The Hive Poetry Collective

Adela is the Board President for Círculo de poetas and Writers and works with the Latinx community nationwide, promoting the intersection of creative writing and social justice. Adelanajarro.com

Join the Hive Live! Tuesday, May 13, at Bookshop Santa Cruz, to hear Francisco Aragón and Adela Najarro.

More about Letras Latinas here. 

Rubén and Dion kick of the show by reading "Eating Together," by Li-Young Lee.

Then they read from Rubén Quesada's new book, Brutal Campanion.

Ruben Quesada, Ph.D is an award-winning poet and editor. He edited the groundbreaking anthology Latinx Poetics: Essays on the Art of Poetry, winner of the Gold Medal from the Independent Publisher Book Awards. His poetry and criticism appear in The New York Times Magazine, Best American Poetry, Ploughshares, Harvard Review, and American Poetry Review. He has served as poetry editor for AGNI, Poet Lore, Pleiades, Tab Journal, and as a poetry blogger for The Kenyon Review and Ploughshares. He currently teaches as Affiliate Faculty in the MFA in Creative Writing Program at Antioch University Los Angeles.

Brutal Companion is a haunting and visceral collection of poems that explores themes of identity, sexuality, loss, and personal transformation. Drawing from his own experiences as a gay man, the poet delves unflinchingly into memories of desire, trauma, and self-discovery against the backdrop of an often unforgiving world. From intimate encounters and dreamlike visions to searing societal critiques, the poems paint a complex portrait of navigating life at the margins. Deeply sensory and evocative, Brutal Companion is a fierce meditation on survival and a testament to poetry's ability to wrest meaning and resilience from even the darkest places.

We mention The Blessing by James Wright.

Join Julie Murphy and Chicago poet, Christy Prahl, as they read and discuss Kwame Dawes' poem Sea and Rain from his book Nebraska. Then they dive into Christy's We Are Reckless (Cornerstone Press), a gorgeous collection of midwest poems that take a daring look into relationships, identity, pleasure, loss, and more. Sprinkled though the conversation is bits of craft, stories and laughter. The show concludes with an imaginative poem from Christy's new manuscript.

Christy Prahl is an Illinois Arts Council grant recipient and the author of the poetry collections We Are Reckless (Cornerstone Press, 2023), With Her Hair on Fire (Roadside Press, forthcoming fall 2025), and Catalog of Labors (Unsolicited Press, forthcoming fall 2026). A Best of the Net and three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has been featured in Poetry Daily as well as many national and international journals, including the Asheville Poetry Review, CALYX, Louisville Review, Penn Review, Sugar House Review, Salt Hill Journal, Tar River Poetry, and others. She splits her time between a small workers’ cottage in Chicago and refurbished Quonset hut in rural southwest Michigan.  

Poets discussed on the show include Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs, Bill Lavender, Aby Kaupang, Mark Nowak, Stacey Jones, Cherie Brown, and Veronica Eldredge--several of whom are featured in upcoming readings including April 26 and 27, 2pm PST (5pm EST) on Lit Balm: An Interactive Livestream Reading Series here: ⁠us04web.zoom.us/j/461603228. ⁠ 

⁠More information about readers here. ⁠

⁠Find out more about the book project here⁠: , and ⁠here.⁠

⁠Order Winter in America (Again here. ⁠

Cassandra, Hildegard of Bingen, Virginia Woolf, Ann Sexton...the link between visionary minds and what classifies as 'mental illness' is key to opening doors of perception. Join Karen Marker as she talks with Julia Chiapella about her new book, Under the Blue Umbrella, and a family history of schizophrenia as both stigma and chimera. Beneath the Blue Umbrella can be found here.

Please join Julie Murphy as she chats with Santa Cruz County's new Poet Laureate, Nancy Miller Gomez, about poetry in the jails and her plans to bring poetry to our community. Nancy reads Ruth Stone's poem, Another Feeling, and talks about the importance of paying attention and how daily observations, memories and current events can ease the challenge of facing a blank page. Listen to Nancy read poems from her stunning debut collection Inconsolable Objects.

