The Hive Poetry Collective

Listen here! Former HIVE member, Geneffa Jahan, returns to offer this salient conversation with beloved local poet and SC Poet Laureate Emeritus, David Sullivan, and his equally lauded friend, the Illinois poet and teacher, Ignatius Valentine Aloysius. They discuss their recently released collaborative poetry collection, Salt Pruning , as they reflect upon the unlikely parallels of their lives and...

"Words: They give and give and give." Cintia Santana joins the Hive to read from her Northern California Book Award-winning poetry debut, The Disordered Alphabet. Hear several poems and a conversation with Farnaz Fatemi about Cintia's views on words as magic, the paying attention, ekphrasis and more. Cintia Santana teaches literary translation and poetry workshops in Spanish and English at Stanfor...

Chris Abani and Kwame Dawes chat with Dion O'Reilly about KUMI: New-Generation African Poets: A Chapbook Box Set THE LIMITED-EDITION BOX SET is a project started in 2014 to ensure the publication of up to a dozen chapbooks every year by African poets through Akashic Books. The series seeks to identify the best poetry written by African poets working today, and it is especially interested in featur...

Burmese American poet Maw Shein Win's new book, Percussing the Thinking Jar, is a liminal elegy to health issues, relationships, and more while navigating the isolation of the pandemic. Hear Maw read poems from the book that's been called by author John Yau, "diaphanous comfort" while we are at "the chaos party." You can find Maw's book at University of Chicago Press . For more on the poet visit h...

In Part 2 of our interview, Marc Vincenz—author of over 40 books of poetry—talks about his book of poetry, The Pearl Diver of Irunmani (White Pine Press, 2023). We dive into the deep waters of a consciousness preparing for death. During a health crisis, Vincenz came into a new language informed by this encounter, finding footing in "the heart of a word" and his own fearless observations. "See the...

Jan Beatty’s   eighth book,  Dragstripping ,  was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, September, 2024. Her memoir,  American Bastard,  won the Red Hen Nonfiction Award. Recent books include  The Body Wars  and a chapbook,  Skydog  (Lefty Blondie Press, 2022).   Other work includes  Jackknife: New and Selected Poems  (University of Pittsburgh, 2018 Paterson Prize) named by Sandra Cisne...

Luke and Dion read some Larry Levis and then take a deep dive into Luke's latest book. Luke Johnson is the author of Quiver (Texas Review Press), a finalist for the Jake Adam York Prize, the Vassar Miller Award, The Levis Prize and the Bittingham. It was recently named a finalist for the California Book Award, winner announced in May. His second full length Distributary is forthcoming Fall 2025 fr...

Ellen Bass joins the Hive in anticipation of her appearance at UCSC for the Morton Marcus Memorial Poetry Reading on November 7. Full details about the event can be found here . Poems by Ellen which she reads in this episode: Laundry , Because , Black Coffee , Any Common Desolation , and Bringing Flowers to Salinas Valley State Prison About Our Guest: Ellen Bass is a Chancellor Emerita of the Acad...

Rick Barot weaves keen observations of the world with reflections and sustenance of human connections across space and time. Please join host Julie Murphy in a conversation with Rick that begins with a discussion of Naomi Shihab Nye 's poem Lights from Other Windows and journeys through poems from Rick's new book Moving the Bones . Rick's exquisitely crafted poems examine the human experience deep...

Marc Vincenz has been called the David Bowie of poetry, reinventing himself and exploring new poetic chops in each of his 40 books. Roxi Power talks with Vincenz about his newest book of surreal poems in The King of Prussia is Drunk on Stars (Lavender Ink Press, 2024). From the imperialism of Prussia to the purity of Iceland, Vincenz juxtaposes the monstrous with the meditative in his quiet lyrics...

Ryler Dustin has represented Seattle on the final stage of the Individual World Poetry Slam and his poems appear in outlets like Verse Daily , Major Jackson’s The Slowdown , and The Best of Button Poetry . He is the author of Trailer Park Psalms (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2023) and Heavy Lead Birdsong (Write Bloody Publishing, 2010). He lives in Bellingham, Washington, with his wife and a do...

Danusha Laméris , a poet and essayist, was raised in Northern California, born to a Dutch father and Barbadian mother. Her first book, The Moons of August (2014), was chosen by Naomi Shihab Nye as the winner of the Autumn House Press Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the Milt Kessler Book Award. Some of her work has been published in: T he Best American Poetry,   The New York Times, Orion, The A...

