Farnaz Fatemi and Julia Chiapella read poems by Palestinian poets and those of Palestinian heritage to amplify and bear witness to the range of their perspectives and the richness of these voices. We found the reading of these aloud to each other to be profoundly moving. Please see the extensive show notes for links to the poets, their books, many more we couldn’t include on the show and other recent resources.

In this order--Fadwa Tuqan, Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, Zeina Azzam, Mahmoud Darwish, Mosab Abu Toha, Maya Abu Al-Hayyat, Noor Hindi, Naomi Shihab Nye were featured on the show. 

We mentioned the following anthologies during this hour: We Call to the Eye & the Night: Love Poems by Writers of Arab Heritage (Zeina Hashem Beck and Hala Alyan, editors); & Modern Arabic Poetry (Salma Khadra Jayyusi, editor). 

Since recording our episode a week ago, the Palestinian academic and poet ⁠Refaat Alareer⁠ was killed in Gaza; we want to bring attention to the ⁠story of this poem, his last⁠. 

We additionally want to highlight the work of Deema K Shehabi, George Abraham, Nathalie Khankan, and Fady Joudah (also see Joudah’s recent “meditation”), among many, many others. For one additional resource about poets, see the Instagram account, The Palestinian Poetry Project, poetrypalestine.

The LA Review of Books recently published a small folio of writing from poets of Palestinian heritage.

We recommend Palestinian Poets on the Role of Literature in Fighting Genocide.

Vox Populi published a “ceasefire cento” solicited from poets globally. You can read it here.

Listen in as Robin Gow and Farnaz Fatemi discuss Robin’s book Lanternfly, their experience writing a hyper-focused collection, the value of persona poems, defiance, cross-species empathy and more. 

Robin Gow is a trans poet and YA/Middle Grade author from rural Pennsylvania. They are the author of several poetry collections including, most recently, Lanternfly August, from Driftwood Press, & Our Lady of Perpetual Degeneracy. Gow also writes queer YA/Middle Grade novels such as Ode to My First Car, A Million Quiet Revolutions, and Dear Mothman. He manages community programs at Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center, building celebratory spaces for the local LGBTQ+ folks. As an autistic person, Robin feels passionate about celebrating neurodivergent folks in the queer community. They live in Allentown, Pennsylvania, with their partner, best friend, and pugs, Gertrude and Eddie. 

Ruba Ahmed joins Julie Murphy to read "Try to Praise the Mutilated World" by Adam Zagajewski and talks about his imperative to see the beauty in the world that lies right beside the horrors. She also reads from her new book Bring Now the Angels and shares her struggle in coming to forgiveness and grief and joy. Ruba also shares some great insights on the power of repetition as well as the importance of Keat's concept of negative capability.

Dilruba Ahmed is the author of Bring Now the Angels (Pittsburg Poetry). Her debut book, Dhaka Dust (Graywolf Press), won the Bakeless Prize. Her poems have appeared in New England Review, New York Times Magazine, Ploughshares, and Virginia Quarterly Review. She has taught with Swarthmore College, Chatham University’s MFA Program, Hugo House in Seattle, and Warren Wilson College’s MFA Program for Writers.
Find her classes & consultations on her website. She's also on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Dion O'Reilly and Pacific Northwest poet, ⁠Jeannine Hall Gailey,⁠ talk about science, science fiction, and poetry. Jeannine reads from her new book ⁠Flare Corona. ⁠

Jeannine Hall Gailey served as the second Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington. She is the author of six books of poetry: ⁠Becoming the Villainess⁠, ⁠She Returns to the Floating World⁠, which was a finalist for the 2012 Eric Hoffer Montaigne Medal and a winner of a Florida Publishers Association Presidential Award for Poetry, ⁠Unexplained Fevers⁠, ⁠The Robot Scientist’s Daughter,⁠ and winner of the Moon City Press Book Prize and SFPA’s Elgin Award, ⁠Field Guide to the End of the World⁠. Her sixth poetry book, Flare, Corona, is upcoming from BOA Editions. She’s also the author of ⁠PR for Poets: A Guidebook to Publicity and Marketing.⁠ She has a B.S. in Biology and an M.A. in English from the University of Cincinnati, as well as an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Pacific University. Her poems have been featured on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac and on Verse Daily; two were included in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. In 2007 she received a Washington State Artist Trust GAP Grant and in 2007 and 2011 a ⁠Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize. 

To kick off Trans Week of Awareness (Nov. 13 - 19), Geneffa Jahan sits down with local youth poet, Madeline Aliah (age 17) to hear how poetry has given her hope and a voice. Madeline reads from her chapbook of poems, This Is My Body: Poems by a Teen Trans Fem, forthcoming from Jamii Press (2024), and additional works that take her poetry beyond identity politics. She speaks of her activism through the Queer Trans Youth Council and shares advice for allies, reminding us through her wit and wisdom that Queer kids are still just kids.

