50 episodes

Kitchen table conversations with poets, hosted by Han VanderHart.

Of Poetry Podcast Han VanderHart

    • Arts

Kitchen table conversations with poets, hosted by Han VanderHart.

    Erin Hoover (Of Fierce Narrative Poetry, Queer Community, and Writing Without a Map)

    Erin Hoover (Of Fierce Narrative Poetry, Queer Community, and Writing Without a Map)

    Read: "What If Pain No Longer Ordered the Narrative" (The Sun)
    Purchase: No Spare People (Black Lawrence Press, 2023)
    Erin Hoover was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. She is the author of two poetry collections: Barnburner (Elixir, 2018), which won the Antivenom Poetry Award and a Florida Book Award, and No Spare People (Black Lawrence, 2023). Her poems have appeared in The Best American Poetry and in journals such as Cincinnati Review, Poetry Northwest, Shenandoah, and The Sun. Hoover lives in Tennessee and teaches creative writing at Tennessee Tech University. She curates and hosts a poetry reading series, Sawmill Poetry, and produces the “Not Abandon, but Abide” monthly interview series for the Southern Review of Books. Visit her website at erinhooverpoet.com.
    Further Reading:
    Ever Baldwin
    Adrienne Rich
    Rachel Zucker
    Diane Seuss
    Bernadette Mayer

    • 1 hr
    rob mclennan: (of the fragment, linguistic collision, and world's end)

    rob mclennan: (of the fragment, linguistic collision, and world's end)

    Read: "Dream, with an interior" in Moist Poetry Journal
    Purchase: World's End (ARP Books, 2023) and groundwork: The best of the third decade of above/ground press: 2013–2023 (Invisible Publishing, 2023)
    Born in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, rob mclennan currently lives in Ottawa, where he is home full-time with the two wee girls he shares with Christine McNair. The author of more than thirty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, he won the John Newlove Poetry Award in 2010, the Council for the Arts in Ottawa Mid-Career Award in 2014, and was longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize in 2012 and 2017. In March, 2016, he was inducted into the VERSe Ottawa Hall of Honour. His most recent titles include the poetry collection World’s End, (ARP Books, 2023), a suite of pandemic essays, essays in the face of uncertainties (Mansfield Press, 2022) and the anthology groundworks: the best of the third decade of above/ground press 2013-2023 (Invisible Publishing, 2023). His collection of short stories, On Beauty (University of Alberta Press) will appear in fall 2024. An editor and publisher, he runs above/ground press, periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics (periodicityjournal.blogspot.com) and Touch the Donkey (touchthedonkey.blogspot.com). He is editor of my (small press) writing day, and an editor/managing editor of many gendered mothers. He spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta, and regularly posts reviews, essays, interviews and other notices at robmclennan.blogspot.com
    Recommended Reading:
    Neil Gaiman
    Midwinter Day by Bernadette Mayer
    Lydia Davis
    Russell Edson
    Sarah Manguso
    Nate Logan
    Ben Niespodziany
    Rosmarie Waldrop
    Cole Swenson
    Rachel Zucker
    Lisa Robertson
    Norma Cole, Writing on Writing in French

    • 1 hr 2 min
    Emilia Phillips: Of Queering Eve, Stanzaic Shape, and Intimate Community

    Emilia Phillips: Of Queering Eve, Stanzaic Shape, and Intimate Community

    Read: Book X and Book VII from "The Queerness of Eve"
    Purchase: Nonbinary Bird of Paradise (University of Akron Press, 2024)
    Emilia Phillips (they/them) is a poet, nonfiction writer, and book reviewer. They are the author of five poetry collections from the University of Akron Press, including Nonbinary Bird of Paradise (forthcoming February 2024) and Embouchure (2021), and four chapbooks. Winner of a 2019 Pushcart Prize, 2015 StoryQuarterly Nonfiction Prize, and the 2012 The Journal Poetry Prize, Phillips’s poems, lyric essays, and book reviews appear widely in literary publications including The Adroit Journal, Agni, American Poetry Review, Gulf Coast, The Kenyon Review, New England Review, The New York Times, Ploughshares, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. They are an Associate Professor of Creative Writing in the Department of English; MFA in Writing Program; and the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at UNC Greensboro, where they regularly teach MFA- and undergraduate-level poetry workshops, Queer Poetry & Poetics, and Women’s Health & Bodies. 
    Recommended Reading:
    Linda Gregerson
    Jenny Johnson — "Fisting Party" (Cortland Review), "Bottoms" (APR)
    Donika Kelly -- "On What Gay Porn Has Done For Me"
    Destiny O Birdsong - "what lesbian porn has done for me" (PoFo)
    Xan Phillips - "Want Could Kill Me"
    Cameron Awkward-Rich
    Ari Banias
    Chen Chen

    • 48 min
    The Line Break / Of Poetry Crossover with Chris Corlew and Bob Sykora and Han VanderHart

    The Line Break / Of Poetry Crossover with Chris Corlew and Bob Sykora and Han VanderHart

