The Poetry Magazine Podcast

By Poetry Foundation

What's The Poetry Magazine Podcast about?

The Poetry Magazine Podcast takes listeners on an audio journey into and beyond the pages of Poetry. Hear poets share the surprises, confusions, and desires that keep them writing. Hosted by Cindy Juyoung Ok and produced by Rachel James.

Download our free app to listen on your phone

The Poetry Magazine Podcast episodes:

10.24.2023
Kiki Petrosino and Cindy Juyoung Ok on Crestfallenness, Cookbooks, and More
This week, Cindy Juyoung Ok speaks with Kiki Petrosino, who has published five elegant and remarkable books, all with Sarabande, including the memoir Bright (2022) and the poetry collection White Blood: A Lyric of Virginia (2020). Petrosino speaks about crestfallenness...
10.10.2023
Kimiko Hahn and Cindy Juyoung Ok on Mentoring Your Younger Poet-Self and More
This week, Cindy Juyoung Ok speaks with Kimiko Hahn, who won the 2023 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize from the Poetry Foundation, and who is featured in the October 2023 issue of Poetry. Hahn talks about how her work has changed...
09.26.2023
Cathy Park Hong and Cindy Juyoung Ok on Shit Moms and More
This week, Cindy Juyong Ok talks with Cathy Park Hong, who has published three volumes of poetry and the collection of essays Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Hong introduces us to...
09.12.2023
Lena Khalaf Tuffaha and Cindy Juyoung Ok on the Renowned and Rebellious Palestinian Poet Zakaria Mohammed
On this week’s episode, Cindy Juyoung Ok speaks with poet, essayist, and translator Lena Khalaf Tuffaha about the life and work of the renowned Palestinian poet and writer Zakaria Mohammed. Born in Nablus, Palestine, Mohammed was a freelance journalist, editor,...
08.29.2023
Kevin Young and Cindy Juyoung Ok on All the Things Poetry Does
This week, Cindy Juyoung Ok speaks with Kevin Young, who has authored or edited over twenty books including the poetry collection Stones (Knopf, 2021) and the nonfiction investigation Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News (Graywolf...
08.15.2023
Richie Hofmann and Cindy Juyoung Ok on Erotic Turmoil and More
This week, Cindy Juyoung Ok talks with Richie Hofmann, whose latest book is A Hundred Lovers (Knopf, 2022), about the ancient tale of Hermias of Iasos which informs Hofmann’s poem “Dolphin.” The poem appears in the July/August issue of Poetry...
08.01.2023
torrin a. greathouse and Cindy Juyoung Ok on Form as Open-Source Software and Being Loud on the Page
This week, Cindy Juyoung Ok talks with torrin a. greathouse, a transgender cripple-punk poet and essayist who is the author of the forthcoming DEED (Wesleyan University Press), as well as Wound from the Mouth of a Wound (Milkweed Editions, 2020). Ok and greathouse...
07.31.2023
torrin a. greathouse and Cindy Juyoung Ok on Being Loud on the Page and Form as Open-Source Software
This week, Cindy Juyoung Ok talks with torrin a. greathouse, a transgender cripple-punk poet and essayist who is the author of DEED, which is forthcoming from Wesleyan University Press, and Wound from the Mouth of a Wound (Milkweed Editions, 2020)....
07.18.2023
Douglas Kearney and Cindy Juyoung Ok on Scrabble, Spite, and “Dintelligibility”
This week, Cindy Juyoung Ok speaks with Douglas Kearney, who joins from Saint Paul, Minnesota. Kearney is the author of eight books of poetry, prose, and libretti, and his poems are often highly distinctive both on and off the page....
07.05.2023
Elisa Gabbert and Cindy Juyoung Ok on Self-Pity, Death, and the Internet
This week, Cindy Juyoung Ok speaks with Elisa Gabbert, who joins us from Providence, Rhode Island. Gabbert is the author of six, soon to be seven, collections of essays and poems, including Normal Distance (Soft Skull Press, 2022) and the...
07.05.2023
Elisa Gabbert and Cindy Juyoung Ok on Self-Pity, Death, and the Internet
This week, Cindy Juyoung Ok speaks with Elisa Gabbert, who joins us from Providence, Rhode Island. Gabbert is the author of six, soon to be seven, collections of essays and poems, including Normal Distance (Soft Skull Press, 2022) and the...
06.20.2023
Omar Sakr and Cindy Juyoung Ok on Queer Use, Cynicism, and Falling in Love
