Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast

Ariana Benson's poems appear or are forthcoming in Poetry, Poem-a-Day, Ploughshares, Copper Nickel, and elsewhere. Recipient of the 2022 Furious Flower Poetry Prize, Benson serves as a nonfiction editor of Auburn Avenue Literary Journal. She lives in St. Louis, Missouri.

Mike Lala is a poet and performance writer living in New York City. He is the author of The Unreal City (Tupelo Press, 2023) and Exit Theater (Colorado Prize for Poetry, 2016);  several chapbooks, including Points of Return (Ghost Proposal, 2023); and a contributing translator to Tales of Dionysus (Univ. of Michigan Press, 2022). Lala’s installations, performance, and libretti include Whale Fall (2021), Madeleines: Tell Me What It Was Like (2020, with Iris McCloughan), Oedipus in the District (2018–19), and Infinite Odyssey (2018).

The Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast February submitted poems episode features five 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.

J.R Rice is a writer, teacher, and spoken word artist, born and raised in Oakland, California. He has a B.A in Creative Writing and an English Education teaching credential from California State University of Long Beach. While studying abroad in Greece, he was mentored by the author, George Crane. His novella, Broken Pencils earned Second place for Best African-American Fiction and Best Novella in the 2023 Speak Up Radio International Firebird Book Award Contest, an Honorable Mention in the 2023 San Francisco Book Festival Award for Best Wild Card entry, and was a top finalist for Hidden River Arts’ 2023 Blue Mountain Award. His short story, “Depends (Good Night)” made the shortlist for the 2023 Letter Review Prize for Short Stories. His travel essays, “No Pasa Nada” earned Third place in the 16th Annual Solas Award for Best Men's Travel Story. In addition to his writing accolades, he earned the Rookie of the Year award at the 2005 National Collegiate Poetry Slam in Philadelphia. He was a Semi-Finalist in the 2023 Berkeley Poetry Slam Finals.

Heather Bourbeau’s award-winning poetry and fiction have appeared in The Irish Times, The Kenyon Review, Meridian, and The Stockholm Review of Literature. She has been featured on KALW and the San Francisco Public Library’s Poem of the Day, and her writings are part of the Special Collections at the James Joyce Library, University College Dublin (Ireland). Her journalism has appeared in The Economist, The Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, and Foreign Policy. She was a contributing writer to Not On Our Watch: The Mission to End Genocide in Darfur and Beyond with Don Cheadle and John Prendergast. She has worked with various UN agencies, including the UN peacekeeping mission in Liberia and UNICEF Somalia. Her collection Some Days The Bird is a poetry conversation with the Irish-Australian poet Anne Casey (Beltway Editions, 2022). Her latest collection, Monarch, is a poetic memoir of overlooked histories from the US West she was raised in (Cornerstone Press, 2023).

Katherine Gaffney completed her MFA at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and is currently working on her PhD at the University of Southern Mississippi. Her work has previously appeared or is forthcoming in Best New Poets, jubilat, Harpur Palate, Mississippi Review, Meridian, Harpur Palate, and elsewhere. She has attended Tin House's Summer Writing Workshop (2014), Sundress Publications' SAFTA Residency in (2021), and was a scholar at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference (2022). Her first chapbook, Once Read as Ruin, was published by Finishing Line Press. Her first full-length collection, Fool in a Blue House, won the 2022 Tampa Review Prize for Poetry. She lives and teaches in Champaign, Illinois.

The December submitted poetry episode features:

Francesca Bell was raised in Washington and Idaho and settled as an adult in California. She did not complete middle school, high school, or college and holds no degrees. She has worked as a massage therapist, a cleaning lady, a daycare worker, a nanny, a barista, and a server in the kitchen of a retirement home. Bell’s writing appears in many magazines including ELLE, Los Angeles Review of Books, New Ohio Review, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, and Rattle. Her translations appear in Mid-American Review, The Massachusetts Review, New England Review, River Styx, and Waxwing. Her first book, Bright Stain (Red Hen Press, 2019), was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award and the Julie Suk Award. In 2023, Red Hen Press published What Small Sound, her second book of poetry, and Whoever Drowned Here, a collection of poems by Max Sessner that she has translated from German. She is translation editor at the Los Angeles Review and the Marin County Poet Laureate.

Jared Harél is the author of Let Our Bodies Change the Subject, selected by Kwame Dawes as the Winner of the 2022 Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry (U. of Nebraska Press, 2023) and Go Because I Love You (Diode Editions, 2018.) He’s been awarded the ‘Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize’ from American Poetry Review, as well as the ‘William Matthews Poetry Prize’ from Asheville Poetry Review. Harél’s poems have recently appeared in such journals as 32 Poems, Beloit Poetry Journal, Electric Literature, Lit Hub, Ploughshares, Poem-a-Day, The Southern Review and The Sun. He teaches writing, plays drums, and lives with his family in Westchester, NY. For more information, visit: jaredharel.com.

Tennison S. Black is the author of Survival Strategies (winner of the National Poetry Series, UGA Press 2023). Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in SWWIM, Hotel Amerika, Booth, Wordgathering, and New Mobility, among others. Black received their MFA at Arizona State University. They are the Managing Editor at Sundress Publications and Best of the Net and are the editor of the anthology on contemporary disability, A Body You Talk To. Though Sonoran born, Black resides in Washington state.