Nancy Miller Gomez is the author of Inconsolable Objects (YesYes Books) and Punishment (Rattle Chapbook Series). Her work has appeared in Best American Poetry, Best New Poets, Prairie Schooner, TriQuarterly, The Adroit Journal, LitHub, Rattle, New Ohio Review, Massachusetts Review, River Styx, Verse Daily, The Hopkins Review, and elsewhere. She received a special mention in the 2023 Pushcart Prize Anthology and is the recipient of a fellowship from the Jentel Foundation. Gomez co-founded Poetry in the Jails, an organization that provides writing workshops to incarcerated women and men and has taught poetry in Salinas Valley State Prison, the Santa Cruz County Jails, the Juvenile Hall and as part of Cornell University’s Prison Education Program. She earned a B.A. from The University of California, San Diego, a J.D. from the University of San Diego and a Master in Fine Arts in Writing from Pacific University. Originally from Kansas she now lives with her family in Northern California and is thrilled to have recently been appointed Poet Laureate of Santa Cruz County. She is currently working on a second collection of poems and a collection of personal essays.

Don't miss the Poet Laureate Celebration at Bookshop Santa Cruz featuring Nancy Miller Gomez and Farnaz Fatemi. April 14, 7-9 PM.

More about In Celebration of the Muse at hivepoetry.org.

Santa Cruz poet, journalist, and author, Addie Mahmassani, buzzes into the Hive to talk Irish poetry with Dion O'Reilly. We read William Butler Yeats, Seamus Heaney, Samuel Beckett and Eamon-Grennan

Addie Mahmassani is originally from the East Coast, where she completed a PhD in American Studies. This spring she is finishing an MFA in poetry at SJSU. She covers Arts & Entertainment for Metro Silicon Valley and other Bay Area papers and served as poetry editor of Reed Magazine, Issue 156. Her first book, a feminist history of the American folk revival, is forthcoming with University of Iowa Press.

Dustin Brookshire has gathered an impressive array of poetic emulations in When I Was Straight: A Tribute to Maureen Seaton. They include free verse gestures, couplets, tercets, and prose poems. Maureen’s influence shines, though is never blinding—each of the poets in this anthology takes her title and makes the poem that follows their own.

(From the forward by Denise Duhamel)

We read poems from: Kelli Russell Agodon, Sarah Cooper, Aaron DeLee, Caridad Moro-Gronlier, Diamond Forde, and Addie Tsai.

Dustin Brookshire (he/him) is the author of the forthcoming chapbook Repeat As Needed (Harbor Editions, 2025) and the chapbooks Never Picked First For Playtime (Harbor Editions, 2023), Love Most Of You Too (Harbor Editions, 2021) and To T he One Who Raped Me (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2012). Love Most Of You Too and Never Picked First For Playtime were finalists in the Poetry Chapbook category of the American Book Fest’s Best Book Awards in 2022 and 2023, respectively.

Poet Maureen Seaton earned an MFA from Vermont College in 1996. She is the author of the poetry collections Fear of Subways (1991), winner of the Eighth Mountain Poetry Prize; The Sea Among the Cupboards (1992); Furious Cooking (1996), winner of both the Iowa Poetry Prize and a Lambda Literary Award; Little Ice Age (2001); Venus Examines Her Breast (2004), winner of the Publishing Triangle’s Audre Lorde Award; and Cave of the Yellow Volkswagen (2009).

Using collage techniques to create delight and dissonance, Seaton’s poetry has been described as unusual, compressed, and surrealistic. Seaton has explored the possibilities of collaboration throughout her career, writing poetry with Denise Duhamel in such collections as Exquisite Politics (1997), Oyl (2000), and Little Novels (2002). She also collaborated with Samuel Ace on Stealth (2011) and with Neil de la Flor on Sinead O’Connor and Her Coat of a Thousand Bluebirds (2011). Seaton, Duhamel, and David Trinidad edited an anthology titled Saints of Hysteria: A Half-Century of Collaborative American Poetry (2007).

Seaton is author of the Lambda Literary Award–winning memoir Sex Talks to Girls (2008), in which she addresses motherhood, sobriety, and sexuality. She teaches at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida.

(from the Poetry Foundation)

Julie Murphy and  Jessica Cohn discuss Jessica's debut book of poems Gratitude Diary, exploring themes of nature, family, loss, and yes, gratitude. Cohn reads Jane Hirshfield's poem My Debtand the poets discuss amazement and appreciation of beauty and nature, but also gratitude for the more challenging and difficult aspects of life.