This week, new host Cindy Juyoung Ok speaks with Omar Sakr, who joins us from Sydney, Australia. Sakr tends to the in between, writing prose and poetry, and moving between poetic and political urges, and through queerness and diasporic experience....
06.06.2023
Donika Kelly and Cindy Juyoung Ok on Desire Paths, Therapy, and Pleasure
This week, new host Cindy Juyoung Ok speaks with Donika Kelly. The author of two poetry collections, The Renunciations and Bestiary, Kelly teaches creative writing at the University of Iowa. Rita Dove called The Renunciations, “poetry of the highest order,” and Nikki Finney, who...
05.23.2023
Cynthia Cruz and Charif Shanahan on Protecting Your Feral-ness and More
This week, Charif Shanahan speaks with Cynthia Cruz, who joins us from Berlin, Germany. Born on a US military base in Wiesbaden and raised in Northern California, she is currently pursuing a PhD at the European Graduate School where her...
05.16.2023
Brian Tierney and Charif Shanahan on Poetry as a Verb, Truth vs Fact, and Love
This week, Charif Shanahan continues asking the Big Questions, this time with Brian Tierney, who joins us from Oakland, California. They get into poetry as a way to pursue truth, living in a time of ruin, and more. We hear...
05.02.2023
Marie Howe and Charif Shanahan on Ecopoetics, Spirituality, and Losing Oneself
This week, Charif Shanahan asks Marie Howe the Big Questions about writing into the unknown, losing oneself in poems, spirituality, the ineffable, teaching and mentorship, and more. Howe is the author of four volumes of poetry, most recently Magdalene (W.W. Norton, 2017),...
04.18.2023
CAConrad and Hoa Nguyen on Crystals, Crows, and Cannibalizing Poems
This April’s issue of Poetry celebrates the 2022 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize recipients. In previous years, one poet was awarded the prize. This year, in honor of the 110th anniversary of the magazine, eleven poets were selected—a nod to the...
04.04.2023
Arthur Sze and Forrest Gander on Silence, the Importance of Blank Pages, and How Every Poem Written Shines a Light on Every Other Poem
This April’s issue of Poetry celebrates the 2022 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize recipients. In previous years, one poet was awarded the prize. This year, in honor of the 110th anniversary of the magazine, eleven poets were selected—a nod to the...
03.21.2023
Nam Le and Lindsay Garbutt on Language as an Ecology of Violence and Corruption, the Pain of Being a Writer, and the Value of Uncertainty
On this episode, Lindsay Garbutt speaks with Nam Le, whose debut book, the short story collection The Boat, was translated into fourteen languages and received over a dozen major awards. We hear poems from his much anticipated first poetry collection,...
03.07.2023
KB Brookins and Holly Amos on Systemic Freedom, the Power of Insistence, and What People Don’t Understand about Texas
This week, Holly Amos speaks with KB Brookins, a writer, cultural worker, and artist living in Austin, TX, and the author of the chapbook How to Identify Yourself with a Wound, as well as the forthcoming full-length collection Freedom House. Brookins...
02.21.2023
Joanna Klink and Holly Amos on psychic longing, attention and attunement, and their differing childhood dinner tables
This week, Holly Amos speaks with Joanna Klink, who joins us from Austin, Texas. Klink is the author of five books of poetry, most recently The Nightfields, and she shares some new poems that appear in the February 2023 issue...
02.07.2023
Charif Shanahan and Adrian Matejka on the shifting of identity, oneness, and centering love
This week, Adrian Matejka sits down with poet and guest editor of the magazine, Charif Shanahan, to talk about oneness, the shifting of identity, and centering love. Born in the Bronx to an Irish-American father and a Moroccan mother, Shanahan’s...
01.24.2023
Building a Sustainable Writing Practice with Stefania Gomez, Maggie Queeney, and Holly Amos, Plus More Writing Prompts
For the month of January, we’re focusing on what keeps us writing. How do we refresh our writing habits and routines? How do poets sustain their writing practices? Today, Holly Amos enlists the help of poets and educators Stefania Gomez...
01.10.2023
Tishani Doshi and Holly Amos on Shape Poetry and Loving the Process, PLUS a Writing Prompt
