The Hive Poetry Collective The Hive

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, and shortlisted for the Eric Hoffer Poetry Award and The Catamaran Poetry Prize; and Limerence, a finalist for the John Pierce Chapbook Competition, forthcoming from Floating Bridge Press. Her work appears in The Sun, Rattle, Cincinnati Review, The Slowdown, Alaska Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. She is a podcaster at The Hive Poetry Collective, leads poetry workshops, and is a reader for Catamaran Literary Reader. She splits her time between a ranch in the Santa Cruz Mountains and a residence in Bellingham, Washington.

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 shares how she rebelled early against the model minority ethos. In the 1960s, she dropped out of college to explore diverse cultures from the Haight-Ashbury to Indian ashrams, from the Financial District to public housing. Seigel speaks of the common humanity she discovered that informed her desire to forge connections with everyday people, elevating their stories through visual art and poetry.



In this interview, she reads poems that address the challenges of growing up Asian and female and moves on to poignant poems of family history that focus on her bachans (grandmas) who showed her how to cope with grief. Through poems of oral history, Seigel presents a portrait of resilient people—enduring and gracious as they cope with tremendous loss and grief. In keeping with this spiritual alignment, Seigel ends the hour with a poem reflecting on her Buddhist worldview.



Shizue Seigel has worked within marginalized communities for 30 years to help tell unheard stories--working with Black women living in public housing, Japanese American incarceration camp survivors, and other underrepresented groups. She is the founder of WriteNow! SF Bay, supporting writing and art by people of color. For more information, check out http://www.shizueseigel.com/ and www.WriteNowSF.com

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, Ohio Railroads (“a long poem in the form of an essay”), Similarly (selected poetry and new work), Border Towns, etc.  In progress are Railroad Sense and Medicine Book.  He is a long-distance cyclist.

In Negro Mountain, Giscombe writes about a ridge straddling the Mason-Dixon line in Pennsylvania and Maryland called Negro Mountain. Named after "Nemesis", a man in the 1750s who took a bullet from a Native American man that was intended for a white man, Negro Mountain is provides fertile grounds for exploring complex relationships between people, wildlife--especially wolves--and location.

The book's speaker and characters from his series of 7 Dreams that open the book are shape shifters, moving fluidly between an educated "country doctor" and monstrous personas--including werewolves and jaguars--embodying hybridity and cultural projections.

For over 50 years, Giscombe has written eloquently about borders, geography, and maps, beginning with Giscome Road. His newest book is a tour de force deserving a two-part interview. C.S. (known to his friends as Cecil) talks with his longtime friend from their Cornell University days, Roxi Power, about the granular details of the first part of his book as well as the grander sweep of his career and poetic preoccupations.

You can hear Cecil read from Negro Mountain during his Hive Live! reading with Nancy Miller Gomez at Bookshop Santa Cruz June 9, 7pm.

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 Louise Glück

Ellen Bryant Voigt on Louise Glück ("Brooding Likeness") on Close Readings.

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, lecturer, blogger, and workshop presenter who has taught over 100 workshops. She was appointed the second Santa Clara County Poet Laureate, 2011-2013. She has collaborated with both visual artists and musicians. She is Assistant Editor of They Said: A Multi-Genre Anthology of Contemporary Collaborative Writing, Black Lawrence Press, 2018. Her work is included in many anthologies.



Listening to Mars is her fifth book of poems.