New Books in Poetry
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network, an academic audio library dedicated to public education. Each episode features scholars discussing their recently published research with another expert in their field, with a focus on poetry. The network offers over 150 channels and 28,000 episodes on its website, and listeners can subscribe to a free weekly newsletter for more content. Support is available through a premium membership.
Episodes
Living Resistance: An Indigenous Vision for Seeking Wholeness Every Day
Feeling worn out by the work of resistance? How do you persevere?Today’s book is: Living Resistance: An Indigenous Vision for Seeking Wholeness Every Day, by Kaitlin B. Curtice. In an era in which "resistance" has become tokenized, Kaitlin Curtice reclaims it as a basic human calling. Kaitlin Curtice shows that we can learn to practice embodied ways of belonging and connection to ourselves and one
An Alaṅkāra Reader: Classical Indian Poetics with Yigal Bronner (Columbia UP, 2026)
Classical Indian poetics prized the skillful use of alaṅkāras, or “ornaments”—literary figures of speech. Across more than a millennium, Sanskrit writers developed and elaborated an account of literary embellishment that is perhaps the world’s most complex and long-standing theory of figuration. Yet it remains the least studied of India’s major classical systems of thought.An Alaṅkāra Reader (Colu
Bureau of Useless Splendour with Chris Banks (ECW Press, 2026)
In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Chris Banks about his poetry collection, The Bureau of Useless Splendor (ECW Press, 2026). Poet Chris Banks is immersed in what is wondrous and strange about human connection, pop culture, and most importantly, the elusive search for understanding and hope in an accelerating century marked by socioeconomic disparity and climate change.Banks
A Room of His Own: Joseph Brodsky and the Making of a Bilingual Poet with Daria S. Smirnova (Academic Studies Press, 2025)
A Room of His Own: Joseph Brodsky and the Making of a Bilingual Poet (Academic Studies Press, 2025) makes the original and persuasive claim that Brodsky’s force as a transnational poet derives paradoxically from an inward-looking stance that privileges “the trope of the room” and a practice of self-translation that is faithful to his own internal poetics rather than the poetic norms
Night Breaks in the Garret: Poems and Peregrinations with Yermiyahu Ahron Taub (Finishing Line Press, 2026)
In Night Breaks in the Garret: Poems and Peregrinations (Finishing Line Press, 2026), Yermiyahu Ahron Taub provides a meditation not so much on the search for home, but on the coming to terms with what is, here and now, home. The poet engages the distant past and the pressing present as well as various companionate figures. Taken as a whole, the book anchors the single queer figure within landscap
Adriana Onitǎ, "Descântec for My Split Tongue" (Palimpsest Press, 2026)
In this NBN interview, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Adriana Oniță about her poetry collection, Descântec For My Split Tongue (Palimpsest Press, 2026). This is Adriana Oniță’s first book of poetry, and it gathers English-Romanian poems that travel across generations, homelands, and dreamscapes to ask: what do we lose when we lose a language? Drawn from Oniță’s childhood and her immigration from
Tsunami: Women’s Voices From Mexico
Featuring personal essay, manifesto, creative nonfiction, and poetry, Tsunami: Women’s Voices From Mexico (Feminist Press, 2025) gathers the multiplicity of voices being raised in Mexico today against patriarchy and its buried structures. Tackling gender violence, community building, #MeToo, Indigenous rights, and more, these writings rock the core of what we know feminism to be, dismant
Carl Dennis, "Earthly Virtues" (Penguin, 2026)
In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Pulitzer Prize winner Carl Dennis about his collection, Earthly Virtues (Penguin Random House, 2026). Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Carl Dennis explores the expansiveness and complexity of universal virtues within the realm of the everyday in this thought-provoking new collection Though most of the virtues that interest Carl Dennis in Earthly
Rachel Eliza Griffiths, "The Flower Bearers" (Random House, 2026)
On September 24, 2021, Rachel Eliza Griffiths married her husband, the novelist Salman Rushdie. On the same day, hundreds of miles away, Griffiths’ closest friend and chosen sister, the poet Kamilah Aisha Moon, who was expected to speak at the wedding, died suddenly. Eleven months later, as Griffiths attempted to piece together her life as a newlywed with heartbreak in one hand and immense love in
Remco E Breuker, "Not Everything Unfolds as Anticipated: Selections from Yi Kyubo’s Tongguk Yi Sangguk Chip" (U Hawaii Press, 2026)
Not Everything Unfolds as Anticipated: Selections from Yi Kyubo’s Tongguk Yi Sangguk Chip (University of Hawaii Press, 2026) comprises translations of poems, tales, letters, epitaphs, and funeral orations by Yi Kyubo (1168–1241), the foremost writer and poet of the Koryŏ dynasty (918–1392). Dr. Breuker’s translation and introduction humanize this celebrated poet, whom he reveals as not only a
Kirby, "Fairy" (Palimpsest Press, 2026)
In this episode, NBN host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Kirby about their joyful and powerful new book, Fairy (Palimpsest Press, 2026).