    Chris Corlew is a writer and musician living in Chicago. His work has appeared in Cotton Xenomorph, Whisk(e)y Tit, Kicking Your Ass, Cracked.com, and elsewhere. With Bob Sykora, he co-hosts The Line Break, a podcast about poetry and basketball. With Brendan Johnson, he is ½ of Lazy & Entitled, the band that writes novels. You can find more Chris on Bluesky @thecorlew, a storiesfromvine.com, or at shipwreckedsailor.substack.com.
    Bob Sykora is the author of the chapbook I Was Talking About Love–You Are Talking About Geography (Nostrovia! 2016) and the forthcoming collection Utopians in Love (Game Over Books 2025). A graduate of the UMass Boston MFA program, he teaches at community college, edits with Garden Party Collective, co-hosts The Line Break podcast, and curates the KC Poetry Calendar.
    Han VanderHart is a queer writer and arts organizer living in Durham, North Carolina. Han is the author of the poetry collection What Pecan Light (Bull City Press, 2021) and the chapbook Hands Like Birds (Ethel Zine Press, 2019). They have poetry and essays published in The Boston Globe, Kenyon Review, The American Poetry Review, The Rumpus, AGNI and elsewhere. Han hosts Of Poetry Podcast, edits Moist Poetry Journal, and co-edits the poetry press River River Books with Amorak Huey.
    Poems Read on the Show:
    "Utopians in Love" by Bob Sykora (Cotton Xenomorph)
    “Bottoms” by Jenny Johnson (American Poetry Review)
    "What the Kids Don't Know" by Jill McDonough (The ThreePenny Review)
    “Elusive Black Hole Pair” by Alina Pleskova (Toska, Deep Vellum)
    "Last night I was sexting and reading June Jordan" by Han VanderHart (unpublished)
    "human pastoral brick" by Chris Corlew

    • 1 hr 29 min
    Amorak Huey and Han VanderHart (River River Books): Of Choosing Abundance, Creating a Small Press Community, and Weathering Manuscript Rejections

    Amorak Huey and Han VanderHart (River River Books): Of Choosing Abundance, Creating a Small Press Community, and Weathering Manuscript Rejections

    Read: Amorak Huey's "Estuary, Delta, Confluence, Mouth" and Han VanderHart's "Larks"(Up the Staircase Quarterly)
    Purchase: Dad Jokes from Late in the Patriarchy (Sundress, 2021) and What Pecan Light (Bull City Press, 2021)
    Amorak Huey is author of four books of poems including Dad Jokes from Late in the Patriarchy (Sundress Publications, 2021). Co-author with W. Todd Kaneko of the textbook Poetry: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology (Bloomsbury, 2018) and the chapbook Slash/Slash (Diode, 2021), Huey teaches in the BFA and MFA programs at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. His previous books are Boom Box (Sundress, 2019), Seducing the Asparagus Queen (Cloudbank, 2018), and Ha Ha Ha Thump (Sundress, 2015), as well as two chapbooks. He is recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and his poems appear in the Best American Poetry anthology, Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day, the Norton Critical Edition of The Odyssey, and many print and online journals.
    Han VanderHart is a genderqueer, Southern writer living in Durham, North Carolina, under the loblolly pines. Han is the author of the poetry collection What Pecan Light (Bull City Press, 2021) and the chapbook Hands Like Birds (Ethel Zine Press, 2019). They have poetry and essays published in The Boston Globe, Kenyon Review, The American Poetry Review, The Rumpus, AGNI and elsewhere. Han hosts Of Poetry podcast and edits Moist Poetry Journal. Their aim is to live, edit, and write with transparency, care, and warmth. They love rescue pitbulls, and send a hello to your dog.
    RiverRiverbooks.org

    Recommended Reading/Listening
    Lauren Camp
    Rachel Edelman
    W. Todd Kaneko
    Carla Sofia Ferreira
    Jennifer A Sutherland
    Joe Wilkins
    Corrie Williamson
    The Line Break podcast with Bob Sykora and Chris Corlew 
    The Black Lily Zine
    Noa Fields
    Nic Anstett
    Jason B. Crawford
    Stephen J. Furlong
    Octopus Books

    • 1 hr 24 min
    Carla Sofia Ferreira (Of Elegiac Odes, Semicolons, and Witness)

    Carla Sofia Ferreira (Of Elegiac Odes, Semicolons, and Witness)

    Read: "Ode to the Empanadas on Pacific & Elm, with Apologies to William Carlos Williams" in Okay Donkey Mag
    Purchase: A Geography That Does Not Hurt Us (River River Books, 2024)
    Carla Sofia Ferreira (she/her) is the daughter of Portuguese immigrants and a teacher from Newark, New Jersey. Author of micro-chapbook Ironbound Fados (Ghost City Press, 2019) and debut poetry book A Geography That Does Not Hurt Us (River River Books, 2024), her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. You can find her writing in The Rumpus, Glamour, EcoTheo, underblong, Okay Donkey, december, and Washington Square Review, among others. On the internet, she’s @csferreira08 on Twitter and @csferreirawrites on Instagram. She believes in kindness, semicolons, and the permanent abolition of ICE. She has now successfully taught her cat Moonshadow how to fetch. She dislikes writing bios in the third person but is saving for her overthrow of societal norms for other causes.
    Recommended Reading:
    Aracelis Girmay, Kingdom Animalia
    Ross Gay, Be Holding and Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude 
    Gwendolyn Brooks, "Paul Robeson"
    Roberto Carlos Garcia, [Elegies]
    Benjamin Garcia, Thrown in the Throat

    • 58 min

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