A Michigan native, Jessica Cohn has made homes in Illinois, New York, and most recently, Aptos, California, where she started a poetry practice with the support of the Santa Cruz community of writers. In GRATITUDE DIARY, her first poetry collection, Cohn marks a path through our post-truth world with rocks, feathers, and observations in verse. This long-time editor and nonfiction author revels in the way poems say what cannot otherwise be said. For more, please visit jessicacohn.net or  jescohn@bsky.social.

Tune in as treasured poet Naomi Shihab Nye reads her poetry, talks of her Palestinian father and ancestors, and recalls the challenging event that led to her popular poem, "Kindness". She also shares a poem by Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Tofa from his bookForest of Noise. Listen to Naomi read poems from her books The Tiny Journalist, Fuel, Transfer, and Everything Comes Next.

Order Winter in America (Again here. 

Listen to readings from our 1/19 and 1/20 launches on KPFK Pacifica Radio in Los Angeles, on Bibliocracy with Andrew Tonkovich on 4 Thursdays at 2:30, starting Feb. 5. 

Join us at our launch events in Seattle (Feb. 4, Seattle U.); Tucson (Feb. 15, Gallery of Food;  San Francisco (March 1, Et Al and summer TBA, City Lights Bookstore), Los Angeles AWP (March 27, CSU-Los Angeles); Santa Cruz (April 1, Bookshop Santa Cruz and April 15, Inter Act, Satori Arts), Lit Balm Interactive Livestream (April 26 & 27 2pm EST), & more.

Farnaz and Sarah Pape discuss the poet's new book, Forgive the Animal, (Cornerstone Press), exploring questions of memory, vulnerability and revelation in her poems, along with the complexity of personal fallibility. Pape thinks and talks eloquently about the process of putting together the manuscript regarding a range of craft issues including point of view, form, and genre-crossing.

Sarah Pape's website is here.

Also mentioned in this interview: You Are No Longer in Trouble by Nicole Stellon O'Donnell

Julie Murphy andDane Cervine discussDEEP TRAVEL – At Home in the [Burning] World(Saddle Road Press), Danes new book of contemporaryhaibun. The poems are rooted in a series of journeys, a pilgrimage, that culminates in the poet findinghome in this fragile, yet resilient, world.

Miller Oberman and Dion O'Reilly read and discuss Omotara James's "My mother's nerves are shot."  and then do a deep dive into Oberman's newest collection, Impossible Things⁠.

Miller Oberman is the author of Impossible Things, forthcoming from Duke University Press, 2024 and The Unstill Ones, Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets, 2017.

He has received a number of awards for his poetry, including a Ruth Lilly Fellowship, the 92Y Discovery Prize, a NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship, and Poetry magazine’s John Frederick Nims Memorial Prize for Translation. Poems from Impossible Things have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, The Hopkins Review, Poem-a-Day, and Foglifter. Poems from The Unstill Ones appeared in Poetry, London Review of Books, The Nation, Boston Review, Tin House, and Harvard Review.

Miller is an editor at Broadsided Press, which publishes visual-literary collaborations and teaches at and serves on the board of Brooklyn Poets. He teaches writing at Eugene Lang College at The New School in New York. Miller is a trans Jewish anti-Zionist committed to the liberation of all. He lives with his family in Queens, New York.

Tim Seibles reads and discusses Lucille Clifton's poem "Hag Riding." Then he reads from his newest collection Voodoo Libretto: New & Selected Poems .

Tim Seibles was the Poet Laureate of Virginia from 2016 to 2018. He is a former National Endowment for the Arts fellow and Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center fellow. His seven books of poetry include Fast Animal, which was a finalist for the 2012 National Book Award, winner of the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Prize and the Pen Oakland Josephine Miles Award for Poetry. This was followed by One Turn Around the Sun in 2017. His latest collection, Voodoo Libretto: New & Selected Poems was released by Etruscan Press in 2022. He received a Lifetime Achievement Award from The Furious Flower Poetry Center in 2024.