In Fairy, Kirby continues to mine their riches and fan the flames lit in their instant classic, Poetry is Queer. Their essays are an act of liberation they call “tending to each other’s freedom,” and are written with signature Kirby directness and panache, from early
Inside Ink & Ribbon Press with Founder G.K. Allum and Poet Jan Noble
A year ago, Ink & Ribbon Press did not exist. Today it’s a nonprofit publisher with its first books in the world, a readership built largely through Substack, early editions that have sold out, and an inaugural prize — the LemonLight Prize — that drew more than 3,500 poems from 706 poets across eight countries. Among the press’s forthcoming titles is Jan Noble’s My Name Is Swan, a poem Jan has
Patricia A. Billingsley, "Lorca in Vermont: The Spanish Poet and His American Lover" (High Road Books, 2026)
A groundbreaking reassessment of the relationship between Federico García Lorca and American poet Philip Cummings and its impact on the poems in Lorca's landmark collection, Poet in New York.In August 1929, Spanish poet Federico García Lorca left New York City to spend ten days with his friend and lover Philip Cummings at a lakeside cottage in northern Vermont. Lorca in Vermont: The Spanish Poet a
Christopher R. Rogers, "My City Need Something" (Common Notions, 2026)
Moving between word and image, the call-and-response collaboration between writer Christopher R. Rogers and photographer karim brown improvises a contemporary portrait of present-day Black Philadelphia, replete with the unfinished activism present since the transnational upsurge of the George Floyd Uprising.Arriving five years after the crucible of that period, this experimental essay-as-LP challe
The Letters of Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson was a letter writer before she was a poet. And it was through letters that she shared prose reflections–alternately humorous, provocative, affectionate, and philosophical–with her extensive community. While her letters often contain poems, and some letters consist entirely of a single poem, they also constitute a rich genre all their own. Through her correspondence, Dickinson appea
Molly Peacock, "The Widow’s Crayon Box" (WW Norton & Co, 2025)
In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with internationally acclaimed poet and biographer of women’s creativity, Molly Peacock about her collection, The Widow’s Crayon Box (WW Norton & Co, 2025)--a book-length sequence of poems that dares to affirm the vast variety of emotional colors in loss and rejuvenation.
After her husband’s death, Molly Peacock realized she was not living the re
Phillip B. Williams, "Lift Every Voice" (Penguin, 2026)
Captivating for both its grandeur and intimacy, Lift Every Voice
(Penguin Books, 2026) explores the past’s capacity to be both a source
of dread and empowerment, an unshakable reminder of violence and an
indelible testament to the endurance of love. In virtuosic poems that
are wise, musical, richly layered, and saturated with vivid imagery,
Williams honors a mother “who knew seven ways to say
In Praise: A Conversation with Texas Poet Laureate & Founder of Torch Literary Arts, Amanda Johnston
In 2006 poet Amanda Johnston went in search of community and, when she didn’t find what she was looking for, Amanda built her own. Today, Torch Literary Arts is a resource and a destination for Black women writers and readers across the diaspora. Fueled by wisdom and writings from poets, novelists, and screenwriters, the organization’s exceptional programming and award-winning magazine amplify Bla
Donna Vorreyer, "Unrivered" (Sundress Publications, 2025)
In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Donna Vorreyer about her poetry collection, Unrivered (Sundress Publications, 2025).
Donna Vorreyer strikes gold with Unrivered, a stunning collection of poems that meditate on grief, regret, longing, self-love, and acceptance. Reeling from the loss of her parents, Vorreyer’s speaker is forced to grapple with her own mortality, and with the comp
Poet-Prophet of American Democracy: Walt Whitman’s Vital Political Prose
Walt Whitman’s outrage at American politics and politicians was surpassed only by his passionate faith in democracy’s future. Both his anger and his hope fire his visionary prose writings on democracy, gathered for the first time in a new Library of America paperback edited by acclaimed political commentator and literary critic David Bromwich.
