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’sBerkeley campus, where he is the Robert Hass Chair in English. His prose and poetry books…

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 Wallac…

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 s…

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,…

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 b…

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, Guto…

The Body! In all its pain and glory! Listen to this discussion with editors Pichchenda Bao, Nicole Callihan, and Jennifer Franklin as they read and talk about poems from their anthology Braving the Body. Delving into the body's experiences, from sex to motherhood to cancer and beyond, Braving the Body culls the best poetry featuring, as Whitman wro…

On April 10th, 2024, Santa Cruz County's first ever Youth Poet Laureate honor was given to Dina Lusztig Noyes at the Kuumbwa Jazz Center in Santa Cruz, CA. SC County Youth Poet Laureate finalists include Gregory Souza, Simon Ellefson, Madeline Aliah, and Sylvi Kayser. These poets read their work in conversation with Farnaz Fatemi, Santa Cruz County…

Join me for this special episode of poetic witness for Palestine, featuring Faris Sabbah and Beau Beausoleil. Listen as Santa Cruz County Superintendent of Schools, Dr Faris Sabbah, shares movingly about his Palestinian background and reads a poem he penned for his late father. We discuss a poem from Beau Beausoleil's latest volume, WAR NEWS--a col…

"Over the past decade or so, nobody has done more for the Pacific Northwest than Paul Nelson." --Sam Hamill. Paul E. Nelson talks with Roxi Power about his forthcoming book, DaySong Miracle (Past 62) from Carbonation Press. The two poet friends laugh, talk, and even sing some of Nelson's lyrical lines in his long investigative and spiritual poems. …

Join Dion O'Reilly as she talks with Ed Hirsch about 100 Poems to Break Your Heart. Edward Hirsch, a MacArthur Fellow, has published ten books of poems, including The Living Fire, Gabriel: A Poem. and Stranger by Night. He has also published six prose books about poetry, among them, How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry, a national bestse…

Don't miss this enlivening and inspiring episode of the Hive Poetry Collective on KSQD. Join host Julie Murphy as she chats with spoken word poets Tara Bracco and Suzen Baraka. They read work newly published in the debut anthology, Poetic People Power and talk about their motto-- Art + Action= Change. This anthology draws from twenty years of live …

Lee Herrick⁠ in conversation with Farnaz Fatemi. Lee Herrick⁠ is the California Poet Laureate. He is the author of three books of poems: Scar and Flower, finalist for the 2020 Northern California Book Award; Gardening Secrets of the Dead; and This Many Miles from Desire. His poems appear widely, in The Poetry Foundation, Academy of American Poets, …

Dorianne Laux’s sixth collection,Only As the Day is Long: New and Selected Poems was named a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Her fifth collection, The Book of Men, was awarded The Paterson Prize. Her fourth book of poems, Facts About the Moon, won The Oregon Book Award and was short-listed for the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. Laux…

Bellingham poet Elizabeth Vignali buzzes in to read from her newest book and also to read and discuss Dorianne Laux⁠'s poem "Facts about the Moon. Elizabeth Vignali is the author of the poetry collection House of the Silverfish (Unsolicited Press 2021) and three chapbooks, the most recent of which is Endangered [Animal] (Floating Bridge Press 2019)…

"This weirdness swims up..." Alexandra Regalado talks to Farnaz Fatemi about teeth as relics, finding inspiration in visual artists, attempting to say the unsaid, writing things in poems that might never get said aloud--and more serious and not-so-serious preoccupations. Our conversation focuses on Regalado's second book, the National Poetry Series…

"I Am a Woman of Almost 62 Years Old / of no special bravery." With this poem, Carla Rachel Sameth begins her hour on The Hive Poetry Show, reading from her first full-length collection, Secondary Inspections, released in January 2024, as well as newer poems. For a voice both introspective and self-aware, Sameth's writing pours itself into the peop…

The first poem in Katie Farris' new book of poems, Standing in the Forest of Being Alive, ends with the stanza Why write love poetry in a burning world?/ To train myself, in the midst of a burning world/ to offer poems of love to a burning world. This poem, an arrow that sails though each poem in the collection, begins Farris' unflinching look at t…

Love in all its blissful, blistering forms provides the foundation for lyrical poet Sarah Levine's new book, Each Knuckle with Sugar. A Massachusettes poet, the conversation runs from love to craft to loss. These surprising poems are made more memorable by the way Levine has skillfully built a world to hold them. You can find Levine's book at Drift…

Peter Kline is the author of two poetry collections, Mirrorforms (Parlor Press) and Deviants (SFASU Press). A former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, he has also received residency fellowships from the Amy Clampitt House and James Merrill House, and has won the Morton Marr Prize from Southwest Review, the River Styx International Poet…

Dion O’Reilly chats with Roxi Power about her new book, The Songs that Objects Would Sing, diving deep into a work that that “is aflame, both with the literal wildfires ravaging the American West and with the slower smolder of personal grief. Power’s response to loss and disaster is a quirky plangent song…shot through with humor and underpinned by …

