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The Hive Poetry Collective

The Hive Poetry Collective

By The Hive

Airing on KSQD 90.7 FM most Sundays at 8:00, the Hive Poetry Collective is a buzz of poets in Santa Cruz, California— a swarm of radio conversations, public readings, and writing workshops.

Find us at hivepoetry.org
And www.facebook.com/hivepoetry
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Currently playing episode

S3: E16 Journal X Debut

The Hive Poetry CollectiveMay 24, 2021

00:00
01:00:17
S6: E9 Lee Herrick, California Poet Laureate, chats with Farnaz Fatemi

S6: E9 Lee Herrick, California Poet Laureate, chats with Farnaz Fatemi

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.

Mar 26, 202459:50
S6:E8 Dorianne Laux Chats with Dion O'Reilly

S6:E8 Dorianne Laux Chats with Dion O'Reilly

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 AwakeWhat 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.

Mar 11, 202458:51
S6 E7: Elizabeth Vignali Chats with Dion O'Reilly

S6 E7: Elizabeth Vignali Chats with Dion O'Reilly

Bellingham poet Elizabeth Vignali buzzes in to read from her newest book and also to read and discuss Dorianne Laux⁠'s poem "Facts about the Moon.


Elizabeth Vignali is the author of the poetry collection House of the Silverfish (Unsolicited Press 2021) and three chapbooks, the most recent of which is Endangered [Animal] (Floating Bridge Press 2019). Her work has appeared in Willow Springs, Cincinnati Review, Poetry Northwest, Mid-American Review, Tinderbox, The Literary Review, and others. She lives in the Pacific Northwest, where she works as an optician, produces the Bellingham Kitchen Session reading series, and serves as poetry editor of Sweet Tree Review.



Mar 04, 202458:52
S6: E6 Alexandra Lytton Regalado & Farnaz Fatemi

S6: E6 Alexandra Lytton Regalado & Farnaz Fatemi

"This weirdness swims up..." Alexandra Regalado talks to Farnaz Fatemi about teeth as relics, finding inspiration in visual artists, attempting to say the unsaid, writing things in poems that might never get said aloud--and more serious and not-so-serious preoccupations. Our conversation focuses on Regalado's second book, the National Poetry Series publication Relinquenda, from Beacon Press.


Alexandra Lytton Regalado is a Salvadoran-American author, editor, and translator. She is the author of Relinquenda, winner of the National Poetry Series (Beacon Press, 2022); the chapbook Piedra (La Chifurnia, 2022); and the poetry collection, Matria, the winner of the St. Lawrence Book Award (Black Lawrence Press, 2017). Alexandra holds fellowships at CantoMundo and Letras Latinas; she is winner of the Coniston Prize, and her work has appeared in The Best American Poetrypoets.org, World Literature Today, Narrative, and The Poetry Foundation’s Harriet blog, among others. Her translations of contemporary Latin American poetry appear in Poetry International, FENCE, and Tupelo Quarterly and she is translator of Family or Oblivion by Elena Salamanca. She is co-founding editor of Kalina, a press that showcases bilingual, Central American-themed books and she is assistant editor at SWWIM Every Day an online daily poetry journal for women-identifying poets. www.alexandralyttonregalado.com

Feb 26, 202459:33
S6:E4 Carla Sameth Chats with Geneffa Jahan

S6:E4 Carla Sameth Chats with Geneffa Jahan

"I Am a Woman of Almost 62 Years Old / of no special bravery."

With this poem, Carla Rachel Sameth begins her hour on The Hive Poetry Show, reading from her first full-length collection, Secondary Inspections, released in January 2024, as well as newer poems. For a voice both introspective and self-aware, Sameth's writing pours itself into the people around her--her biracial Black son, a mother succumbing to dementia, siblings, lovers, and her wife going through the process of transitioning into her husband.

As Eduardo C. Corral notes about Carla's work, "Blossoming and decay are the twin forces in these powerful poems. Addiction, death, raising a child blessed with more than one story, and queerness are the threads woven throughout the book, but they also vibrate with their own particular music." Particular, yes, but always leaning into the shared experience, several of these poems, such as "Love Letter to a Burning World," and "June 2020," decipher the intersecting perplexities of the pandemic, the intensification of racial unrest, and the fires--literal and figurative--that raged around us during that season. Sameth's gaze shrinks from none of the distress but does not linger in the emotions, arresting us instead with a captivating image or wry undertone. She says of her family, "We used to argue over the hearts and gizzards; now no one wants those parts." 

"Secondary Inspections invites us to take a second look at what we thought we knew and shows us how things are not always what they seem—identity can be questioned, provoke danger, and leave us impacted by how others see us; the bedrock of a family can be forever shifting and we too shift along with it. Through powerful narrative and vivid imagery, Sameth’s poetry travels, searches, stumbles, and ultimately, returns. Even amidst heart-staggering moments, she reveals a rich cultural life that is both within, and that is further made possible by deeply being in the places you love with the people you love" (carlasameth.com). 

Carla Rachel Sameth is the co-poet laureate of Altadena (2022-2024) and a Poet Laureate Fellow with the Academy of American Poets. Her chapbook, What Is Left was published in December 2021 with Dancing Girl Press. Her memoir, One Day on the Gold Line was reissued by Golden Foothills Press in December 2022. Her work has been selected three times as Notable Essays of the Year in Best American Essays. A Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee. a Pasadena Rose Poet, a West Hollywood Pride Poet, and a former PEN Teaching Artist, Carla has taught creative writing to high school and university students, incarcerated youth and other diverse communities.

Listen to Carla read her poems and talk candidly with Geneffa about the experiences that informed them--a conversation relatable to those who are mothers or have otherwise had to learn to embrace while letting go.

Secondary Inspections is now available for order.