Join Bromwich, Mark Edmundson (author of Song of Ourse
Laurie D. Graham, "Calling It Back to Me: Poems" (Random House, 2026)
In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery interviews acclaimed poet
Laurie D. Graham about her new book of poetry, Calling it Back to Me
(McClelland & Stewart, 2026).
A poet’s clear-eyed witnessing of familial history, this is the most
personal collection yet from two-time Trillium Book Award finalist
Laurie D. Graham.
In these searching, spare, and resonant poems,
Laurie D. Graham traces
Jaime Forsythe, "Yield" (Buckrider Books, 2026)
In her third collection, Nova Scotian poet Jaime Forsythe has created an elegant long poem with Yield (Buckrider Books, 2026).
In these dreamlike lines a mother faces the postpartum void from a
porous house by the ocean as the veil between land and sea, and between
being lost and being found, grows thinner. With repeated waves of
couplets Forsythe brings the reader unforgettable images:
Amrita Chowdhury and Ujaan Ghosh trans., "Baidehisha Bilasa: The Amorous Plays of Sita’s Husband" (Wide Open Window Books, 2025)
Amrita Chowdhury and Ujaan Ghosh bring into English for the first time a long-inaccessible masterpiece of South Asian literature Baidehisha Bilasa: The Amorous Plays of Sita’s Husband (2025). Composed in the late seventeenth century by Upendra Bhanja — the Odia prince-poet hailed as Kavi Samrat, the Emperor of Poets — the work is a Ramayana that privileges shringara, the erotic sentiment, over ma
chaun webster, "Without Terminus: untraining an archive" (Greywolf, 2026)
In his first work of nonfiction, poet chaun webster blends memoir, archival research, visual poetics, and cultural criticism to trace the ways structural anti-Black violence has shaped his inheritance, and grapples with the question of how to know—and mourn—the kin he was never able to meet.webster is particularly drawn to his grandfather Reginald, who worked for years as a Pullman porter, who was
Barry Devine and Ellen Scheible eds., "Teaching James Joyce in the Twenty-First Century" (UP of Florida, 2025)
A guide for today’s classrooms, this collection from leading Joyce scholars explores innovative pedagogical approaches to the works of this often-challenging writer
Teaching James Joyce in the Twenty-First Century (UP of Florida, 2025) presents examples of bold, innovative pedagogical techniques instructors have used to adapt the study of Joyce’s work for the contemporary classroom. Leading Joyce
Alex Averbuch, "Furious Harvests" (Harvard UP, 2026)
Furious Harvests (Harvard University Press, 2026) transports
readers to Alex Averbuch’s homeland of eastern Ukraine. Amid the bloody destruction brought by Russia’s war of aggression, the poet toils in fields of memory, reaping lyrics from family archives and mementos to amass testaments to the complex and painful histories of this place and its peoples. A family tree, letters to home, and t
Elizabeth Bradfield's Books in Dark Times (JP)
For the RtB Books in Dark Times series back in 2021, John spoke with Elizabeth Bradfield, editor of Broadsided Press, poet, professor of creative writing at Brandeis, naturalist, photographer.
Her books include Interpretive Work, Approaching Ice, Once Removed, and Toward Antarctica. She lives on Cape Cod, travels north every summer to guide people into Arctic climes, birdwatches.
Liz is in and of
Sharon Israel, "Voice Lesson" (Post Traumatic Press, 2017)
In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with poet Sharon Israel about her poetry collection, Voice Lesson (Post Traumatic Press).
Sharon Israel’s poems are full of song and detail, movement and color; the pleasures she brings to the page are many and varied. We are as likely to find Israel’s speaker sighting owls in the Catskills, or helping in her dad’s butcher shop, as in the world of mu
Stephanie Bolster, "Long Exposure" (Palimpsest Press, 2025)
In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with award-winning poet Stephanie Bolster about her new book, Long Exposure (Palimpsest Press, 2025).
After Hurricane Katrina, the photographer Robert Polidori flew to New Orleans to document the devastation. In the wreckage he witnessed, and in her questions about what she saw in what he saw, Stephanie Bolster found the beginnings of a long poem. Th
Kaie Kellough, "Interposition" (McClelland & Stewart, 2026)
In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks wit Griffin Prize winner Kaie Kellough about his new long poem, Interposition (McClelland & Steward, 2026).
