Miller Oberman and Dion O'Reilly read and discuss Omotara James's "My mother's nerves are shot."  and then do a deep dive into Oberman's newest collection, Impossible Things⁠.

Miller Oberman is the author of Impossible Things, forthcoming from Duke University Press, 2024 and The Unstill Ones, Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets, 2017.

He has received a number of awards for his poetry, including a Ruth Lilly Fellowship, the 92Y Discovery Prize, a NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship, and Poetry magazine’s John Frederick Nims Memorial Prize for Translation. Poems from Impossible Things have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, The Hopkins Review, Poem-a-Day, and Foglifter. Poems from The Unstill Ones appeared in Poetry, London Review of Books, The Nation, Boston Review, Tin House, and Harvard Review.

Miller is an editor at Broadsided Press, which publishes visual-literary collaborations and teaches at and serves on the board of Brooklyn Poets. He teaches writing at Eugene Lang College at The New School in New York. Miller is a trans Jewish anti-Zionist committed to the liberation of all. He lives with his family in Queens, New York.

Tim Seibles reads and discusses Lucille Clifton's poem "Hag Riding." Then he reads from his newest collection Voodoo Libretto: New & Selected Poems .

Tim Seibles was the Poet Laureate of Virginia from 2016 to 2018. He is a former National Endowment for the Arts fellow and Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center fellow. His seven books of poetry include Fast Animal, which was a finalist for the 2012 National Book Award, winner of the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Prize and the Pen Oakland Josephine Miles Award for Poetry. This was followed by One Turn Around the Sun in 2017. His latest collection, Voodoo Libretto: New & Selected Poems was released by Etruscan Press in 2022. He received a Lifetime Achievement Award from The Furious Flower Poetry Center in 2024.

 SPREZZATURA, Christopher Buckley's 30th book, is due from Lynx House Press, January 2025. The sense of place in these poems-- whether its the foggy cliffs above the sea or the street of Fresno-- is vivid and immediate.  Buckley examines friendship and the inevitability of change as he braids grief, love, and hope in these poems, many of which are dedicated to the great Fresno poets including Phillip Levine, Larry Levis and Peter Everewine.  Chris opens the show with two Everwine poems and discusses the book of interviews and essays he edited, "Naming the Lost: The Fresno Poets."

Christopher Buckley's work was selected for Best American Poetry 2021; he is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry, two NEA grants, a Fulbright Award in Creative Writing, and four Pushcart Prizes.  

Recent books are—One Sky to the Next, winner of the Longleaf Press book Prize for 2022—Agnostic (Lynx House Press), The Pre-Eternity of the World (Stephen F. Austin State University Press), and The Consolations of Science & Philosophy (Lynx House Press). Star Journal: Selected Poems was published by University of Pittsburgh Press in 2016. 

He has edited over a dozen critical collections and anthologies, most recently NAMING THE LOST: THE FRESNO POETS—Interviews & Essays; Bear Flag Republic: Prose Poems & Poetics from California (with Gary Young) Alcatraz Editions, 2008; with Alexander Long, A CONDITION OF THE SPIRIT: THE LIFE AND WORK OF LARRY LEVIS. Again co-edited with Gary Young, Lynx House Press published, One for the Money: the Sentence as a Poetic Form.  With Jon Veinberg, he edited MESSENGER TO THE STARS: A LUIS OMAR SALINAS NEW SELECTED POEMS & READER, published by Tebot Bach in 2014.

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Former HIVE member, Geneffa Jahan, returns to offer this salient conversation with beloved local poet and SC Poet Laureate Emeritus, David Sullivan, and his equally lauded friend, the Illinois poet and teacher, Ignatius Valentine Aloysius. They discuss their recently released collaborative poetry collection, Salt Pruning, as they reflect upon the unlikely parallels of their lives and their evolving friendship.

"Salt pruning references the process by which saline mists and seawater shape and shear foliage and rocks along coasts. Meanwhile, the poems in Salt Pruning are a thoughtful conversation using the language of poetry and invented forms to explore how grief and love, immigrant trauma, and friendship have sculpted" these two fine poets (Luisa A. Igloria).

Saline winds, whether on the West Coast of Santa Cruz or Mumbai, prune the landscape, offering a ready trope for how truthful language, flowing between friends, shapes both craft and connection.

As Lee Herrick aptly notes about this collection, the long final poem says it well: 'Men weep everywhere / They can hardly see to steer.' This book is vulnerable and revelatory, a collaborative delight."

This one-hour conversation will leave you touched by something sacred and salient--something to steer you forward and inward.

"Words: They give and give and give." Cintia Santana joins the Hive to read from her Northern California Book Award-winning poetry debut, The Disordered Alphabet. Hear several poems and a conversation with Farnaz Fatemi about Cintia's views on words as magic, the paying attention, ekphrasis and more.

