Episodes

  • Zoë Ryder White (Of Wonder, Emily Dickinson, and Titling Poems)
    Mar 17 2026

    Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).
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    Read: "Listen to Yourself" (Sixth Finch)

    Purchase: The Visible Field (River River Books, 2026)

    Zoë Ryder White’s first full-length collection, The Visible Field, was published by River River Books in February, 2026. A chapbook, Via Post, was a finalist for Tupelo Press’ Snowbound Chapbook award and won the Sixth Finch chapbook contest in 2022. HYPERSPACE was the editors’ choice pick for the Verse Tomaž Šalamun Prize in 2020 and is available from Factory Hollow Press. She co-authored A Study in Spring (Rabbit Catastrophe Press, 2015) and Elsewhere (Sixth Finch Press, 2020) with Nicole Callihan. Her poems have appeared in Tupelo Quarterly, Iterant, Plume, and Threepenny Review, among others. A former elementary school teacher, she edits books for educators about the craft of teaching. She lives in New York’s Hudson Valley with her family.

    Reading Recommendations

    Vijay Seshadri

    Emily Dickinson

    Letters of Emily Dickinson

    Nicole Callihan

    Imogene's Antlers (children's book)

    The Poetics of Revery by Gaston Bachelard

    The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard

    Molly Spencer

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    1 hr and 12 mins
  • J.D. Ho (Of Mystery and Empathy, Cover Design, and Foraging in Winter)
    Feb 24 2026

    Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).
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    Read: the title essay "Backyard Alchemy" (The Common)

    Purchase: Backyard Alchemy: on life with other creatures in a time of salvage (River River Books, 2026)

    J.D. Ho was born by the sea, raised on a rock, schmoozed in Hollywood, drove to Austin, Texas for an MFA, and now lives among foxes and deer on a sliver of east coast green. J.D.’s work has appeared in Georgia Review, Missouri Review, Ninth Letter, and other journals.

    Reading Recommendations

    Mushroom at the End of the World by Anna Tsing

    The Fall of Iris Henley by Jennifer Graham

    Brilliant Minds (tv show)

    Alban Fischer (Designer and editor)

    Pastoral, 1994 by Joe Wilkins

    Scythe by Elizabeth Sylvia

    Your Mother’s Bear Gun by Corrie Williamson

    EcoTheo Review

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    55 mins
  • Elizabeth Sylvia (Of Gardens, Marie Antoinette, and Loving What is Flawed)
    Feb 16 2026

    Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).
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    Read: "On Learning that Kim Kardashian Exceeded her Water Allowance by 232,000 Gallons in June" (Passengers Journal)

    Purchase: Scythe (River River Books, 2026)


    Elizabeth Sylvias first book, None But Witches: Poems on Shakespeare’s Women (2022), won the 2021 3 Mile Harbor Press Book Award. Her chapbook My Little Book of Domestic Anxieties (2025) is available from Ballerini Books, and her second full-length collection, Scythe, is available now from River River Books. She has been a finalist or semi-finalist in competitions sponsored by the Burnside Review, C&R Press, DIAGRAM, Thirty West, Rare Swan, and Wolfson Press, and is a reader for SWWIM Every Day. Elizabeth has received fellowships from the New York Public Library, the West Chester University Poetry Center, and the Longleaf Writers Conference, and is the winner of the 2023 riverSedge Poetry Prize. Elizabeth grew up on Martha’s Vineyard and currently teaches in Southeastern Massachusetts, where she lives with her husband, two daughters, and an extravagantly demanding garden.

    Recommended Reading:

    Richard Siken's Crush
    Lady Wing Shot by Sara Moore Wagner

    If Some God Shakes Your House by Jennifer Franklin

    Ceive by BK Fischer

    Rue by Kathryn Nuernberger

    No Longer at This Address by Andrew Hemmers

    The Garden Against Time by Olivia Laing

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    1 hr and 6 mins
  • Majda Gama (Of Arabic Oral Tradition, the Sonics of the Ghazal, and the Western Luxury of Telling the Truth in Your Poems)
    Jan 19 2026

    Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).
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    Read: "Ghazal: Morning" (The Offing)

    Purchase: In the House of Modern Upbringing for Girls(Wandering Aengus Press, 2025)

    Majda Gama was born in Beirut to a Saudi father and American mother. Her hometown is Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and her roots Hijazi, but she also has a long, complicated relationship with Northern Virginia where her father was stationed in the 1970's. Majda is the author of In the House of Modern Upbringing for Girls (Wandering Aengus Press, 2025) and The Call of Paradise, (Two Sylvia’s, 2023). Her poetry has been honored with the Graybeal-Gowen award for Virginia poets from Shenandoah and the Gregory Djanikian scholar award for poetry from Adroit. Recent poems have appeared in, or are forthcoming from, AGNI, Ploughshares, POETRY, Prairie Schooner, Swamp Pink, Tupelo Quarterly, and TriQuarterly.