Featured in the Publishers Weekly Spring 2026 PreviewFrom Kaie Kellough, poet, sound performer, and Griffin prize winner, comes a linguistic incursion into desire, technology, and the absurd.Kaie Kellough (Magnetic Equator, Griffin Poetry P
Sarah Jean Grimm, "Hog Lagoon" (blush, 2023) and "Soft Focus" (Metatron, 2017)
Sarah Jean Grimm is the author of Soft Focus (Metatron, 2017) and the chapbook Hog Lagoon (blush, 2023). She was a founding editor of Powder Keg Magazine (2014-2019) and currently edits the small poetry press After Hours Editions. She lives in upstate New York and works as a book publicist with Broadside PR.
Book Recommendations:
Niina Pollari Paths of Totality
Song Cave Press, Emily Skillings, Ta
Avrom Sutzkever: Ten Poems
In 2017, a cache of Jewish materials was discovered in the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania. The discovery included a manuscript of “Tsen Lider” (“Ten Poems”), a collection written and compiled by Yiddish poet Avrom Sutzkever while living in the Vilna Ghetto. This unique manuscript includes variants of later published poems and preserves Sutzkever's original spelling and punctuation
Jennifer Wong, "Light Year" (Nine Arches Press, 2025)
And in the room we could hear
the ocean waves, breaking against
the history of ourselves.
So concludes the first poem in Light Year (Nine Arches Press, 2025) by Jennifer Wong. This book is a meditation on time. These poems delve into the mind of a poet crossing spaces of deep wounds, love and healing: a constellation of friendships and love as she moves through upheaval, transformation and change
Sarah Howe, "Foretokens" (Random House, 2025)
'Unearthed in a clear-out, a picture calendar she’s kept– hoarding, I’ve learnt, is a mark of the emigrant –across continents and time.'So begins Sarah Howe’s extraordinary new collection, Foretokens, returning to the riddle of belonging she explored in her award-winning debut, Loop of Jade. At the heart is her own mother’s clouded past: abandoned as a baby and taken in, at the turbulent dawn of C
Crystal Simone Smith, "Common Sense (1776), Addressed to Today's Citizen's of America: An Erasure" (Beacon, 2026)
This powerful work by award-winning poet Crystal Simone Smith exposes the uncomfortable truth about America’s founding text: while Common Sense is celebrated as a cornerstone of American democracy, Thomas Paine’s arguments for “total freedom and equality” were written exclusively for white men—completely excluding women and people of color from his vision of liberation.Through a clear-eyed point o
Manuel Iris, "The Whole Earth Is a Garden of Monsters / Toda la Tierra Es Un Jardín de Monstruos" (U Arizona Press, 2026)
This award-winning bilingual collection intertwines the lives of a Renaissance painter and a modern migrant worker, offering a fresh perspective on art and migration.
In this highly imaginative work, the lives of the northern Renaissance painter Hieronymus Bosch (1450-1516) and an imagined contemporary migrant worker named Juan Coyoc, later known as Juan Domínguez, run in parallel as they mirror e
Conor Mc Donnell, "What We Know So Far Is..." (Wolsak & Wynn, 2025)
In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Conor Mc Donnell about his long poem, What We Know So Far Is...(Wolsak & Wynn, 2025).
The Irish word for shadow, “scáth,” is also our word for shelter.
In a powerful long poem that captures the disquiet of our age with cinematic language and imagery, Conor Mc Donnell’s What We Know So Far Is … harkens back to the previous century in its dari
Eric Weiskott, "Cycle of Dreams" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2021) and "Piers Plowman: A New Annotated Edition of the A-Text" (U Exeter Press, 2025)
My guest today is Eric Weiskott, Professor of English at Boston College. Eric has previously published Meter and Modernity in English Verse, 1350-1650 (U Pennsylvania Press, 2021) and English Alliterative Verse: Poetic Tradition and Literary History (Cambridge University Press, 2016), as well as a chapbook titled Chanties: An American Dream (Bottlecap, 2023). Eric is also a co-editor for the Yearb
Diamond Forde, "The Book of Alice" (Scribner, 2026)
Winner of the 2025 James Laughlin Award from The Academy of American Poets
When her grandmother died, poet Diamond Forde inherited a well-worn family Bible to remember her by. In The Book of Alice (Scribner, 2026), she retells the story of her grandmother’s life through the framework of the only poetry Alice knew: the King James Bible. A Black woman born in the Jim Crow South, Alice joined the
David Martin, "nightstead" (Palimpsest Press, 2026)
In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with acclaimed Calgary, Alberta poet David Martin about is new collection, nightstead (Palimpsest Press, 2026).