Cintia Santana teaches literary translation and poetry workshops in Spanish and English at Stanford University. Santana's poems have appeared in Best New Poets 2016 and 2020, 2023 Best of the Net Anthology, Poets.org, Poetry Daily, among many others! Her debut poetry collection, The Disordered Alphabet published by Four Way Books in 2023) was short-listed for the 2023 California Independent Booksellers Alliance “Golden Poppy” Award, received the 2024 IPPY Bronze Medal, the 2023 North American Book Award's Silver Medal, and just this fall won the 43rd Annual Northern California Book Award in Poetry.  

https://www.cintiasantana.com

Chris Abani and Kwame Dawes chat with Dion O'Reilly about KUMI: New-Generation African Poets: A Chapbook Box Set

THE LIMITED-EDITION BOX SET is a project started in 2014 to ensure the publication of up to a dozen chapbooks every year by African poets through Akashic Books. The series seeks to identify the best poetry written by African poets working today, and it is especially interested in featuring poets who have not yet published their first full-length book of poetry.

The nine poets included in this box set are: Nurain Oládèjì, Sarpong Osei Asamoah, Claudia Owusu, Nome Emeka Patrick, Qhali, Connor Cogill, Feranmi Ariyo, Dare Tunmise, and Adams Adeosun.

KWAME DAWES is the author of numerous books of poetry and other works of fiction, criticism, and essays. His most recent poetry collection is Sturge Town which was published by Peepal Tree Press in the UK and W.W. Norton in the US. Dawes is a George W. Holmes University Professor of English and Glenna Luschei Editor of Prairie Schooner. He teaches in the Pacific MFA Program and is the series editor of the African Poetry Book Series, director of the African Poetry Book Fund, and artistic director of the Calabash International Literary Festival. He is a Chancellor for the Academy of American Poets and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Dawes is the winner of the prestigious Windham/Campbell Award for Poetry and was a finalist for the 2022 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. In 2022, Kwame Dawes was awarded the Order of Distinction Commander class by the Government of Jamaica, and in 2024, he was appointed Poet Laureate of Jamaica.
CHRIS ABANI's prose includes The Secret History of Las Vegas, Song for Night, The Virgin of Flames, Becoming Abigail, GraceLand, and Masters of the Board. His poetry collections include Smoking the Bible, Sanctificum, There Are No Names for Red, Feed Me the Sun, Hands Washing Water, Dog Woman, Daphne’s Lot, and Kalakuta Republic. He holds a BA and MA in English, an MA in gender and culture, and a PhD in literature and creative writing. Abani is the recipient of a PEN USA Freedom to Write Award, a Prince Claus Award, a Lannan Literary fellowship, a California Book Award, a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, a PEN Beyond Margins Award, a PEN/Hemingway Award, and a Guggenheim fellowship. He won the prestigious 2024 UNT Rilke Prize and was a finalist for the 2024 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. He is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Born in Nigeria, he is currently on the board of trustees, a professor of English, and director of African Studies at Northwestern University.

Burmese American poet Maw Shein Win's new book, Percussing the Thinking Jar, is a liminal elegy to health issues, relationships, and more while navigating the isolation of the pandemic. Hear Maw read poems from the book that's been called by author John Yau, "diaphanous comfort" while we are at "the chaos party." You can find Maw's book at University of Chicago Press. For more on the poet visit http://www.mawsheinwin.com.

 https://madhat-press.com/

https://litbalm.org/

Jan Beatty’s eighth book, Dragstripping, was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, September, 2024. Her memoir, American Bastard, won the Red Hen Nonfiction Award. Recent books include The Body Wars and a chapbook, Skydog (Lefty Blondie Press, 2022). Other work includes Jackknife: New and Selected Poems (University of Pittsburgh, 2018 Paterson Prize) named by Sandra Cisneros on LitHub as her favorite book of 2019. Beatty worked as a waitress, abortion counselor, and in maximum security prisons. She is Professor Emerita at Carlow University, where she directed creative writing, the Madwomen in the Attic workshops, and the MFA program. 

Luke and Dion read some Larry Levis and then take a deep dive into Luke's latest book.

Luke Johnson is the author of Quiver (Texas Review Press), a finalist for the Jake Adam York Prize, the Vassar Miller Award, The Levis Prize and the Bittingham. It was recently named a finalist for the California Book Award, winner announced in May. His second full length Distributary is forthcoming Fall 2025 from Texas Review Press. You can find more of his work at Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, Narrative Magazine, Poetry Northwest and elsewhere. 

Ellen Bass joins the Hive in anticipation of her appearance at UCSC for the Morton Marcus Memorial Poetry Reading on November 7. Full details about the event can be found here.

