Rattle Poetry

Rebecca Starks is the author of the poetry collections Time Is Always Now, a finalist for the 2019 Able Muse Book Award, and Fetch, Muse, forthcoming from Able Muse Press. Winner of Rattle‘s 2018 Neil Postman Award for Metaphor, and past winner of Poetry Northwest‘s Richard Hugo Prize, she is a co-founder of Mud Season Review and a former director of the Burlington Writers Workshop. She works as a...

Alison Townsend is the author of two award-winning books of poetry, The Blue Dress and Persephone in America, and a volume of prose, The Persistence of Rivers: An Essay on Moving Water. Her poem "Pantoum from the Window of the Room Where I Write" won the 2020 Rattle Poetry Prize. Professor Emerita of English at the University of Wisconsin–Whitewater, she lives in the country outside Madison. Find...

​Russell Brakefield is the author of FIELD RECORDINGS (Wayne State University Press, 2018). His writing has appeared in the Indiana Review, New Orleans Review, Poet Lore, Crab Orchard Review, Hobart, and elsewhere. He received his MFA in poetry from the University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers’ Program. He has received fellowships from the University of Michigan Musical Society, the Vermont Stu...

Rattlecast #77 features former California Poet Laureate Dana Gioia. Dana Gioia is an internationally acclaimed poet and writer. Former California Poet laureate and Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, Gioia was born in Los Angeles of Italian and Mexican descent. The first person in his family to attend college, he received a B.A. and M.B.A. from Stanford and an M.A. from Harvard in Com...

Rattlecast #76 features Jennifer Jean and her new book, Object Lesson. Jennifer Jean's poetry collections include OBJECT LESSON (Lily Books) and THE FOOL (Big Table). She's also released the teaching resource book OBJECT LESSON: A GUIDE TO WRITING POETRY (Lily Books). Her poetry, prose, and co-translations have appeared in: Poetry Magazine, Waxwing Journal, Rattle Magazine, Crab Creek Review, DMQ...

Rattlecast #75 features 2020 Rattle Poetry Prize Finalist Alexis Rotella and her most recent book, Dancing the Tarantella. Alexis received a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Drew University, where she did her thesis on Zen Buddhism. She also received a Masters in Classical Acupuncture from The Academy for Five Element Acupuncture, as well as a doctorate in clinical hypnotherapy. In 1984, she s...

Rattlecast #74 features Marjorie Lotfi, a frequent contributor to Poets Respond, and her most recent book, Refuge. Marjorie Lotfi was born in New Orleans, spent her childhood in Tehran, then lived in San Diego, Washington DC and New York before moving to London in 1999 and Edinburgh in 2005. She founded and runs Open Book, which organizes reading groups in community settings and with vulnerable ad...

Rattlecast #73 features Skye Jackson, one of the 2020 Rattle Poetry Prize finalists, and her recent chapbook, A Faster Grave. Skye Jackson was born in New Orleans. She is currently an MFA candidate in poetry at the University of New Orleans Creative Writing Workshop where she serves as an associate poetry editor of Bayou Magazine. She is the author of the prizewinning chapbook, A Faster Grave, pub...

Rattlecast #72 features Amy Miller and her most recent book, The Trouble with New England Girls. Amy has appeared many times in Poets Respond and six times in Rattle's issues, most recently issue 67. Amy Miller's full-length poetry collection, The Trouble with New England Girls, won the Louis Award from Concrete Wolf Press, and her latest chapbooks are I Am on a River and Cannot Answer (BOAAT Pres...

Rattlecast #71 features Sarah P. Strong and their new book, The Mouth of Earth. Sarah has appeared in seven issues of Rattle, most recently in this winter's. Sarah P. Strong is the author of two poetry collections, Tour of the Breath Gallery, winner of the Walt McDonald First-Book Prize (Texas Tech, 2013), and The Mouth of Earth (University of Nevada, forthcoming 2020), and two novels, The Faintin...

Rattlecast #70 features Alan W. King and his forthcoming chapbook, CROOKED SMILING LIGHT. Alan has appeared in issues 31 and 54 of RATTLE. Alan King is an author, poet, journalist and videographer, who lives with his family in Bowie, MD. He’s a communications specialist for a national nonprofit and a senior editor at Words Beats & Life‘s global hip hop journal. King is the author of POINT BLANK (S...

Rattlecast #69 features winter issue contributor Jim Peterson and his new book, The Horse Who Bears Me Away. Jim Peterson is the author of six collections of poetry, three chapbooks, numerous plays, and a novel, Paper Crown, published by Red Hen Press and recently made available on Audible. His poetry collection The Owning Stone won Red Hen Press’s Benjamin Saltman Award for 1999. His newest colle...