In his most personal collection to date, award-winning poet David Martin elegizes his younger brother who died by suicide at the age of twenty-three. With a mixture of childhood recollections and anguished moments nightstead produces a com
Darius Phelps, "My God’s Been Silent" (Writ Large Press, 2026)
My God’s Been Silent (Writ Large Press, 2026) is a poetry collection that lives at the intersection of faith and fury, grief and grace. Written in the aftermath of loss and disillusionment, these poems are elegies and incantations-each one a plea, a protest, a prayer left unanswered. This collection excavates the silence of God through the body of a Black man who has known both sanctuary and aband
Guy Elston, "The Character Actor Convention" (Gordon Hill Press/Porcupine's Quill, 2025)
In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Toronto poet Guy Elston about his debut poetry collection, The Character Actor Convention (Gordon Hill Press/Porcupine's Quill, 2025).
A pumpkin writes a letter to his father. A sheep recalls a revolution, and love. Hydrogen pens a tell-all expos of Oxygen. The Stick Insect Orders His Tomb. Napoleon counts waves and cheats at cards. A sunflower
Sunil Iyengar, "The Colosseum Book of Contemporary Narrative Verse" (Franciscan UP, 2025)
Narrative verse, or poems that tell a story, has existed for millennia, yet the mode of writing has been neglected by literary publishers, editors, and critics in our own time. This anthology reestablishes the vital relationship of narrative verse to a contemporary readership of poetry. It presents a wide range of specimens from twenty-eight poets who were born since World War II and who published
Khashayar Kess Mohammadim, "The Book of Interruptions" (Buckrider Books, 2025)
In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with poet Khashayar "Kess" Mohammadi about their new poetry collection, The Book of Interruptions. In The Book of Interruptions (Buckrider Books, 2025) Khashayar “Kess” Mohammadi has brought together a collection of poems written with scalpel-like precision. Infused with “pre-emptive violence” these poems mark the intersection of war, immigration, s
Margo LaPierre, "Ajar" (Guernica Editions, 2025)
In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with poet Margo LaPierre about her poetry collection, Ajar (Guernica Editions, 2025). The poems in Ajar navigate the physical and psychological dangers of womanhood through the flattening lens of mood disorder. Psychosis isn’t the opposite of reality—it’s another perceptual system. If neurotypical thought measures the world in centimetres, this colle
Luis Rechani Agrait, "My Excellency: Comedy in Three Acts" (Swan Isle Press, 2025)
My Excellency: Comedy in Three Acts (Swan Isle Press, 2025) by Luis Rechani Agrait was translated into English by William Carlos Williams but not published in his lifetime. This first-ever edition of Williams’s translation was edited and has an introduction by Jonathan Cohen. It includes a foreword by Julio Marzán and an afterword by José Luis Ramos Escobar. It also includes the lecture Williams g
Bänoo Zan and Cy Strom, "Woman Life Freedom: Poems for the Iranian Revolution" (Guernica Editions, 2025)
In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Bänoo Zan and Cy Strom about their anthology, Woman Life Freedom: Poems for the Iranian Revolution (Guernica Editions, 2025).
This international anthology marks a world-historical moment: the first ever feminist revolution. The slogan chanted by the demonstrators in Iran is Woman, Life, Freedom, and it encompasses hopes and ideals for all people
Catherine Clarke, "A History of England in 25 Poems" (Penguin, 2025)
This is the history of England told in a new way: glimpsed through twenty-five remarkable poems written down between the eighth century and today, which connect us directly with the nation’s past, and the experiences, emotions and imaginations of those who lived it.