Poems by Ellen which she reads in this episode: Laundry, Because, Black Coffee, Any Common Desolation, and Bringing Flowers to Salinas Valley State Prison

About Our Guest:

Ellen Bass is a Chancellor Emerita of the Academy of American Poets. Her most recent book, Indigo, was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2020. Other poetry collections include Like a Beggar (Copper Canyon Press, 2014)—which was a finalist for The Paterson Poetry Prize, The Publishers Triangle Award, The Milt Kessler Poetry Award, The Lambda Literary Award, and the Northern California Book Award—The Human Line (Copper Canyon Press, 2007), and Mules of Love (BOA Editions, 2002), which won The Lambda Literary Award. She co-edited (with Florence Howe) the first major anthology of women’s poetry, No More Masks! (Doubleday, 1973).

Her poems have frequently appeared in The New Yorker and The American Poetry Review, as well as in The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, The American Poetry Review, The New Republic, The Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, The Sun and many other journals and anthologies. She was awarded Fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts and The California Arts Council and received the Elliston Book Award for Poetry from the University of Cincinnati, Nimrod/Hardman’s Pablo Neruda Prize, The Missouri Review’sLarry Levis Award, the Greensboro Poetry Prize, the New Letters Poetry Prize, the Chautauqua Poetry Prize, and four Pushcart Prizes.

Her non-fiction books include Free Your Mind: The Book for Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Youth (HarperCollins, 1996), I Never Told Anyone: Writings by Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse (HarperCollins, 1983), and The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse(Harper Collins, 1988, 2008), which has sold over a million copies and has been translated into twelve languages.

Ellen founded poetry workshops at Salinas Valley State Prison and the Santa Cruz, CA jails. She currently teaches in the low residency MFA writing program at Pacific University.

Maggie Paul is the author of Scrimshaw (Hummingbird Press 2020), Borrowed World, (Hummingbird Press 2011), and the chapbook, Stones from the Baskets of Others (Black Dirt Press 2000). Her poetry, reviews, and interviews have appeared in the Catamaran Literary Reader, Rattle, The Monterey Poetry Review, Porter Gulch Review, Red Wheelbarrow, and Phren-Z, SALT, and others. She is a poet and non-fiction writer in Santa Cruz, California.

Maggie's print interview with Ellen Bass can be found here.

Rick Barot weaves keen observations of the world with reflections and sustenance of human connections across space and time. Please join host Julie Murphy in a conversation with Rick that begins with a discussion of Naomi Shihab Nye's poem Lights from Other Windows and journeys through poems from Rick's new book Moving the Bones. Rick's exquisitely crafted poems examine the human experience deeply and intimately. In our troubled times, his voice is an invitation to find beauty and hope amidst the chaos.

Marc Vincenz is a poet, fiction writer, translator, editor, publisher, musician and artist. He has published over 40 books of poetry, fiction and translation. His latest poetry collections are A Splash of Cave Paint, and The King of Prussia is Drunk on Stars. His latest translation is An Audible Blue: Selected Poems (1963 - 2016) by celebrated Swiss poet and novelist, Klaus Merz, which won the 2023 Massachusetts Book Award for Translated Literature. His forthcoming poetry collections are Spells for the Wicked (Unlikely Books 2025) and No More Animal Poems with White Pine Press in 2026.  Marc’s work has been translated into German, Russian, Romanian, French, Icelandic, and Chinese.  Marc is the publisher for MadHat Press and New American Writing. He produces and hosts the biweekly reading series on Zoom, Lit Balm. 

Ryler Dustin has represented Seattle on the final stage of the Individual World Poetry Slam and his poems appear in outlets like Verse Daily, Major Jackson’s The Slowdown, and The Best of Button Poetry. He is the author of Trailer Park Psalms (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2023) and Heavy Lead Birdsong (Write Bloody Publishing, 2010). He lives in Bellingham, Washington, with his wife and a dog he met while hiking.

Danusha Laméris, a poet and essayist, was raised in Northern California, born to a Dutch father and Barbadian mother. Her first book, The Moons of August (2014), was chosen by Naomi Shihab Nye as the winner of the Autumn House Press Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the Milt Kessler Book Award. Some of her work has been published in: The Best American Poetry, The New York Times, Orion, The American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, and Prairie Schooner. Her second book, Bonfire Opera, (University of Pittsburgh Press, Pitt Poetry Series), was a finalist for the 2021 Paterson Poetry Award and recipient of the Northern California Book Award in Poetry. She was the 2018-2020 Poet Laureate of Santa Cruz County, California, and is currently on the faculty of Pacific University’s low residency MFA program. Her third book, Blade by Blade, is forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press.