For the month of January, we’re focusing on what keeps us writing. How do poets sustain their writing practices? Are there generative tips and tricks we can learn from them? Today, Holly Amos enlists the help of poet, writer, and...
12.27.2022
Esther Belin and Tacey M. Atsitty on Monsters
This week, Esther Belin speaks with Diné poet Tacey M. Atsitty. Atsitty’s debut full-length collection, Rain Scald, was published in 2018, and Arthur Sze described the book as filled with a poetry “where rain, expected to be nourishing, is also...
12.13.2022
Esther Belin and Diamond Forde on poetry as self-definition, self-reclamation, and biomythography
This week, Esther Belin speaks with Diamond Forde, who joins us from Asheville, North Carolina, which she describes as a sort of homecoming. One of five recent recipients of the 2022 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowships, Forde’s...
11.29.2022
Ashley M. Jones and Marcus Wicker on Afrofuturism, OutKast, and Living in the American South
This week, Ashley M. Jones speaks with Marcus Wicker about a project he began early in the pandemic while looking for sources of calm in books and music. Many of these were space-influenced—OutKast’s album ATLiens, Robert Hayden’s poem “American Journal”—and Wicker began exploring...
11.16.2022
Su Cho and Tariq Luthun on Joy, Apocalypse, Crying, and Pokémon
On this week’s episode, Su Cho speaks with Tariq Luthun, a Palestinian writer and community organizer based in metro Detroit. Luthun is the author of How the Water Holds Me, out from Bull City Press in 2020, and we hear his...
11.14.2022
Hanif Abdurraqib Reads "For the Dogs Who Barked at Me on the Sidewalks in Connecticut"
The editors discuss Hanif Abdurraqib's poem "For the Dogs Who Barked at Me on the Sidewalks in Connecticut" from the May 2018 issue of Poetry.
11.02.2022
Taneum Bambrick and Su Cho on Intimacy and Poetry
This week, Su Cho sits down with Taneum Bambrick to talk about two of her favorite things: poetry and intimacy. Bambrick is the author of Intimacies, Received, recently out from Copper Canyon Press, and Vantage. Their chapbook, Reservoir, was selected...
10.25.2022
Nikky Finney, Ross Gay, and Adrian Matejka on Cataloging Time with Artifacts and Heartbeats
This week, Poetry’s new editor, Adrian Matejka, sits down with Nikky Finney and Ross Gay for a joy-filled conversation about time and how we catalog it with artifacts, heartbeats, and, of course, poems. Nikky Finney was born by the sea in...
10.04.2022
The Life and Poetry of Carolyn Marie Rodgers, with Nina Rodgers Gordon, Andrew Peart, and Srikanth Reddy
Delve into the life and poetry of one of the chief architects of the Black Arts Movement in Chicago, Carolyn Marie Rodgers (1940-2010), with a very special guest: Carolyn’s sister, Nina Rodgers Gordon. Born in Bronzeville, Carolyn Marie Rodgers cofounded Third World...
09.22.2022
Esther Belin in Conversation with Beth Piatote
This week, Esther Belin and Beth Piatote map out some unique qualities of the Navajo and Nez Perce languages. Piatote is a writer, scholar, and member of the Nez Perce nation, and she offers insight into the embodied experience of...
09.20.2022
Esther Belin in Conversation with A. Van Jordan
This week, Esther Belin speaks with A. Van Jordan about his forthcoming book, When I Waked, I Cried to Dream Again. The title comes from The Tempest, and the book celebrates Black youth while complicating contemporary understandings of Shakespearian characters and...
09.06.2022
Esther Belin in Conversation with Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach
This week, Esther Belin speaks with Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach. Dasbach emigrated to the United States from Ukraine as a Jewish refugee when she was six years old. Her scholarly research focuses on contemporary American poetry related to the Holocaust, and...
08.23.2022
Esther Belin in Conversation with Beth Piatote
This week, Esther Belin and Beth Piatote map out some unique qualities of the Navajo and Nez Perce languages. Piatote is a writer, scholar, and member of the Nez Perce nation, and she offers insight into the embodied experience of...
08.09.2022
Esther Berlin in Conversation with Toni Giselle Stuart
