet and educator whose work is grounded in curiosity and reverence. Her poems have appeared in over twenty literary journals and anthologies, and her first book of poetry, What We Were Born For, was selected as the Poetry Foundation’s monthly book pick in 2022. Currently, Emilie is a professor of creative writing, a poet in the schools, and at work on an anthology of poems on mental health for teens. For more of her work and words, visit: https://emilielygren.com/ 

We read and discuss [It is abominable, unquenchable by touch] by Diane Seuss and then read from Kim's newest book Exit Opera.

Kim Addonizio  is the author of nine poetry collections, two novels, two story collections, and two books on writing poetry, The Poet’s Companion (with Dorianne Laux) and Ordinary Genius. She has received fellowships from the NEA and Guggenheim Foundation, Pushcart Prizes in both poetry and the essay, and her work has been widely translated and anthologized. Tell Me was a National Book Award Finalist in poetry. Her new poetry collection, Exit Opera, is out from W.W. Norton. She lives in Oakland, California.

Poet Roger Reeves, author of King Me, Best Barbarian and Dark Days: Fugitive Essays, is a National Book Award finalist, Griffin Poetry Prize Winner, Whiting Award winner and professor at UT Austin. His frank and gracious discussion of poetry, growing up in the Pentecostal church, parenthood, and the importance of silence, carves a path encouraging us toward the revelation that the life we want is already here, reaching out for our hand.

Nicelle Davis is a California poet, collaborator, and performance artist. Her poetry collections include The Language of Fractions (Moon Tide Press 2023). The Walled Wife (Red Hen Press, 2016), In the Circus of You (Rose Metal Press, 2015), Becoming Judas (Red Hen Press, 2013), and Circe (Lowbrow Press, 2011).

Penguin Noir recently won the Changing Light Novel in Verse Prize from Livingston Press and will be released Summer of 2025. Her poetry film collaborations with Cheryl Gross have been shown across the world. She has taught poetry at Youth for Positive Change, an organization that promotes success for youth in secondary schools, MHA, Volunteers of America in their Homeless Youth Center, Red Hen’s WITS program, and with MEP. She currently teaches Middle School in the High Desert of southern California.

Also mentioned in the episode: Plants Painting and Poetry, A Youtube Channel by Nicelle Davis and Anthony M Sannazzaro.