Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast

Adela Najarro is a poet with a social consciousness who is working on a novel. She serves on the board of directors for Círculo de poetas and Writers and works with the Latine/x community nationwide, promoting the intersection of creative writing and social justice. Her extended family left Nicaragua and arrived in San Francisco during the 1940s; after the fall of the Somoza regime, the last of the family settled in the Los Angeles area. She is the author of four poetry collections: Split Geography, Twice Told Over, My Childrens, and Volcanic Interruptions, a chapbook that includes Janet Trenchard's artwork. The 2024 Int'l Latino Book Awards designated Volcanic Interruptions as an Honorable Mention in the Juan Felipe Herrera Best Poetry Book Award category. The California Arts Council has recognized her as an established artist for the Central California Region and appointed her as an Individual Artist Fellow.

The poems in Variations in Blue address the aftermath of domestic violence through the transformative power of language, leading to healing and empowerment via the author’s journey into her Latine/x culture. They cycle through the traumatic residue of dysfunctional relationships, the complexities of Latinx representation through a series of ekphrastic poems, and reimagine Nicaragua as a homeland set in a volcanic landscape. Each section contains a series of poetic variations on a theme, and the poems reverberate and rotate through the indeterminacy of language. Najarro’s Variations in Blue insists that the complexities of experience must be understood one version at a time, each distinctly unfolding its unique design.

The Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast April submitted poems episode features four 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.

Listen to the poems using your favorite podcast player and then read each below:

• Portrait of a Waxwing by Lores Denison
• Melanophobia by Maya Sheppard
• One July Ago, There Was a Cafe by Keith Gaboury
• Venus of Urbino by Kenneth Boyd

Liz Cahill is the Co-founder & Executive Director of Decentered Arts and leads the organizational and strategic direction. Liz is also a founding member and resident of Uzay Gallery, a poet, event producer, and researcher. She is working on her first book of poems, Garbage Age Lady, forthcoming on Decentered Press. Outside of the arts she can be found cooking food for friends and biking with her tiny dog Rya in a backpack.

The Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast March submitted poems episode features four 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. Subscribe today.

• A Father's Pride by Rachel Novak
• BREATHE by Shada Harris
• watch by Julia Skye
• How to Catch Fire by Jaineba Chang

Lena Khalaf Tuffaha is a poet, essayist and translator. She is author of three books of poetry: Something About Living (University of Akron Press, 2024), winner of the 2024 National Book Award for Poetry and the 2022 Akron Poetry Prize; Kaan & Her Sisters (Trio House Press), finalist for the 2024 Firecracker Award and honorable mention for the 2024 Arab American Book Award; and Water & Salt (Red Hen), winner of the 2018 Washington State Book Award and honorable mention of the 2018 Arab American Book Award. She is also the author of two chapbooks, Arab in Newsland, winner of the 2016 Two Sylvias Prize, and Letters from the Interior (Diode, 2019), finalist for the 2020 Jean Pedrick Chapbook Prize. For more about her work, visit www.lenakhalaftuffaha.com. 

Queer poet and writer Cass Donish was born and raised in the Greater Los Angeles Area. They are the author of the poetry collections Beautyberry and The Year of the Femme, winner of the Iowa Poetry Prize, as well as the nonfic­tion chapbook, On the Mezzanine. Their work has appeared in The American Poetry Review, Denver Quarterly, The Gettysburg Review, Guernica, The Iowa Review, The Kenyon Review, Poem-a-Day, VICE, and elsewhere. Donish received an MA in cultural geography from the University of Oregon, an MFA in poetry from Washington University in St. Louis, and a PhD in English and creative writing from the University of Missouri. They live in Columbia, Missouri.

A trigger warning. Please note that this interview, because of the subject matter and themes of Cass' new book, touch on suicide. If you are having suicidal thoughts please reach out for support resources in your area.

The Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast November submitted poems episode features four 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.