Andrea Hollander⁠, author of ⁠six poetry books⁠, moved to Portland, Oregon, in 2011, after living for more than three decades in the Arkansas Ozarks, where she was innkeeper of a bed & breakfast for fifteen years and Writer-in-Residence at Lyon College for twenty-two. Hollander’s newly released sixth full-length collection is ⁠And Now, Nowhere But …

Farnaz Fatemi and Julia Chiapella read poems by Palestinian poets and those of Palestinian heritage to amplify and bear witness to the range of their perspectives and the richness of these voices. We found the reading of these aloud to each other to be profoundly moving. Please see the extensive show notes for links to the poets, their books, many …

Listen in as Robin Gow and Farnaz Fatemi discuss Robin’s book Lanternfly, their experience writing a hyper-focused collection, the value of persona poems, defiance, cross-species empathy and more. Robin Gow is a trans poet and YA/Middle Grade author from rural Pennsylvania. They are the author of several poetry collections including, most recently,…

Ruba Ahmed joins Julie Murphy to read "Try to Praise the Mutilated World" by Adam Zagajewski and talks about his imperative to see the beauty in the world that lies right beside the horrors. She also reads from her new book Bring Now the Angels and shares her struggle in coming to forgiveness and grief and joy. Ruba also shares some great insights …

Dion O'Reilly and Pacific Northwest poet, ⁠Jeannine Hall Gailey,⁠ talk about science, science fiction, and poetry. Jeannine reads from her new book ⁠Flare Corona. ⁠ Jeannine Hall Gailey served as the second Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington. She is the author of six books of poetry: ⁠Becoming the Villainess⁠, ⁠She Returns to the Floating World⁠,…

To kick off Trans Week of Awareness (Nov. 13 - 19), Geneffa Jahan sits down with local youth poet, Madeline Aliah (age 17) to hear how poetry has given her hope and a voice. Madeline reads from her chapbook of poems, This Is My Body: Poems by a Teen Trans Fem, forthcoming from Jamii Press (2024), and additional works that take her poetry beyond ide…

Roxi Power talks with Brenda Hillman, winner this month of the Northern California Book Reviewers’ Fred Cody Award for Lifetime Achievement, about her 11th book of poetry with Wesleyan University Press, In a Few Minutes Before Later. We discuss her new trans-genre tetralogy about time: how to find calm during the Anthropocene by being in time in mu…

What do the Sufis, Zen Buddhists, and Catholics have in common? Listen in and find out as Gary Gach brings the poetry of Persian poet Hafiz to The Hive! We talk about the new book, Hafiz's Little Book of Life, he and translation collaborator Erfan Mojib have put together with a forward by Ari Honarvar. “How to translate into English what, until now…

Rick Lupert zooms into The Hive. We read Robert Creeley’s poem “I Know a Man,” and shamelessly display our ignorance about the great Robert Creeley, who did indeed, sometimes wear an eyepatch, and who was a powerful and engaging reader. Rick Lupert reads some fruit poems from his current book, I Am Not Writing a Book of Poems in Hawaii, inspired by…

A conversation between Geneffa Jahan and the Youth Poet Laureates of Watsonville, Eva Sophia Martinez Rodriguez (pictured) and Rachel Huerta, appointed to serve a two-year term from 2023 – 2025. The Watsonville Public Library created this position to recognize a youth under the age of 20 for their literary achievements, passion for promoting awaren…

Rooja Mohassessy buzzes into the Hive to talk about her new book, When Your Sky Runs Into Mine. She also reads a Sylvia Plath poem "Black Rook in Rainy Weather." ⁠ Rooja Mohassessy is an Iranian-born poet and educator. She is a MacDowell Fellow and an MFA graduate of Pacific University, Oregon. Her debut collection When Your Sky Runs Into Mine (Feb…

Poets Bill Lavender, Sean F. Munro, and Rodrigo Toscano talk with Roxi Power about the wildly successful annual April event they organize: The New Orleans Poetry Festival. In the second half of the show, they read their own poems; the political poetics of each poem buzzes with national and global currents. Festival co-founder Bill Lavender reads fr…

Content Warning: Discussion of eating disorders Courtney Le Blanc reads from her latest book, ⁠Her Whole Bright Life and also the poem, ⁠"Where No One Says Eating Disorder⁠" by ⁠Kelly Grace Thomas⁠ from Thomas's collection ⁠Boat Burn ⁠ ⁠ Courtney LeBlanc⁠ is the author of the full-length collections ⁠Her Whole Bright Life; Exquisite Bloody, Beating…

Joan Kwon Glass zooms into the Hive to talk about her new book. We also read and discuss Laura Apol's poem "Instructions for the Friends Who Are Sorting my Daughter's Things this Afternoon." Joan Kwon Glass is the mixed-race, Korean American author of Night Swim (Diode Editions, 2022), and three chapbooks (How To Make Pancakes for a Dead Boy, If Ru…

Lana Hechtman Ayers joins host Julie Murphy to read from her two recently published books, Overtures and When All Else Fails. Join us as Lana reads a poem by Ellen Bass and talks about the healing powers of poetry, how the awareness of death brings compassion and finding joy in difficult times.

