Poetry Off the Shelf

A.B. Spellman on Jim Crow, alligator suede shoes, and shaking up the art of the castle.

Garth Greenwell on shame, small acts of love, and the patch of snow inside us.

Idra Novey on exile, stereotypes, and making art the center of your life.

Helena and Nicholson Baker on drawing your loved ones, the horrors of the world, and finding your way back to beauty.

Perry Janes on Hollywood, ego, and trying not to break his NDA.

E.J. Koh on distance, broken English, and writing poems that forgive.

Camille Dungy on her garden, writing from the provinces, and the poetry of Anne Spencer. 

Dorothea Lasky on The Shining, writing what you fear, and the ferocity of color.

Merlin Sheldrake on fungi, creativity, and the queerness of nature.

Elisa Gonzalez on bisexuality, humor, and working in finance.

Joyelle McSweeney on sound, style icons, and the Ovidian landscape of her ear canal.

Sara Henning on radical truth, obsessive forms, and letting go of grief. 

Philip Metres on middle age, writer's block, and praying for the people of Palestine.

April Gibson on chronic illness, religion, and being a teenage mother.

Declan Ryan on his father's construction job, tenderness between boxers, and the inevitable tragic end.

Monica Rico on cooking, grunt work, and the heat at General Motors.

Nam Le on commerce, irony vs. sincerity, and being in the Arctic. 

Gregory Pardlo on improv, therapy, and driving around with his father’s ashes.

Caitlin Cowan on rejection, tradwives, and poems from our better self.

Blake Butler on complex mourning, the suicide of his wife Molly Brodak, and finding his way back.

Remembering the lesbian poet and activist Minnie Bruce Pratt, as well as the Palestinian poet and symbol of the resistance, Refaat Alareer.

Steve Zeitlin and Bob Holman on the healing act of writing, small frogs, and politics at the fiddle festival.

Laura Mullen on academia, death threats, and doing the next brave thing.

Daniel Brock Johnson on risk, a T-shirt mantra, and life after the death of his friend James Foley.

Sebastian Merrill on the voice of his former self, the underworld, and laughing during yoga.

 Sahar Muradi on cyclical time, leather butterflies, and saying goodbye to her father.

Sean Cole on loneliness, fear of aging, and what poems can do.

Eric Sneathen on queer utopia, bad writing, and San Francisco in the ’70s.

Irène Mathieu on pediatrics, suburbs without a TV, and our body's unknown terrain.

Natalie Shapero on Wheel of Fortune, babysitting for her landlord, and pretending not to grieve.

Rosanna Young Oh on her parents’ grocery store, leaving poetry, and the duties of the firstborn. 

Airea D. Matthews on self-interest, starry skies, and her parents’ fateful wedding day.

Sophus Helle on empire, Calvin and Hobbes, and the world's first author. 

Leslie Sainz on Bill O’Reilly, glassblowing, and the lure of praise.

Diane Seuss on New York in the ’70s, virtue, and her father’s early death.

Katie Farris on cancer, desire, and her early-menopause care package. 

Paisley Rekdal on maps, Sisyphus, and the dangers of beauty.

Aaron Smith on shame, telling the truth, and his mother's last lipstick.

Rebecca Gayle Howell and Ashley M. Jones on working-class poems, good food, and their fathers’ bodies.

Jennifer Jean on foster care, finding her voice, and loving her father as he was.

Mahogany L. Browne on her first kiss, family secrets, and having your book banned.

Janine Joseph on memory loss, car sounds, and a mirror that loves you.

Peter Cole on his brother's death, finding his vocation, and the erotic pull of letters.

Raymond Antrobus on late-night BBC poetry dubs, real people, and becoming a father.

Gabrielle Bates on betrayal, home church, and living in her mother's slaughterhouse.

Marisa Tirado on Selena, cow skulls, and the memory of adobe brick.

Remembering Richard Howard as a poet, mentor, and friend, plus a few words on money by Bernadette Mayer.

Celes Tisdale on similarities, teaching after the uprising, and his mother's favorite poet.

Belarussian poets Valzhyna Mort and Julia Cimafiejeva on magic, transformation, and what's hidden underneath the forest floor.

JoAnna Novak on islands, a plush placenta, and a gift from the suicide hotline.

Alexandra Lytton Regalado on fate, snake mirrors, and the daily work of letting go.

Ama Codjoe on normal naked bodies, solving problems, and her childfree life.

Noʻu Revilla on ancestral history in newspapers, ocean consciousness, and how to be a guest.

Chelsea Harlan on knowledge, creaturehood, and the quest for her mother’s secret sadness.

André Naffis-Sahely on desert sand, rootlessness, and the long shadow of fascism.

Elisa Gabbert on commitment, boredom, and the poem as theater. 

Saeed Jones on accuracy, being funny, and creating what we need.

Chantal Gibson on ancestors, laundry, and Frantz Fanon for beginners.

Nina Mingya Powles on muscle memory, Haka tutorials, and the shock of home.

Niina Pollari on sunflowers, redemption, and the most depressing phone note in the world.

Victoria Chang on bonsai trees, witticisms, and the wisdom of not giving a crap.

Tom Sleigh about his romance with experience, fancy jackets, and one last visit to the dog beach.

Sylvie Kandé and her translator Alexander Dickow on the courage of migrants, the limits of language, and an epic without a nation.

Kim Moore on playing the trumpet, misogyny, and the men we love.

Tommye Blount on transformation, Kids Incorporate, and the joy of drowning in diction.

Oksana Maksymchuk and Oksana Lutsyshyna on life as a refugee, the God of comfort, and the deep roots of the war.

Julie Enszer and Elena Gross on community care, the AIDS epidemic, and OutWrite, the conference that shaped queer literary history.

Hoa Nguyen on photographs, her mother's past with the motorcycle circus, and the quiet ways to talk to ghosts.

Poet and playwright Malcolm Tariq on listening, field trips with his brother, and the perils of dating while Black.

Kaveh Akbar on human wondering, fat squirrels, and the best spouse in the world.

Bianca Stone on family trauma, wrinkled towels, and the case against self-improvement.

Remembering the life, poetry, and activism of Janice Mirikitani, plus a few words on love by bell hooks.

Keats Conley on smelly ducks, spiders, and the limits of the human perspective.

Steven Espada Dawson on possibility, toothpaste, and the grief of cosmic aloneness.

Noor Hindi on home ownership, evictions court, and her father's grief.

Clint Smith on being human, healing on a plantation, and the difference between Jefferson and Grant.

Isabel Duarte-Gray on town gossip, folk remedies, and the music of Kentucky.

Poet and priest Spencer Reece on his cousin's murder, the AIDS epidemic, and bearing witness to a moment.

Chen Chen on nourishment, homophobia, and breaking free of the fear of failure.