Want to hear what it's like teaching poetry to Special Ops soldiers? Or how to delineate (or not) the space grief occupies? Tune in to hear poetry mining the vein of Robinson Jeffers and Theodore Roethke. George Lober's latest book, Rainbow Eucalyptus, New and Collected Poems, is available from ⁠Bookshop Santa Cruz⁠ and ⁠Amazon⁠.

Jessica Cuello reads from her latest book. Jessica and Dion also read the poem "Running Home I Saw the Planets" from Aracelis Girmay's book Kingdom Animalia.

Jessica Cuello’s most recent book is Yours, Creature (JackLeg Press, 2023). Her book Liar, selected by Dorianne Laux for The 2020 Barrow Street Book Prize, was honored with The Eugene Nassar Prize, The CNY Book Award, and a finalist nod for The Housatonic Book Award. Cuello is also the author of Hunt (The Word Works, 2017) and Pricking (Tiger Bark Press, 2016). Cuello has been awarded The 2022 Nina Riggs Poetry Prize, two CNY Book Awards, The 2016 Washington Prize, The New Letters Poetry Prize, a Saltonstall Fellowship, and The New Ohio Review Poetry Prize. She is poetry editor at Tahoma Literary Review and teaches French in Central NY.

Join Julie Murphy and fellow Bee, Geneffa Jahan, as they discuss “A Simple Poem for Virginia Woolf” by Bronwen Wallace, and then explore and delight in Geneffa's forthcoming book Spilling the Chai: Poems about Family and Food, published by Jamii Press.

Dion O'Reilly is the author of three poetry collections: Sadness of the Apex Predator, a finalist for the Steel Toe Book Prize and the Ex Ophidia Prize; Ghost Dogs, winner of the Pinnacle Book Achievement Award, The Independent Press Award for Poetry, and shortlisted for the Eric Hoffer Poetry Award and The Catamaran Poetry Prize; and Limerence, a finalist for the John Pierce Chapbook Competition, forthcoming from Floating Bridge Press. Her work appears in The Sun, Rattle, Cincinnati Review, The Slowdown, Alaska Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. She is a podcaster at The Hive Poetry Collective, leads poetry workshops, and is a reader for Catamaran Literary Reader. She splits her time between a ranch in the Santa Cruz Mountains and a residence in Bellingham, Washington.

Shizue Seigel has worked within marginalized communities for 30 years to help tell unheard stories--working with Black women living in public housing, Japanese American incarceration camp survivors, and other underrepresented groups. She is the founder of WriteNow! SF Bay, supporting writing and art by people of color. For more information, check out http://www.shizueseigel.com/ and www.WriteNowSF.com

Poems by others mentioned: Brigit Pegeen Kelly’s “Song” and Wallace Stevens’ “Snowman”. 

Louise Glück, who passed away last October at age 80, was one of the most important poets of our time. Former US Poet Laureate and winner of every major poetry prize, including the Noble and the Pulitzer, Louise was a passionate and beloved teacher. Bay Area poet Veronica Kornberg joins Julie Murphy in reading and discussing her poems, as well as sharing stories from her deep life.

Books by Louise Glück

Ellen Bryant Voigt on Louise Glück ("Brooding Likeness") on Close Readings.

Sally Ashton, former Santa Clara County Poet Laureate, drops into the Hive to talk with Farnaz Fatemi about her most recent book of poems, Listening to Mars. She shares poems which explore the sadness and surreal world of lockdown, what space exploration says about humans, and more. 

Sally Ashton is a poet, writer, Editor-in-Chief of the DMQ Review, San José State University professor emerita, lecturer, blogger, and workshop presenter who has taught over 100 workshops. She was appointed the second Santa Clara County Poet Laureate, 2011-2013. She has collaborated with both visual artists and musicians. She is Assistant Editor of They Said: A Multi-Genre Anthology of Contemporary Collaborative Writing, Black Lawrence Press, 2018. Her work is included in many anthologies.

Listening to Mars is her fifth book of poems.

We discuss a poem by Rachel McKibbons and several from Blanco's fabulous new book, Homeland of My Body⁠.