Feb 14, 202459:50
S6:E3 Katie Farris chats with Julie Murphy

S6:E3 Katie Farris chats with Julie Murphy

The first poem in Katie Farris' new book of poems, Standing in the Forest of Being Alive, ends with the stanza Why write love poetry in a burning world?/ To train myself, in the midst of a burning world/ to offer poems of love to a burning world. This poem, an arrow that sails though each poem in the collection, begins Farris' unflinching look at the details of her own cancer treatment and marriage in the midst of social and political unrest. The poems, intimate and immediate, tackle difficult subjects yet they're full of tenderness and humor. Join host Julie Murphy as she chats with Katie Farris about the poems, poetry and about her journey To train myself to find, in the midst of hell/ what isn't hell.  Katie Farris’s most recent book, Standing in the Forest of Being Alive, from Alice James Books (US) and Liverpool University Press (UK), was shortlisted for the 2023 TS Eliot Prize and was listed as Publisher’s Weekly’s Top 10 Poetry Books for 2023. She’s also the author of the hybrid-form text boysgirls (Marick Press, 2011; Tupelo Press 2019), and the co-translator of many works, including A Country in Which Everyone’s Name is Fear, which was one of World Literature Today’s Notable Books of 2022. She’s a Pushcart Prize winner. She graduated with an MFA from Brown University, and is currently Visiting Associate Professor of Poetry at Princeton University.

Feb 06, 202459:33
S6E2: Sarah Levine speaks with Julia Chiapella
Jan 20, 202401:00:05
S6 E1: Peter Kline Talks to Dion O'Reilly

S6 E1: Peter Kline Talks to Dion O'Reilly

Peter Kline is the author of two poetry collections, Mirrorforms (Parlor Press) and Deviants (SFASU Press).  A former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, he has also received residency fellowships from the Amy Clampitt House and James Merrill House, and has won the Morton Marr Prize from Southwest Review, the River Styx International Poetry Prize, and The Columbia Review Poetry Prize.  His poems have appeared in PloughsharesPoetryTin House, and many other journals, as well as the Best New Poets series, the Verse Daily website, the Random House anthology of metrical poetry, Measure for Measure, and the Persea anthology of self-portrait poems, More Truly and More Strange.  Since 2012 he has directed the San Francisco literary reading series Bazaar Writers Salon.  He teaches writing at the University of San Francisco and Stanford University.


We read Charles Wright's "Future Tense."


Jan 09, 202459:27
S5 E40: Roxi Power talks about her new book with Dion O'Reilly

S5 E40: Roxi Power talks about her new book with Dion O'Reilly

Dion O’Reilly chats with Roxi Power about her new book, The Songs that Objects Would Sing, diving deep into a work that that “is aflame, both with the literal wildfires ravaging the American West and with the slower smolder of personal grief.  Power’s response to loss and disaster is a quirky plangent song…shot through with humor and underpinned by a rippling ostinato of lyric power” (Mark Scroggins). 

With ease and humor, Dion and Roxi draw on postmodern and Buddhist theories, debating whether the presences that sing within the objects of Power's lines are “essences.”  “I feel you in the glint of objects sometimes.  That’s all I know.” The white "ghost piano" on the book's cover, painted by her sister Sky Power, summons her mother’s musical influence within the titular elegiacal poem. Power conjures and “unpaints” the psycho-geography of Texas and Wyoming, filled with the "ghost-scratchings" of memory that, like de Kooning's paintings, peak through to the surface of the “cinematic fictions she sews from scratch." She bends time in poems such as "The Aftermath of Future" where “Now is just one fold in the snake skin of time.” 

Dion and Roxi discuss Power’s trans-genre work and why she has been drawn to recombinant forms since her MFA work at Cornell University that include music, visual art, and film. Power has taught for 25 years at the University of California, Santa Cruz where she founded and edits the trans-genre anthology, Viz. Inter-Arts. Her next book is forthcoming from Carbonation Press in 2024.

Power organizes national “Trans-Genre Cabarets,” and her own trans-genre work includes Live Film Narration (Neo-Benshi) performances of original scripts across the country, including the Tennessee Williams Festival, the New Orleans Poetry Festival, REDCAT, and St. Mark’s Poetry Project.  Her next Neo-Benshi performance is Feb. 22 at Satori in Santa Cruz.  

Power organizes events and makes podcasts for The Hive Poetry Collective.  Her most recent podcast is with Brenda Hillman.

Farnaz Fatemi writes: “With both musical and emotional intelligence, not to mention a linguistic virtuosity, Power conjures hope amid her sonic discoveries—while still bearing lucid witness to personal and community grief.”

C.S. Giscombe writes, “The first line of Roxi Power’s incredible burst of poems lays down the law with one hand and sets things in motion with another—that is, she writes as if to remark on the coming noise made by fire, death, love…The many motions of this music, of these songs that objects would sing, will brush the reader with a difficult and worthy and joy.

You can order her book here.

 

 


Jan 08, 202458:42
S5 E41: Andrea Hollander and Emily Ransdell Chat with Dion O'Reilly

S5 E41: Andrea Hollander and Emily Ransdell Chat with Dion O'Reilly

Andrea Hollander⁠, author of ⁠six poetry books⁠, moved to Portland, Oregon, in 2011, after living for more than three decades in the Arkansas Ozarks, where she was innkeeper of a bed & breakfast for fifteen years and Writer-in-Residence at Lyon College for twenty-two. Hollander’s newly released sixth full-length collection is And Now, Nowhere But Here (Terrapin Books, 2023)⁠. Her fifth, Blue Mistaken for Sky, was a finalist for the Best Book Award in Poetry from the American Book Fest; her fourth, Landscape with Female Figure: New & Selected Poems, 1982- 2012, was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award; her first, House Without a Dreamer, won the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize and was recently reissued, along with The Other Life, Hollander’s second full-length collection, by Red Hen Press in its Story Line Legacy series. Her poems and essays appear widely in anthologies, college textbooks, and literary journals, including a recent feature in The New York Times Magazine. Other honors include two Pushcart Prizes (in poetry and literary nonfiction), two fellowships in poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts, and the 2021 49th Parallel Award in Poetry. After teaching for two literary centers in Portland for six years, in 2017 she initiated the Ambassador Writing Seminars, which she conducted in her home until the pandemic, and now via Zoom.

