Rattle Poetry

Episode #31 welcomes Rachel Custer to the Rattlecast. Rachel has appeared in three issues of Rattle and three times in Poets Respond, including with "How I Am Like Donald Trump," perhaps the most-read and most-discussed poem in the entire series. Rachel Custer is the author of The Temple She Became (Five Oaks Press, 2017) and the recipient of a 2019 NEA Fellowship in Poetry. She has previously pub...

Episode #30 features Kelly Grace Thomas and her new book Boat Burned. Kelly's poem "And the Woman Said" appeared in Rattle #51 and won the Neil Postman Award for Metaphor. Kelly Grace Thomas is a 2018 finalist for the Rita Dove Poetry Award. Her first full-length collection, Boat Burned, released with YesYes Books in January 2020. Kelly’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in: Best New Poets 2...

Episode #29 features Susan Browne and her new book Just Living. Susan's poems have appeared in issues 64, 66, and the forthcoming issue 67 of Rattle. Susan Browne’s poetry has appeared in Ploughshares, The Sun, Subtropics, The Southern Review, Superstition Review, Rattle, New Ohio Review, B O D Y, American Life in Poetry, The American Journal of Poetry, Love’s Executive Order, and 180 More, Extrao...

Episode #28 features 2019 Rattle Chapbook Prize winner Christina Olson and her book The Last Mastodon. Christina Olson is the author of the poetry collections Terminal Human Velocity and Before I Came Home Naked as well as the chapbooks Weird Science and Rook & The M.E.: A Law & Order-Inspired Narrative. Her poetry and nonfiction has appeared in Arts & Letters, Virginia Quarterly Review, The South...

​Michael T. Young's third full-length collection, The Infinite Doctrine of Water, was published by Terrapin Books. His chapbook, Living in the Counterpoint (Finishing Line Press), received the 2014 Jean Pedrick Chapbook Award from the New England Poetry Club. His other collections include The Beautiful Moment of Being Lost (Poets Wear Prada), Transcriptions of Daylight (Rattapallax Press), and Bec...

Episode #26 features 2019 Rattle Poetry Prize Finalist Kathleen Balma and her chapbook Gallimaufry & Farrago. Kathleen Balma is a public librarian and the author of Gallimaufry & Farrago (Finishing Line Press 2018), a poetry chapbook. She received a Master of Library Science and a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry Writing from Indiana University. A Fulbright Fellow and Pushcart Prize winner, she is th...

In this episode we'll visit with Chaun Ballard and his chapbook, Flight. Chaun has appeared in issues 66 and 60 of Rattle, and several times in Poets Respond. Raised in St. Louis, Missouri, and San Bernardino, California, Chaun Ballard is the co-host of the Blue Doors Poetry Retreat in Galaxidi, Greece, an affiliate editor for Alaska Quarterly Review, a Callaloo fellow, and a graduate of the MFA P...

Clint Margrave's poem "When Death Travels" appears in this winter's issue of Rattle, and he has another in issue #67 this spring. Salute the Wreckage, his second collection of poems, explores the universe within us and the universe in which we live. Clint Margrave is also the author of The Early Death of Men, a collection of poems published by NYQ Books. His work has also appeared in The New York...

After a break for Christmas and New Year's Eves, the Rattlecast returns with an episode featuring another frequent contributor, Barbara Crooker, and her new book Some Glad Morning. Barbara Crooker is the author of nine books of poetry, most recently The Book of Kells (which won the Best Poetry Book 2018 Award from Poetry by the Sea) and Some Glad Morning (Pitt Poetry Series). Her first book, Radia...

Peter E. Murphy was born in Wales and grew up in New York City where he operated heavy equipment, managed a nightclub and drove a taxi. He is the author of eleven books and chapbooks including most recently, Mean Time and The Man Who Never Was. His poems, essays and photographs have been published in hundreds of journals including The Amsterdam Quarterly, The Beloit Poetry Journal, The Cortland Re...

For episode 21, we visit with longtime Rattle contributor Tony Gloeggler, along with a special "closed" mic, featuring poems from the anthology Alongside We Travel: Contemporary Poets on Autism. Tony's most recent books focus on his relationship with his ex-girlfriend's autistic son, and his poems are also included in the anthology. Tony Gloeggler was born and raised in New York City. He is the au...

Naomi Shihab Nye was interviewed in Rattle #21, and in this week we discuss her newest book The Tiny Journalist. She has been a Lannan Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow, and a Witter Bynner Fellow (Library of Congress). She has received a Lavan Award from the Academy of American Poets, the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award, the Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award, the Paterson Poetry Prize, four Pushcart Prize...