Featured poets in this episode:

• ràithean by Eartha Davis
• Park Avenue South by Thomas Sadoski
• The Chase by hms

Robin LaMer Rahija is originally from Kansas City, MO and now lives in Kentucky. She received her MFA from the University of Kentucky, where she is currently staff in the Department of English. In 2010, she co-founded and edited Rabbit Catastrophe Press, a handbound, feminist, book arts micropress. In 2015, she co-founded Workhorse Writers Collective, a publishing and education platform for poets outside of academia. Her poems have appeared in Puerto Del Sol, FENCE, Spoon River Review, and elsewhere. Inside Out Egg is her first full-length book, published by Variant Lit in 2024.

The Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast October submitted poems episode features four 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. Subscribe today.

Featured poets:

• Things Will Work Out by Madi Huffman
• Summer Storm by Ben Fowlkes
• African Black Soap Burns Me Now by Dereka Smith
• New York Rhino by VA Wiswell

Tyler Mills is the author of the memoir The Bomb Cloud (Unbound Edition Press 2024), which received a Literature Grant from the Café Royal Foundation NYC. Her poetry guidebook, Poetry Studio: Prompts for Poets, is newly released this summer (2024) from the University of Akron Press. She is the author of the poetry books City Scattered (Tupelo Press 2022), Hawk Parable (University of Akron Press 2019), Tongue Lyre (Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award, Southern Illinois University Press 2013), and co-author with Kendra DeColo of Low Budget Movie (Diode Editions 2021). A poet and essayist, her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Guardian, The New Republic, the Kenyon Review, The Believer, and Poetry, and her essays in AGNI, Brevity, Copper Nickel, River Teeth, and The Rumpus. She teaches for Sarah Lawrence College’s Writing Institute and the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center's 24PearlStreet and lives in Brooklyn on part of the unceded homeland of the Lenape people. 

The Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast August submitted poems episode features six 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. Subscribe today.

• Home, My Home by Alexandra Sim
• ​​Alton and Aaliyah by Dolapo Demuren
• Permission by Morgan Stone
• The Color is Brown by Reonda Thompson
• A Smart Girl by Stepy Kamei
• Nocturne: Rockland Bakery, 3 AM by Christine Potter

AE Hines is the author of Adam in the Garden (Charlotte Lit Press, 2024) and Any Dumb Animal (Main Street Rag, 2021). He has won the Red Wheelbarrow Prize and Palette Poetry’s Love and Eros Prize, and has been a finalist for the Montreal International Poetry Prize. His poems have been widely published in such journals as The Southern Review, Rattle, The Sun, Prairie Schooner and Alaska Quarterly. And his literary criticism can be found in American Poetry Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Rain Taxi, and Northwest Review. He received his MFA from Pacific University, and resides in Charlotte and Medellín, Colombia. More at www.aehines.net

Olivia Gatwood is the author of two poetry collections, New American Best Friend and Life of the Party, and the co-writer of Adele’s music video for "I Drink Wine." She has received international recognition for her poetry, writing workshops, and work as a Title IX Compliant educator in sexual assault prevention and recovery. Her performances have been featured on HBO, MTV, VH1, the BBC, and more. Her poems have appeared in The Poetry Foundation, Lambda Literary, and The Missouri Review. Originally from Albuquerque, she lives in Los Angeles.

The Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast June submitted poems episode features six 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.

June featured poets:

• Under by Scott Pleasants
• Fabrication by Jennifer Brown
• Faces by Kenya McDonald
• Harry’s by Olivia Qi
• Orderly by Hoyt Rogers

Ellen Chang-Richardson is an award-winning poet of Taiwanese and Chinese Cambodian descent whose multi-genre writing has appeared in Augur, The Fiddlehead, Grain, Plenitude, Watch Your Head: Writers and Artists Respond to the Climate Crisis, The Spirits Have Nothing to Do with Us: New Chinese Canadian Fiction and others. The co-founder of Riverbed Reading Series, they are a member of Room’s editorial collective, long con magazine’s editorial board and the creative poetry collective VII. They are represented by Tasneem Motala at the Rights Factory and currently live on the traditional unceded territory of the Algonquin Nation (Ottawa, Canada).

The Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast May submitted poems episode features six 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. Subscribe today.

Lauren Ducrey is an award-winning poet, speaker, mindfulness facilitator, AI designer (ex-Google) and string cheese enthusiast. When she’s not designing more emotionally supportive AI, she’s on a mission to break poetry out of its ivory tower as an accessible tool to support our well-being. She spent 7 years at Google hacking poetry into the workplace with team-building and leadership training that build on the connective power of language. She also supports individuals writing themselves out loud through workshops, writing courses, and 1-on-1 mentoring. She weaves a poetic community wherever she goes, hosting events and interactive performances in NYC and Paris. Her tools of choice on this mission are her two Masters in Literature and Social Innovation, her previous lives as a political speechwriter and educator, as well as an unrelenting sense of humor. 

Her book of poems Tongues Tied and her album of poetry and music Cordes sensibles make words leap off the page in conversation with artwork and original riffs. Her pieces are also featured in Initium Magazine, Humankind Magazine, Fabernovel.com, as well as in mindfulness apps Minderful and RogaLife. Her piece "The Second Cactus" is the laureate of the 2022 Moving Words competition, an international project bringing poems to the screen with ani

J. Mae Barizo, born in Toronto to Filipino immigrants, is a poet, essayist, librettist and multidisciplinary artist. She is the author of two books of poetry, Tender Machines (Tupelo Press, 2023) and The Cumulus Effect. A finalist for the Graywolf Nonfiction Prize and the 2023 Megaphone Prize, her work has been anthologized in books published by W.W. Norton, Atelier Editions and Harvard University Press. Recent writing appears in Poetry, Ploughshares, Esquire, Los Angeles Review of Books, Paris Review Daily, Boston Review, BookForum, among others.

As a librettist, she is the inaugural recipient of Opera America's IDEA residency, given to artists who have the potential to shape the future of opera. Her monodrama ISOLA will have its world premiere at Long Beach Opera in 2024, and UNBROKEN, commissioned for Opera Theatre of St. Louis, will be premiered in 2024. She is also the recipient of fellowships and awards from Bennington College, Mellon Foundation, Opera America, Jerome Foundation and Poets House. She is on the MFA faculty of The New School and lives in New York City.

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.

• A Defense of Vermin by Peter Carellini
• Kiting by t.m. thomson
• The Fallen by Edward Sankey
• Crow in Variations by Diane Sahms
• Her Name is Heather by Tobi Alfier

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.

• Tell me Again by Cerid Jones
• Meals with Grandma and Grandpa by Lori Rottenberg
• The Aves of Morning by Caroline Wellman
• Nameless Things by Özge Lena
• Broken Glass by Kenya McDonald

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.

Brennan DeFrisco is a poet, teaching artist, editor, voice actor, & ekphrastic artist from the San Francisco Bay Area. He’s been a National Poetry Slam finalist, a Pushcart Prize nominee, Grand Slam Champion of the Oakland Poetry Slam, & regional coordinator for California Poets in the Schools, Poetry Out Loud, & the San Francisco Arts Commission. He’s the author of A Heart With No Scars, published by Nomadic Press, & has served as poetry editor on the mastheads of Lunch Ticket, Caesura & Meow Meow Pow Pow. His work has been published in Red Wheelbarrow, Oracle Fine Arts Review, Drunk in a Midnight Choir, JMWW Journal, Words Dance, & elsewhere. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing with a focus in poetry from Antioch University Los Angeles.

• thank god for thanking god by Esteban Allard-Valdivieso
• Girlhood by Lucy Rattner
• Sins of Gold by Daude Teel
• Laura in April by Derek Kannemeyer
• Unannounced Guest by Alison Davis

Loreena McKennitt, currently on a North America, Europe, and United Kingdom tour, is a multi-faceted Canadian artist known for her unique blend of pop, folk, and worldbeat music, often described as "eclectic Celtic." With over 14 million records sold worldwide, she has achieved gold and platinum status in 15 countries. McKennitt owns her record label, Quinlan Road, and has an extensive catalog that includes hits like "The Mummers' Dance." She has received numerous awards, including two Junos and a Grammy nomination. Not just a musician, she's also an advocate for intellectual property rights and a philanthropist with her own charitable organizations. From small-town roots to global stardom, she's a self-managed powerhouse in the music industry.