⁠Emily Ransdell⁠'s debut collection, One Finch Singing, was awarded the 2022 Lewis Award and was published in 2023 by Concrete Wolf Press. She holds an MFA in Poetry from Pacific University. Emily divides her time between Camas Washington and Manazaita Oregon, where she teaches poetry workshops through the Hoffman Center for the Arts.  

Jan 04, 202459:01
S5: E39 Poets of Palestinian Heritage, hosted by Julia Chiapella & Farnaz Fatemi

S5: E39 Poets of Palestinian Heritage, hosted by Julia Chiapella & Farnaz Fatemi

Farnaz Fatemi and Julia Chiapella read poems by Palestinian poets and those of Palestinian heritage to amplify and bear witness to the range of their perspectives and the richness of these voices. We found the reading of these aloud to each other to be profoundly moving. Please see the extensive show notes for links to the poets, their books, many more we couldn’t include on the show and other recent resources.

 

In this order--Fadwa TuqanLena Khalaf TuffahaZeina AzzamMahmoud DarwishMosab Abu TohaMaya Abu Al-HayyatNoor HindiNaomi Shihab Nye were featured on the show. 

 

We mentioned the following anthologies during this hour: We Call to the Eye & the Night: Love Poems by Writers of Arab Heritage (Zeina Hashem Beck and Hala Alyan, editors); & Modern Arabic Poetry (Salma Khadra Jayyusi, editor). 


Since recording our episode a week ago, the Palestinian academic and poet ⁠Refaat Alareer⁠ was killed in Gaza; we want to bring attention to the ⁠story of this poem, his last⁠


We additionally want to highlight the work of Deema K ShehabiGeorge Abraham, Nathalie Khankan, and Fady Joudah (also see Joudah’s recent “meditation”), among many, many others. For one additional resource about poets, see the Instagram account, The Palestinian Poetry Project, poetrypalestine.

 

The LA Review of Books recently published a small folio of writing from poets of Palestinian heritage.

 

We recommend Palestinian Poets on the Role of Literature in Fighting Genocide.


Vox Populi published a “ceasefire cento” solicited from poets globally. You can read it here.

Dec 12, 202357:25
S5: E38 Robin Gow talks with Farnaz Fatemi

S5: E38 Robin Gow talks with Farnaz Fatemi

Listen in as Robin Gow and Farnaz Fatemi discuss Robin’s book Lanternfly, their experience writing a hyper-focused collection, the value of persona poems, defiance, cross-species empathy and more. 

Robin Gow is a trans poet and YA/Middle Grade author from rural Pennsylvania. They are the author of several poetry collections including, most recently, Lanternfly August, from Driftwood Press, & Our Lady of Perpetual Degeneracy. Gow also writes queer YA/Middle Grade novels such as Ode to My First CarA Million Quiet Revolutions, and Dear Mothman. He manages community programs at Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center, building celebratory spaces for the local LGBTQ+ folks. As an autistic person, Robin feels passionate about celebrating neurodivergent folks in the queer community. They live in Allentown, Pennsylvania, with their partner, best friend, and pugs, Gertrude and Eddie. 

Dec 06, 202359:10
S5:E36 Ruba Ahmed Chats with Julie Murphy

S5:E36 Ruba Ahmed Chats with Julie Murphy

Ruba Ahmed joins Julie Murphy to read "Try to Praise the Mutilated World" by Adam Zagajewski and talks about his imperative to see the beauty in the world that lies right beside the horrors. She also reads from her new book Bring Now the Angels and shares her struggle in coming to forgiveness and grief and joy. Ruba also shares some great insights on the power of repetition as well as the importance of Keat's concept of negative capability.

Dilruba Ahmed is the author of Bring Now the Angels (Pittsburg Poetry). Her debut book, Dhaka Dust (Graywolf Press), won the Bakeless Prize. Her poems have appeared in New England Review, New York Times Magazine, Ploughshares, and Virginia Quarterly Review. She has taught with Swarthmore College, Chatham University’s MFA Program, Hugo House in Seattle, and Warren Wilson College’s MFA Program for Writers.
Find her classes & consultations on her website. She's also on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.



Nov 13, 202359:00
S5:E37 Jeannine Hall Gailey talks with Dion O'Reilly

S5:E37 Jeannine Hall Gailey talks with Dion O'Reilly

Dion O'Reilly and Pacific Northwest poet, ⁠Jeannine Hall Gailey,⁠ talk about science, science fiction, and poetry. Jeannine reads from her new book Flare Corona.


Jeannine Hall Gailey served as the second Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington. She is the author of six books of poetry: Becoming the VillainessShe Returns to the Floating World, which was a finalist for the 2012 Eric Hoffer Montaigne Medal and a winner of a Florida Publishers Association Presidential Award for Poetry, Unexplained FeversThe Robot Scientist’s Daughter, and winner of the Moon City Press Book Prize and SFPA’s Elgin Award, ⁠Field Guide to the End of the World⁠. Her sixth poetry book, Flare, Corona, is upcoming from BOA Editions. She’s also the author of PR for Poets: A Guidebook to Publicity and Marketing. She has a B.S. in Biology and an M.A. in English from the University of Cincinnati, as well as an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Pacific University. Her poems have been featured on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac and on Verse Daily; two were included in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. In 2007 she received a Washington State Artist Trust GAP Grant and in 2007 and 2011 a ⁠Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize. 

Nov 12, 202359:13
S5:E35 Madeline Aliah with Geneffa Jahan

S5:E35 Madeline Aliah with Geneffa Jahan

To kick off Trans Week of Awareness (Nov. 13 - 19), Geneffa Jahan sits down with local youth poet, Madeline Aliah (age 17) to hear how poetry has given her hope and a voice. Madeline reads from her chapbook of poems, This Is My Body: Poems by a Teen Trans Fem, forthcoming from Jamii Press (2024), and additional works that take her poetry beyond identity politics. She speaks of her activism through the Queer Trans Youth Council and shares advice for allies, reminding us through her wit and wisdom that Queer kids are still just kids.