These poems open windows onto wildly different worlds – from the public to the intimate, from the witty to the savage, from the playf
Martin Herskovitz, "Son of the Shoah: Poems from a Second-Generation Holocaust Survivor" (McFarland, 2025)
As a third generation Holocaust survivor, this was an important conversation with a second generation survivor. Marty has been conducting workshops on writing memory for quite a while and that's where we met - in his workshops with Jewish Ethiopians in Israel. Son of the Shoah: Poems from a Second-Generation Holocaust Survivor is his emotional reckoning with his parents and the world as being born
Paul Vermeersch, "NMLCT: Poems" (ECW Press, 2025)
In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Paul Vermeersch about his new collection of poetry, NMLCT (ECW Press, 2025). Fables and fairy tales collide with virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and monstrous myths in a world where no one knows what to believe. In his eighth book of poems, Paul Vermeersch responds to the increasing difficulty of knowing what is real and what isn’t, wh
Gian Piero Persiani, "Poets, Patrons, and the Public: Poetry as Cultural Phenomenon in Courtly Japan" (Brill, 2025)
Waka poetry was all the rage in tenth-century, courtly Japan. Every educated person composed it, emperors and consorts sponsored it, and societal interest in it was at an all-time high. Poets, Patrons, and the Public: Poetry as Cultural Phenomenon in Courtly Japan (Brill, 2025) offers an unprecedentedly broad and vivid portrayal of this season of literary flourishing, revealing the multitude of fa
Andrew Fadyen-Ketchum, "Fight or Flight" (Stephen F. Austin State UP, 2023)
In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery interviews Andrew Fadyen-Ketchum about his poetry collection, Fight or Flight (Stephen F. Austin State UP, 2023).
Fight or Flight artifacts the trauma of McFadyen-Ketchum's divorce and the journey he took across the wilds of America (living in a tent on the California coast, getting intentionally lost in the Utah desert, tracking wild animals in the bitte
Rayanne Haines, "What Kind of Daughter" (Frontenac House Press, 2024)
In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery interviews acclaimed Alberta poet Rayanne Haines about her book, What Kind of Daughter (Frontenac House Press, 2024).
What Kind of Daughter? is a poetic memoir by Rayanne Haines that considers identity and gender expectations while exploring the public perception of the space between the spaces we inhabit during periods of grieving, whether that grieving i
Eileen Myles, "Pathetic Literature" (Grove Press, 2022)
“Literature is pathetic.” So claims Eileen Myles in their provocative and robust introduction to Pathetic Literature (Grove Press, 2022), a breathtaking mishmash of pieces ranging from poems to theater scripts to prose to anything in between, all exploring the so-called “pathetic” or awkwardly-felt moments and revelations around which lives are both built and undone. An utterly unique collection c
Yvonne Blomer, "Death of Persephone: A Murder" (Caitlin Press, 2024)
In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Yvonne Blomer about her stunning narrative poetry, Death of Persephone: A Murder (Caitlin Press, 2024).
In Death of Persephone, the patriarchal myth of the maiden taken, raped, and made the potent and sexualized queen of the underworld is questioned, altered, flipped. Instead, we have Stephanie, a girl of seven, taken and raised by her Uncle H.
Eli Clare, "Unfurl: Survivals, Sorrows, and Dreaming" (Duke UP, 2025)
A transcript of this interview is available [here]
A queer disabled love song to trees and beavers, tremors and dreams, Unfurl: Survivals, Sorrows, and Dreaming (Duke UP, 2025) explores the pulsing core and porous edges of survival, sorrow, and dreaming. Blending poetry and creative nonfiction, emotion and activist thinking, Eli Clare invites us to unfurl ourselves into the lovely multitude of gen
Lillian Allen et. al, "Muttertongue: What Is a Word in Utter Space" (Exile Editions, 2025)
In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery interviews Gregory Betts, one of the poets behind the collaboration, Muttertongue: what is a word in utter space (Exile Editions, 2025) – by Lillian Allen (Toronto’ s seventh Poet Laureate, a dub poet, writer, and Juno Award winner), Gary Barwin (poet, writer, composer, multimedia artist, performer, and educator), and Gregory Betts (whose writing explores
Concetta Principe, "Disorder" (Gordon Hill Press, 2024)
In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Concetta Principe about her poetry collection, DIsorder (Gordon Hill Press, 2024).
Disorder, the newest collection of poetry from Concetta Principe, explores the metaphorical relationship between the home and the mind, where a home should be place of sanctuary but can have its safe borders destabilized by mental illness. The poems work through
Anand, "The Notbook of Kabir: Thinner than Water, Fiercer than Fire" (India Viking, 2025)
Kabir is the most alive of all dead poets. He is a fabric without stitches. No centres, no edges. Anand threads his way in. Over the years, as a publisher and editor, Anand immerses himself in the works of Babasaheb Ambedkar and other anticaste thinkers. He gives up his practice of music and poetry, blaming his disenchantment on caste. One day in Delhi, Anand starts looking for Kabir. He finds him
Lorne Daniel, "What Is Broken Binds Us" (U Calgary Press, 2025)
In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery interviews poet Lorne Daniel about his poetry collection, What is Broken Binds Us (University of Calgary Press, 2025).
