Rattle Poetry

Latest Episodes:

ep. 176 - Angela Voras-Hills Jan 10, 2023

Show notes

Poet, community organizer, and instructor Angela Voras-Hills grew up in Wisconsin. She earned an MFA from the University of Massachusetts Boston. She is the author of the poetry collection Louder Birds (2020), selected by Traci Brimhall for the Lena-Miles Wever Todd Prize. Voras-Hills has received grants from the Sustainable Arts Foundation and Key West Literary Seminar as well as a fellowship from the Writers’ Room of Boston. She cofounded The Watershed: A Place for Writers, a literary arts organization, which evolved into Arts + Literature Laboratory in Madison, Wisconsin. She lives with her family in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Find much more here: https://www.angelavorashills.com/ In the second hour, we'll be joined by special guest Clint Margrave, who appeared in RC24, sharing a few poems from his new book, Visitor. https://clintmargrave.com/ As always, we'll also include live open lines for responses to our weekly prompt or any other poems you'd like to share. A Zoom link will be provided in the chat window during the show before that segment begins. For links to all the past episodes, visit: https://www.rattle.com/rattlecast/ This Week’s Prompt: Embodied Poetry Scavenger Hunt: Experiment with cross-pollination, incorporating movement and body awareness. To begin your scavenger hunt, head to wildhoneywords.com/create for details! Next Week's Prompt: Think about a time in your life when you felt like you lost yourself. What were the circumstances? Use as much detail as possible. How did you find yourself again? Write for 10 minutes. Next, type into a search bar: “If you don’t” and then just one more letter (for example, "If you don't r".) How does the search engine think you might want to finish the sentence? Choose one of these as the first line of your poem. How can you tie the ideas together? Maybe you can incorporate a few of them into your poem? The Rattlecast livestreams on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, then becomes an audio podcast. Find it on iTunes, Spotify, or anywhere else you get your podcasts.

ep. 175 - Emily Ruth Hazel Jan 03, 2023

Show notes

Emily Ruth Hazel is a cross-pollinating poet, author, and artist who is passionate about diversifying the audience for poetry and the contexts in which we find it. Founder and creative director of Wild Honey Words, a poetry-meets-art boutique that offers expressive apparel, accessories, décor, and journals featuring her words and designs, Emily brings everyday life into poetry and brings poetry into everyday life. She was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and is a two-time recipient of national Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prizes. Her chapbook, Body & Soul (Finishing Line Press, 2005), was a New Women’s Voices finalist. A graduate of Oberlin College’s Creative Writing Program, she has led writing workshops at libraries, schools, and community centers in Massachusetts, Ohio, New York, and South Africa. Currently based in the foothills of Los Angeles, Emily is developing several poetry book manuscripts and co-writing lyrics for an original musical inspired by the life of the extraordinary singer, cultural bridge builder, and Civil Rights foremother Marian Anderson. Find much more here: https://emilyruthhazel.com/ Wild Honey Words: https://www.wildhoneywords.com/ As always, we'll also include live open lines for responses to our weekly prompt or any other poems you'd like to share. A Zoom link will be provided in the chat window during the show before that segment begins. For links to all the past episodes, visit: https://www.rattle.com/rattlecast/ This Week’s Prompt: Write a poem about a secret, but use extended metaphor to keep it a secret. This Week's Prompt: Embodied Poetry Scavenger Hunt: Experiment with cross-pollination, incorporating movement and body awareness. To begin your scavenger hunt, head to wildhoneywords.com/create for details! The Rattlecast livestreams on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, then becomes an audio podcast. Find it on iTunes, Spotify, or anywhere else you get your podcasts.