Nov 07, 202358:58
S5:E34 Brenda Hillman & Roxi Power talk about Hillman's newest book

S5:E34 Brenda Hillman & Roxi Power talk about Hillman's newest book

Roxi Power talks with Brenda Hillman, winner this month of the Northern California Book Reviewers’ Fred Cody Award  for Lifetime Achievement, about her 11th book of poetry with Wesleyan University Press, In a Few Minutes Before Later.   We discuss her new trans-genre tetralogy about time: how to find calm during the Anthropocene by being in time in multiple ways: sinking into the micro-minutes; performing micro-activism; and celebrating the microbiome. We explore her influences–from Blake to Bergson, Clare to Baudelaire, as well as the less celebrated moss, owls, and wood rats that appear frequently in her eco-poetry.  Alive with humor, witness, creative design and punctuation–what Forrest Gander calls “typographical expressionism”--Hillman’s poetry teaches us how to abide in crisis from Covid to California fires, living in paradox as a way to transcend despair.

Brenda Hillman shares the Fred Cody Lifetime Achievement Award with with Isabel Allende, Daniel Ellsberg, Michael Pollan, Ishmael Reed, Gary Snyder, Robert Duncan, Alice Walker and others. Winner of the William Carlos Williams Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Award, the International Griffin Poetry Prize (for Seasonal Works with Letters on Fire, 2013), the Northern California Book Award (for Extra Hidden Life, among the Days, 2018) and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Academy of American Poets, Brenda Hillman was born in Tucson, Arizona and has been an active part of the Bay Area literary community since 1975.  

She has edited an edition of Emily Dickinson’s poems for Shambhala Press, and co-edited and co-translated several books.  She is director of the Poetry Program at the Community of Writers in Olympic Valley and is on the regular poetry staff ad Napa Valley Writers Conference. Hillman just retired from teaching in the MFA Program at St. Mary’s College in Moraga, CA.  She has worked as an activist for social and environmental justice. She is a mother, grandmother, and is married to poet, Robert Hass. 

Photograph by Robert Hass.



Oct 30, 202359:46
S5:E33.Gary Gach chats with Julia Chiapella
Oct 23, 202358:10
S5:E31 Rick Lupert Chats with Dion O'Reilly

S5:E31 Rick Lupert Chats with Dion O'Reilly

Rick Lupert zooms into The Hive. We read Robert Creeley’s poem “I Know a Man,” and shamelessly display our ignorance about the great Robert Creeley, who did indeed, sometimes wear an eyepatch, and who was a powerful and engaging reader. Rick Lupert reads some fruit poems from his current book, I Am Not Writing a Book of Poems in Hawaii,  inspired by his vacation with his family to Hawaii. 

Rick Lupert has been involved in the Los Angeles poetry community since 1990.  He is the recipient of the 2014 Beyond Baroque Distinguished Service Award for service to the Los Angeles poetry community. 

His poetry has appeared in numerous magazines and literary journals, including The Los Angeles Times, Rattle, Chiron Review, and others.  He edited the anthologies A Poet’s Siddur Ekphrastia Gone Wild, The Night Goes On All Night – Noir-Inspired Poetry and, A Poet’s Haggadah: Passover through the Eyes of  Poets, and is the author of 27 books, including: Paris: It’s The Cheese, I Am My Own Orange County, Mowing Fargo, I’m a Jew. Are You?, Stolen Mummies, I’d Like to Bake Your Goods, A Man With No Teeth Serves Us Breakfast, We Put Things in Our Mouths, Sinzibuckwud!, Death of a Mauve Bat (Ain’t Got No Press), and more.

He also writes the Jewish poetry blog From The Lupertverse for the Los Angeles Jewish Journal.

Rick created and maintains the Poetry Super Highway, an online resource and publication for poets.

He lives in Newhall, California with his wife Addie, son Jude, and 3 cats.



Oct 15, 202359:59
S5:E30 Watsonville Youth Poet Laureates with Geneffa Jahan

S5:E30 Watsonville Youth Poet Laureates with Geneffa Jahan

A conversation between Geneffa Jahan and the Youth Poet Laureates of Watsonville, Eva Sophia Martinez Rodriguez (pictured) and Rachel Huerta, appointed to serve a two-year term from 2023 – 2025. The Watsonville Public Library created this position to recognize a youth under the age of 20 for their literary achievements, passion for promoting awareness of poetry and whose work demonstrates a commitment to social justice, equity, and diversity. In this hour, these teens share their journey, talk about their craft, and recite poems that showcase their individual styles. (Click the link for photos and bios of both poets).

i am mixed.
the soil of strawberry fields
and the blush of cherry blossoms
run wild in my blood.

(From "mixed" by Rachel Huerta)

Oct 02, 202357:33
S5:E29 Rooja Mohassessy Chats with Dion O'Reilly

S5:E29 Rooja Mohassessy Chats with Dion O'Reilly

Rooja Mohassessy buzzes into the Hive to talk about her new book, When Your Sky Runs Into Mine. She also reads a Sylvia Plath poem "Black Rook in Rainy Weather."

Rooja Mohassessy is an Iranian-born poet and educator. She is a MacDowell Fellow and an MFA graduate of Pacific University, Oregon. Her debut collection When Your Sky Runs Into Mine (Feb 2023) was the winner of the 22nd Annual Elixir Poetry Award. Her poems and reviews have appeared in Narrative Magazine, Poet Lore, RHINO Poetry, Southern Humanities Review, CALYX Journal, Ninth Letter, Cream City Review, The Adroit Journal, New Letters, The Florida Review, Poetry Northwest, The Pinch, The Rumpus, The Journal, and elsewhere.