This week, Esther Belin speaks with Toni Giselle Stuart, a South African poet, performer, and facilitator. Belin says, “When I first heard Stuart’s poetry, I was moved by her use of sound and breath to create tension and emphasis. She...
07.27.2022
Esther Belin in Conversation with Allison Akootchook Warden
This week, Esther Belin speaks with Allison Akootchook Warden, an interdisciplinary artist from the Alaskan Native village of Kaktovik. They discuss the practice of acknowledging land before events and Warden’s poem “we acknowledge ourselves,” which opens the Land Acknowledgments special...
07.15.2022
Esther Belin in Conversation with Manny Loley
This week, Esther Belin speaks with Manny Loley, a Diné poet and storyteller who writes in both the Navajo and English languages. Belin and Loley talk about stories as medicine, the unique poetics of the Navajo language and the meanings...
06.28.2022
Esther Belin in Conversation with Patricia Jabbeh Wesley
This week, guest editor Esther Belin speaks with poet and scholar Patricia Jabbeh Wesley. Although Belin’s and Wesley’s homelands are far from each other—Wesley’s in Liberia and Belin’s in Diné bikéyah of the Navajo people—they share a deep commitment to...
06.24.2022
Mini Episode: Esther Belin Shares Two Writing Prompts
In our very first mini episode, Esther Belin shares two writing prompts to help propel you to a place that comforts and aligns you back to center.
06.21.2022
Esther Belin in Conversation with Orlando White
This week, Esther Belin and Orlando White talk about Diné thought and poetics, sound and breath in Diné bizaad, the Navajo language, and what it means, as Indigenous writers, to use the English language as a vessel to integrate tribal...
05.31.2022
Srikanth Reddy with Liesl Olson and Ed Roberson on Margaret Danner’s “The Elevator Man Adheres to Form”
This week, we return to the little-known world of Margaret Danner with guest editor Srikanth Reddy, historian Liesl Olson, and poet Ed Roberson. Olson and Roberson were the people who first introduced Reddy to Margaret Danner’s poetry. Olson is the...
05.18.2022
Srikanth Reddy in Conversation with Josué Coy Dick, Juan Coy Tení, and Jesse Nathan
Today we explore the Popol Vuh, the foundational sacred narrative of the K’iche people. This Mayan epic tells the story of creation, the role of the gods in human affairs, and the history of migration and settlement in Central America...
05.03.2022
Srikanth Reddy in Conversation with James Shea
This week, Srikanth Reddy talks shit, quite literally, with the poet and translator James Shea. Shea recently co-translated, with Ikuho Amano, a little-known essay by the Japanese poet Masaoka Shiki titled “Haiku on Shit.” It’s a surprisingly serious, if not...
04.19.2022
Srikanth Reddy in Conversation with Don Mee Choi
Srikanth Reddy first encountered the complex poetic world of Don Mee Choi as a translator of avant-garde Korean poetry before reading Choi’s own poetry. As a poet, Choi invites readers into her personal history—which is also the history of her...
04.05.2022
Srikanth Reddy in Conversation with Lawrence-Minh Bùi Davis
When Srikanth Reddy was reading about Lawrence-Minh Bùi Davis’s work as a curator at the Smithsonian, he was surprised to learn about Davis’s interest in ghosts. This week on the podcast, Reddy speaks with Davis about ghosts and “ghost practice,” and...
03.22.2022
Srikanth Reddy and CM Burroughs on Margaret Danner
This week, guest editor Srikanth Reddy and poet CM Burroughs dive into the world of Margaret Danner. Danner was a contemporary of Gwendolyn Brooks and Langston Hughes, whom she knew personally, but she never achieved the recognition she deserved in...
03.08.2022
Srikanth Reddy in Conversation with Jay Hopler and Kimberly Johnson
When Jay Hopler received a terminal cancer diagnosis in 2017, he was told he had two years to live. He thought, “I have to write a book in twenty-four months.” We’ll hear two poems from that book today. Still Life,...
02.22.2022
Suzi F. Garcia in Conversation with Jennifer Shyue
This week, Suzi F. Garcia sits down with Jennifer Shyue, a translator focusing on contemporary Cuban and Asian-Peruvian writers. We hear two poems by Julia Wong Kcomt, whose work Shyue has been translating for the past three years. Kcomt was...