ep. 174 - John Brehm Dec 27, 2022

Show notes

John Brehm was born and raised in Lincoln, Nebraska and educated at the University of Nebraska and Cornell University. He is the author of three full-length books of poetry, Sea of Faith, Help Is on the Way, and No Day at the Beach, all from the University of Wisconsin Press, and a chapbook, The Way Water Moves, from Flume Press. His collection of essays, The Dharma of Poetry, was recently released by Wisdom Publications and is a companion to his acclaimed anthology, The Poetry of Impermanence, Mindfulness, and Joy, also from Wisdom Publications. John teaches for Mountain Writers Series in Portland, Oregon, and for The Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver, Colorado. He offers a monthly Poetry as Spiritual Practice gathering and with his wife, Alice Boyd, leads mindfulness retreats that incorporate Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement lessons, guided meditations, and mindful poetry discussions. He lives in Portland, Oregon. Find much more here: https://www.johnbrehmpoet.com/ As always, we'll also include live open lines for responses to our weekly prompt or any other poems you'd like to share. A Zoom link will be provided in the chat window during the show before that segment begins. For links to all the past episodes, visit: https://www.rattle.com/rattlecast/ This Week's Prompt: Write a poem using a word list. Read part of a book and write down a list of the 10 words that stand out most. Use those 10 words to inspire your poem. Next Week’s Prompt: Write a poem about a secret, but use extended metaphor to keep it a secret. The Rattlecast livestreams on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, then becomes an audio podcast. Find it on iTunes, Spotify, or anywhere else you get your podcasts.

ep. 173 - Dion O'Reilly Dec 20, 2022

Show notes

Dion O’Reilly’s debut book, Ghost Dogs, was published in February 2020 by Terrapin Books. Her second collection, Sadness of the Apex Predator, was chosen for the 2024 Portage Poetry Series from University of Wisconsin’s Cornerstone Press. Her poems and essays appear in The Sun, Rattle, The Cincinnati Review, The Slowdown, The Massachusetts Review, and elsewhere. Ghost Dogs is the winner of the Independent Press award for poetry, the Dragonfly award for poetry, the Pinnacle Achievement Award for Poetry, and was shortlisted for the Eric Hoffer Award. She teaches poetry workshops in person and on Zoom and is a member of The Hive Poetry Collective which produces poetry radio shows, podcasts, and events. Dion is also a screener for the Catamaran Literary Reader. Find much more here: https://dionoreilly.wordpress.com/ As always, we'll also include live open lines for responses to our weekly prompt or any other poems you'd like to share. A Zoom link will be provided in the chat window during the show before that segment begins. For links to all the past episodes, visit: https://www.rattle.com/rattlecast/ This Week's Prompt: What is your earliest memory of a color? Next Week's Prompt: Writing a poem using a word list. Read part of a book and write down a list of the 10 words that stand out most. Use those 10 words to inspire your poem. The Rattlecast livestreams on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, then becomes an audio podcast. Find it on iTunes, Spotify, or anywhere else you get your podcasts.

ep. 172 - Elaine Sexton Dec 13, 2022

Show notes

Elaine Sexton’s latest collection of poems is Drive (Grid Books, 2022). Her three previous books of poetry are: Sleuth (New Issues, 2003), Causeway (New Issues, 2008), and Prospect/Refuge (Sheep Meadow Press, 2015). An avid book maker and micro-publisher, she is the author of several chapbooks, and has curated site-specific events with accompanying limited-edition chapbooks, and periodicals, among them Hair and 2 Horatio. She teaches text and image and poetry at Sarah Lawrence College and has been guest faculty at New York University and in the graduate writing program at City College (CUNY). Formerly a senior editor at ARTnews and visual arts editor for Tupelo Quarterly, she serves as a contributing editor for On the Seawall, and is a member of the National Book Critics Circle. Find much more here: https://www.elainesexton.org/ As always, we'll also include live open lines for responses to our weekly prompt or any other poems you'd like to share. A Zoom link will be provided in the chat window during the show before that segment begins. For links to all the past episodes, visit: https://www.rattle.com/rattlecast/ This Week's Prompt: Victoria Chang radically changes the way in which we regard obituaries by writing an entire poetry collection using obits as form. Write an obituary for one of the following: a previous version of yourself, a friendship or romantic relationship, a body part, your adult child’s childhood, or for someone who has not died but that you’ve lost (read “One Year After My Dying Father and I Stop Speaking to Each Other Again” by Eugenia Leigh in Split This Rock for inspiration!) Next Week’s Prompt: Color Memory. What is your earliest memory of a color? Draft notes toward a poem starting with the first thing, the first color that comes to mind. Name it, and refine this description. Write down any and all details you can think of related to this color, describing it so a reader can begin to "see" what you see, and the circumstances around this experience. Joseph Albers, artist, color theorist, and arts educator, wrote: “If one says “Red” (the name of the color) and there are fifty people listening, it can be expected that there will be 50 reds in their minds. And one can be sure that all these reds will be very different.” He considered color to be “passive, deceiving, and unstable.” When drafting your next poem describe the color and every action, idea, and concrete image that comes to mind. This may be a list poem, a prose poem. See what comes. The Rattlecast livestreams on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, then becomes an audio podcast. Find it on iTunes, Spotify, or anywhere else you get your podcasts.

