Poet Talk on WMUA

Tiana Clark is the author of the poetry collection, I Can’t Talk About the Trees Without the Blood (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018), winner of the 2017 Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize, and Equilibrium (Bull City Press, 2016), selected by Afaa Michael Weaver for the 2016 Frost Place Chapbook Competition. Clark is a winner for the 2020 Kate Tufts Discovery Award (Claremont Graduate University), a 2...

Kirun Kapur is the winner of the Arts & Letters Rumi Prize in Poetry and the Antivenom Poetry Award for her first book, Visiting Indira Gandhi’s Palmist (Elixir Press, 2015). Her second collection, Women in the Waiting Room (Black Lawrence Press, 2020), was a finalist for the National Poetry Series and was included in the Best Books of 2020 by Kirkus Reviews. Named an “Asian-American poet to w...

Educated at Georgetown University, BA English Literature, 2011; Brown University, MFA Fiction, 2015; New York University, MFA Poetry, 2021. Desiree C. Bailey is a poet and writer from Trinidad and Tobago, and New York. She is the author of What Noise Against the Cane (Yale University Press) which won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry....

Tzivia Gover is the author of several books about dreams, sleep, and waking up to a joyful life. Her most recent book, Dreaming on the Page: Tap into Your Midnight Mind to Supercharge Your Writing, combines writing, spirituality, and dreamwork. It won top honors in its category from the Independent Book Publishers Association and was named a finalist in its category by the Foreward Indies prize. H...

Poet John Hennessey is our guest this week. His most recent book is "Exit Garden State". He is the poetry editor of "The Common" and he teaches at Umass/Amherst.

In this episode of Poet Talk, join Ellen, Jon, and Riley as they host local Springfield poet Gri Saex in discussing her work, and the works that have inspired her in her writing. From her time living in New York City to her upbringing in the Dominican Republic, Gri draws from a wealth of knowledge and experience to inform her poetry, and her activism in the greater Springfield area. To learn more...

Paula Sayword has been writing poetry for fifty years but only began to take herself seriously after she retired from a career in public housing. With her long-time partner, she lives in Western, Massachusetts. Her poetry has appeared in Sanctuary, the Journal of Massachusetts Audubon Society; the Naugatuck River Review, Cyclamen & Swords, Sinister Wisdom, The Zuni Mountain Poets and Adrienne...

Sandra Yannone is the author of The Glass Studio (2024) and Boats for Women (2019), both published by Salmon Poetry in County Clare, Ireland. Her poetry has appeared in Ploughshares, SWWIM Every Day, Prairie Schooner, Poetry Ireland Review, Lavender Review, and Women’s Review of Books. Since March, 2020, she has hosted the weekly reading series Cultivating Voices LIVE Poetry on Zoom via Facebook....

Adam Grabowski is the author of the chapbook Go On Bewilderment (Attack Bear Press, 2020). His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in such journals as Ninth Letter, OVERSOUND, New Ohio Review, Plume, Sixth Finch, jubilat, Off the Coast, DMQ Review, Hobart, Rust + Moth, Exit 7, Bullets into Bells (online), past-ten, Night Coffee, Drunk in a Midnight Choir,The Naugatuck River Review, Radius, and...

Ide Amari Thompson (he/they) is a Black and Queer Caribbean writer from Nassau, Bahamas. They are working on an MLS degree from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champange and have an MFA in poetry from UMass Amherst and are a TinHouse 2024 Winter Alum and a reader at the Massachusetts Review. Their written work has appeared in the PREE online journal, Onyx magazine, exhibitions by the National Ar...

A poet, editor, and occasional critic, Michael Mercurio lives and writes in the Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts. His poems, interviews, and reviews have been published or are forthcoming in Palette Poetry, Thrush, The Common, Cream City Review, Sierra (the magazine of the Sierra Club), Sugar House Review, Lily Poetry Review, and elsewhere. (A full list of publications may be found here.) M...

Adrie Rose lives next to an orchard in western MA and is the editor of Nine Syllables Press. Her work has previously appeared in The Baltimore Review, Nimrod International Journal, The Night Heron Barks, and more. Her chapbook I Will Write a Love Poem was released in 2023 with Porkbelly Press, and her chapbook Rupture was released in 2024 with Gold Line Press. She was nominated for the Pushcart Pr...

Anna Maria Hong (she/her) is the author of Age of Glass (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2018), winner of the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award and the Cleveland State University Poetry Center’s First Book Poetry Competition; the novella H & G (Sidebrow Books, 2018), winner of the A Room of Her Own Foundation’s Clarissa Dalloway Prize; and Fablesque (Tupelo Pr...

