Tessera

Bob Sykora @bobsykora.bsky.social · last wk.

finally had a chance to listen & so grateful to @hanvanderhart.bsky.social for the sweetness and thoughtfulness and laughs—I had great time when we recorded but a double delight to hear us spending time with the longer, more unwieldy poems in the book & all the places your reading of it took us!

Of Poetry Podcast@ofpoetrypodcast.bsky.social · 2w ago

Of Oneida, of heartbreak, of hotel rooms and mansions, of travelling to research poems, of Utopians & dragon flies & the seas turned to lemonade & &! Hear @bobsykora.bsky.social read from his gorgeous collection UTOPIANS IN LOVE @gameoverbooks.bsky.social 💙📚 Listen: share.transistor.fm/s/7c3ac522

Author photo of Bob Sykora in brown cableknit sweater and cover image of UTOPIANS IN LOVE

Text:

Episode 92: Bob Sykora (Of the Poet and the Archive, Love and Community, and the Lens of American Utopias)
UTOPIANS IN LOVE
BOB SYKORA
Listen: On Spotify, Apple, Google, and elsewhere

Of Poetry Podcast @ofpoetrypodcast.bsky.social · 2w ago

If you’d like a recommendation for your commute home or your relaxing-at-home this afternoon/evening, might we suggest…

Of Poetry Podcast@ofpoetrypodcast.bsky.social · 2w ago

Listen to Episode 92: Bob Sykora (Of the Poet and the Archive, Love and Community, and the Lens of American Utopias) here: share.transistor.fm/s/7c3ac522 #poetry 📚💙🎙️ @bobsykora.bsky.social @gameoverbooks.bsky.social

On Utopians in Love
"1 could have written about different things these communities were doing.
But I was thinking, I'm always thinking, about love."
BOB SYKORA, EPISODE 92

Of Poetry Podcast @ofpoetrypodcast.bsky.social · 2w ago

Listen to Episode 92: Bob Sykora (Of the Poet and the Archive, Love and Community, and the Lens of American Utopias) here: share.transistor.fm/s/7c3ac522 #poetry 📚💙🎙️ @bobsykora.bsky.social @gameoverbooks.bsky.social

Dr. Han VanderHart @hanvanderhart.bsky.social · 2w ago

This episode is so good and you HAVE TO HEAR Bob read his mesmerizing poems—he’s got the juice, bbs! 🎙️🩷📚💕 UTOPIANS IN LOVE!!!

Of Poetry Podcast@ofpoetrypodcast.bsky.social · 2w ago

Of Oneida, of heartbreak, of hotel rooms and mansions, of travelling to research poems, of Utopians & dragon flies & the seas turned to lemonade & &! Hear @bobsykora.bsky.social read from his gorgeous collection UTOPIANS IN LOVE @gameoverbooks.bsky.social 💙📚 Listen: share.transistor.fm/s/7c3ac522

Of Poetry Podcast @ofpoetrypodcast.bsky.social · 2w ago

Of Oneida, of heartbreak, of hotel rooms and mansions, of travelling to research poems, of Utopians & dragon flies & the seas turned to lemonade & &! Hear @bobsykora.bsky.social read from his gorgeous collection UTOPIANS IN LOVE @gameoverbooks.bsky.social 💙📚 Listen: share.transistor.fm/s/7c3ac522

Bob Sykora @bobsykora.bsky.social · 2w ago

👀👀👀

Of Poetry Podcast@ofpoetrypodcast.bsky.social · 2w ago

Can’t wait for you to hear this episode with @bobsykora.bsky.social!! 📚💗💗

Heart graphic and the text:

(sneak peek)
"..to think about love is always to think about politics and community."
EPISODE 92 WITH BOB SYKORA

Of Poetry Podcast @ofpoetrypodcast.bsky.social · 2w ago

Can’t wait for you to hear this episode with @bobsykora.bsky.social!! 📚💗💗

Dr. Han VanderHart @hanvanderhart.bsky.social · 2w ago

Arts grant for me so I can take off time and edit @ofpoetrypodcast.bsky.social 😭

Jude Law dressed as Young Pope, in white and gold robes, smoking in lawn chair on Vatican lawn, sunglasses and wide brimmed white hat

Of Poetry Podcast @ofpoetrypodcast.bsky.social · last mo.