    Recommended reading
    2017 PEN America World Voices: Sheyr Jangi (Poetic Battles)

    Lena Khalaf Tuffaha

    Mahmoud Darwish

    Fady Joudah

    Gwendolyn Brooks

    Jill Kitchen

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    1 hr and 15 mins
  • Frances Klein (Of the Alaskan Rural, the Quantifying Work That Poets Do Best, and the Emotional Intensity of Writing Labor)
    Dec 11 2025

    Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).
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    Read: Three Poems by Frances Klein at Cultural Daily

    Purchase: Another Life (Riot in Your Throat Press, 2025)

    Frances Klein is an Alaskan poet and teacher. Klein is the author of the poetry collection Another Life (Riot in Your Throat Press, 2025). She is also the author of several poetry chapbooks, including (Text) Messages from The Angel Gabriel (Gnashing Teeth, 2024). Klein is the founding editor of Flight: A Literary Sampler, and an editor at The Weight Journal. Her writing has appeared in Best Microfictions, Rattle, the Harvard Advocate, the London Magazine, HAD, and others. Klein lives in Southeast Alaska with her husband and son.

    Recommended Reading:

    Terrance Hayes, "Wind in a Box" (poem, also recommend book)

    Jericho Brown

    Marianne Baruch, Grace, Fallen from

    Joshua Bennett

    Robert Hass

    Lucille Clifton

    Sarah Vap, End of the Sentimental Journey

    James Tate

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    1 hr and 3 mins
  • Nicole Cooley (Of Form and Flood, the Documentation of Grief, and Poetry That Violates Rules)
    Nov 19 2025

    Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).
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    Read: "Mother Water Ash" (Poets.org)

    Purchase: MOTHER WATER ASH(Louisiana State University Press 2024)

    Nicole Cooley grew up in New Orleans and is the author of seven books of poems, most recently MOTHER WATER ASH(Louisiana State University Press 2024), as well as OF MARRIAGE (Alice James Books 2018), GIRL AFTER GIRL AFTER GIRL (LSU Press 2018) and BREACH (LSU Press 2010). She has received the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets, an NEA grant, and the Emily Dickinson Award from The Poetry Society of America, and most recently a grant from the New Jersey Council for the Arts. She is a professor in the MFA Program in Creative Writing and Literary Translation at Queens College, The City University of New York and lives in NJ with her family.

    Reading Recommendations:

    Yannis Ritsos

    Incendiary Art by Patricia Smith

    The Dream of Reason by Jenny George

    The Poet in the Worldby Denise Levertov

    The Art of Deathby Edwidge Danticat

    Against Forgetting by Carolyn Forche

    Orbit by Victoria Chang

    Mother Hunger by Kelly McDaniel

    "A Small Needful Fact" by Ross Gay

    C.D. Wright

    Philip Levine

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    1 hr and 1 min
  • Natalie Solmer (Of Genealogies of Water, the Great Lakes and Diane Seuss, and the Working Class, Rural Lyric)
    Oct 28 2025

    Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).
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    Purchase: Water Castle by Natalie Solmer (Kelsay Books, 2024)

    Read: "I Am a Great Lake" (MER)


    Natalie Solmer was born and raised in South Bend, Indiana, a granddaughter of Polish and German immigrants. She worked in the field of horticulture for many years, including 13 years as a grocery store florist, before becoming a professor of English and creative writing. She teaches at Ivy Tech Community College in Indianapolis and is the founder and editor in chief of Indianapolis Review. Her work has been published in journals such as North American Review, Notre Dame Review, Pleiades, Mom Egg Review, and Tab Poetry Journal. Her debut book of poems, Water Castle, was published by Kelsay Books in the fall of 2024. You can find her poems, visual poetry, and visual art at http://www.nataliesolmer.com

    Reading Recommendations:

    The Indianapolis Review

    Diane Seuss, Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl (Graywolf, 2018)

    "Song in my Heart" by Diane Seuss

    Gustav Klimt

    Frida Kahlo

    "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" by Walter Benjamin

    Joyelle McSweeney, Death Styles (Nightboat Books, 2024)

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    1 hr and 6 mins
  • Sarah Green (Of Dictionaries, Salvage and Destruction, and the Longing to Make Something Good)
    Oct 14 2025

    Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).
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    Purchase: The Deletions (Editor’s Choice, Akron Poetry Prize)

    Sarah Green is the author of an April 2025 release, The Deletions (Editor’s Choice, Akron Poetry Prize) and a previous collection, Earth Science. Her poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Paris Review, New Ohio Review, 32 Poems, FIELD, Copper Nickel, Gettysburg Review, Pleiades, and elsewhere. A two-time Pushcart Prize winner, she is an Associate Professor of English at St. Cloud State.

    Reading Recommendations:
    Kylie Gellatly

    Marie Howe

    Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey

    James Wright

    Marianne Moore

    Merriam-Webster

    The Lost Words by Robert Macfarlane

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    1 hr and 3 mins