Sep 13, 202359:13
S5:E28 The New Orleans Poetry Festival. Bill Lavender, Sean F. Munro, and Rodrigo Toscano talk with Roxi Power
Sep 07, 202358:30
S5:E27 Courtney Le Blanc Talks to Dion O'Reilly

S5:E27 Courtney Le Blanc Talks to Dion O'Reilly

Content Warning: Discussion of eating disorders

Courtney Le Blanc reads from her latest book, Her Whole Bright Life and also the poem, ⁠"Where No One Says Eating Disorder⁠" by ⁠Kelly Grace Thomas⁠ from Thomas's collection Boat Burn  

Courtney LeBlanc⁠ is the author of the full-length collections Her Whole Bright Life; Exquisite Bloody, Beating Heart; and Beautiful & Full of Monsters.⁠ She is the Arlington County Poet Laureate, a Virginia Center for Creative Arts fellow, and the founder and editor-in-chief of Riot in Your Throat, an independent poetry press. She loves nail polish, tattoos, and a soy latte each morning. 


Dion plugs the podcast Maintenance Phase, an excellent source of information on fat shaming, bogus diets, and our society's screwed up attitudes toward body size and food.

Aug 30, 202359:01
S5:E25 Joan Kwon Glass Talks to Dion O'Reilly

S5:E25 Joan Kwon Glass Talks to Dion O'Reilly

Joan Kwon Glass zooms into the Hive to talk about her new book. We also read and discuss Laura Apol's poem "Instructions for the Friends Who Are Sorting my Daughter's Things this Afternoon."

Joan Kwon Glass is the mixed-race, Korean American author of Night Swim (Diode Editions, 2022), and three chapbooks (How To Make Pancakes for a Dead Boy, If Rust Can Grow on the Moon, and Bloodline). She serves as poet laureate for Milford, CT, Editor in Chief for Harbor Review and is a Brooklyn Poets Mentor. Joan is an instructor on the faculty of various writing centers including the Hudson Valley Writers Center, Brooklyn Poets & Corporeal. Her poems appear in Poetry Northwest, Ninth Letter, Tahoma Literary Review, Prairie Schooner, Asian American Writer’s Workshop, The Slowdown and elsewhere. She is available for manuscript consultations, readings and workshops.


Content warning: Discussion of suicide.

Aug 16, 202359:07
S5:E26 Lana Hechtman Ayers Chats with Julie Murphy

S5:E26 Lana Hechtman Ayers Chats with Julie Murphy

Lana Hechtman Ayers joins host Julie Murphy to read from her two recently published books, Overtures and When All Else Fails. Join us as Lana reads a poem by Ellen Bass and talks about the healing powers of poetry, how the awareness of death brings compassion and finding joy in difficult times.

Aug 14, 202359:17
S5:E24 Roxi Power chats with Dion O'Reilly about Emily Dickinson

S5:E24 Roxi Power chats with Dion O'Reilly about Emily Dickinson

Public interest in Emily Dickinson continues strong, evidenced by recent pop culture hits like Apple TV’s Dickinson, and the movie, Wild Nights With Emily, starring Molly Shannon.  Dickinson herself was influenced by 19th century popular cultural forms, including crime novels. Tune in to hear two poets have fun trying to solve some puzzles, while appreciating the mystery, in her enigmatic poems and life.

Aug 03, 202359:52
S5.E23 Gail Rudd Entrekin Speaks with Julia Chiapella

S5.E23 Gail Rudd Entrekin Speaks with Julia Chiapella

Join us as Gail Rudd Entrekin reads poems from her book Walking Each Other Home, an homage to the bittersweet journey of love, life, and parting. Gail is editor of the online environmental literary magazine, Canary (www.canarylitmag.org) and holds an M.A. in English Literature/Creative Writing from the Ohio State University. She has taught both subjects for over 25 years. Her poems have been finalists for the Pablo Neruda Prize, won the Women’s National Book Association Award and were First Runner-Up for the Steve Kowit and Catamaran Poetry Prizes.  Her sixth poetry book, Walking Each Other Home (Longship Press, 2023), was a finalist for the Blue Light and Richard Snyder Prizes, and her chapbook The Mother/Daughter Papers was finalist for the Comstock and Poetry Box Chapbook Prizes in 2023. Walking Each Other Home is available here from Longship Press.


Jul 25, 202358:49
S5:E21 Beau Beausoleil Chats with Geneffa Jahan

S5:E21 Beau Beausoleil Chats with Geneffa Jahan

Geneffa Jahan hosts San Francisco poet and bookseller Beau Beausoleil as he shares how he became an organizer after the 2007 bombing of Al Mutanabbi Street, the famed booksellers’ street of Baghdad. They discuss his global movement, Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here, with annual readings worldwide to commemorate the bombing, and his anthology of poems and prose by survivors and witnesses, Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here (2012). Beausoleil reads two poems, written as letters to Iraq, and one poem he wrote for his collaborative photojournalism project, Shadow & Light, honoring the 324 Iraqi Academics murdered between 2003 and 2012. With 57 participants from Jordan to Egypt, Iran, the US, the UK, and Canada, the project ensures that “the protest does not go home,” to quote Beausoleil, “but lives on as a project of witness, memory, and solidarity.”

Beau Beausoleil is the author of 15 books of poetry, most recently, Another Way Home (Bluelight Press, 2022) and two chapbooks: The Killing of George Floyd (Intermittent Press, 2023) and Poems for Ukraine (Barley Books, UK, 2023).

Jul 05, 202359:58
S5:E20 Jamaica Baldwin Chats with Dion O'Reilly

S5:E20 Jamaica Baldwin Chats with Dion O'Reilly

Jamaica Baldwin zooms into The Hive to talk about her new book, Bone Language. We read some Vievee Frances and talk about the radical acceptance that poetry can bring. Jamaica, a Santa Cruz native, will be in town to read at The HiveLive! on July 18th at Bookshop Santa Cruz. Reading with her, will be the fabulous Francesca Bell. 