Hear @jgriffingraham.bsky.social read from The Fall of Iris Henley on Episode 91! Listen here: share.transistor.fm/s/dc0a1b63 📚💜🎙️

from The Fall of Iris Henley

"And just like that, the illusion that were all okay, that we're all moving on, goes up in smoke."
Jennifer Graham

Jennifer—em Dash—Graham @jgriffingraham.bsky.social · last mo.

Put this quote on my gravestone

Of Poetry Podcast@ofpoetrypodcast.bsky.social · last mo.

Join us for a new conversation with @jgriffingraham.bsky.social, about novel writing & YA & working class readers & more! 📚💜 Listen here: share.transistor.fm/s/dc0a1b63 🎙️🎧

"My previous failed novels were lots of beautiful language that couldn't get moving..”

JENNIFER GRAHAM, EP 91

Of Poetry Podcast @ofpoetrypodcast.bsky.social · last mo.

Join us for a new conversation with @jgriffingraham.bsky.social, about novel writing & YA & working class readers & more! 📚💜 Listen here: share.transistor.fm/s/dc0a1b63 🎙️🎧

Jennifer—em Dash—Graham @jgriffingraham.bsky.social · last mo.

It was so fun to talk to @hanvanderhart.bsky.social about writing! Go give us a listen! And if you dig conversations about writing and literature in general, subscribe to @ofpoetrypodcast.bsky.social on your podcast app.

Of Poetry Podcast@ofpoetrypodcast.bsky.social · last mo.

Of genres and perceptions, of commercial and pulp writing (Fanny Howe!), of beautiful language and sentences that bring us joy, of public libraries and of blue collar readers and writing technology and more! Hear novelist Jennifer Graham read on Episode 91! 📚💜🎙️🎧 share.transistor.fm/s/dc0a1b63

Photo of Jennifer Graham reading at Book People on stage (in gorgeous flowered dress) and the book cover of The Fall of Iris Henley (pompous and BLOOD!) and the text:

Episode 91: Jennifer
Graham (Of Writing YA, Poetics & Play in Novels, and Working Class
Readers Vs "Reading as a
Luxury")

Listen: On Spotify, Apple, Google, and elsewhere
Purchase: The Fall of Iris Henley (Wednesday Books,
2026)
Read/Listen: The Fall of Iris Henley (excerpt)

Of Poetry Podcast @ofpoetrypodcast.bsky.social · last mo.

Of genres and perceptions, of commercial and pulp writing (Fanny Howe!), of beautiful language and sentences that bring us joy, of public libraries and of blue collar readers and writing technology and more! Hear novelist Jennifer Graham read on Episode 91! 📚💜🎙️🎧 share.transistor.fm/s/dc0a1b63

Of Poetry Podcast @ofpoetrypodcast.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Tune in to Episode 90 with @preetivangani.bsky.social, out today! 📚💙🎧 Listen here: share.transistor.fm/s/b6cd1fe1

"I love what one sentence can do. It feels like a challenge. It satisfies the urge in me to write a good short story, but to also be playful and
intentional with syntax."
PREETI VANGANI, EP 90

"And then I was like, let's have fun with it. I'm so tired of being one note in elegy. Not so much one note, but I think I have grown past the phase of grieving where anger can only mean one thing"
PREETI VANGANI, EP 90

Of Poetry Podcast @ofpoetrypodcast.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Of elegy, of aunts, of mothers and father, of Bombay, of form and revision, of the inexhaustibility of grief and hope and joy—join @preetivangani.bsky.social on Episode 90 as she reads from her new collection FIFTY MOTHERS, out now from @riverriverbooks.bsky.social! share.transistor.fm/s/b6cd1fe1

Graphic featuring author photo of Preeti Vangani and book cover of fifty mothers and the text:

Episode 89: Preeti
Vangani (Of Being Rooted in Elegy, Embodiment, and Inexhaustibility in Poetry)
FIFTY
MOTHERS
POEMS
PREETI
Preeti Vangani, author of Fifty Mothers
Listen: On Spotify, Apple, Google, and elsewhere
Purchase: Fifty Mothers (River River Books, 2026)

