The Line Break

After August in September, it's November in December! Arriving late—tucking their shits in and trying to muss down their hair—the dudes are finally ready to bring some poems to your ears. Bob reads "Love Song to the Alpacas of Solomon Lane" by Kenzie Allen, Chris reads a three-line collaborative poem by Joshua Beckman and Matthew Rohrer, and then the dudes talk intriguing NBA stories so far.

It's year two for Garden Party Collective, and the winners of the 2024 chapbook contest are here! In this episode, Bob interviews (and Chris reacts to) Ashley Elizabeth (red line), Jacob Jardel (Full-Blooded CHamaole), Kenny Bradley (Night Science), and Maya Williams (What's So Wrong With A Pity Party Anyway?).

Learn more about Garden Party Collective: https://www.gardenpartycollective.com/

Check out the chapbook series: https://www.gardenpartycollective.com/2024-series

Ashley Elizabeth (she/her) is a winner of the 2024 Garden Party Collective Chapbook Contest. She is a Pushcart-nominated writer and teacher whose work has appeared in SWWIM, Voicemail Poems, Rigorous, and Sage Cigarettes, among others. Ashley is the author of A Family Thing (Redacted Books/ELJ Editions, 2024) and chapbooks CHARM(ed) (Fifth Wheel Press, 2024), black has every right to be angry (Alternating Current, 2023), and you were supposed to be a friend (Nightingale & Sparrow, 2020). She lives on the original land of the Piscataway (Baltimore, MD) with her partner and their cats.

Jacob Jardel (he/him) is a CHamoru writer, scholar, and educator born in Guåhan (Guam), raised in California and Oklahoma, and currently based in Kansas City. He’s currently pursuing a doctoral degree in English and Curriculum & Instruction at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. A former Editor for The Sosland Journal, his work has appeared in The 580 Mixtapes Vol. 1, Fanachu’s Voices of the Diaspora zine, and No. 1 Magazine. Jacob lives online at itsjacobj.com, on Twitter/X @itsjacobj96, and on Instagram @itsjacobj. Offline, you can most likely find him in the wild writing, teaching, or working on a writing consultation. When in his natural habitat, though, Jacob is usually watching YouTube with his partner and his cat while hyperfocusing on his special interests, including (but not limited to) Magic: The Gathering, professional wrestling, baseball, and video games.

Kenny Bradley is a poet and graduate student at Rockefeller University, based in New York City, where he travels the boroughs to perform spoken word poetry. He utilizes concepts in both music and biology to influence and shape his poetry to discuss topics ranging in self-love, identity, dissecting trauma, and being a black person in STEM. He was a member of the Provslam 2023 slam team, where he and his teammates won 4 northeast regional slam competitions and self-published a co-authored team chapbook, “Dear Kid, Monster”. He and his teammate Ren L[i]u were finalists for the 2023 Button Poetry Video Contest with their joint poem “Love, Monster.” His work can be found on Button Poetry, Frontier Poetry, Empty House Press, etc. When he is not writing, you can find him in a record store, steaming fresh cup of hot chocolate in hand, spotify in the other as he researches new artists to introduce to his homies. To find more of his work, you can find him on instagram @hotchocolate_poetry.

Maya Williams (ey/they/she) is a religious Black multiracial nonbinary suicide survivor who was selected as Portland, ME's seventh poet laureate for a July 2021 to July 2024 term. Maya received a MFA in Creative Writing with a Focus in Poetry from Randolph College in June 2022. Eir debut poetry collection Judas & Suicide (Game Over Books, 2023) was selected as a finalist for a New England Book Award. Their second poetry collection, Refused a Second Date (Harbor Editions, 2023), was selected as a finalist for a Maine Literary Award. Their third poetry collection, What's So Wrong with a Pity Party Anyway?, was selected as one of four winners of Garden Party Collective's chapbook prize in 2024. Maya was selected as one of Maine Humanities Council's recipients of the Constance Carlson Public Humanities Prize in 2024. Follow her at @emmdubb16 and mayawilliamspoet.com

Summer's over, it's September, so naturally, we've invited our dear friend August J. Smith on the show! The author of VISITORS FROM THE RED STAR and ten chapbooks, as well as the mind behind the band Plum Wooer, August also used to live with Bob. August reads Mary Coons' poem "The Talking Family," his own poem "Viktor Kostrykin," and then the lads tell him about Victor Wembanyama and forget crucial details from SPACE JAM.

Buy August's book: https://shorturl.at/TMFgE

Visit August's website: https://augustsmith.net/

Summer is coming to a close, and it's time for the dudes to celebrate one of the most important summer events in a poet's life: the Ghost City Press Micro-Chapbook Summer Series! Bob reads from "Eating Out Anne Sexton" by Elena Sichrovsky and "AI Fever" by Paddy Qiu, Chris reads from "Poems" by Tom Snarsky and "Every Path Leads To The Sea" by Erinola E. Daranijo, and then the guys debate whether Rucker League or Summer League is cooler.