Selected by President Obama as the fifth Presidential Inaugural Poet in U.S. history, Richard Blanco was the youngest, the first Latinx, immigrant, and gay person to serve in that role. In 2023, Blanco was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Biden from the National Endowment for the Humanities.  Born in Madrid to Cuban exile parents and raised in Miami in a working-class family, Blanco’s personal negotiation of cultural identity and the universal themes of place and belonging characterize Blanco’s many collections of poetry, including his most recent, Homeland of My Body, which reassess traditional notions of home as strictly a geographical, tangible place that merely exist outside us, but rather, within us. He has also authored the memoirs FOR ALL OF US, ONE TODAY: AN INAUGURAL POET’S JOURNEY and THE PRINCE OF LOS COCUYOS: A MIAMI CHILDHOOD.  Blanco has received numerous awards, including the Agnes Starrett Poetry Prize, the PEN American Beyond Margins Award, the Patterson Prize, and a Lambda Prize for memoir. He was Woodrow Wilson Fellow and has received numerous honorary degrees.  Currently, he serves as Education Ambassador for The Academy of American Poets and is an Associate Professor at Florida International University.  In April 2022, Blanco was appointed the first-ever Poet Laureate of Miami-Dade County.

Braving the Body can be purchased at Small Habor Publishing or on Amazon.

Editors Pichchenda Bao, Nicole Callahan, and Jennifer Franklin provide candid insights into creating the anthology and read poems illustrating the breadth of content and craft on this timeless subject.

More info about the program here.

Follow the program on Instagram @youthpoetlaureatesantacruz

Join me for this special episode of poetic witness for Palestine, featuring Faris Sabbah and Beau Beausoleil. Listen as Santa Cruz County Superintendent of Schools, Dr Faris Sabbah, shares movingly about his Palestinian background and reads a poem he penned for his late father. We discuss a poem from Beau Beausoleil's latest volume, WAR NEWS--a collection of poems written daily since October 2023 to witness the effects of hearing news out of Gaza. Beau himself then joins me to read from this collection and discuss these very necessary poems.

AGITATE! Journal has partnered with the poet to provide WAR NEWS as a free digital download.

They write,

War News is a collection of 90 poems written everyday by Beausoleil since 8th October, 2023. The poems in the collection reflect on what it means to bear witness to war, killing, and destruction in Gaza, Palestine. It asks, what it means to be alive at a time when even the death and suffering of children fails to elicit a response strong enough to end the war. This collection of 90 poems is a witness testimony from afar. It is an archive of grief, mourning, and solidarity. It is an accounting of the cost of war. Through these powerful and devastating poems Beausoleil reminds us that we cannot turn away. In the poet’s own words, “[O]ur humanity, our collective morality, requires that we bear witness and then take some kind of action" (agitatejournal.org).

The entire volume may be downloaded as a PDF or read online, providing a useful reference as you listen to this thought-provoking episode.

----------------------------------------------------------------

Beau Beausoleil is a poet and activist based in San Francisco, California. His two most recent chapbooks are: The Killing of George Floyd (Intermittent Press, 2023) and Poems for Ukraine (Barley Books, UK, 2023). These poems also appear in the online Moving Parts Press Digital Poetry Series as Poems for George Floyd and In Ukraine: Poems. He is the founder of Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here, a global arts response to the car-bombing of Al-Mutanabbi Street (the street of the booksellers) in Baghdad, Iraq in 2007. It is a project of witness, memory, and solidarity with the Iraqi people by poets, artists, and writers. A selection of 24 poems from War News was also published by Moving Parts Press

(Bio, AgitateJournal.org).

Poet/interviewer Paul E. Nelson is the son of a labor activist father and Cuban immigrant mother. He founded the Cascadia Poetics LAB & the Cascadia Poetry Festival. Books include Cascadian Prophets (Interviews 1999-2023) (2024),  Haibun de la Serna (2022), A Time Before Slaughter/Pig War: & Other Songs of Cascadia (2020) American Prophets (interviews 1994-2012) (2018) & American Sentences (2015, 2021). Co-Editor of Cascadian Zen Volume I: Bioregional Writings on Cascadia Here and Now (2023, Watershed Press), Make it True meets Medusario (2019) (Spanish & English) and other anthologies. He’s Literary Executor for the late poet Sam Hamill and lives in Rainier Beach, alongside dəxʷwuqʷed Creek.

https://paulenelson.com/

https://cascadiapoeticslab.org/

Image by Roberta Hoffman

Join Dion O'Reilly as she talks with Ed Hirsch about 100 Poems to Break Your Heart.