Jamaica Baldwin’s debut collection is Bone Language (YesYes Books 2023). Her poetry has appeared in Guernica, World Literature Today, The Adroit Journal, Indiana Review, Poetry Northwest, and The Missouri Review, among others. Her accolades include a 2023 Pushcart Prize, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a RHINO Poetry editor’s prize, and a Glenna Luschei Prairie Schooner Award. Her writing has been supported by Hedgebrook, Aspen Words, Storyknife, Furious Flower, and the Jack Straw Writers program. Jamaica is currently the associate editor of Prairie Schooner at the University of Nebraska -Lincoln where she is pursuing her PhD in English with a focus on poetry and Women’s and Gender Studies. She is originally from Santa Cruz, CA.

Jun 26, 202359:19
S5: E19 Tolsun Books' The Book of Life After Death with Farnaz Fatemi

S5: E19 Tolsun Books' The Book of Life After Death with Farnaz Fatemi

Join Tim Lindner, editor of The Book of Life After Death (Tolsun Books, 2023) with Farnaz Fatemi as they discuss this forthcoming book which explores how the dead might be remembered in poems & essays. We are joined by four more poets--Elizabeth Quiñones-Zaldaña, Xioaly Li, Hunter Hazelton, and Jen Karetnick--reading selections from the book.


"We're all going to die. What's worse is that once we do, we don't have a chance to explain ourselves for everything we've done. Once we're ghosts, our identities are defined by the places and things we leave behind. When we're the ones left behind, we decide what's of value and how our ghosts should be remembered. Sometimes, people become something entirely different than when they were here. And perhaps that's the point. Maybe it's not our fear of dying that drives us but rather that our lives after death aren't our lives at all."

Jun 12, 202356:22
S5:E18 AE Hines Chats with Dion O'Reilly

S5:E18 AE Hines Chats with Dion O'Reilly

Earl Hines and Dion O'Reilly talk about earning an MFA at Pacific University, read and discuss the fabulous poem, "Shrike," by Henri Cole​, and read and talk about Hines latest book Any Dumb Animal

AE Hines’s debut collection, Any Dumb Animal, received Honorable Mention in the North Carolina Poetry Society’s 2022 Brockman-Campbell Book contest, and was a daVinci Eye finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book award. His poems have been widely published in anthologies and literary journals, including more recently: Rattle, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Southern Review, Rhino, Ninth Letter, The Missouri Review, Poet Lore, The Greensboro Review, and I-70 Review. He is currently pursuing his MFA in Writing at Pacific University.

Jun 06, 202359:30
S5:E17 Jimmy Santiago Baca Chats with Julia Chiapella
May 29, 202357:22
S5:E15 Vincent Rendoni Chats with Dion O'Reilly

S5:E15 Vincent Rendoni Chats with Dion O'Reilly

Vincent Rendoni and Dion O'Reilly engage in a wide-ranging and lively discussion of life and poetry. He reads Monica Rico's  "Poem in Consideration of My Death" from an anthology that, due to its representation of Latino life, influenced Vincent's decision to be a poet, The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4, LatinNext


Vincent Antonio Rendoni is the author of A Grito Contest in the Afterlife, which was the winner of the 2022 Catamaran Poetry Prize for West Coast Poets. Previously, he was a 2022 Jack Straw Cultural Center Fellow and winner of the 2021 Blue Earth Review Flash Fiction Contest. His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best Small Fictions. His work appears in The Sycamore Review, The Texas Review, The Quarterly West, Another Chicago Magazine, Sky Island Journal, and So It Goes: The Literary Journal of the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library.

May 09, 202301:00:07
S5 E14 Lisa Ortiz talks about her latest book, Stem, with Farnaz Fatemi

S5 E14 Lisa Ortiz talks about her latest book, Stem, with Farnaz Fatemi

One of the original Hive members, Lisa Allen Ortiz, joins us to talk about her Idaho Prize-winning poetry collection, STEM, a book which asks, among other questions, "where in the body does aliveness reside?" Our conversation plumbs more of these easy-to-answer inquiries.

Lisa is the author of two poetry collections: Stem, winner of the 2021 Idaho Prize and Guide to the Exhibit winner of the 2016 Perugia Press Prize. Her short stories and poems have appeared in Prime Number MagazineColorado Review and The Literary Review among other places. She is co-translator with Sara Rivera of The Blinding Star, selected poems of the Peruvian poet Blanca Varela, a book which won the 2021 Northern California Book Award for Poetry in Translation.

May 05, 202358:55
S5:E13 Barbara Bloom talks with Geneffa Jahan

S5:E13 Barbara Bloom talks with Geneffa Jahan

Barbara Bloom, who recently relocated to Bellingham, Washington, shares poems about the deep connection she finds in nature, especially in Santa Cruz, where she lived for over 30 years. Barbara studied poetry with Santa Cruz poets, Joe Stroud and Morton Marcus and taught in the English Department of Cabrillo College for nearly 30 years. In this episode, Barbara reads and discusses poems of departure and the reassurance of perpetual presence in the natural world--a theme that permeates her Santa Cruz poems as well as those about her teenage years with her family on a coastal homestead in British Columbia, Canada. She is a member of the local Hummingbird Poetry Collective and has two volumes of poetry: On the Water Meridian (2007) and Pulling Down the Heavens (2017), both published by Hummingbird Press.

Apr 26, 202357:04
S5: E12 Jennifer Franklin with Farnaz Fatemi

S5: E12 Jennifer Franklin with Farnaz Fatemi

Farnaz talked with Jennifer Franklin, whose third book, If Some God Shakes Your House, has just been published by Four Way Books in March 2023.  We discuss If Some God Shakes Your House, in which Franklin has “reimagined Antigone for our times--where filial devotion and ossified roles of gendered labor become the engine of her defiance.” Franklin's work is honest and riveting, and full of insight about what it means to be a woman. We discuss persona poems, writing about difficult material, ecopoetry, and more.

