Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast

The Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast April submitted poems episode features four wonderful contributions read by the poets. Different forms and themes are featured. The Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast explores the art of poetry through interviews with poets and artists including Safia Elhillo, A.E. Stallings, Dana Gioia, Yanyi, Olivia Gatwood, Lisa Marie Simmons and more.

Listen to the poems using your favorite podcast player and then read each below:

• Portrait of a Waxwing by Lores Denison
• Melanophobia by Maya Sheppard
• One July Ago, There Was a Cafe by Keith Gaboury
• Venus of Urbino by Kenneth Boyd

Liz Cahill is the Co-founder & Executive Director of Decentered Arts and leads the organizational and strategic direction. Liz is also a founding member and resident of Uzay Gallery, a poet, event producer, and researcher. She is working on her first book of poems, Garbage Age Lady, forthcoming on Decentered Press. Outside of the arts she can be found cooking food for friends and biking with her tiny dog Rya in a backpack.

The Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast March submitted poems episode features four wonderful contributions read by the poets. Different forms and themes are featured. The Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast explores the art of poetry through interviews with poets and artists including Safia Elhillo, A.E. Stallings, Dana Gioia, Yanyi, Olivia Gatwood, Lisa Marie Simmons and more. Subscribe today.

• A Father's Pride by Rachel Novak
• BREATHE by Shada Harris
• watch by Julia Skye
• How to Catch Fire by Jaineba Chang

Lena Khalaf Tuffaha is a poet, essayist and translator. She is author of three books of poetry: Something About Living (University of Akron Press, 2024), winner of the 2024 National Book Award for Poetry and the 2022 Akron Poetry Prize; Kaan & Her Sisters (Trio House Press), finalist for the 2024 Firecracker Award and honorable mention for the 2024 Arab American Book Award; and Water & Salt (Red Hen), winner of the 2018 Washington State Book Award and honorable mention of the 2018 Arab American Book Award. She is also the author of two chapbooks, Arab in Newsland, winner of the 2016 Two Sylvias Prize, and Letters from the Interior (Diode, 2019), finalist for the 2020 Jean Pedrick Chapbook Prize. For more about her work, visit www.lenakhalaftuffaha.com. 

Queer poet and writer Cass Donish was born and raised in the Greater Los Angeles Area. They are the author of the poetry collections Beautyberry and The Year of the Femme, winner of the Iowa Poetry Prize, as well as the nonfic­tion chapbook, On the Mezzanine. Their work has appeared in The American Poetry Review, Denver Quarterly, The Gettysburg Review, Guernica, The Iowa Review, The Kenyon Review, Poem-a-Day, VICE, and elsewhere. Donish received an MA in cultural geography from the University of Oregon, an MFA in poetry from Washington University in St. Louis, and a PhD in English and creative writing from the University of Missouri. They live in Columbia, Missouri.

A trigger warning. Please note that this interview, because of the subject matter and themes of Cass' new book, touch on suicide. If you are having suicidal thoughts please reach out for support resources in your area.

Sam Rush began writing after developing progressive hearing loss and realizing how many words each word could be. They were a finalist at the National Poetry Slam in 2016 and Sam's work has been featured in Muzzle, The Offing, Voicemail Poems & The Journal, as well as on Button Poetry, and SlamFind. Their first collection of poems, SWALLOW (Sibling Rivalry Press,2021) was nominated for the Georgia Author of the Year Award. Sam has spent the last decade working in environmental education and youth empowerment.

The Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast November submitted poems episode features four wonderful contributions read by the poets. Different forms and themes are featured. The Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast explores the art of poetry through interviews with poets and artists including Safia Elhillo, A.E. Stallings, Dana Gioia, Yanyi, Olivia Gatwood, Lisa Marie Simmons and more.

Featured poets in this episode:

Robin LaMer Rahija is originally from Kansas City, MO and now lives in Kentucky. She received her MFA from the University of Kentucky, where she is currently staff in the Department of English. In 2010, she co-founded and edited Rabbit Catastrophe Press, a handbound, feminist, book arts micropress. In 2015, she co-founded Workhorse Writers Collective, a publishing and education platform for poets outside of academia. Her poems have appeared in Puerto Del Sol, FENCE, Spoon River Review, and elsewhere. Inside Out Egg is her first full-length book, published by Variant Lit in 2024.

The Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast October submitted poems episode features four wonderful contributions read by the poets. Different forms and themes are featured. The Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast explores the art of poetry through interviews with poets and artists including Safia Elhillo, A.E. Stallings, Dana Gioia, Yanyi, Olivia Gatwood, Lisa Marie Simmons and more. Subscribe today.

Featured poets:

Tyler Mills is the author of the memoir The Bomb Cloud (Unbound Edition Press 2024), which received a Literature Grant from the Café Royal Foundation NYC. Her poetry guidebook, Poetry Studio: Prompts for Poets, is newly released this summer (2024) from the University of Akron Press. She is the author of the poetry books City Scattered (Tupelo Press 2022), Hawk Parable (University of Akron Press 2019), Tongue Lyre (Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award, Southern Illinois University Press 2013), and co-author with Kendra DeColo of Low Budget Movie (Diode Editions 2021). A poet and essayist, her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Guardian, The New Republic, the Kenyon Review, The Believer, and Poetry, and her essays in AGNI, Brevity, Copper Nickel, River Teeth, and The Rumpus. She teaches for Sarah Lawrence College’s Writing Institute and the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center's 24PearlStreet and lives in Brooklyn on part of the unceded homeland of the Lenape people.