Rattle Poetry

Ephraim Scott Sommers joins Timothy Green on The Rattlecast for a conversation about poetry, chronic illness, gratitude, music, and his new collection, Diabetic Gumdrops. A poet, essayist, singer-songwriter, and associate professor of English at Winthrop University, Sommers is the author of the award-winning collections The Night We Set the Dead Kid on Fire and Someone You Love Is Still Alive. His...

Stephen A. Allen joins Timothy Green on The Rattlecast for a conversation about poetry, music, formal verse, Tourette syndrome, and his debut collection, Difficult Music. A former Rattle Poetry Prize finalist and longtime Rattle contributor, Allen was born and raised in Vermont and now lives in Michigan. His poetry has also appeared in Modern Haiku, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Northern New England Revie...

Molly Fisk returns to The Rattlecast for a conversation with Timothy Green about poetry, storytelling, history, and her new book, Walking Wheel. A poet, essayist, radio commentator, and former Poet Laureate of Nevada County, California, Fisk is an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow and a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. She first joined us on Rattlecast #61 in 2020...

Lance Larsen joins Timothy Green on The Rattlecast to celebrate Secretary of the Invisible Thing, one of the three winners of the 2026 Rattle Chapbook Prize. A former Poet Laureate of Utah, Larsen is the author of six full-length poetry collections, including Making a Kingdom of It, What the Body Knows, and Genius Loci. His poems have appeared in Poetry, The New York Review of Books, The Times Lit...

In this special episode of The Rattlecast, we reveal the results of the 2026 Rattle Poetry Prize, our annual poetry competition offering $25,000 in total awards for individual poems. We’ll announce this year’s $15,000 winner and ten finalists, and most of the 11 prize-winning poets will join us live to read their winning poems and talk briefly about the work. The Rattle Poetry Prize is one of the...

Wendy Videlock returns to The Rattlecast for a conversation with Timothy Green about poetry, nature, animals, language, and her new book, Desert Kin: Speaking Animal in the American Southwest. A poet, essayist, visual artist, and Poet Laureate of Western Colorado, Videlock’s work has appeared in Poetry, The New York Times, Best American Poetry, Hudson Review, and Rattle. She was also a two-time Ra...

Rebecca Gayle Howell joins Timothy Green on The Rattlecast for a conversation about poetry, erasure, climate change, spirituality, and her new book, Erase Genesis. A poet, translator, editor, and librettist, Howell is the recipient of a United States Artists Fellowship, the Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry, and a Pushcart Prize. She previously served as poetry editor of the Oxford Ame...

Mary Keating joins Timothy Green on The Rattlecast for a conversation about poetry, disability, humor, resilience, and her memoir in verse, Recalibrating Gravity. A poet, lawyer, and disability-rights advocate, Keating became paraplegic following a car accident at age fifteen and went on to graduate from Yale Law School, build a legal career, and advocate for accessibility and disability rights. A...

Matthew Olzmann joins Timothy Green on The Rattlecast for a conversation about contemporary poetry, humor, love poems, imagination, and what makes a poem connect with readers. The author of Mezzanines, Contradictions in the Design, and Constellation Route, Olzmann is an assistant professor of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College and the recipient of fellowships from the National Endow...

Katie Dozier joins Timothy Green on the Rattlecast for a conversation about poetry, trauma, memoir in verse, and her new book, Residency Review: A Memoir in Verse. Rattle’s Creative Editor and creator of The Poetry Space_, Katie is also the author of All That Glitter and Watering Can. Residency Review grew out of her experience at a low-residency MFA program and braids poetry with emails, quotatio...

Hemat Malak joins Timothy Green on the Rattlecast for a conversation about poetry, identity, poetic form, and her debut collection, Shelf Life, published by 5 Islands Press. An Australian poet based in Picton, New South Wales, Hemat returned to poetry after more than four decades away and won the 2025 Bruce Dawe National Poetry Prize for “I Don’t Say My Name Right.” A longtime Rattle listener and...

Jeffrey Bean joins Timothy Green on The Rattlecast for a conversation about poetry, invented poetic forms, music, and his latest collection, Everywhere, Everywhere, winner of the 2024 Vern Rutsala Book Prize. A poet and professor of English at Central Michigan University, Jeffrey appears in the Invented Forms section of Rattle’s Summer 2026 issue with “Bach’s Bones,” part of a new series of poems...

Joanna Preston joins Timothy Green on The Rattlecast for a conversation about her poetry and writing life. An Australian-born, New Zealand-based poet, editor, and creative writing tutor, Joanna is the author of The Summer King (winner of the Kathleen Grattan Award and Mary Gilmore Award) and Tumble (winner of the Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry). She appears in the Invented Forms section of...