Carol Guess is the author of numerous books of poetry and prose, including Doll Studies: Forensics and Tinderbox Lawn. Forthcoming books include a short story collection, Sleep Tight Satellite (Tupelo Press), and a hybrid poetry collection, Infodemic (Black Lawrence Press). A frequent collaborator, she writes across genres and illuminates historically marginalized material. In 2014 she was awarded the Philolexian Award for Distinguished Literary Achievement by Columbia University. She is Professor of English at Western Washington University, where she teaches Queer Literature and Creative Writing.

The Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast September submitted poems episode features six wonderful contributions read by six 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.

Featured poets include:

• You left a box of neckties by Ani Jones
• Words and Lives by Siavash Saadlou
• My Blue Affront by Keith Mark Gaboury
• A Brief History of Obsession by Sara Femenella
• A Pair of Ruby Red Slipper Threw Up All Over My Dining Room Table by Kelsey Kessler
• Astrolabe by Marianne Tefft

This week's episode features a special excerpt from the Exploring San Francisco podcast by San Francisco Travel. Award-winning host and travel writer Aaron Millar welcomes Viewless Wings founder and City of Dublin Poet Laureate James Morehead to recite his poem "nine point five miles per hour", recorded while riding a cable car. James' poem was inspired by the San Francisco Cable Car Museum.

Hear the complete episode and follow Exploring San Francisco on your favorite podcast streaming service.

Brandon Rushton is the author of The Air in the Air Behind It (Tupelo Press, 2022), selected by Bin Ramke for the Berkshire Prize. Born and raised in Michigan, his individual poems have received awards from Gulf Coast and Ninth Letter and appear widely in publications like The Southern Review, Denver Quarterly, Pleiades, Bennington Review, and Passages North. His essays appear in Alaska Quarterly Review, Terrain.org, the critical anthology, A Field Guide to the Poetry of Theodore Roethke, and have been listed as notable by Best American Essays. After earning his MFA from the University of South Carolina, he joined the writing faculty at the College of Charleston. Since the fall of 2020, he's served as a visiting professor of Writing at Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Caitlin Conlon is a poet and avid reader from Upstate New York. She holds a BA in English and a Creative Writing Certificate from the University at Buffalo and, while there, was chosen for the Friends of the University Libraries Undergraduate Poetry Prize, and the Arthur Axlerod Memorial Prize for Poetry. Her debut poetry collection, The Surrender Theory, was released in 2022 with Central Avenue Publishing. You can find her online almost anywhere @cgcpoems. Below are excerpts from the interview with James Morehead on the Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast.

A trigger warning for listeners: the book being discussed contains sensitive material related to death, grief, and mental health.

Roger Craik, Professor Emeritus of English at Kent State University, Ohio, has written four collections of poetry: I Simply Stared (2002), Rhinoceros in Clumber Park (2003), The Darkening Green (2004), and Down Stranger Roads (2014), along with two chapbooks, Those Years (2007), (translated into Bulgarian in 2009), and Of England Still (2009). His poetry has appeared in several national poetry journals, such as The Formalist, Fulcrum, The Literary Review, The Atlanta Review, The London Grip and The London Magazine. English by birth and educated at the universities of Reading and Southampton, he has worked as a journalist, TV critic, and chess columnist. Before coming to the USA in 1991, he worked in Turkish universities and was awarded a Beinecke Fellowship to Yale in 1990. He is widely traveled, having visited North Yemen, Egypt, South Africa, Tibet, Nepal, Japan, Bulgaria (where he taught during spring 2007 on a Fulbright Scholarship), the United Arab Emirates, Austria, Croatia and Romania, (where from 2013-14 he was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Oradea). He is glad every day that he is living in the USA. He watches the birds throughout the year, with joy.