Buy the book⁠ and support poets and publishers.

Find out more about Tree Lines (Grayson Books, Edited by Jennifer Barber, Jessica Greenbaum and Fred Marchant), mentioned in the episode. 

Apr 10, 202357:47
S5: E11 Denise Duhamel Chats with Dion O'Reilly

S5: E11 Denise Duhamel Chats with Dion O'Reilly

Denise Duhamel’s most recent books of poetry are Second Story  (Pittsburgh, 2021) and Scald (2017). Blowout (2013) was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. A proponent of collaboration, she and Maureen Seaton have co-authored five collections, the most recent of which is CAPRICE (Collaborations: Collected,Uncollected, and New) (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2015). Her nonfiction publications include The Unrhymables: Collaborations in Prose (with Julie Marie Wade, Noctuary Press, 2019). A recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, she is a distinguished university professor in the MFA program at Florida International University in Miami.

Apr 03, 202359:49
S5:E10 Tsering Wangmo Dhompa chats with Julie Murphy

S5:E10 Tsering Wangmo Dhompa chats with Julie Murphy

Tsering Wangmo Dhompa is the first Tibetan woman to publish poetry in English. She joins Julie Murphy to read new and favorite poems, as well as the poem ⁠When it rains in Dharamsala⁠ by Tenzin Tsundue. They talk about exile, impermanence, and how poems take us from image to mystery.


Tsering Wangmo Dhompa is the author of the poetry books, My Rice Tastes Like the Lake, In the Absent Everyday, and Rules of the House (all from Apogee Press, Berkeley) and three chapbooks. Dhompa's first non-fiction book, Coming Home to Tibet was published in the US by Shambhala Publications in 2016 and by Penguin, India in 2014. She was born in India and raised in the Tibetan refugee communities in India and Nepal. Dhompa has a PhD in Literature from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and an MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. She teaches in the English Department at Villanova University.


When it rains in Dharamsala by Tenzin Tsundue. 

Tsering Wangmo Dholpa on Intagram

Mar 27, 202359:29
S5:E9 Caridad Moro-Gronlier Talks with Julia Chiapella
Mar 14, 202356:33
S5: E8 Gregory Orr Chats with Dion O'Reilly (2)

S5: E8 Gregory Orr Chats with Dion O'Reilly (2)

Gregory Orr buzzes back into the Hive to talk with Dion O'Reilly about his newest book, Selected Books of the Beloved. We talk about John Keats's "Lines Supposed to Be Addressed to Fanny Braun," the difference between epic and lyric poetry, and the dangers of the false Beloved. 


Gregory Orr was born February 3, 1947 in Albany, New York. He grew up in the rural Hudson Valley. At the age of twelve, he was responsible for the death of a younger brother in a hunting accident, an event that powerfully influenced his ideas about trauma, silence and poetry. When he was fourteen, his family moved to Haiti, where his father worked as a doctor at the Hospital Albert Schweitzer in Deschapelles. The family returned to the States a year later, after his mother’s sudden death. In 1965, at the age of eighteen, he worked as a civil rights volunteer in Mississippi. During that time, he was kidnapped at gunpoint in rural Alabama and held for a week in solitary confinement in the town of Hayneville. These events of his youth form the basis of his memoir, The Blessing, which tells the story of his childhood and how he came to poetry.


The author of more than 10 collections of poetry and several volumes of essays, criticism, and memoir, Gregory Orr is a master of the short, personal lyric. His poetry has been widely anthologized and translated into at least 10 languages. Observes critic Hank Lazer, “From Burning the Empty Nests (1973) to the present, Orr gradually developed the ability to fuse his incredible skill at visual precision—the signature of his image-based work in his very first book—with an insistent musical quality, joining visual precision with a beauty of sound.”

Mar 06, 202358:44
S5:E7 Rodrigo Toscano hosted by Roxi Power

S5:E7 Rodrigo Toscano hosted by Roxi Power

In this week’s episode of The Hive Poetry Collective, Rodrigo Toscano joins Roxi Power to read work from The Charm and the Dread (Fence Books, 2022) and The Cut Point (Counterpath Press, 2023).  We hear about his work in the fields of labor organizing, as well as how his work within Latinx, New Orleans, and experimental poetry communities influence his poetics.

Feb 27, 202359:45
S5:E6 Janice Lobo Sapigao talks with Julie Murphy

S5:E6 Janice Lobo Sapigao talks with Julie Murphy

Join host Julie Murphy as she chats with Janice Lobo Sapigao about how the intimate details of our lives are the best way to address big themes in poetry such as immigration, community, connectedness, colonization, and loneliness. Janice reads new works as well as the poem "Swerte" by Alyza Taguilaso.

Feb 13, 202359:21
S5: E4 Jim Moore Talks with Dion O'Reilly about his new book Prognosis

S5: E4 Jim Moore Talks with Dion O'Reilly about his new book Prognosis

Jim Moore has been writing poetry for more than four decades. Before Prognosis from Graywolf in 2021, he wrote, Invisible Strings, published in 2011 by Graywolf Press. In 2012 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship for the work in that book. Underground: New & Selected Poems is available now from Graywolf Press.

He has won the Minnesota Book Award for his poetry four times. Jim has received grants from the Bush Foundation, the Minnesota State Arts Boards, the Loft Mcknight and in 2012 from the Guggenheim Foundation.  His poems have appeared three times in Pushcart Prize Editions as well as in many magazines, including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Nation, American Poetry Review, Harper’s The Kenyon Review, The Threepenny Review, and Water-Stone Review.

Jim lives in Minneapolis and Spoleto, Italy with his wife the photographer JoAnn Verburg. He teaches in the Hamline University MFA Program in St. Paul, Minnesota and is often a Visiting Professor at the Colorado College in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He works online individually with poets from around the country.

