Poet Talk on WMUA

Kirsten Mosher is an American artist and author based in Western Massachusetts. Mosher is engaged in video, writing, studio work and art in public places. At once subversive and always playful, Mosher's work draws attention to how context transforms the language of urban scenes, signs and furniture by navigating and challenging everyday boundaries. Mosher often documents the relationships betw...

María Luisa Arroyo Cruzado was born in Manati, Puerto Rico, and raised in Springfield, Massachusetts. She received a BA from Colby College, an MA from Tufts University, and an MFA from Pine Manor College. Arroyo Cruzado writes poetry and prose that code-switch between English, Farsi, German, and Spanish—the cultural languages of her experiences. She is the author of  Thought Here Would Cure Me of...

Kevin & Ellen read from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass : the first 25 "cantos", in honor of its publication on 4July 1855. Walt Whitman is America’s world poet—a latter-day successor to Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Shakespeare. In  Leaves of Grass  (1855, 1891-2), he celebrated democracy, nature, love, and friendship. This monumental work chanted praises to the body as well as to th...

Lesle Lewis is the author of six poetry collections:   Small Boat   (2003),  Landscapes I & II  (2006),   lie down too  (2011),  A Boot’s a Boot  (2014),   Rainy Days on the Farm  (2019),  John’s Table  (2026) and the chapbooks,   It’s Rothko in Winter or Belgium   (2012), and  Hydrogen  (2025).  A new book,  Survival of the Fittest Pronoun , is due out this fall.  She graduated from the UMass...

Carol Edelstein, with Robin Barber, co-founded Gallery of Readers Press. With Liz George, she edits  Switch , a journal of micro fiction. She is the author of three books of poems, most recently  Past Repair  (Simian Press, 2021). Her poetry and fiction have been featured in numerous anthologies and literary magazines, including  The Massachusetts Review, The Georgia Review,  and  Alaska Quarterly...

Samantha Pious translates women's poetry, especially sapphic women's poetry. Her aim is to contribute to a canon—or canons—of our own. So far, she has translated the selected poems of Renée Vivien, Natalie Barney, and Judith Teixeira. Her translations of Teixeira have been shortlisted for a Lambda Literary Award and for a Golden Crown Literary Award. She has also translated  A Lover and Hi...

Amy Gordon's poems have appeared in Antiques Magazine, The Amsterdam Review ,  Ekphrastic Review ,  The Massachusetts Review, and other journals. She is the author of three chapbooks: Deep Fahrenheit (Prolific Press) and The Yellow Room (Finishing Line Press).   Leaf Town is the winner of the 2023 Slate Roof Press Elyse Wolf Chapbook Prize. Before turning to poetry, she wrote and published pri...

In a career spanning six decades, Ted Pearson has published thirty-two books of poetry, most recently Epistrophy and Trilogy. He also co-authored The Grand Piano, a ten-volume experiment in collective autobiography; edited Epilogue , a posthumous edition of Craig Watson’s last poems, and co-edited Bobweaving Detroit: The Selected Poems of Murray Jackson . His work has appeared in Canada, England,...

Born 1947 in Northampton, Robin Barber, M.A., is a writer, teacher, and photographer. He loves writing workshops--first joined Pat Schneider's workshop in 1987, then Gene Zeiger's, then Carol Edelstein's from 1994 to the present. Certified by Amherst Writers and Artists leadership program,  he's been leading the Wednesday evening and Monday morning workshops since 1997. In 2010, Ro...

JK Lawson is a visual artist and poet. Over the past 30 years his work has been exhibited extensively throughout the USA including the American Visionary Museum in Baltimore, the Californian African American Museum in Los Angelos, Ogden Museum of Southern Art, Time and Space Limited, Hudson, NY and currently at the New England Visionary Arts museum, in Northanpton, Ma. He is the author of seven bo...

Suzanne Stroh’s new book, published last December by Headmistress Press, is the first English translation of the only book length prose poem by Natalie Clifford Barney, one of the Brilliant Exiles living in Paris between the two World Wars. Suzanne’s writing has been anthologized in NPR’s Story Project, edited by Paul Auster, and by Peacock Press in the Defying Gravity Series edited by Richard Pea...

Anthony Walton’s poems have appeared widely, in such magazines and journals as  The New Yorker, The American Scholar, The Black Scholar, 32 Poems, Alaska Quarterly Review, Kenyon Review, Black Renaissance Noire, Poetry Ireland, Oxford American, Obsidian, Notre Dame Review, The Library of America,  and  The Academy of American Poets , among many others .  He is the author of a chapbook of poems,  1...