C.S. Giscombe—known to his friends as Cecil--talks with long-time friend Roxi Power about the second half of his newest poetry book, Negro Mountain) (University of Chicago Press) which was recommended by a New York Times critic as one of the 5 best poetry books of 2023.   In the second part of our interview, Giscombe dives deep into the book’s central concepts, such as “negro luck” and the “the lo...

Want to hear what it's like teaching poetry to Special Ops soldiers? Or how to delineate (or not) the space grief occupies? Tune in to hear poetry mining the vein of Robinson Jeffers and Theodore Roethke. George Lober's latest book, Rainbow Eucalyptus, New and Collected Poems, is available from ⁠Bookshop Santa Cruz⁠ and ⁠Amazon⁠ .

Award-winning book and letterpress artists Felicia Rice and Theresa Whitehill (former Poet Laureate of Ukiah, CA.) created a multi-genre project, Heavy Lifting, that speaks in poetry, letterpress, and film to the multiple crises of recent years: fires, Covid, Black Lives Matter, housing injustice, and more. Roxi Power talks with these remarkable artists about their "urgent publishing" an...

Jessica Cuello reads from her latest book. Jessica and Dion also read the poem "Running Home I Saw the Planets" from Aracelis Girmay 's book Kingdom Animalia. Jessica Cuello ’s most recent book is Yours, Creature (JackLeg Press, 2023). Her book Liar , selected by Dorianne Laux for The 2020 Barrow Street Book Prize, was honored with The Eugene Nassar Prize, The CNY Book Award, and a f...

Join Julie Murphy and fellow Bee, Geneffa Jahan , as they discuss “ A Simple Poem for Virginia Woolf ” by Bronwen Wallace, and then explore and delight in Geneffa's forthcoming book Spilling the Chai: Poems about Family and Food , published by Jamii Press.

At this live, in-studio interview, Julia Chiapella chats with Hive member Dion O'Reilly about her new book, Sadness of the Apex Predator. Dion O'Reilly is the author of three poetry collections: Sadness of the Apex Predator , a finalist for the Steel Toe Book Prize and the Ex Ophidia Prize; Ghost Dogs , winner of the Pinnacle Book Achievement Award, The Independent Press Award for Poetry,...

Geneffa Jahan talks with third-generation Japanese American artist and activist, Shizue Seigel about her seven decades of experiential connections across age, class, continents, and cultures. Born in 1946, shortly after her parents emerged from incarceration, Seigel grew up in segregated Baltimore, Occupied Japan, California farm labor camps and skid-row Stockton. In this candid interview, Seigel...

C.S. Giscombe talks about the first half of his newest poetry book, Negro Mountain (University of Chicago Press) which was recommended by a New York Times critic as one of the 5 best poetry books of 2023. C. S. Giscombe teaches at the University of California’s Berkeley campus, where he is the Robert Hass Chair in English.  His prose and poetry books include  Negro Mountain ,  Prairie Style ,  Ohi...

Farnaz Fatemi and Nancy Miller Gomez discuss her debut book of poems,  Inconsolable Objects , from YesYes Books. In addition to talking about several poems in the collection, Gomez talks about self-doubt along with her assessment of “poets as the fighter pilots of the literary world.”  Poems by others mentioned: Brigit Pegeen Kelly’s “ Song ” and Wallace Stevens’ “ Snowman ”. 

Louise Glück , who passed away last October at age 80, was one of the most important poets of our time. Former US Poet Laureate and winner of every major poetry prize, including the Noble and the Pulitzer, Louise was a passionate and beloved teacher. Bay Area poet Veronica Kornberg joins Julie Murphy in reading and discussing her poems, as well as sharing stories from her deep life. Books by Louis...

Sally Ashton , former Santa Clara County Poet Laureate, drops into the Hive to talk with Farnaz Fatemi about her most recent book of poems,  Listening to Mars.  She shares poems which explore the sadness and surreal world of lockdown, what space exploration says about humans, and more.  Sally Ashton is a poet, writer, Editor-in-Chief of the  DMQ Review , San José State University professor emerita...

We discuss a poem by Rachel McKibbons and several from Blanco's fabulous new book, Homeland of My Body ⁠. Selected by President Obama as the fifth Presidential Inaugural Poet in U.S. history, Richard Blanco was the youngest, the first Latinx, immigrant, and gay person to serve in that role. In 2023, Blanco was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Biden from the National Endowment...

Chopsy Gutowski talks with Roxi Power about her powerful poems freshly submitted for her MFA thesis. As friends who have been writing together in Santa Cruz for years, Chopsy and Roxi laugh and dig in, plumbing the lyrical depths of Gutowski's eco-poetry, elegies, and political poetry. Mining the difficult moves in Jorie Graham's book, To 2040, Gutowski invites us to inhabit the present mo...