Of Poetry Podcast

Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).--Purchase: Your Mother's Bear Gun (River River Books, 2025)Read: "You're Hoarding Guns, I'm Growing Herbs" (Kenyon Review)Corrie Williamson was born on a small farm in southwestern Virginia. She is the author of three books of poetry, most recently Your Mother’s Bear Gun, which is newly out from River River Books. Her other books are The River Where You Forgot My Name, in the Crab Orchard Series, which was named a 2019 Montana Book Award Honor Book by the Montana Library Association; and Sweet Husk, which won the 2014 Perugia Press Prize, and was a finalist for the 2015 Library of Virginia Poetry Award. She is also co-editor, with poets Anne Haven McDonnell and Kamella Cruz, of the in-progress eco-poetry anthology A Literary Field Guide to the Rocky Mountains.She completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Virginia, with a BA in Poetry and Anthropology, and her MFA in Poetry from the University of Arkansas, where she was a recipient of the Walton Fellowship, and a Director of the Writers in the Schools Program. She has taught writing at the University of Arkansas, Helena College, and Carroll College, and worked as an educator in Yellowstone National Park. She was the recipient of the 2020 PEN Margery Davis Boyden Wilderness Writing Residency, spending seven and a half months writing and living off-grid in a remote section of the Rogue River in southwest Oregon. Her poems have appeared in journals such as The Southern Review, Ecotone, The Kenyon Review, The Missouri Review, AGNI, Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and many others. You can also find her work in anthologies such as Cascadia Field Guide; Environmental and Nature Writing Volume II: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology; The Ecopoetry Anthology: Volume II; and Bright Bones: An Anthology of Contemporary Montana Writing. She lives in Lewistown, Montana.Recommended Reading:Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and The AbundanceElizabeth BradfieldThe Poem’s Country: Place & Poetic PracticeCharles Wright

Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).--Purchase: Pastoral, 1994 (River River Books, 2025)Read: "Limp" at The Missouri ReviewJoe Wilkins was born and raised on the Big Dry of eastern Montana and now lives with his family in the foothills of the Coast Range of Oregon. He is the author of the novels Fall Back Down When I Die (2019) and The Entire Sky (2024), both published by Little, Brown and Company. A finalist for the First Novel Prize from the Center for Fiction and the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award, Fall Back Down When I Die won the High Plains Book Award. Wilkins is also the author of a memoir, The Mountain and The Fathers, and four previous collections of poetry. Wilkins directs the creative writing program at Linfield University and is a member of the low-residency MFA faculty at Eastern Oregon University.Reading Recommendations:James Dickey, DeliveranceMaurice ManningLouise ErdrichJames WrightGary SotoEdgar Lee Masters' Spoon River AnthologyMaya Jewell ZellerAtsuro Riley

Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).--Purchase: Certain Shelter (June Road Press, 2024) Read: "A BRIEF HISTORY OF YANKEE THRIFT, YANKEE INGENUITY, AND YANKEE WORK ETHIC" in Sixth FinchAbbie Kieferis the author of Certain Shelter (June Road Press, 2024) and the chapbook Brief Histories (Whittle Micro-Press, 2024). Her work is forthcoming or has appeared in Copper Nickel, Gulf Coast, Pleiades, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, The Southern Review, and other places. She lives in New Hampshire. Find her online at abbiekieferpoet.com.Reading Recommendations:Edwin Arlington Robinson Wikipedia"Richard Cory" by E.A. RobinsonSelected Poems of Anne Sexton"The Truth the Dead Know" by Anne Sexton"Ars Poetica" by Aracelis Girmayfrank: sonnets by Diane Seuss

Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).--Read: "Space Age" in Menagerie MagazinePurchase: The Alcestis Machine (Acre Books, 2024)Carolyn Oliver is the author of The Alcestis Machine (Acre Books, 2024), Inside the Storm I Want to Touch the Tremble (University of Utah Press, 2022; selected for the Agha Shahid Ali Prize), and three chapbooks. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in TriQuarterly, Image, Copper Nickel, Poetry Daily, Moist Poetry Journal, Consequence, and elsewhere. Born in Buffalo and raised in Ohio, she now lives in Massachusetts. Recommended Reading:The Naomi Letters by Rachel Menniesfrank: sonnets by Diane SeussTill We Have Faces by C.S. LewisOrlando: A Biography by Virginia WoolfMetropolis (1927) film, Directed Fritz Lang"Methought I Saw My Late Espoused Saint" by John MiltonOrder and Disorder by Lucy HutchinsonThe Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin

