The Hive Poetry Collective

Reading from her debut poetry collection, Earth, My Witness , Magdalena Montagne discusses the power of poetry and nature in her healing journey as a survivor of child sexual abuse. “When I despaired, Earth held me,” she writes in her eponymous poem. Magdalena also shares recent poetry about BLM and social oppression. A long-time facilitator of drop-in writing workshops, Magdalena Montagne has col...

Listen in to as Shelley Wong reads from and talks about her debut collection, As She Appears , out May 10 from Yes Yes Books. Shelley talks with Farnaz Fatemi about the making of the book, building your own canon of self-love, and how poems help when the world erases or distorts. Find out why Electric Lit has called Shelley Wong "the poet-queen the world needs right now."  Shelley Wong is the...

Ken Weisner chats with Julie Murphy about odes, owls and homages. Ken has published three volumes of poetry with Santa Cruz’s own Hummingbird Press, including Anything on Earth in 2010 and Cricket to Star in 2019.  Ken edits Red Wheelbarrow through De Anza College, where he also teaches. Ken coordinates, with Poetry Center San José, the annual Red Wheelbarrow Poetry Prize—this year’s final ju...

Perhaps our most appropriate guest ever on The Hive: former Santa Cruzan Erica Gillingham discusses her debut poetry chapbook, The Human Body Is a Hive , a rich collection about queer love and queer family-making. Listen to Erica read from the book and share her pursuit of telling lesbian love stories in poems, "making a baby with science," and other revealing topics. With a guest cameo from her n...

Listen to poet, printmaker, teacher, and translator Gary Young read his poems and discuss his fascination with Japanese poetry, Confucianism, and the body as erotic epicenter.  About poet Gary Young That's What I Thought from Persea Books Even So: New Selected Poems from Amazon American Journal of Poetry feature  Precious Mirror: Poems by Kobun Chino Otogawa translated by Gary Young

Sally Ashton chats with Dion O'Reilly about prose poetry. Sally Ashton is a writer, teacher, and editor in chief of DMQ Review , an online journal of poetry and art. Publishing in three genres, she’s the author of 4 books including her latest The Behaviour of Clocks , WordFarm. She won first prize in the international Fish Flash Fiction contest and work appears inProse Poetry: An Introduction, and...

Join host Julie Murphy as she chats with Kathryn Pertuccelli about loving language and life's unexpected journeys. Kitty reads from her manuscript God of Sea. God of Salt . Her poems are full of images of the natural world, surprising turns and fresh language as they explore relationships, loss, and the deep life.

Listen to poets from the Writers of Color-Santa Cruz County Collective read & discuss their poems, touching upon themes of ancestry, culture, death, trauma, and healing. The group talks about their Día de los Muertos poetry event (Nov. 2021), during which they were targets of a racist Zoombombing . Featured poets include Sonya Pendrey, Shirley Flores-Muñoz, Claudia Ramírez Flores, Vivian Varga...

Dion O'Reilly chats with Dustin Brookshire , the editor of Limp Wrist Magazine, and Denise Duhamel , his co-editor of the upcoming issue, which will feature poems about BARBIE ! Listen to poems from the all-Barbie issue , including poems by Dorianne Laux, Gregg Shapiro , Caridad Moro-Granlier, and also a couple by both Denise and Dustin. The inspiration for this issue was Denise's 1997 book, Kinky...

Award-winning poet Julia Levine joins host Julie Murphy and reads from her most recent collection of poem Ordinary Psalms . Julia's poems are full of startling images and metaphors. Please join this lively conversation about loss of vision, affliction, transformation and learning to trust.

Join host Erin Redfern as she talks with Kelly Cressio-Moeller about Kelly's first book, Shade of Blue Trees (Two Sylvias, 2021; Wilder Prize finalist). Enjoy the lush images of Kelly's poems and hear thoughts on grief and the poem as portent, train rides in Germany and her approach to form, painting and music as creative spurs, and heeding what in us "is making the most noise" to get our creative...