L.J. Sysko is the author of “The Daughter of Man” (April ’23, University of Arkansas Press), the 2023 Miller Williams Poetry Series first finalist selected by Patricia Smith, and Battledore (Finishing Line Press), a chapbook about early motherhood. Sysko’s poems have been anthologized in “Best New Poets” and “Let me Say This: A Dolly Parton Poetry Anthology” (Madville Publishing) and have appeared in publications such as Ploughshares, The Missouri Review's "Poem of the Week," and Mississippi Review, among others. An MFA in poetry from New England College, a Virginia Center for Creative Arts Fellow, and a 2022 Palm Beach Poetry Festival Thomas Lux Scholar, Sysko is Director of Executive Communications at Delaware State University.

Adult content warning: A trigger warning for listeners: this interview includes adult themes and may not be appropriate for children.

Born in the Gambia, Kweku Abimbola earned his MFA in poetry from the University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers’ Program. He is of Gambian, Ghanaian, and Sierra Leonean descent. Abimbola’s first full-length poetry collection, Saltwater Demands a Psalm, was published by Graywolf Press in 2023. In 2022, the début collection was selected by Tyehimba Jess to receive the Academy of American Poets’ First Book Award. Abimbola’s writing primarily investigates colonization, Black mourning, Black boyhood, gender politics, and the spiritual consequences of climate change in West Africa. He is a Visiting Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Tampa.

The Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast June submitted poems episode features five wonderful contributions read by five 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. Subscribe today.

• Whiskey Breath by Sinead McGuigan

• Nothing to Lose by Heather MacKechnie

• How to What? by Lawrence Bridges

• You May Experience Some Joint Discomfort by Denise Alden

• Pray for my Daughter by Dana Kinsey

On this episode we welcome poet Aimee Baker and filmmakers Jason Greer and Vanessa Cicarelli to discuss the award-winning documentary "She" based on Baker's collection "Doe" which tells the stories of missing and unidentified women through poetry. A warning that this episode deals with subject matter some listeners may find triggering or disturbing.

Aimée Baker is the author of the Akron Prize-winning collection of poetry Doe (University of Akron Press, 2018) which was the subject of the documentary She (Birdy & Bean Films, 2022) starring Kate Mulgrew, Coco Jones, and Raven Goodwin. As a multi-genre writer, Aimée’s work has been published in journals such as Guernica, The Southern Review, and Black Warrior Review. Currently she teaches at a university in upstate New York and is working on her next book.

Jason Greer and Vanessa Cicarelli are high school sweethearts that have been together for over 25 years. Jason was born in Bozeman, Montana and Vanessa in Montreal, Quebec. They now live in Upstate New York where they raise their children and run a family business. They started Greer  Cicarelli Photography in 2000 specializing in commercial photography and video production. Their work has been featured in numerous magazines and publications both nationally and internationally. Jason and Vanessa believe in telling authentic stories through photography or film. “She” is their first full-length film. What began as a passion project has taken on a life of its own, interweaving the weight of the forgotten with feminine beauty and the power of knowledge.

As a bonus, Daniel agreed to share lyrics from an upcoming project, Ashes and Diamonds.

Katy Didden is the author of Ore Choir: The Lava on Iceland (Tupelo Press, 2022), and The Glacier’s Wake (Pleiades Press, 2013). Her poems, essays, and reviews appear in journals such as Public Books, Poetry Northwest, Ecotone, Diagram, The Kenyon Review, Image, 32 Poems, The Spoon River Poetry Review, The Sewanee Review, and Poetry, and her work has been featured on Verse Daily and Poetry Daily.  She has received fellowships and residencies from The Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Vermont Studio Center, the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, the Ragdale Foundation, the Hambidge Center, the MacDowell Colony, and the Listhús Residency in Ólafsfjörður, Iceland. She was also a 2013-2014 Hodder Fellow at Princeton University. Collaborating with members of the Banff Research in Culture’s Beyond Anthropocene Residency, she co-created Almanac for the Beyond (Tropic Editions, 2019). Katy is an Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing at Ball State University.