Rattlecast #68 feature's Steve Henn and his forthcoming book, Guilty Prayer. His poems have appeared in Poets Respond and four issues of Rattle. Steve Henn wrote Indiana Noble Sad Man of the Year (Wolfson Press 2017), And God Said: let there be Evolution! (NYQ Books 2012), and Unacknowledged Legislations (NYQ Books 2011) and the forthcoming chapbook from Main Street Rag, Guilty Prayer (out Feb/Mar...

Rattlecast #67 features RENT Poet founder Brian Sonia-Wallace and his new book, The Poetry of Strangers. In 2012, Brian set up a typewriter on the street with a sign that said “Poetry Store” and accidentally started his business: RENT Poet. Over 5,000 poems later, his book of essays, The Poetry of Strangers, profiles the communities he's written for across America, and the desperate desire to be l...

Rattlecast #66 features Fiona Sze-Lorrain. Fiona Sze-Lorrain is a poet, literary translator, editor, and zheng harpist who writes and translates in English, French, Chinese, and occasionally Spanish. She is the author of three books of poetry: Water the Moon (2010), My Funeral Gondola (2013), and most recently The Ruined Elegance (2016) from Princeton, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Pri...

This episode of the Rattlecast is a pre-recorded broadcast of our conversation with Jan Beatty this June, which appeared in issue #69 of Rattle magazine. Jan Beatty’s sixth book, The Body Wars, will be published in fall 2020 by the University of Pittsburgh Press. She is the winner of the Red Hen Nonfiction Award for her memoir, American Bastard, forthcoming in 2021. Jackknife: New and Collected Po...

Rattlecast #64 features David Mason, who has two poems in the current issue of Rattle. He'll being reading from his book of new and selected poems, The Sound, as well as a forthcoming manuscript, Pacific Light. David Mason’s books of poems include The Buried Houses (winner of the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize), The Country I Remember (winner of the Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award), and Arrivals. His...

Rattlecast #63 features Jessica Goodfellow and her book, Whiteout. Jessica has appeared in three issue of Rattle, including our most recent. Jessica Goodfellow grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, but has spent the last twenty years in California, Florida, and Japan. She received an MS degree from the California Institute of Technology and an MA in linguistics from the University...

Rattlecast #62 features A.M. Juster and his latest book, Wonder and Wrath. A.M. Juster is an award-winning poet, translator, and critic. His most recent books include John Milton's The Book of Elegies, The Elegies of Maximianus, and Sleaze & Slander, and his first book of original poetry, The Secret Language of Women, won the Richard Wilbur Award. Juster's poetry, translations, and essays have app...

Rattlecast #61 features former Nevada County Poet Laureate Molly Fisk and her newest project, California Fire & Water: A Climate Crisis Anthology. Molly Fisk is an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow (2019), a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow (1999), and the author of two poetry collections: The More Difficult Beauty, and Listening to Winter, which was #4 in the California Poetry Serie...

Rattlecast #60 features 2020 Rattle Chapbook Prize winner Kathleen McClung. Kathleen McClung is the author of Temporary Kin, The Typists Play Monopoly, and Almost the Rowboat. A Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, she is the winner of the Rita Dove, Morton Marr, Shirley McClure, and Maria W. Faust national poetry prizes. Her work appears widely in journals and anthologies, including Fire &...

Rattlecast #59 features slam legend Taylor Mali. Taylor has appeared in many issues of Rattle and was winner of the 2nd annual Rattle Chapbook Prize. Taylor Mali is one of the most well-known poets to have emerged from the poetry slam movement and one of the original poets to appear on the HBO series “Def Poetry Jam.” A four-time National Poetry Slam champion, he is the author of four collections...

Rattlecast #58 features Gregory Loselle. Gregory's formal poems have appeared two issues of Rattle, most recently the summer 2020 issue. Gregory Loselle won four Hopwood Awards and The Academy of American Poets Prize at The University of Michigan, where he earned an MFA. He has won The William van Wert Fiction Award from Hidden River Arts, and Lorian Hemingway Short Story Competition for his short...

Rattlecast #57 features Alejandro Escudé. Alejandro has appeared often in both Rattle's print issues and Poets Respond, and was interviewed for issue #59. Alejandro Escudé’s first book of poems, "My Earthbound Eye," was published in September 2013 upon winning the 2012 Sacramento Poetry Center Award. He received a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis, where he was taught by such notab...

Rattlecast #56 features longtime Rattle contributor Jennifer Perrine and her new book, Again. Jennifer Perrine is the author of three previous books of poetry, most recently No Confession, No Mass, winner of the Publishing Triangle Audre Lorde Award and the Prairie Schooner Book Prize. Perrine’s other books include In the Human Zoo, which was selected for the Agha Shahid Ali Poetry Prize, and The...