Cintia Santana teaches literary translation and poetry workshops in Spanish and English at Stanford University. Santana's poems have appeared in Best New Poets 2016 and 2020, 2023 Best of the Net Anthology, Poets.org, Poetry Daily, among many others! Her debut poetry collection, The Disordered Alphabet published by Four Way Books in 2023) was short-listed for the 2023 California Independent Booksellers Alliance “Golden Poppy” Award, received the 2024 IPPY Bronze Medal, the 2023 North American Book Award's Silver Medal, and just this fall won the 43rd Annual Northern California Book Award in Poetry.  

https://www.cintiasantana.com

Chris Abani and Kwame Dawes chat with Dion O'Reilly about KUMI: New-Generation African Poets: A Chapbook Box Set

THE LIMITED-EDITION BOX SET is a project started in 2014 to ensure the publication of up to a dozen chapbooks every year by African poets through Akashic Books. The series seeks to identify the best poetry written by African poets working today, and it is especially interested in featuring poets who have not yet published their first full-length book of poetry.

The nine poets included in this box set are: Nurain Oládèjì, Sarpong Osei Asamoah, Claudia Owusu, Nome Emeka Patrick, Qhali, Connor Cogill, Feranmi Ariyo, Dare Tunmise, and Adams Adeosun.

KWAME DAWES is the author of numerous books of poetry and other works of fiction, criticism, and essays. His most recent poetry collection is Sturge Town which was published by Peepal Tree Press in the UK and W.W. Norton in the US. Dawes is a George W. Holmes University Professor of English and Glenna Luschei Editor of Prairie Schooner. He teaches in the Pacific MFA Program and is the series editor of the African Poetry Book Series, director of the African Poetry Book Fund, and artistic director of the Calabash International Literary Festival. He is a Chancellor for the Academy of American Poets and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Dawes is the winner of the prestigious Windham/Campbell Award for Poetry and was a finalist for the 2022 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. In 2022, Kwame Dawes was awarded the Order of Distinction Commander class by the Government of Jamaica, and in 2024, he was appointed Poet Laureate of Jamaica.
CHRIS ABANI's prose includes The Secret History of Las Vegas, Song for Night, The Virgin of Flames, Becoming Abigail, GraceLand, and Masters of the Board. His poetry collections include Smoking the Bible, Sanctificum, There Are No Names for Red, Feed Me the Sun, Hands Washing Water, Dog Woman, Daphne’s Lot, and Kalakuta Republic. He holds a BA and MA in English, an MA in gender and culture, and a PhD in literature and creative writing. Abani is the recipient of a PEN USA Freedom to Write Award, a Prince Claus Award, a Lannan Literary fellowship, a California Book Award, a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, a PEN Beyond Margins Award, a PEN/Hemingway Award, and a Guggenheim fellowship. He won the prestigious 2024 UNT Rilke Prize and was a finalist for the 2024 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. He is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Born in Nigeria, he is currently on the board of trustees, a professor of English, and director of African Studies at Northwestern University.

Burmese American poet Maw Shein Win's new book, Percussing the Thinking Jar, is a liminal elegy to health issues, relationships, and more while navigating the isolation of the pandemic. Hear Maw read poems from the book that's been called by author John Yau, "diaphanous comfort" while we are at "the chaos party." You can find Maw's book at University of Chicago Press. For more on the poet visit http://www.mawsheinwin.com.

In Part 2 of our interview, Marc Vincenz—author of over 40 books of poetry—talks about his book of poetry, The Pearl Diver of Irunmani (White Pine Press, 2023). We dive into the deep waters of a consciousness preparing for death. During a health crisis, Vincenz came into a new language informed by this encounter, finding footing in "the heart of a word" and his own fearless observations. "See the island in your mind/or you will always be lost."

Vincenz takes us into "the theater of fear"..."when the audience leaves and you're left only with yourself." The poet and the reader emerge changed. Like a cyborg prophet, Marc now writes from the seam between worlds—life and death, nature and "the machinery of the world" (Borges)—mitigating oppositions with deep music. "The traffic doesn't slow/the bling navigates/like porpoises' eyes/ in the windows,/those deep dangling metaphors/in a city tangled up in its own industrial age."

 You can hear Pt. 1 of our interview which aired 10/6/24 on KSQD.  We discuss Marc's book, The King of Prussia is Drunk on Stars (Lavender Ink, 2024) here:

 Marc Vincenz is a poet, fiction writer, translator, editor,

 https://madhat-press.com/

https://litbalm.org/

Jan Beatty’s eighth book, Dragstripping, was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, September, 2024. Her memoir, American Bastard, won the Red Hen Nonfiction Award. Recent books include The Body Wars and a chapbook, Skydog (Lefty Blondie Press, 2022). Other work includes Jackknife: New and Selected Poems (University of Pittsburgh, 2018 Paterson Prize) named by Sandra Cisneros on LitHub as her favorite book of 2019. Beatty worked as a waitress, abortion counselor, and in maximum security prisons. She is Professor Emerita at Carlow University, where she directed creative writing, the Madwomen in the Attic workshops, and the MFA program. 

Luke and Dion read some Larry Levis and then take a deep dive into Luke's latest book.

Luke Johnson is the author of Quiver (Texas Review Press), a finalist for the Jake Adam York Prize, the Vassar Miller Award, The Levis Prize and the Bittingham. It was recently named a finalist for the California Book Award, winner announced in May. His second full length Distributary is forthcoming Fall 2025 from Texas Review Press. You can find more of his work at Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, Narrative Magazine, Poetry Northwest and elsewhere.