Nathan McClain is the author of Scale (Four Way Books, 2017) and Previously Owned (Four Way Books, 2022), a recipient of fellowships from The Frost Place, Sewanee Writers' Conference, Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and a graduate of the M.F.A. Program for Writers at Warren Wilson.  A Cave Canem fellow, his poems and prose have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry Northwest, Green Mounta...

Amy Dryansky (she/her) is the author of the poetry collections Grass Whistle (Salmon Poetry, 2013), winner of the Massachusetts Book Award for poetry, and How I Got Lost So Close to Home (Alice James Books, 1999), winner of the New England/New York Award. Her poems and essays have been published in anthologies and journals including Barrow Street, Harvard Review, New England Review, Orion, Radar,...

Sarah B. Sullivan (she/her), of Northampton, MA, is a person, poet, physician, teacher, ocean-lover, partner, parent, lesbian, friend, meditator, dog-mom, and searcher. She wrote some poetry back in her 20’s, and started writing again when illness helped her decide to work less as a doctor and more on her passion for poetry. The community of people she interacts with, whether writing together, cri...

Kim Keough (She/Her) received her BA in English from Mount Holyoke College. Her Poetry and Photography have appeared in Meat for Tea: The Valley Review. She is the former director of Voices from Inside, a writing program for incarcerated and formerly-incarcerated women. She currently lives in Williamsburg.

Carol Potter’s most recent book of poems, What Happens Next is Anyone’s Guess, was awarded the 2021 Pacific Coast Series Award from Beyond Baroque Books. Other books include Some Slow Bees, which winner of the 2014 Field Poetry Prize from Oberlin College Press, Otherwise Obedient (Red Hen Press, 2007), a finalist in the Lambda LGBT awards for 2007, and Short History of Pets which won the 1999 Clev...

Lee (formerly Lori) Desrosiers’ poetry books are The Philosopher’s Daughter ( Salmon Poetry, Ireland, 2013), Sometimes I Hear the Clock Speak (Salmon, 2016) and Keeping Planes in the Air (Salmon, 2020). Two chapbooks, Inner Sky  and typing with e.e. cummings, are from Glass Lyre Press. Their poems have appeared in  Ms. Magazine, The New York Times, New Millennium Review , Split this Rock, Contempo...

Poet Michael Favala Goldman (b. 1966) is also a Danish literary translator, educator, editor, and jazz clarinetist. Goldman’s seven books of original poetry include Who has time for this? (2020), Slow Phoenix (2021), Small Sovereign (2021), If you were here you would feel at home (2022), This May Sound Familiar (2022), Someday all of this will be yours (2023), and What Minimal Joy (2023). Among hi...

Rebecca Hart Olander holds a bachelor’s degree from Hampshire College, a master of arts in teaching in English from Smith College ’96, and a master of fine arts in writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She teaches writing at Westfield State University and is the editor/director of Perugia Press, an independent feminist press that publishes full-length poetry collections by emerging women poet...

Matt Donovan is the author most recently of The Dug-Up Gun Museum (forthcoming from BOA Editions in November 2022) and the collection of lyric essays, A Cloud of Unusual Size and Shape: Meditations on Ruin and Redemption (Trinity University Press 2016). He is the recipient of a Whiting Award, a Rome Prize in Literature, a Creative Capital Grant, and an NEA Fellowship in Literature. In addition to...

Heather Treseler is the author of Auguries & Divinations (Bauhan, 2024), which received the 2023 May Sarton New Hampshire Poetry Prize and the 2024 Shelia Margaret Motton Book Award, and Parturition (Southword, 2020), which received the 2019 chapbook award from the Munster Literature Centre in Cork, Ireland, and the Jean Pedrick Chapbook Prize. Her poems appear in The American Scholar, Kenyon...

Gail Thomas most recent books of poetry are  Trail of Roots, a chapbook which won the A.V. Christie Series (Seven Kitchens Press) and the full-length collection Leaving Paradise (Human Error Publishing). Her other books are Odd Mercy (Headmistress, 2016), Waving Back (Turning Point, 2015), No Simple Wilderness: An Elegy for Swift River Valley (Haleys, 2001) and Finding the Bear (Perugia Press, 199...

D. Dina Friedman’s newest books are the poetry collection Here in Sanctuary—Whirling, (Querencia Press) and the short-story collection Immigrants (Creators Press), which was first runner up in the short-story category for the Eric Hoffer Award. Her previous books include two YA novels, Escaping Into the Night (Simon and Schuster), Playing Dad’s Song (Farrar Straus Giroux) and one book of poetry Wo...