What's The Poetry Magazine Podcast about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

The Poetry Magazine Podcast episodes:

Kiki Petrosino and Cindy Juyoung Ok on Crestfallenness, Cookbooks, and More

Kimiko Hahn and Cindy Juyoung Ok on Mentoring Your Younger Poet-Self and More

Cathy Park Hong and Cindy Juyoung Ok on Shit Moms and More

Lena Khalaf Tuffaha and Cindy Juyoung Ok on the Renowned and Rebellious Palestinian Poet Zakaria Mohammed

Kevin Young and Cindy Juyoung Ok on All the Things Poetry Does

Richie Hofmann and Cindy Juyoung Ok on Erotic Turmoil and More

torrin a. greathouse and Cindy Juyoung Ok on Form as Open-Source Software and Being Loud on the Page

torrin a. greathouse and Cindy Juyoung Ok on Being Loud on the Page and Form as Open-Source Software

Douglas Kearney and Cindy Juyoung Ok on Scrabble, Spite, and “Dintelligibility”

Elisa Gabbert and Cindy Juyoung Ok on Self-Pity, Death, and the Internet

Elisa Gabbert and Cindy Juyoung Ok on Self-Pity, Death, and the Internet

Omar Sakr and Cindy Juyoung Ok on Queer Use, Cynicism, and Falling in Love

Donika Kelly and Cindy Juyoung Ok on Desire Paths, Therapy, and Pleasure

Cynthia Cruz and Charif Shanahan on Protecting Your Feral-ness and More

Brian Tierney and Charif Shanahan on Poetry as a Verb, Truth vs Fact, and Love

Marie Howe and Charif Shanahan on Ecopoetics, Spirituality, and Losing Oneself

CAConrad and Hoa Nguyen on Crystals, Crows, and Cannibalizing Poems

Arthur Sze and Forrest Gander on Silence, the Importance of Blank Pages, and How Every Poem Written Shines a Light on Every Other Poem

Nam Le and Lindsay Garbutt on Language as an Ecology of Violence and Corruption, the Pain of Being a Writer, and the Value of Uncertainty

KB Brookins and Holly Amos on Systemic Freedom, the Power of Insistence, and What People Don’t Understand about Texas

Joanna Klink and Holly Amos on psychic longing, attention and attunement, and their differing childhood dinner tables

Charif Shanahan and Adrian Matejka on the shifting of identity, oneness, and centering love

Building a Sustainable Writing Practice with Stefania Gomez, Maggie Queeney, and Holly Amos, Plus More Writing Prompts

Tishani Doshi and Holly Amos on Shape Poetry and Loving the Process, PLUS a Writing Prompt

Esther Belin and Tacey M. Atsitty on Monsters

Esther Belin and Diamond Forde on poetry as self-definition, self-reclamation, and biomythography

Ashley M. Jones and Marcus Wicker on Afrofuturism, OutKast, and Living in the American South

Su Cho and Tariq Luthun on Joy, Apocalypse, Crying, and Pokémon

Hanif Abdurraqib Reads "For the Dogs Who Barked at Me on the Sidewalks in Connecticut"

Taneum Bambrick and Su Cho on Intimacy and Poetry

Nikky Finney, Ross Gay, and Adrian Matejka on Cataloging Time with Artifacts and Heartbeats

The Life and Poetry of Carolyn Marie Rodgers, with Nina Rodgers Gordon, Andrew Peart, and Srikanth Reddy

Esther Belin in Conversation with Beth Piatote

Esther Belin in Conversation with A. Van Jordan

Esther Belin in Conversation with Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach

Esther Belin in Conversation with Beth Piatote

Esther Berlin in Conversation with Toni Giselle Stuart

Esther Belin in Conversation with Allison Akootchook Warden

Esther Belin in Conversation with Manny Loley

Esther Belin in Conversation with Patricia Jabbeh Wesley

Mini Episode: Esther Belin Shares Two Writing Prompts

Esther Belin in Conversation with Orlando White

Srikanth Reddy with Liesl Olson and Ed Roberson on Margaret Danner’s “The Elevator Man Adheres to Form”

Srikanth Reddy in Conversation with Josué Coy Dick, Juan Coy Tení, and Jesse Nathan

Srikanth Reddy in Conversation with James Shea

Srikanth Reddy in Conversation with Don Mee Choi

Srikanth Reddy in Conversation with Lawrence-Minh Bùi Davis

Srikanth Reddy and CM Burroughs on Margaret Danner

Srikanth Reddy in Conversation with Jay Hopler and Kimberly Johnson

Suzi F. Garcia in Conversation with Jennifer Shyue