Bob Hicok has appeared in several issues of Rattle, including the conversation in issue #29. His poems have appeared in a wide variety of magazines, journals, and anthologies, including the New Yorker, Poetry, The American Poetry Review, and numerous volumes of The Best American Poetry. His books have been awarded the Bobbitt Prize from the Library of Congress and named a "Notable Book of the Year...

Nickole Brown's chapbook To Those Who Were Our First Gods was winner of the 2018 Rattle Chapbook Prize. She received her MFA from the Vermont College, studied literature at Oxford University, and was the editorial assistant for the late Hunter S. Thompson. She worked at Sarabande Books for ten years. Her first collection, Sister, a novel-in-poems, was first published in 2007 by Red Hen Press and a...

Wally Swist is the author of some three dozen books and chapbooks of poetry and prose, most recently The Bees of the Invisible. His book Huang Po and the Dimensions of Love was selected co-winner of the 2011 Crab Orchard Series Open Poetry Contest, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa served as judge, and the book was published by Southern Illinois University Press in 2012. Swist is a reci...

Lynne Knight was the winner of the 2009 Rattle Poetry Prize. She is the author of several books of poetry, most recently The Persistence of Longing (2016) and The Language of Forgetting (2018). Her cycle of poems on Impressionist winter paintings, Snow Effects (2008), has been translated into French by Nicole Courtet. Knight’s work has appeared in Best American Poetry 2000, and her awards include...

Francesca Bell was born in Spokane, Washington, into a family with deep, hardscrabble roots in the Northwest. Her poems and translations appear in many magazines including ELLE, Mid-American Review, New Ohio Review, North American Review, and Prairie Schooner. She’s also appeared in many issues of Rattle, was the featured conversation in issue #56, and won the 2014 Neil Postman Award for Metaphor....

Janet Fitch is the author of the #1 national bestseller White Oleander, a novel translated into 24 languages, an Oprah Book Club book and the basis of a feature film; Paint It Black, also widely translated and made into a 2017 film; and two epic novels of the Russian Revolution, "The Revolution of Marina M" and "Chimes of a Lost Cathedral." Many of the characters in those last two books are poets,...

Aaron Poochigian earned a PhD in Classics from the University of Minnesota and an MFA in Poetry from Columbia University. His book of translations from Sappho, Stung With Love, was published by Penguin Classics in 2009, and his translation of Apollonius’ Jason and the Argonauts was released 2014. For his work in translation he was awarded a 2010-2011 grant by the National Endowment for the Arts. H...

Bro. Yao (Hoke S. Glover III) is a poet, teacher, former owner of Karibu Books, and author of the book "Inheritance." His work has centered on issues of literacy and the promotion of reading in the African American and larger community. He is currently an Assistant Professor of English at Bowie State University. His poetry and/or essays have been published in African American Review, Smartish Pace...

Jamey Hecht, PhD, LMFT is a psychoanalyst in private practice in Los Angeles. He studied poetry with Allen Grossman, John Burt, and Frank Bidart at Brandeis University in the 1990’s. His first book of poems was Limousine, Midnight Blue (Red Hen Press, 2009), fifty 14-line elegies for President Kennedy. Dodo Feathers collects the best of Jamey Hecht’s poetry from the past thirty years (1989-2019)....

Episode 10 of the Rattlecast features Al Ortolani and his 2019 Rattle Chapbook Prize winning collection "Hansel and Gretel Get the Word on the Street." Al is a retired high school teacher, so "each poem is like a chalk mark on a blackboard. Much like the teacher who has leaned one too many times against the chalk tray, Ortolani wears his poems on the back of pants, his shirt sleeves, his jacket el...

Episode 9 of the Rattlecast features Rattle #65 contributor Alexandra Umlas and her debut book "At the Table of the Unknown," which, according to David Hernandez, is "deft, attentive, and often turn the quotidian into moments steeped in mystery." As always, we'll also include live open mic after talking to our guest. For details on how to participate, either pre-recorded or via Skype, go to: https...

Episode 8 of the Rattlecast features Kat Lehmann and her new book "Stumbling Toward Happiness," a spin on the “how to be happy” genre featuring 111 haibun and hybrid meditations of transformation and triumph. As always, we'll also include live open mic after talking to our guest. For details on how to participate, either pre-recorded or via Skype, go to: https://www.rattle.com/rattlecast/ ____ Kat...

Episode 7 of the Rattlecast features frequent Rattle contributor Kim Dower and her new book "Sunbathing on Tyrone Power's Grave." Who was Tyrone Power and what was the Poet Laureate of West Hollywood doing on his grave? We'll find out! As always, we'll also include live open mic after talking to our guest. For details on how to participate, either pre-recorded or via Skype, go to: https://www.ratt...