Roxi Power talks with Brenda Hillman, winner this month of the Northern California Book Reviewers’ Fred Cody Award  for Lifetime Achievement, about her 11th book of poetry with Wesleyan University Press, In a Few Minutes Before Later.   We discuss her new trans-genre tetralogy about time: how to find calm during the Anthropocene by being in time in multiple ways: sinking into the micro-minutes; performing micro-activism; and celebrating the microbiome. We explore her influences–from Blake to Bergson, Clare to Baudelaire, as well as the less celebrated moss, owls, and wood rats that appear frequently in her eco-poetry.  Alive with humor, witness, creative design and punctuation–what Forrest Gander calls “typographical expressionism”--Hillman’s poetry teaches us how to abide in crisis from Covid to California fires, living in paradox as a way to transcend despair.

Brenda Hillman shares the Fred Cody Lifetime Achievement Award with with Isabel Allende, Daniel Ellsberg, Michael Pollan, Ishmael Reed, Gary Snyder, Robert Duncan, Alice Walker and others. Winner of the William Carlos Williams Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Award, the International Griffin Poetry Prize (for Seasonal Works with Letters on Fire, 2013), the Northern California Book Award (for Extra Hidden Life, among the Days, 2018) and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Academy of American Poets, Brenda Hillman was born in Tucson, Arizona and has been an active part of the Bay Area literary community since 1975.  

She has edited an edition of Emily Dickinson’s poems for Shambhala Press, and co-edited and co-translated several books.  She is director of the Poetry Program at the Community of Writers in Olympic Valley and is on the regular poetry staff ad Napa Valley Writers Conference. Hillman just retired from teaching in the MFA Program at St. Mary’s College in Moraga, CA.  She has worked as an activist for social and environmental justice. She is a mother, grandmother, and is married to poet, Robert Hass. 

Photograph by Robert Hass.

What do the Sufis, Zen Buddhists, and Catholics have in common? Listen in and find out as Gary Gach brings the poetry of Persian poet Hafiz to The Hive! We talk about the new book, Hafiz's Little Book of Life, he and translation collaborator Erfan Mojib have put together with a forward by Ari Honarvar.

 “How to translate into English what, until now, has justifiably been called the ‘untranslatable’ Persian verses of Hafiz? From its epigraph onward, Erfan Mojib and Gary Gach have given us the answer. Hafiz’s Little Book of Life breathes new life into the world of the Sufi poet’s 14th-century words, making those words new again.”
—Stephen Ratcliffe, author Conversation and Listening to Reading

You can purchase the book here: https://www.getyourfaceinabook.com/book/9781642970463

And you can learn more about Gary Gach here:

http://garygach.com/

Rick Lupert zooms into The Hive. We read Robert Creeley’s poem “I Know a Man,” and shamelessly display our ignorance about the great Robert Creeley, who did indeed, sometimes wear an eyepatch, and who was a powerful and engaging reader. Rick Lupert reads some fruit poems from his current book, I Am Not Writing a Book of Poems in Hawaii,  inspired by his vacation with his family to Hawaii. 

Rick Lupert has been involved in the Los Angeles poetry community since 1990.  He is the recipient of the 2014 Beyond Baroque Distinguished Service Award for service to the Los Angeles poetry community. 

His poetry has appeared in numerous magazines and literary journals, including The Los Angeles Times, Rattle, Chiron Review, and others.  He edited the anthologies A Poet’s Siddur Ekphrastia Gone Wild, The Night Goes On All Night – Noir-Inspired Poetry and, A Poet’s Haggadah: Passover through the Eyes of  Poets, and is the author of 27 books, including: Paris: It’s The Cheese, I Am My Own Orange County, Mowing Fargo, I’m a Jew. Are You?, Stolen Mummies, I’d Like to Bake Your Goods, A Man With No Teeth Serves Us Breakfast, We Put Things in Our Mouths, Sinzibuckwud!, Death of a Mauve Bat (Ain’t Got No Press), and more.

He also writes the Jewish poetry blog From The Lupertverse for the Los Angeles Jewish Journal.

Rick created and maintains the Poetry Super Highway, an online resource and publication for poets.

He lives in Newhall, California with his wife Addie, son Jude, and 3 cats.

A conversation between Geneffa Jahan and the Youth Poet Laureates of Watsonville, Eva Sophia Martinez Rodriguez (pictured) and Rachel Huerta, appointed to serve a two-year term from 2023 – 2025. The Watsonville Public Library created this position to recognize a youth under the age of 20 for their literary achievements, passion for promoting awareness of poetry and whose work demonstrates a commitment to social justice, equity, and diversity. In this hour, these teens share their journey, talk about their craft, and recite poems that showcase their individual styles. (Click the link for photos and bios of both poets).

(From "mixed" by Rachel Huerta)

Rooja Mohassessy buzzes into the Hive to talk about her new book, When Your Sky Runs Into Mine. She also reads a Sylvia Plath poem "Black Rook in Rainy Weather." ⁠

Rooja Mohassessy is an Iranian-born poet and educator. She is a MacDowell Fellow and an MFA graduate of Pacific University, Oregon. Her debut collection When Your Sky Runs Into Mine (Feb 2023) was the winner of the 22nd Annual Elixir Poetry Award. Her poems and reviews have appeared in Narrative Magazine, Poet Lore, RHINO Poetry, Southern Humanities Review, CALYX Journal, Ninth Letter, Cream City Review, The Adroit Journal, New Letters, The Florida Review, Poetry Northwest, The Pinch, The Rumpus, The Journal, and elsewhere.