What is Broken Binds Us is a collection of poems of the disruptions and emotional tremors that shape us: enslaved families broken and dispersed, histories hidden, addiction and estrangement, and the shocks of bodily trauma.
What is Broken
Theresa Muñoz, "Archivum" (Pavillion Poetry at Liverpool UP, 2025)
Archivum (Pavillion Poetry at Liverpool UP, 2025) by Dr. Theresa Muñoz is a book – wise, funny and inventive by turn – that explores what it means to look at artefacts in an archive, and how these objects resonate with events in our lives. Imagined as a walk across Edinburgh, landmarks such as the Balmoral clock, National Library of Scotland, Meadows, Canongate Kirkyard and Water of Leith provide
Carlene Kucharczyk, "Strange Hymn: Poems" (U Mass Press, 2025)
"I'll tell you everything I know. Though there might not be much to tell," confesses the speaker in Strange Hymn: Poems (U Mass Press, 2025) by Carlene Kucharczyk, in a meticulously crafted lyrical journey exploring morality and humanity. The poems here grapple with understanding physical loss: "I wanted / to know at once and definitively our animal bodies / were not all we were. It is shameful
Patrick Grace, "Deviant" (U Alberta Press, 2024)
In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with poet Patrick Grace about his stunning poetry collection, Deviant (U Alberta Press, 2024).
Deviant traces a trajectory of queer self-discovery from childhood to adulthood, examining love, fear, grief, and the violence that men are capable of in intimate same-sex relationships. Richly engaged with the tangible and experiential, Patrick Grace’s con
Walter Scott Peterson, "[M]y ‘case’ to work up’: William Carlos Williams’s Paterson" (William Carlos Williams Review, Vol 41, No. 2, 2024),
In “[M]y ‘case’ to work up’: William Carlos Williams’s Paterson” (William Carlos Williams Review, Volume 41, Number 2, 2024), Walter Scott Peterson argues that as a physician-poet Dr. Williams approaches his poetic material very much as he approaches his patients, and that the form of Paterson in particular is intentionally and actually reminiscent of the various forms taken by the medical case na
Adam Bremer-McCollum, "The Pearlsong" (Harvard UP, 2025)
The Pearlsong (Harvard University Press, 2025) offers the reader a beautifully translated story of a young child who goes on a journey to far away places, donning glistening garments, meeting dragons, and encountering talking letters. In addition to the translated text of The Pearlsong Syriac poem, the reader will find a thorough commentary and glossary. The appendices of the book offer further de
Aisha Sasha John, "total: poems" (Random House, 2025)
In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Aisha Sasha John about her poetry collection, total: poems (McClelland & Stewart, 2025).
"John is brilliant at communicating. She's also really funny. Poems don't get more direct and precise and unforgettable than this." —National Post The highly anticipated new collection from Griffin Poetry Prize finalist Aisha Sasha John. IS THERE A SYNO
Farah Ghafoor, "Shadow Price: Poems" (House of Anansi, 2025)
In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery interviews Farah Ghafoor about her poetry collection, Shadow Price (House of Anansi, 2025), which was longlisted for the 2025 Toronto Book Awards.
Borrowing its title from a finance term—“the estimated price of a good or service for which no market price exists”—Shadow Price is a stunning debut that examines the idea of value in a world that burns under our
Taylor Byas, "Resting Bitch Face: Poems" (Catapult, 2025)
The author of the award-winning national bestseller I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times returns with a poetry collection that transforms the Black female speaker from object, artistic muse, and victim to subject, critic, and master of her story.Resting Bitch Face (Soft Skull Press, 2025) is a book for women, for Black women, for lovers of art and film criticism, and for writers interested in work
Eibhear Walshe and Eleanor Fitzsimons, "Speranza: Poems by Jane Wilde" (Liverpool UP, 2025)
Speranza: Poems by Jane Wilde (Liverpool UP, 2025) by Dr. Eibhear Walshe and Dr. Eleanor Fitzsimons is the first contemporary edition of the poetry of Jane Wilde, née Elgee, who also wrote as Speranza. Speranza was, in her time, renowned worldwide, with essays, poetry and translated work published in Ireland, England, America and beyond. She was a key figure in the nationalist Young Ireland moveme
Tea Gerbeza, "How I Bend Into More" (Anstruther Books, 2025)
Based on Tea Gerbeza's experience with scoliosis, How I Bend Into More (Anstruther Books, 2025) re-articulates selfhood in the face of ableism and trauma. Meditating on pain, consent, and disability, this long poem builds a body both visually and linguistically, creating a multimodal space that forges Gerbeza's grammar of embodiment as an act of reclamation. Paper-quilled shapes represent the poet
Aurora Levins Morales, "Silt: Prose Poems" (Palabrera Press, 2019)
In the late 1890s a US congressman argued that the United States had the right to seize Cuba because he believed it was made of silt that had washed out of the mouth of the Mississippi River which made it literally US soil. That story inspired Puerto Rican Jewish poet Aurora Levins Morales to apply for a writing residency in New Orleans, and to travel the length of the river from Minnesota to the
Ashley M. Jones, "Lullaby for the Grieving" (Hub City Press, 2025)
With previous work hailed by the New York Times as “unflinching” and “piercing,” Ashley M. Jones’s Lullaby for the Grieving (Hub City Press, 2025) is her most personal collection to date.