Edward Hirsch, a MacArthur Fellow, has published ten books of poems, including The Living Fire, Gabriel: A Poem. and Stranger by Night. He has also published six prose books about poetry, among them, How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry, a national bestseller, 100 Poems to Break Your Heart, and The Heart of American Poetry. He is president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

Don't miss this enlivening and inspiring episode of the Hive Poetry Collective on KSQD. Join host Julie Murphy as she chats with spoken word poets Tara Bracco and Suzen Baraka. They read work newly published in the debut anthology, Poetic People Power and talk about their motto-- Art + Action= Change. This anthology draws from twenty years of live performances of Poetic People Power, poetry for social good. Their work explores social and political topics as well as their personal journeys.

Tara Bracco is founder and producing artistic director of Poetic People Power. She’s created, produced, and performed in 20 spoken word shows about the social and political issues of our time. She is a recognized leader in the field of art and social change and has been featured in O, The Oprah Magazine, Time Out New York, Brooklyn Rail, and HuffPost for her visionary leadership of Poetic People Power. She has spoken about art and activism at colleges, festivals, and theaters, and she is the recipient of 20 competitive grant awards. She is also the recipient of the 2015 Images and Voices of Hope Award. Her work as a journalist has been published by Cosmopolitan, American Theatre, Condé Nast Traveler, BUST, and Clamor. In 2009, she cofounded the international nonprofit The Project Solution, which serves 30,000 people in 14 countries. You can find Tara on Instagram and Facebook.      

Suzen Baraka is a two-time Emmy Award-winning poet and SAG-AFTRA actor. With a passion for performance ignited over 17 years ago, Suzen has graced stages nationwide, captivating audiences with her magnetic presence and powerful spoken word.  A true advocate for the transformative power of the arts, Suzen served as an artist in residence at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, using poetry and performance to inspire and uplift underprivileged youth in Irvington and Newark. Her commitment to social justice extends beyond the stage, as evidenced by her role as the writer and face of Theraflu’s Right to Recover Campaign, championing women's access to paid sick leave. Her work has been recognized with two regional Emmy Awards for her PSAs, titled: VOTE 2020 and My Asian. As an American actress, poet, and proud woman of Black and Korean descent, Suzen Baraka seeks to build bridges, spark conversations, challenge norms, and pave the way for a future where art and activism converge in powerful harmony.  You can contact Suzen on her website, Instagram, and Two Stop by David Johann Kim by the Ensemble Studio Theater at Atwater Village.

Lee Herrick⁠ in conversation with Farnaz Fatemi. Lee Herrick⁠  is the California Poet Laureate. He is the author of three books of poems: Scar and Flower, finalist for the 2020 Northern California Book Award; Gardening Secrets of the Dead; and This Many Miles from Desire. His poems appear widely, in The Poetry Foundation, Academy of American Poets, The Place That Inhabits Us: Poems from the San Francisco Bay Watershed, Indivisible: Poems of Social Justice with a foreword by Common, HERE: Poems for the Planet, with a foreword by the Dalai Lama, and Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy, among others. Herrick serves on the advisory board of Terrain.org and Sixteen Rivers Press. He co-founded LitHop in Fresno. Born in Daejeon, Korea and adopted as an infant, Herrick lives with his family in Fresno, California. He served as Fresno Poet Laureate from 2015-2017 and teaches at Fresno City College and in the low-residency MFA program at University of Nevada Reno at Lake Tahoe. He is the 10th California Poet Laureate, and the first Asian American to serve in the role.   

As mentioned in this episode, Lee Herrick's signature project as California Poet Laureate is "Our California," with more information here.

Dorianne Laux’s sixth collection,Only As the Day is Long: New and Selected Poems  was named a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Her fifth collection, The Book of Men, was awarded The Paterson Prize. Her fourth book of poems,  Facts About the Moon,  won The Oregon Book Award and was short-listed for the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize.  Laux is also the author of Awake;  What We Carry, a finalist for the National Book Critic’s Circle Award;  Smoke; as well as a fine small press edition,  The Book of Women.  She is  the co-author of the celebrated text  The Poet's Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry. Her latest collection is Life On Earth was released in January of 2024.