Heather Treseler is author of Auguries & Divinations , which received the 2025 Massachusetts Book Award in poetry, and two chapbooks, Hard Bargain and Parturition . Her work has received a Pushcart Prize, the W. B. Yeats Prize, and the Editors’ Prize from The Missouri Review , and support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Her poems appear in...

Isa Gitana is a Romani, Indigenous Mexican, and Italian queer femme poet writing about ancestry, survival, and the sacred ordinary. Her work moves between lyric tenderness and cultural critique, exploring life in a body shaped by migration, erasure, and resilience. She has been published in the  Dear Sister  anthology and in  Meat for Tea  literary magazine. A lifelong community builder, she treat...

D M Gordon is the prize-winning author of  Fourth World  (Adastra Press),  Nightly, at the Institute of the Possible (Hedgerow Books)—a finalist for the Massachusetts Book Award, and  Loosestrife for Porcupines,  2026, finalist for the Blue Light Book Award. Two novels,  Gabriel , about a lost boy trying to find himself and home among northern islands in the 1960's, and  Edda , about his grand...

Rebecca Hart Olander’s poetry has appeared recently or is forthcoming in  On the Seawall, Poetry Northwest,  and  Shō Poetry Journal,  and her collaborative visual and written work has been published in multiple journals and in  They Said: A Multi-Genre Anthology of Contemporary Collaborative Writing,  from Black Lawrence Press. A Women's National Book Association Poetry Award winner, Rebecca’...

Maya Janson’s second poetry collection, “On the Mercy Me Planet” was published in 2022 by Blue Edge Books and was selected as a “Must Read” by the Massachusetts Center for the Book. Janson’s poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Threepenney Review, Plume, Best American Poetry and elsewhere. She has been a recipient of a Massachusetts Artist Grant and has been a fellow at MacDowell. Janson has bee...

Casper Lucia is a trans artist and writer living in the hilltowns of Western Massachusetts. He grew up in Los Angeles. His work thus far mostly exists in limited and ephemeral forms, like broadsides, drawings, and self-published zines that he no longer has any copies of. Email him at  casperluciahello@gmail.com  to stay updated on his work.

Martín Espada has published more than twenty books as a poet, editor, essayist, and translator. His new book of poems is called Jailbreak of Sparrows (2025). His previous book,  Floaters,  won the National Book Award for Poetry in 2021. Other poetry collections include  Vivas to Those Who Have Failed  (2016),  The Trouble Ball  (2011),  The Republic of Poetry  (2006),  Alabanza  (2003) and  Imagin...

Mydalis Vera is a Puerto Rican writer  and social worker with an MFA in Nonfiction Creative Writing from Bay Path University. Her body of work includes the self-published collection Warrior Guerrera: Sayings and Affirmations para las Guerreras and a poetry chapbook titled Warrior Guerreras and Broken Hearts, Burning Suns. She is also the author of the Guerrera Writer Journal. Her writing has appea...

Lauren Marie Schmidt is the author of three previous collections of poetry:  Two Black Eyes and a Patch of Hair Missing ;  The Voodoo Doll Parade , selected for the Main Street Rag Author’s Choice Chapbook Series; and  Psalms of The Dining Room , a sequence of poems about her volunteer experience at a soup kitchen in Eugene, Oregon. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in journals such as  Belo...

Born in Westerly, RI, Carla Panciera was raised on her family’s dairy farm. She graduated from the University of New Hampshire with a BA in English and has a graduate degree in poetry from Boston University where she studied with George Starbuck and Derek Walcott.  She has published three collections of poetry: One of the Cimalores (Cider Press Award Winner), No Day, No Dusk, No Love (Bordighera P...

K. T. Landon’s debut collection,  Abide , was selected by Kim Addonizio as the winner of the 2025 Richard Snyder Memorial Poetry Prize and will be published by Ashland Poetry Press in 2026.  Her poems have appeared in  The Southern Review ,  The Sun ,  New Ohio Review ,  North American Review,Nimrod , Narrative, and  Best New Poets among others.   Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize...

Deborah Gorlin is the author of two previous books of poems,  BODILY COURSE , White Pine Poetry Press Prize, 1997, and  LIFE OF THE GARMENT,  Bauhan Publishing, winner of the 2014 May Sarton New Hampshire Poetry Prize.  Her new book of poems,  OPEN FIRE , Bauhan Publishing, has been published this Spring, 2023. She has published in a wide range of journals including  Poetry, American Poetry Review...

Lori Shine  received her MFA from UMass Amherst in 2004. Her poems have appeared in  6x6, APR, Boston Review, Conduit, New American Writing, Tin House , and other magazines, and in the chapbooks  Weather Eye  (2025) and  Coming Down in White  (2007), both with artwork by Kathranne Knight. She and Knight have worked together on multiple collaborative projects, including Correspondence Publishing. L...