In it, Jones studies the multifaceted nature of grief: the personal grief of losing her father, and the political grief tied to Black Southern identity. How does one find a path through the deep sorrow of losing
Mark Vernon, "Awake!: William Blake and the Power of the Imagination" (Hurst & Co., 2025)
In the 200 years since Blake's death, the visionary artist, poet and writer has become a household name, often beloved. Yet many struggle to comprehend his kaleidoscopic ideas; how they speak to human longings and the challenges of living in anxious times.
Philosopher and psychotherapist Mark Vernon provides a fresh route into Blake, taking him at his word. Exploring this brilliant thinker's passi
Therí Alyce Pickens, "What Had Happened Was" (Duke UP, 2025)
In her debut poetry collection, What Had Happened Was, Therí Alyce Pickens investigates the complex structures of Black storytelling. Addressing topics ranging from Black life, popular culture, and history to individual encounters with emotion, love, and chronic disability, Pickens crafts and questions the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and who we want to be. Throughout, Pickens mines
Zachari Logan, "Green" (Radiant Press, 2025).
In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with poet and visual artist Zachary Logan about his beautiful collection of poetry and art, Green (Radiant Press, 2025).
An exciting new collection of ekphrastic poems accompanied by a compilation of green sketches via the lens of a queer poet and visual artist. Zachari Logan carried a sketchbook as he travelled the world and responded to iconic art
Ilana Rosen, "Israeli Documentary Poetry: Coming of Age with the State" (Academic Studies Press, 2025)
Israeli Documentary Poetry: Coming of Age with the State introduces and explores documentary poetry written by Israeli poets who came of age during the first two decades of the state and who, since the 1970s and 1980s, have recorded their experiences of that period. This study offers a literary-cultural analysis of forty-two poems by thirty Israeli poets of various backgrounds, divided into themes
MA|DE, "ZZOO" (Anstruther Books, 2025)
In this episode, NBN host Hollay Ghadery interviews the artist collective MA|DE about their poetry collection, ZZOO (Anstruther Books, 2025).
At a time when binaristic and hierarchical relations are being readily interrogated, MA|DE — a unity of two voices fused into a single, poetic third — takes up a critique of the human-animal divide in their full-length debut, ZZOO. From the depths of the oc
Natalie Lim, "Elegy for Opportunity" (Buckrider Books, 2025)
In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Vancouver poet Natalie Lim about her debut poetry collection, Elegy for Opportunity (Wolsak & Wynn/Buckrider Books, 2025).
In this collection, Natalie Lim asks: How do we go on living and loving in a time of overlapping crises? Anchored by elegies for NASA's Opportunity rover and a series of love poems, this collection explores the tension a
Chris Hutchinson, "Lost Signal" (Palimpsest Press, 2025)
In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Edmonton poet Chris Hutchinson about his newest collection of poetry, Lost Signal (Palimpsest Press, 2025).
In Lost Signal, Chris Hutchinson celebrates the resilience and adaptability of language, while locating the tipping points of our ongoing environmental, informational, and humanitarian crises. Subtle semantic shifts mirror ideological rif
Tracy Wai de Boer, "Nostos" (Anstruther Books, 2025)
In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Tracy Wai de Boer about her debut poetry collection, Nostos (Palimpsest Press/Anstruther 2025).
Taking its title from Ancient Greek, Tracy Wai de Boer’s Nostos is a hero’s journey rooted in the quest for selfhood from elemental beginnings to an unknowable end. “Nostos” translates to homecoming and is one of the root words of nostalgia; the othe
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