Check out more from Ghost City Press, including every Summer Series micro-chap available as a pay-what-you-want download, here: https://ghostcitypress.com/

How can we continue to interrogate our writing? What new ways can we find to push ourselves as we read deeper? This month, Bob reads "A Romantic Sonnet!" by S. Yarberry, Chris reads "Dear Moses Grandy...Love, the Great Dismal Swamp," and the dudes wonder if they can grasp the concept of time zones clearly enough to watch Olympic basketball.

Summer is here, so why not read poems? This month, Bob reads "Time Is Filled with Beginners" by Diana Khoi Nguyen, Chris reads "This is the Barbecue We Had Last Night" by Han VanderHart, and then the guys recap and re-cope the NBA Finals.

on this month's episode, Bob and Chris confront narratives that feel depressingly inevitable—that war will continue to happen and fatherhood is difficult to get right—and try to see if poetry can help change those narratives. Bob reads "[...]" by Fady Joudah, Chris reads "We Were All Odysseus In Those Days," and even though the guys recorded less than a week ago, their playoff takes are already obsolete.

two McSweeney's articles we might've been referencing:

"An Interactive Guide To Ambiguous Grammar" by Vijith Assar https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/an-interactive-guide-to-ambiguous-grammar

"How To Use The Past Exonerative Tense To Uphold White Supremacy" by Devorah Blachor https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/how-to-use-the-past-exonerative-tense-to-uphold-white-supremacy

Strap on your leather armor and sharpen your curved bronze swords, Bob Curator of Calendars and Chris Wrecker of Ships are reading The Iliad! The dudes realized they had both separately decided to storm the gates of Troy (Bob shepherded by Emily Wilson's translation, Chris violently thrown around by Robert Fagles') and figured why not do an episode on it? In this episode, you'll find enthusiastic gushing about the language of epics, parsing of the way the Homeric epics are culturally absorbed, Chris confusing "Antigone" with "Aeschylus," confusion as to way Ajax was basically absent from the 2004 film Troy, and stunningly knuckle-dragging sexism from an ancient society!

Follow KC Poetry Calendar on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kcpoetrycalendar/

Read the Shipwrecked Sailor blog: https://shipwreckedsailor.substack.com/

Gather round, damas y caballeros, children of all ages, have we got a treat for you! It's the first but probably not last crossover episode between The Line Break and Of Poetry! That's right, Han VanderHart joins Bob Sykora and Chris Corlew, and the three of them read not merely other people's poetry, but reach into the depths of their notebooks to holler some of their own art-words your way. Han reads their poem "last night I was sexting and reading June Jordan," and "Bottoms" by Jenny Johnson. Bob reads his poem "Utopians In Love" and "What Kids Don't Know" by Jill McDonough. Chris reads his poem "human pastoral brick" and "Elusive Black Hole Pair" by Alina Pleskova.

After their declamations, the three dudes discuss how they decided to add podcasting to their practice of poetry. Do good things happen when you commit to discussing poetry with your friends every so often? We think so!

Han VanderHart is a queer writer and arts organizer living in Durham, North Carolina. Han is the author of the poetry collection What Pecan Light (Bull City Press, 2021) and the chapbook Hands Like Birds (Ethel Zine Press, 2019). They have poetry and essays published in The Boston Globe, Kenyon Review, The American Poetry Review, The Rumpus, AGNI and elsewhere. Han hosts Of Poetry Podcast, edits Moist Poetry Journal, and co-edits the poetry press River River Books with Amorak Huey.

Bob Sykora is the author of the chapbook I Was Talking About Love–You Are Talking About Geography (Nostrovia! 2016) and the forthcoming collection Utopians in Love (Game Over Books 2025). A graduate of the UMass Boston MFA program, he teaches at community college, edits with Garden Party Collective, co-hosts The Line Break podcast, and curates the KC Poetry Calendar.

Chris Corlew is a writer and musician living in Chicago. His work has appeared in Cotton Xenomorph, Whisk(e)y Tit, Kicking Your Ass, Cracked.com, and elsewhere. With Bob Sykora, he co-hosts The Line Break, a podcast about poetry and basketball. With Brendan Johnson, he is ½ of Lazy & Entitled, the band that writes novels. You can find more Chris on Bluesky @thecorlew, at storiesfromvine.com, or at shipwreckedsailor.substack.com.

What an episode we have for you this month! Fresh off a weekend at AWP 2024 in Kansas City, Bob and Chris have recruited their most near-them-at-the-time friends to read LIVE POEMS on the show! That's right, we have Stephen J. Furlong, Teo Shannon, Chloe N. Clark, Diannely Antigua, Matt W. Miller, Todd Osborne, Amorak Huey, and Maya Williams! Forget NBA All-Star, this is Line Break All-Star! If you stay until the end, Bob and Chris even read their own poetry for once!