Preorder Corrie Williamson's Your Mother's Bear Gun and Joe Wilkins' Pastoral, 1994River River Bookswas founded by Amorak Huey and Han VanderHart in March 2022. Inspired by the idea that you cannot step in the same river twice, at River River Books, two poetry editors join together to publish (at least) two exceptional poetry titles a year. By limiting our press catalog, we commit to supporting our authors and their books with focused attention and joy. Submissions (fee optional) open to full-length poetry manuscripts May 1-June 30.Amorak Huey (uh-MOR-ack) is author of four books of poems including Dad Jokes from Late in the Patriarchy (Sundress Publications, 2021). Co-founder with Han VanderHart of River River Books, Huey teaches in the BFA and MFA programs at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. He also is co-author with W. Todd Kaneko of the textbook Poetry: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology (Bloomsbury, 2nd ed., 2024) and Slash/Slash (2021), winner of the Diode Editions Chapbook Prize. Huey is a recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts, and his poems have appeared in The Best American Poetry, American Poetry Review, The Southern Review, The Missouri Review, the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day series, and many other print and online journals. Han VanderHart is a queer writer living in Durham, North Carolina. Their second poetry collection Larks, winner of the 2024 Hollis Summers Poetry Prize, is forthcoming in April 2025 from Ohio University Press. Han is also the author of What Pecan Light (Bull City Press, 2021) and has work published in Kenyon Review, The American Poetry Review, The Rumpus, AGNI, and elsewhere. Han hosts Of Poetry Podcast and alongside Amorak Huey co-edits the poetry press River River Books.

Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).--Read: "Midwinter" in The DodgePurchase: Songs for the Land-Bound (June Road Press, 2024)Violeta Garcia-Mendoza is a Spanish-American poet, teacher, and suburban wildlife photographer. Her poetry has appeared in numerous literary journals, and in 2022, she received a grant from the Sustainable Arts Foundation. She is a member of the Madwomen in the Attic Writing Workshops at Carlow University. Violeta lives with her husband, children, and pack of rescue dogs on a small certified wildlife habitat in western Pennsylvania. Songs for the Land-Bound (June Road Press, 2024) is her debut collection.Recommended Reading"In the Bleak Midwinter" by Christina RossettiJune Road PressMadwomen in the AtticEpisode 57: Sebastián H. Páramo (Of Apocalypse Literature, Writing Semi-Autobiography, and Hunting Pixelated Ducks)

Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).--Purchase: Sweet Hunter: The Complete Poems of St. Teresa of Ávila (Monkfish Book Publishing, 2024) trans. Dana Delibovi and The Widow's Crayon Box (Penguin, 2024) by Molly PeacockDana Delibovi is a poet, essayist, and translator. She began translating the poetry of St. Teresa of Ávila in 2019, after retiring from a hybrid career as an advertising copywriter and adjunct instructor of philosophy. Her translations of Teresa's poetry and her essays on Teresa’s legacy have appeared in Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry, The Catholic Poetry Review, U.S. Catholic, After the Art, and Confluence, with a translation forthcoming in a new anthology from Word on Fire. Delibovi's writing has also appeared in Apple Valley Review, Bluestem, Ezra Translations, Moria, Noon, Psaltery & Lyre, Salamander, Slippery Elm and many other journals. She is a 2020 Pushcart Prize nominee, a 2020 Best American Essays notable essayist, and 2023 co-winner of the Hueston Woods Poetry Contest. Delibovi is Consulting Poetry Editor at the literary e-zine Cable Street. She received her BA from Barnard College, Columbia University, and holds MA degrees from New York University (philosophy) and Bank Street College of Education (early childhood education). She lives in Lake Saint Louis, Missouri.Molly Peacock is a poet and a biographer whose multi-genre literary life has taken her from New York City to Toronto, from poetry to prose, from lyric self-examination to curiosity about the lives of others.  Her latest poetry collection is The Widow’s Crayon Box (W.W. Norton), a  A book-length sequence of poems that dares to affirm the vast variety of emotional colors in loss and rejuvenation. Peacock is the author of eight books of poetry, including The Analyst: Poems and Cornucopia: New & Selected Poems, as well as A Friend Sails in on a Poem, about a 47-year friendship in poetry.  Peacock is the co-founder of Poetry in Motion on New York’s subways and buses, the founder of The Best Canadian Poetry series and, most recently, creator of The Secret Poetry Room at Binghamton University. Awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Canada Council, and the Leon Levy Center for Biography, Peacock is also a memoirist and biographer, author of two books about creativity in the lives of women artists Flower Diary and The Paper Garden: Mrs. Delany Begins Her Life’s Work at 72, named a Book of the Year by Booklist, The Economist, The Globe and Mail, The Irish Times, The Kansas City Star, The London Evening Standard, MacLean’s, The Pittsburgh Post Gazette and The Sunday Telegraph. A dual citizen of Canada and the United States, she lives in Toronto and teaches at 92NY.

Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).--Read: "Inheritance" and "Homecoming, Rich Square, NC" (Fourway Review)Purchase: Composition (Button Poetry, 2023)Junious 'Jay' Ward is a poet and teaching artist from Charlotte, NC. He is a National Slam champion (2018), an Individual World Poetry Slam champion (2019), author of Sing Me A Lesser Wound (Bull City Press 2020) and Composition (Button Poetry 2023). Jay currently serves as Charlotte's inaugural Poet Laureate and is a 2023 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow. Ward has attended Breadloaf Writers Conference, Callaloo, The Watering Hole and Tin House Winter Workshop. His work can be found in Columbia Journal, Four Way Review, DIAGRAM, Diode Poetry Journal and elsewhere.Recommended Reading and Listening:Year of the Dog by Deborah Paredez (Boa Editions)Look by Solmaz Sharif (Graywolf Press)Zong! by M. nourbeSe philip (Graywolf Press)Defacing the Monument by Susan Briante (Noemi Press)Whereas by Layli Long Soldier (Graywolf)Catherine Rockwood's Episode 44: Of Pirates, the Event of the Image, and Angelic Sex

Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).--Read: "I Pull My Leaf Leg Stockings Off My Body" (The Boiler Journal)Purchase: The Girl Who Became a Rabbit (HCP, 2024)Emilie Menzel, writer and librarian of hybridities, is the author of the book-length lyric The Girl Who Became a Rabbit (Hub City Press, 2024). Their gently haunted writing features in Copper Nickel, Bennington Review, and The Offing, amongst others, and has garnered such honors as the New Southern Voices Poetry Prize, the Deborah Slosberg Memorial Award in Poetry, and the Cara Parravani Memorial Award in Fiction. Menzel holds an MFA from UMass Amherst and serves as a collections librarian at Duke University and creative resources librarian for Seventh Wave. Raised on Georgia summers, they live in Durham, North Carolina.Recommended Reading:The Descent of Alette by Alice Notley"The War of Vaslav Ninjinsky" by Frank BidartMy Life in the Nineties by Lyn HejinianMax PorterAnnie DillardToni MorrisonMaggie NelsonBernadette MeyerSabrina Ora MarkLydia Davis

Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).--Read: "Men Working Above: demolition" and "Parable of Baiting" (UCity Review)Purchase: Altars of Spine and Fraction (Northwestern University Press, 2024)Nicholas Molbert Born and raised on Louisiana’s Gulf Coast, Nicholas lives in Los Angeles. He is the author of Altars of Spine and Fraction(Northwestern University Press, 2024) and two poetry chapbooks from Foundlings Press: Goodness Gracious (2019) and Cocodrie Elegy (2024). You can find his work in places like The Cincinnati Review, The Greensboro Review, Mississippi Review, and Missouri Review among others. He holds a PhD from the University of Cincinnati and an MFA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign."Recommended Reading:Martha SerpasDear Memphis by Rachel EdelmanNight Angler by Geoffrey DavisLures by Adam VibesBlood Dazzler by Patricia SmithBeyond Katrina by Natasha TretheweyThe Room Where I Was Born by Brian TeareLarry LevisPhillip LevineWanda ColemanUnmanly Grief by Jess Williard