Lisa Baird joins Timothy Green on The Rattlecast for a conversation about her poetry and writing life. A spoken word poet, essayist, and community acupuncturist, her work has been shortlisted for the Room Poetry Contest, Ralph Gustafson Poetry Contest, and Sappho Poetry Prize, and longlisted twice for the CBC Poetry Prize. Her most recent book is When Whales Went back to the Water. In this episode...

Rasaq Malik Gbolahan joins Timothy Green on The Rattlecast for a conversation about his poetry and writing life. A Nigerian poet, performer, translator, and editor, Rasaq is the winner of the 2024 Anhinga Prize for Poetry for his first full-length collection The Origin of Wounds. He is the founding editor-in-chief of Agbowó and co-founder of Àtẹ́lẹwọ́, a digital journal dedicated to Yorùbá-languag...

Adam Scheffler is the author of two books of poems: Heartworm, which won the 2021 Moon City Press Prize, and A Dog’s Life, which won the 2016 Jacar Press Book Contest. He is also the author of a book of literary criticism, So This Is What It Feels Like: Empathy in the Poetry of James Wright (LSU Press, 2026). He grew up in Berkeley, California, received his MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Wor...

D.M. Aderibigbe is from Lagos, Nigeria. His most recent book, 82nd Division, was selected for the National Poetry Series. His debut book, How the End First Showed, won the Brittingham Prize in Poetry, among other honors. He has received fellowships from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference (Walter E. Dakin Fellowship), The James Merrill House, OMI/Ledig House, Ucross, Jentel, and Boston University wher...

Amy M. Alvarez is the author of Makeshift Altar, winner of the 2025 American Book Award and CariCon Poetry Prize. Born to Jamaican and Puerto Rican parents in New York, New York, her work focuses on race, ethnicity, gender, place, and social justice. Selected as one of 2022’s Best New Poets, her poetry has appeared in Ploughshares, The Missouri Review, Poetry Foundation, and elsewhere. She has bee...

Valentina Gnup is a two-time Rattle Poetry Prize Finalist, and also appears in our new Best of the Ekphrastic Challenge anthology. She received her bachelor's degree in journalism from CSUF in 1980 and her MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University Los Angeles in 2002. Her most recent book is Ruined Music. She has two grown daughters and currently lives in Mill Valley, California, where she c...

Robert Wrigley's collections of poetry include The True Account of Myself as a Bird (Penguin, 2022; Box (Penguin, 2017); Anatomy of Melancholy & Other Poems (Penguin, 2013); winner of the Pacific Northwest Book Award; Beautiful Country (Penguin, 2010); Earthly Meditations: New and Selected Poems (2006); Lives of the Animals (2003), winner of the Poets Prize; Reign of Snakes (1999), winner of the K...

Lisa Wells is a poet, essayist, and documentarian. She is the author, most recently, of The Fire Passage, selected by Diane Seuss as the winner of the Levis Poetry Prize (Four Way Books, 2025). Her debut poetry collection, The Fix, won the Iowa Poetry Prize. She is also the author of Believers: Making a Life at the End of the World, (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), a finalist for the 2022 PEN E.O. Wilso...

Luigi Coppola has appeared in multiple issues of Rattle and the Ekphrastic Challenge. He is a teacher, poet, DIY music producer and multimedia artist (recording and performing as The Only Emperor), first-generation immigrant and avid rum and coke drinker. A graduate of the Warwick University Creative writing programme, he is Bridport Prize shortlisted, Ledbury and National Poetry Competition longl...

JeFF Stumpo is the author of the full-length poetry collection these are the waterfalls in my head, winner of the 2026 Granite State Poetry Prize and forthcoming from Yas Press (University of New Hampshire). He has published five chapbooks of poetry, most through Seven Kitchens Press, including Against Itself Cannot Stand, along with a spoken word album. His other honors include the 2024 Subnivean...

Alan Shapiro first appeared in episode 248. He's back with a new book, Diver. He's the author of 15 books of poetry, including Reel to Reel, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Night of the Republic, a finalist for both the National Book Award and The Griffin Prize, two memoirs, a novel, two books of critical essays, and two translations. Shapiro has taught at Stanford University, Northwestern Univ...

Daniel Donaghy is the author of five poetry collections, most recently Somerset, which was named co-winner of the 2019 Paterson Poetry Prize. His previous poetry collections include Start with the Trouble, and Streetfighting, a Paterson Poetry Prize Finalist. He earned a BA in English from Kutztown University, an MA in English/Creative Writing from Hollins College, an MFA in Creative Writing (Poet...