ep. 171 - Joan Kwon Glass Dec 06, 2022

Show notes

Joan Kwon Glass is the mixed-race, Korean American author of NIGHT SWIM (Diode Editions, 2022) & three chapbooks. She serves as Editor-in-Chief for Harbor Review, as a Brooklyn Poets Mentor, is a proud Smith College graduate & has been a public school educator for 20 years. She serves on the faculty of Hudson Valley Writers Center & the Fine Arts Work Center of Provincetown. Her work has won or been finalist for several prizes & her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize & Sundress Anthology Best of the Net. Joan’s poems have been published or are forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, Asian American Writer’s Workshop (The Margins), RHINO, Rattle, Dialogist & elsewhere, and she is available for manuscript consultations, reading and workshops. Please follow her on Twitter @joanpglass and see her website at www.joankwonglass.com. She lives in Connecticut with her family. Find much more here: https://joankwonglass.com/ As always, we'll also include live open lines for responses to our weekly prompt or any other poems you'd like to share. A Zoom link will be provided in the chat window during the show before that segment begins. For links to all the past episodes, visit: https://www.rattle.com/rattlecast/ This Week's Prompt: Write a list poem of choices, each line/choice ending with the line “and I will die on this hill.” It could be funny like “A bar of soap is better than any kind of body wash, and I will die on this hill.” Or heavier things. Another option is to write a longer poem detailing a choice which ends with the line. Next Week's Prompt: Victoria Chang radically changes the way in which we regard obituaries by writing an entire poetry collection using obits as form. Write an obituary for one of the following: a previous version of yourself, a friendship or romantic relationship, a body part, your adult child’s childhood, or for someone who has not died but that you’ve lost (read “One Year After My Dying Father and I Stop Speaking to Each Other Again” by Eugenia Leigh in Split This Rock for inspiration!) The Rattlecast livestreams on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, then becomes an audio podcast. Find it on iTunes, Spotify, or anywhere else you get your podcasts.

ep. 170 - Rick Lupert Nov 29, 2022

Show notes

Rick Lupert has been involved in the Los Angeles poetry community since 1990. He is the recipient of the 2014 Beyond Baroque Distinguished Service Award for service to the Los Angeles poetry community. He is the author of 21 books: Paris: It’s The Cheese, Brendan Constantine is My Kind of Town, and most recently God Wrestler and I Am Not Writing a Book of Poems in Hawaii. He hosted the Cobalt Café reading series in Canoga Park for almost 21 years and is regularly featured at venues throughout Southern California. Rick created and maintains the Poetry Super Highway, an online resource and publication for poets, and works as the music teacher and graphic and web designer for anyone who would like to help pay his mortgage. He lives in Newhall, California with his wife Addie, son Jude, and three cats. Find much more here: https://www.poetrysuperhighway.com/rick/ As always, we'll also include live open lines for responses to our weekly prompt or any other poems you'd like to share. A Zoom link will be provided in the chat window during the show before that segment begins. For links to all the past episodes, visit: https://www.rattle.com/rattlecast/ This Week's Prompt: Write a poem inspired by your favorite poet. Next Week’s Prompt: Write a list poem of choices, each line/choice ending with the line “and I will die on this hill.” It could be funny like “A bar of soap is better than any kind of body wash, and I will die on this hill.” Or heavier things. Another option is to write a longer poem detailing a choice which ends with the line. The Rattlecast livestreams on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, then becomes an audio podcast. Find it on iTunes, Spotify, or anywhere else you get your podcasts.

