Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).
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Purchase: Water Castle by Natalie Solmer (Kelsay Books, 2024)

Read: "I Am a Great Lake" (MER)

Natalie Solmer was born and raised in South Bend, Indiana, a granddaughter of Polish and German immigrants. She worked in the field of horticulture for many years, including 13 years as a grocery store florist, before becoming a professor of English and creative writing. She teaches at Ivy Tech Community College in Indianapolis and is the founder and editor in chief of Indianapolis Review. Her work has been published in journals such as North American Review, Notre Dame Review, Pleiades, Mom Egg Review, and Tab Poetry Journal. Her debut book of poems, Water Castle, was published by Kelsay Books in the fall of 2024. You can find her poems, visual poetry, and visual art at http://www.nataliesolmer.com

Reading Recommendations:

The Indianapolis Review

Diane Seuss, Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl (Graywolf, 2018)

"Song in my Heart" by Diane Seuss

Gustav Klimt

Frida Kahlo

"The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" by Walter Benjamin

Joyelle McSweeney, Death Styles (Nightboat Books, 2024)

Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).
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Purchase: The Deletions (Editor’s Choice, Akron Poetry Prize)

Sarah Green is the author of an April 2025 release, The Deletions (Editor’s Choice, Akron Poetry Prize) and a previous collection, Earth Science. Her poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Paris Review, New Ohio Review, 32 Poems, FIELD, Copper Nickel, Gettysburg Review, Pleiades, and elsewhere. A two-time Pushcart Prize winner, she is an Associate Professor of English at St. Cloud State.

Reading Recommendations:
Kylie Gellatly

Marie Howe

Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey

James Wright

Marianne Moore

Merriam-Webster

The Lost Words by Robert Macfarlane

Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).
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Purchase: Unrivered (Sundress Publications, 2025)

Read: "Dysmorphia (Autumn)" at Harpur Palate

Donna Vorreyer is the author of four full-length poetry collections: Unrivered ( 2025), To Everything There Is (2020), Every Love Story is an Apocalypse Story (2016) and A House of Many Windows (2013), all from Sundress Publications. Recent work has appeared in Ploughshares, Pleiades, Poet Lore, Colorado Review, Harpur Palate, Baltimore Review, Salamander, and many other journals. Donna lives in the western suburbs of Chicago and runs the online reading series A Hundred Pitchers of Honey. She is the co-founder/co-editor of Asterales: A Journal of Arts & Letters.

Reading/Listening Recommendations:

Mary Ruefle’s essay “Pause”

Diane Seuss's frank: sonnets

John Donne, Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions (1624)

Philip Sidney, Astrophil and Stella (1591)

Jane Hirshfield "Changing Everything"

Richard Wilbur, “The Beautiful Changes”

Joanne Kyger

Eileen Myles

Salvage by Heji Choi

Taylor Byas’s Resting Bitch Face

Dustin Brookshire, Wild and Precious Life Series

Robin Wall Kimmerer's The Serviceberry

Lewis Hyde's The Gift

Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).
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Purchase: Encounters for the Living and the Dead (River River Books, 2025)

Jameela F. Dallis lives in Durham, NC. Her publications include poems, interviews, arts journalism, and literary scholarship in Feminist Studies, Honey Literary, The Fight and the Fiddle, Our State, Walter, The Bloomsbury Handbook to Toni Morrison, and elsewhere. She's inspired by memory and desire, the thrill of wandering new cities, and the wonder of everyday encounters. Her work explores texture, taste, sound, sensation, and the richness of visual art. She curated Material Encounters (Peel Gallery, Carrboro, March 2024), juried Scaffold (Artspace, Raleigh, April 2023), and has served on regional curatorial and fellowship committees. Jameela has taught dozens of university courses and facilitated creative workshops for more than a decade. Originally from Chattanooga, TN, Jameela received her B.A. in English from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, and holds both an M.A. and Ph.D. in English from UNC-Chapel Hill. Encounters for the Living and the Dead is her first book of poetry. Read more at jameeladallis.com

Reading Recommendations:

Pieter Aertsen's A Meat Stall with the Holy Family Giving Alms(1551)

Henri Matisse's Les Betes de la Mer (1950)

Five Questions with Author Jameela F. Dallis: River River Books' Newsletter

Jaki Shelton Green

Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).

