Of Poetry Podcast

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, a storiesfromvine.com, or at shipwreckedsailor.substack.com.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.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.Poems Read on the Show:"Utopians in Love" by Bob Sykora (Cotton Xenomorph)“Bottoms” by Jenny Johnson (American Poetry Review)"What the Kids Don't Know" by Jill McDonough (The ThreePenny Review)“Elusive Black Hole Pair” by Alina Pleskova (Toska, Deep Vellum)"Last night I was sexting and reading June Jordan" by Han VanderHart (unpublished)"human pastoral brick" by Chris Corlew

Read: Amorak Huey's "Estuary, Delta, Confluence, Mouth" and Han VanderHart's "Larks"(Up the Staircase Quarterly)Purchase: Dad Jokes from Late in the Patriarchy (Sundress, 2021) and What Pecan Light (Bull City Press, 2021)Amorak Huey is author of four books of poems including Dad Jokes from Late in the Patriarchy (Sundress Publications, 2021). Co-author with W. Todd Kaneko of the textbook Poetry: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology (Bloomsbury, 2018) and the chapbook Slash/Slash (Diode, 2021), Huey teaches in the BFA and MFA programs at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. His previous books are Boom Box (Sundress, 2019), Seducing the Asparagus Queen (Cloudbank, 2018), and Ha Ha Ha Thump (Sundress, 2015), as well as two chapbooks. He is recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and his poems appear in the Best American Poetry anthology, Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day, the Norton Critical Edition of The Odyssey, and many print and online journals.Han VanderHart is a genderqueer, Southern writer living in Durham, North Carolina, under the loblolly pines. 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 and edits Moist Poetry Journal. Their aim is to live, edit, and write with transparency, care, and warmth. They love rescue pitbulls, and send a hello to your dog.RiverRiverbooks.orgRecommended Reading/ListeningLauren CampRachel EdelmanW. Todd KanekoCarla Sofia FerreiraJennifer A SutherlandJoe WilkinsCorrie WilliamsonThe Line Break podcast with Bob Sykora and Chris Corlew The Black Lily ZineNoa FieldsNic AnstettJason B. CrawfordStephen J. FurlongOctopus Books

Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).--Read: "Ode to the Empanadas on Pacific & Elm, with Apologies to William Carlos Williams" in Okay Donkey MagPurchase: A Geography That Does Not Hurt Us (River River Books, 2024)Carla Sofia Ferreira (she/her) is the daughter of Portuguese immigrants and a teacher from Newark, New Jersey. Author of micro-chapbook Ironbound Fados (Ghost City Press, 2019) and debut poetry book A Geography That Does Not Hurt Us (River River Books, 2024), her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. You can find her writing in The Rumpus, Glamour, EcoTheo, underblong, Okay Donkey, december, and Washington Square Review, among others. On the internet, she’s @csferreira08 on Twitter and @csferreirawrites on Instagram. She believes in kindness, semicolons, and the permanent abolition of ICE. She has now successfully taught her cat Moonshadow how to fetch. She dislikes writing bios in the third person but is saving for her overthrow of societal norms for other causes.Recommended Reading:Aracelis Girmay, Kingdom AnimaliaRoss Gay, Be Holding and Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude Gwendolyn Brooks, "Paul Robeson"Roberto Carlos Garcia, [Elegies]Benjamin Garcia, Thrown in the Throat

Read: "A Poem for Retired Lighthouses," Little Blue MarblePurchase: And We Are Far From Shore: Poems for Our Flag Means Death (Ethel Zine Press, 2023)Catherine Rockwood  (she/they) lives in Massachusetts. She reads and edits for Reckoning Magazine and reviews books for Strange Horizons. Their poetry chapbooks, And We Are Far From Shore: Poems for Our Flag Means Death (2023) and Endeavors To Obtain Perpetual Motion (2022) are available from the Ethel Zine Press.Recommended Reading:Our Flag Means Death: A Brief Excursus on Tailors and Tailoring by Catherine RockwoodA review of Our Flag Means Death by Catherine Rockwood (Strange Horizons)Ethel Zine PressStephanie Burt, We Are MermaidsBrian Teare, Doomstead DaysThe Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Read: Neutral Spaces, for more of Tom Snarsky's poetryPurchase: Reclaimed Water (Ornithopter Press, 2023)Tom Snarsky is the author of the chapbooks Threshold (Another New Calligraphy) & Complete Sentences (Broken Sleep Books), as well as the full-length collections Light-Up Swan and Reclaimed Water (both from Ornithopter Press). He lives in the mountains of northwestern Virginia with his wife Kristi and their cats. You can find him @tomsnarsky on Twitter, Instagram, & Bluesky, and you can find the reading series he coordinates @night_light_poems_ on Instagram and @nightlightpoems on Twitter. If you're a poet, he would love to hear from you!Further/Recommended Reading:The MinisonThe Minison ProjectC.T. SalazarNoelle Kocot's Ascent of the Mothers (Wave Books, 2023)Jon Anderson's The Inner Gate