Jim reads and discusses one of his favorite poems, "We must Praise the Mutilated World," BY ADAM ZAGAJEWSKI TRANSLATED BY CLARE CAVANAGH

Jan 31, 202359:10
S5:E2 Daniel Summerhill chats with Julie Murphy

S5:E2 Daniel Summerhill chats with Julie Murphy

Join Julie Murphy as she speaks with Daniel Summerhill,  Assistant Professor of Poetry/Social Action & Composition at CSU Monterey Bay and is the inaugural Poet Laureate of Monterey County. Daniel reads a Danez Smith poem and talks about the duty of a poet to tell the truth.  His poems look closely at how things really are with beauty, lyric grace and hope.

Jan 09, 202359:53
S5:E1 Dustin Brookshire and Julie E. Bloemeke chat with Dion O'Reilly

S5:E1 Dustin Brookshire and Julie E. Bloemeke chat with Dion O'Reilly

Editors Dustin Brookshire and Julie E. Bloemeke discuss their upcoming compilation of Dolly poems, Let Me Say This: A Dolly Parton Poetry Anthology from Madville Publishing, due to be released on January 19th, 2023 on Dolly Parton's 77 th Birthday. 

Dustin and Julie attended their first Dolly concert in August 2011. Ten years later, they  joined forces to co-edit a Limp Wrist Dolly issue in 2021 to honor Dolly’s 75th birthday, and on January 19th, they will release an anthology of poems paying tribute to the great singer-songwriter and cultural icon, Dolly Parton.

Dustin and Julie  will also launch an accompanying podcast to the anthology to be available by summer 2023. Be on the lookout for their new podcast, Just Because We’re Dolly Fans.

Jan 02, 202359:42
S4:E39 Charles Atkinson interviewed by Julia Chiapella
Dec 13, 202257:28
S4: E38 Ellen Bass, Francesca Bell, and Dion O'Reilly Talk about Anne Sexton.

S4: E38 Ellen Bass, Francesca Bell, and Dion O'Reilly Talk about Anne Sexton.

Ellen Bass talks about her experience having Ann Sexton as a teacher in the '70s at Boston University. Then, Francesca Bell zooms in, and we read and discuss a few of Sexton's poems. I mention Sexton's fabulous biography by Diane Middlebrook. If you are interested in reading Sexton's poems, a good place to start is her collected poems or also her selected poems.

Dec 05, 202259:15
S4:E37 Paola Bruni Chats with Dion O'Reilly

S4:E37 Paola Bruni Chats with Dion O'Reilly

Paola Bruni chats with Dion O'Reilly about the collaborative book, How do you Spell the Sound of Crickets, written with the late Jory Post.


Jory Post was an educator, writer, and artist who lived in Santa Cruz, California. He and his wife, Karen Wallace, created handmade books and art together as JoKa Press. Jory was the co-founder and publisher of phren-Z, an online literary quarterly, and founder of the Zoom Forward reading series.

His first book of prose poetry, The Extra Year, was published in 2019, and was followed by a second, Of Two Minds, in 2020. His novel, Pious Rebel, also appeared in 2020. His novel, Smith: An Unauthorized Fictography, was published in 2021.

His work has been published in Catamaran Literary Reader, Chicago Quarterly Review, Rumble Fish Quarterly, The Sun, and elsewhere. 


Paola Bruni is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, winner of the Morton Marcus Poetry Prize, and winner of the Muriel Craft Bailey Poetry Prize judged by Ellen Bass, as well as a finalist for the Mudfish Poetry Prize.

Her poems have appeared in The Southern Review, Ploughshares, Five Points Journal, Rattle, Massachusetts Review, and Catamaran Literary Reader, among others. Her short plays have been produced by Actors Theater, Santa Cruz as well as short-listed for play festivals around the globe. 

Dec 01, 202259:01
S4:E36 Lucian Mattison talks with Farnaz Fatemi

S4:E36 Lucian Mattison talks with Farnaz Fatemi

Join Farnaz Fatemi as she talks with Lucian about the planet's creature, clouds, climate change and curing ham--and the poems Lucian writes invoking all of these things. 

Lucian Mattison is a US-Argentinian poet and translator. He is the author of three books of poetry, Reaper's, Peregrine Nation and, most recently, Curare , just released from C&R press.

Nov 16, 202258:30
S4:E35: John Sibley Williams Chats with Dion O'Reilly

S4:E35: John Sibley Williams Chats with Dion O'Reilly

John Sibley Williams is the author of Scale Model of a Country at Dawn (Cider Press Review Book Award, 2021), The Drowning House (Elixir Press Poetry Award, 2021),  As One Fire Consumes Another (Orison Poetry Prize, 2019), Skin Memory (Backwaters Prize, University of Nebraska Press, 2019), Summon (JuxtaProse Chapbook Prize, 2019),  Disinheritance, and Controlled Hallucinations. His book Sky Burial: New & Selected Poems is forthcoming in translated form by the Portuguese press do lado esquerdo. He has also served as editor of two Northwest poetry anthologies, Alive at the Center (Ooligan Press, 2013) and Motionless from the Iron Bridge (barebones books, 2013).

A twenty-eight-time Pushcart nominee, John is the winner of numerous awards, including the Laux/Millar Prize, Wabash Prize, Philip Booth Award, Janet B. McCabe Poetry Prize, American Literary Review Poetry Contest, Phyllis Smart-Young Prize, The 46er Prize, Nancy D. Hargrove Editors' Prize, Confrontation Poetry Prize, and Vallum Award for Poetry. Previous publishing credits include: Best American PoetryYale Review, Midwest QuarterlySouthern Review, Colorado Review, Sycamore ReviewPrairie SchoonerMassachusetts ReviewPoet LoreSaranac ReviewAtlanta ReviewTriQuarterlyColumbia Poetry ReviewMid-American ReviewPoetry Northwest, Third Coast, and various anthologies.

Nov 08, 202255:21
S4:34: Javier Zamora Chats with Julia Chiapella
Nov 01, 202258:30