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Purchase: Field Notes(River River Books, 2025)

E. G. Cunningham was born in South Carolina and grew up in Italy and Florida. Her poems, essays, stories, and hybrid pieces have appeared in or are forthcoming from a wide range of national and international publications, including The Abandoned Playground, Colorado Review, The Gettysburg Review, The Nation, Poetry London, The Poetry Review, Puerto del Sol, Southern Humanities Review, and ZYZZYVA. Her most recent chapbook, Oranges for Venus, was selected as the 2023 1br/3bath Editor’s Choice from Tilted House Press. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing, Poetry from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and a PhD in English Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Georgia. Read more about her writing and music at egcunningham.com.

Reading Recommendations

"What are the United States and why are there so many of them?" essay by Heriberto Yepéz

Sonia Sanchez's essay in Civil Disobediences: poetics and politics in actions (Coffee House Press, 2004)

Transnational Battle Field (Commune Editions, 2017) by Heriberto Yepéz

Poem for Difficult Children (Broken Sleep Books, 2022) by Daniele Pantano

The Gleaners and I (2001, film) by Agnes Varda (watch on The Internet Archive)

Whose Justice? Which Rationality?by Alasdair MacIntyre

The Southern Reach Series by Jeff VanderMeer

Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).

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Read: "Faith Test" at The Florida Review Online

Purchase: The Science of Things We Can Believe (Ghost Peach Press, 2024)

Christen Noel Kauffmanis author of The Science of Things We Can Believe which won the Ghost Peach Press Prize in Poetry chosen by Tiana Clark (2024) and the chapbook Notes to a Mother God (2021), which was a winner of the Paper Nautilus Debut Chapbook Series. She is a 2022 National Poetry Series Finalist and her work can be found in A Harp in the Stars: An Anthology of Lyric Essays (University of Nebraska Press), Tupelo Quarterly, Copper Nickel, The Cincinnati Review, DIAGRAM, and Smokelong Quarterly, among others. She's currently a poetry editor for Driftwood Press and lives in Richmond, Indiana.

Reading/Listening Recommendations:
Frank X Walker's Affrilachia

Sara Moore Wagner's Of Poetry Episode

upfromsumdirt's Of Poetry Episode

Joe Wilkin's Of Poetry Episode

Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).

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Purchase: Lady Wing Shot by Sara Moore Wagner (Lynx House Press, 2024)

Read: “Annie Oakley’s Bullet Inventory” Jet Fuel Review

Sara Moore Wagner is the author of three prize winning full length books of poetry, Lady Wing Shot, winner of the 2023 Blue Lynx Prize (2024), Swan Wife (Cider Press Review Editors Prize, 2022), and Hillbilly Madonna (Driftwood Press Manuscript Prize, 2022), and of two chapbooks. She is also a 2022 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award recipient, a 2021 National Poetry Series Finalist, and the recipient of a 2019 Sustainable Arts Foundation award. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in many journals and anthologies including Gulf Coast, Smartish Pace, Waxwing, Beloit Poetry Journal, and The Cincinnati Review, among others. In 2023, she became the Managing Poetry Editor of Driftwood Press. She lives in West Chester, OH with her husband and three children.

Recommended Reading

Christen Noel Kauffman (with us in spirit on Episode 74!)

[Buffalo Bill 's] by E.E. Cummings

Lit Youngstown
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).

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Read: "Practice Elegy" at Copper Nickel

Purchase: The Naomi Letters (BOA Editions, 2021)

Rachel Mennies is the author of the poetry collections The Wolf (BOA Editions, forthcoming fall 2027); The Naomi Letters (BOA Editions, 2021); The Glad Hand of God Points Backwards, the 2014 winner of the Walt McDonald First-Book Prize in Poetry at Texas Tech University Press and finalist for a National Jewish Book Award; and No Silence in the Fields, a chapbook from Blue Hour Press. Her poetry has recently appeared at Poetry Magazine, The Believer, Kenyon Review, American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. Rachel's essays, criticism, and other articles have appeared, or will soon, at The Millions, The Poetry Foundation, LitHub, and numerous other outlets.

Reading Recommendations:

"Having it out with Melancholy" by Jane Kenyon

Portrait of a Woman on Fire, Dir. Céline Sciamma (film)

Aracelis Girmay's The Black Maria

This is How You Lose the Time Warby Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Circe by Madeline Miller

Galatea by Madeline Miller

[Eugenio] Montale in English

Adrienne Rich

Anne Sexton

Virginia Woolf

Anaïs Nin

Sylvia Plath