Public interest in Emily Dickinson continues strong, evidenced by recent pop culture hits like Apple TV’s Dickinson, and the movie, Wild Nights With Emily, starring Molly Shannon. Dickinson herself was influenced by 19th century popular cultural forms, including crime novels. Tune in to hear two poets have fun trying to solve some puzzles, while ap…

Join us as Gail Rudd Entrekin reads poems from her book Walking Each Other Home, an homage to the bittersweet journey of love, life, and parting. Gail is editor of the online environmental literary magazine, Canary (www.canarylitmag.org) and holds an M.A. in English Literature/Creative Writing from the Ohio State University. She has taught both sub…

Geneffa Jahan hosts San Francisco poet and bookseller Beau Beausoleil as he shares how he became an organizer after the 2007 bombing of Al Mutanabbi Street, the famed booksellers’ street of Baghdad. They discuss his global movement, Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here, with annual readings worldwide to commemorate the bombing, and his anthology of poem…

Jamaica Baldwin zooms into The Hive to talk about her new book, Bone Language. We read some Vievee Frances and talk about the radical acceptance that poetry can bring. Jamaica, a Santa Cruz native, will be in town to read at The HiveLive! on July 18th at Bookshop Santa Cruz. Reading with her, will be the fabulous Francesca Bell. Jamaica Baldwin’s d…

Join Tim Lindner, editor of The Book of Life After Death (Tolsun Books, 2023) with Farnaz Fatemi as they discuss this forthcoming book which explores how the dead might be remembered in poems & essays. We are joined by four more poets--Elizabeth Quiñones-Zaldaña, Xioaly Li, Hunter Hazelton, and Jen Karetnick--reading selections from the book. "We'r…

Earl Hines and Dion O'Reilly talk about earning an MFA at Pacific University, read and discuss the fabulous poem, "Shrike," by Henri Cole​, and read and talk about Hines latest book Any Dumb Animal. AE Hines’s debut collection, Any Dumb Animal, received Honorable Mention in the North Carolina Poetry Society’s 2022 Brockman-Campbell Book contest, an…

Listen to this free-wheeling conversation with acclaimed poet, memoirist, screenwriter and educator Jimmy Santiago Baca. We talk about the gift of saying 'no,' the unexpected byproducts of incarceration, his upcoming writers retreat, and hear him read several of his poems from his 50-year writing career. You can learn more about Jimmy on his websit…

Vincent Rendoni and Dion O'Reilly engage in a wide-ranging and lively discussion of life and poetry. He reads Monica Rico's "Poem in Consideration of My Death" from an anthology that, due to its representation of Latino life, influenced Vincent's decision to be a poet, The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4, LatinNext. Vincent Antonio Rendoni is the author of …

One of the original Hive members, Lisa Allen Ortiz, joins us to talk about her Idaho Prize-winning poetry collection, STEM, a book which asks, among other questions, "where in the body does aliveness reside?" Our conversation plumbs more of these easy-to-answer inquiries. Lisa is the author of two poetry collections: Stem, winner of the 2021 Idaho …

Barbara Bloom, who recently relocated to Bellingham, Washington, shares poems about the deep connection she finds in nature, especially in Santa Cruz, where she lived for over 30 years. Barbara studied poetry with Santa Cruz poets, Joe Stroud and Morton Marcus and taught in the English Department of Cabrillo College for nearly 30 years. In this epi…

Farnaz talked with Jennifer Franklin, whose third book, If Some God Shakes Your House, has just been published by Four Way Books in March 2023. We discuss If Some God Shakes Your House, in which Franklin has “reimagined Antigone for our times--where filial devotion and ossified roles of gendered labor become the engine of her defiance.” Franklin's …

Denise Duhamel’s most recent books of poetry are Second Story (Pittsburgh, 2021) and Scald (2017). Blowout (2013) was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. A proponent of collaboration, she and Maureen Seaton have co-authored five collections, the most recent of which is CAPRICE (Collaborations: Collected,Uncollected, and New) (Sib…

Tsering Wangmo Dhompa is the first Tibetan woman to publish poetry in English. She joins Julie Murphy to read new and favorite poems, as well as the poem ⁠When it rains in Dharamsala⁠ by Tenzin Tsundue. They talk about exile, impermanence, and how poems take us from image to mystery. Tsering Wangmo Dhompa is the author of the poetry books, My Rice …

Listen as Caridad reads poems from her book Tortillera, a work in three parts addressing the journey of a woman claiming her own voice. We talk about desire, the Cuban-American experience, coming out, artist Ana Mendienta...among other things. Tune in! Caridad's website is here: http://www.caridadmoro.com/about-me.html#/ You can purchase both the s…