Read: Carolyn Hembree's poem April 2020Purchase: For Today (LSU Press, 2024)Carolyn Hembree's third poetry collection, For Today, is forthcoming from LSU Press. She is also the author of Skinny and Rigging a Chevy into a Time Machine and Other Ways to Escape a Plague, winner of the Trio Award and the Rochelle Ratner Memorial Award. Her poems appear in Beloit Poetry Journal, Copper Nickel, Poetry Daily, The Southern Review, and other publications. She teaches in the MFA program at the University of New Orleans and serves as the poetry editor of Bayou Magazine. Recommended Reading:Jennifer Shaw's visual art series Flood StatePale Horse, Pale Rider by Katherine Anne Porter (novella on the 1918 flu pandemic)Inger Christensen's alphabet, translated Susanna NiedSpring and All (facsimile edition with introduction by C.D. Wright) by William Carlos Williams[By the road to the contagious hospital] by William Carlos WilliamsDon't Let Me Be Lonely by Claudia Rankine"An Anatomy of the Long Poem" by Rachel Zucker

Read: "Dear Memphis," at Terrain.orgPurchase: Dear Memphis (River River Books, 2023)Rachel Edelman is a Jewish poet raised in Memphis, Tennessee whose writing explores diasporic living. Dear Memphis, their debut collection of poems, will be published by River River Books in 2024. Her poems have appeared in Narrative, The Seventh Wave, The Threepenny Review, West Branch, and many other journals. They have received material support from City of Seattle Office of Arts & Culture, the Academy of American Poets, Mineral School, Crosstown Arts, and Tin House and finalist commendations from the Adrienne Rich Award, the Pink Poetry Prize, and the National Poetry Series. Edelman earned a BA in English and geology from Amherst College and an MFA in poetry from the University of Washington. She teaches Language Arts in the Seattle Public Schools, where embodiment and care root her personal, poetic, and pedagogical practice.Further Reading:Jacob Lawrence: The Migration SeriesAlicia Ostriker

Read: Four Poems by Erin Malone, in Electric Literature.Purchase: Site of Disappearance (Ornithopter Press, 2023)Erin Malone’s new book, Site of Disappearance, was a finalist for the National Poetry Series and is out now from Ornithopter Press. She’s also the author of Hover (Tebot Bach Press, 2015), and a chapbook, What Sound Does It Make (Concrete Wolf, 2008). Her recent honors include the Coniston Prize from Radar Poetry and the Robert Creeley Memorial Prize from Marsh Hawk Press. Erin has received grants and fellowships from Washington State Artist Trust, 4Culture, Jack Straw, and the Colorado Council of the Arts; and residency support from Kimmel-Harding Nelson Center, The Anderson Center, Ucross, and Jentel Foundations. Her poems have appeared in FIELD, New Ohio Review, Salamander, Cimarron, Beloit Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. A former editor of Poetry Northwest, Erin has taught at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, the University of Washington Rome Center, Hugo House, and with Seattle’s Writers in the Schools. She lives on Bainbridge Island, WA, and works as a bookseller.Additional Reading:Nox by Anne CarsonJane, A Murder by Maggie Nelson

Read: "Here is a Sea We Cannot Call Sea" in ScalawagPurchase: The Understudy's Handbook (WWPH, 2020).Steven Leyva was born in New Orleans, Louisiana and raised in Houston, Texas. His poems have appeared in Smartish Pace, Scalawag, Nashville Review, jubilat, The Hopkins Review, Prairie Schooner, and Best American Poetry 2020. He is a Cave Canem fellow and author of the chapbook Low Parish and author of The Understudy’s Handbook which won the Jean Feldman Poetry Prize from Washington Writers Publishing House. Steven holds an MFA from the University of Baltimore, where he is an associate professor in the Klein Family School of Communications Design.Further Reading:Lucille Clifton's Collected PoemsTaylor Byas, "THE POETICS OF PERFORMANCE IN STEVEN LEYVA’S THE UNDERSTUDY’S HANDBOOK"The Future of Black: Afrofuturism, Black Comics, and Superhero Poetry (Blair)

Read: "Self Portrait with Arithmetic," "Self-Portrait Without Wings," and "Self-Portrait as Smaller Moon" at The Brooklyn QuarterlyPurchase: Flutter, Kick by Anna V. Q. Ross (Red Hen Press, 2022)Anna V.Q. Ross's previous collections include If a Storm (Anhinga Press, winner of the Robert Dana-Anhinga Prize for Poetry); Figuring (Bull City Press); and Hawk Weather (winner the New Women’s Voices Prize from Finishing Line Press and the Jean Pedrick Chapbook Award from the New England Poetry Society). A recipient of fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Fulbright Foundation, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Vermont Studio Center, her recent work appears in Kenyon Review, Harvard Review, The Nation, The Missouri Review, Poetry Northwest, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. She is poetry editor for Salamander Magazine and teaches at Tufts University and through the Emerson Prison Initiative. Anna lives with her family in Dorchester, where she runs the poetry and music series Unearthed Song & Poetry and raises chickens.Reading/Viewing Recommendations:Muriel Rukeyser's ("I lived in the first century of world wars")Visual art by Shelly Julian Bunde ("She Left For Good One Time But Came Back")