ep. 169 - Nicole Caruso Garcia Nov 22, 2022

Show notes

Nicole Caruso Garcia's full-length debut poetry collection is Oxblood (Able Muse Press 2022). Her writing appears in journals and anthologies such as Best New Poets 2021, Crab Orchard Review, DIAGRAM, Light, Measure, Mezzo Cammin, ONE ART, PANK, Plume, the Raintown Review, Rattle, RHINO, Sonora Review, Spillway, and Tupelo Quarterly. Find her new book and much more here: http://www.nicolecarusogarcia.com/index.html As always, we'll also include live open lines for responses to our weekly prompt or any other poems you'd like to share. A Zoom link will be provided in the chat window during the show before that segment begins. For links to all the past episodes, visit: https://www.rattle.com/rattlecast/ This Week's Prompt: Start with a first line from a James Tate poem and write a poem (or prose poem) that incorporates dialogue within the narrative. See where your imagination takes you! Suggestions: Next Week’s Prompt: Write a poem inspired by your favorite poet. The Rattlecast livestreams on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, then becomes an audio podcast. Find it on iTunes, Spotify, or anywhere else you get your podcasts.

ep. 168 - David James Nov 14, 2022

Show notes

David James has published six books, six chapbooks, and has had more than thirty of his one-act plays produced in the U.S. and Ireland. His most recent books are Alive in Your Skin While You Still Own It and Wiping Stars from Your Sleeves. His second book, She Dances Like Mussolini, won the 2010 Next Generation Indie book award. He has taught writing at Oakland Community College for over twenty years. Alive in Your Skin While You Own It: https://kelsaybooks.com/products/alive-in-your-skin-while-you-still-own-it Wiping Stars from Your Sleeves: https://www.shantiarts.co/uploads/files/jkl/JAMES_STARS.html Nail Yourself into Bliss: https://kelsaybooks.com/products/nail-yourself-into-bliss As always, we'll also include live open lines for responses to our weekly prompt or any other poems you'd like to share. A Zoom link will be provided in the chat window during the show before that segment begins. For links to all the past episodes, visit: https://www.rattle.com/rattlecast/ This Week's Prompt: Think about the geographical place that says home to you, its flora and fauna, the distinctive shape of the land and the buildings there rooted, the people who feel like family and community, whose tongues shapes sounds like your own. Then, even in so simple a form as a list, draw the most distinctive of those elements together and show—in hints or explicitly—how you are partly contingent on those specificities, how you emerge from that milieu. Next Week's Prompt: Start with a first line from a James Tate poem and write a poem (or prose poem) that incorporates dialogue within the narrative. See where your imagination takes you! The Rattlecast livestreams on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, then becomes an audio podcast. Find it on iTunes, Spotify, or anywhere else you get your podcasts.

ep. 167 - David Bowles Nov 08, 2022

Show notes

David Bowles is a Mexican American author and translator from south Texas, where he teaches at the University of Texas Río Grande Valley. He has written over two dozen award-winning titles, most notably They Call Me Güero and My Two Border Towns. His work has also been published in multiple anthologies, plus venues such as The New York Times, Strange Horizons, Apex Magazine, School Library Journal, Rattle, Translation Review, and the Journal of Children’s Literature. Additionally, David has worked on several TV/film projects, including Victor and Valentino (Cartoon Network), the Moctezuma & Cortés miniseries (Amazon/Amblin) and Monsters and Mysteries in America (Discovery). Find the books and much more here: https://davidbowles.us/ As always, we'll also include live open lines for responses to our weekly prompt or any other poems you'd like to share. A Zoom link will be provided in the chat window during the show before that segment begins. For links to all the past episodes, visit: https://www.rattle.com/rattlecast/ This Week's Prompt: Pick a villain from pop culture, comic books, fairy tales, etc., and have them respond to the events of the last six years. Include a musical instrument and a favorite food. Next Week's Prompt: Think about the geographical place that says home to you, its flora and fauna, the distinctive shape of the land and the buildings there rooted, the people who feel like family and community, whose tongues shapes sounds like your own. Then, even in so simple a form as a list, draw the most distinctive of those elements together and show—in hints or explicitly—how you are partly contingent on those specificities, how you emerge from that milieu. The Rattlecast livestreams on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, then becomes an audio podcast. Find it on iTunes, Spotify, or anywhere else you get your podcasts.

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