Watsonville native & poet Olga Rosales Salinas discusses and reads from her book, La Llorona: Poetry & Prose. In this stunning collection in which La Llorona's presence looms large, Rosales Salinas tackles the violence of deportation, being first gen, the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, religion, mental illness, assimilation, & more. To purchase her book, go to https://www.olgars.com/ All...

Dion O'Reilly interviews Susan Browne , who reads new poems and old ones from her book Just Living . They talk about Jim Moore 's poem, "Whatever Else," a poem that studies  the lyric beauty in a difficult world. She quotes Robert Hass who says, "Every line of your poem needs something interesting in it." Obviously true! But just try to do it!

Hosted by Julia Chiapella, Hive members share poems to focus our collective consciousness on imagining a new world. From Yeats to Jessica Jacobs to Roger Reeves. Julia is joined by guests Julie Murphy and Farnaz Fatemi. Poems from the episode:  Yeats The Second Coming Marie Howe What The Silence Said Sharon Olds A Song Near the End of the World  Roger Reeves For Black Children at the End...

Join host Julie Murphy as talks with Jessica Jacobs about solitude, revelation and inspiration. Jessica read's and discusses Ellen Bass' poem God and the G-Spot s well as poems from each of her books, including her forth coming collection of poems in conversation with the Book of Genesis. Jessica Jacob's website SunJune Literary Collaborative Free SunJune generative writing sessions

Dion O'Reilly talks with Michael Kleber-Diggs about his new collection of poems, Worldly Things.

Come spend time with Leonora Simonovis and our new favorite poetry book, Study of the Raft , which won the 2021 Colorado Prize and was published November 2021.  Hear the poet read poems which explore what it means to be exiled from a place and culture, and also what she carries with her—fiercely and lovingly. Buy Study of the Raft here . photo: IG @meterphoto

Victoria Bañales interviews poet Violeta Orozco, who discusses and reads from her forthcoming book, The Broken Woman Diaries . Violeta's poems are a bold exploration of love, loss, displacement, and dismemberment, and the ways in which broken bodies can be healed and stitched back together.   Violeta Orozco is a bilingual author and spoken word artist from Mexico City. The Broken Woman Diarie...

 Poet, translator, essayist, editor, and journalist Stephen Kessler returns to the Hive to chat with Dion O'Reilly . They read from his new book, Last Call and also a poem by the author Jack Gilbert .

In this week's episode, Jessica Cohn and Nancy Miller Gomez join host Farnaz Fatemi in the Hive to read new work and talk about their poetry lives. We hear about the extraordinary Santa Cruz poetry community, and about finding joy during the pandemic, facing self-doubt. Above all, we hear some fantastic poems.  (In individual segments: Jessica Cohn, part 1 and Nancy Miller Gomez part 2.)

Julie Murphy hosts this episode of The Hive Poetry Collective along with Farnaz Fatemi, chatting with Santa Cruz poet laureate David Allen Sullivan. David reads from his new book Black Butterflies Over Bagdad as well as new work. He also reads and talks about Inventing the Orange Peel , a poem by Meng Hui. They discuss community, compassion, and the power of sharing poetry across cultures as well...

Dion O'Reilly interviews Donika Kelly about her recently published collection, The Renunciations . Donika also reads " The Animal Spell" by Zachary Schomburg, one of her favorite poets. 

Tune in for a conversation that covers a lot of ground: a Keetje Kuipers poem, ice cream insights, and plenty of Camille's poems that work to illuminate the intersections of motherhood, history, race, and the body in space and time.  https://camilledungy.com

Join Farnaz Fatemi for this week’s very special show with the two poet-translators of just-published The Blinding Star (Tolsun Books), poems by the Peruvian poet Blanca Varela. Talk with and hear Sara Daniele Rivera and Lisa Allen Ortiz read Varela’s poems in both the original Spanish and their English translations. It’s a ride through the inner life of this wildly contemporary poet. https://tolsu...

Dion O'Reilly interviews Diane Seuss about her fabulous new book Frank: Sonnets . Diane also reads a poem by the poet Frank O'Hara --an inspiration behind her book.