Of Poetry Podcast @ofpoetrypodcast.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Happy Midsommar/solstice—join Elane Kim and hear sonnets from ANTIBODY (@riverriverbooks.bsky.social, 2026) on Episode 89! 📚💙🎙️ Listen here: share.transistor.fm/s/7a9b0b76

On Calvino:

"Invisible Cities, even though it's so many little self-contained stories, also ends up being its own kind of coming-of-age story. And so I think the way that I was engaging with this text, felt a lot like I was
trying to come home to myself."
ELANE KIM, EPISODE 89

Susan L. Leary @susanlleary.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Jennifer A. Sutherland 💙 from HOUSE OF MYTH AND NECESSITY (River River Books) “Did you think that we would spell it out for you?” @jasutherland.bsky.social @riverriverbooks.bsky.social

Whereas

Did you think that we would spell it out for you?

Explain the puzzle? Make it all fit?

There's no life in that.

Off the stage no one tells you where to stand or what to say or hear or do.

Sometimes you have to read between the lines, to coin a phrase.

Find your own mark and hit it. Keep your elbows in.

Watch out for the machina when she descends.

River River Books @riverriverbooks.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Pour yourself a second cup of coffee, and enjoy this beauty review of Elane Kim’s Antibody—as well as @christinalinsin.bsky.social’s review of Asa Drakes’ Maybe the Body and Catherine Esposito Prescott’s Superbloom! www.southfloridapoetryjournal.com/reviews-2026...

"Astonishing in its keen observation of self and society, tender in its understanding of humanity and the ephemeral and wonderful bodies which house us, Elane Kim's debut poetry collection, Antibody, is a powerful redefinition of the body as home and an exploration of the collective tensions its impermanence causes within society, within cultures, within our personal worlds..."
ANTIBODY
ELANE KIM
Christina Linsin reviews ANTIBODY by Elane Kim for South Florida Poetry Journal

Of Poetry Podcast @ofpoetrypodcast.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Of sonnets, of the migratory language, of home, of what long lines can hold, of tercets, of Calvino and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, of neuroscience & eyes & vision & so much more! Join Elane Kim, author of ANTIBODY from @riverriverbooks.bsky.social, on Ep 89! ofpoetrypodcast.com/2026/06/19/e...

Author photo of Elane Kim and cover photo of ANTIBODY

Episode 89: Elane Kim (Of
Coming Home to Yourself, Calvino's
Invisible Cities, and the Harmony of Science and Poetry)
ANTIBODY
ELANE KIM
Elane Kim, author of
Antibody
Listen: On Spotify, Apple, Google, and elsewhere
Purchase: Antibody (River River Books) by Elane Kim

Of Poetry Podcast @ofpoetrypodcast.bsky.social · 3mo ago

New episode with ELANE KIM, author of ANTIBODY (@riverriverbooks.bsky.social) drops tomorrow! 📚💙🎙️ Subscribe today: ofpoetrypodcast.com

On Dictee:

...Theresa Hak Kyung Cha is able to establish the potential for one body to fight erasure by characterizing [language] as something beyond speech...and so language ends up being the simultaneous weapon and wound."

ELANE KIM, EPISODE 89

River River Books @riverriverbooks.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Hi dear poets—our summer open reading period closes on Sunday, 5/31! Send us your manuscripts today, before you are distracted by a bird or the inevitability of death. 📚💙💙 Submit here: riverriverbooks.org/editors/subm...

SUMMER 2026
OPEN READING
PERIOD
Closing
May 31
RIVERRIVERBOOKS.ORG

Burgi Zenhaeusern @burgi.bsky.social · 4mo ago

"I aim my walking home / for where the house is and for where the house was and for where the house / could be." @zoeryderwhite.bsky.social in her f a n t a s t i c THE VISIBLE FIELD (@riverriverbooks.bsky.social, 2026). 💖💫💖 Poems to read & read 😍 #poetry 📚💙

The book on a tan wooden surface: the title is in white, boldfaced capitalized lettering and covers the entire cover, up to down, one word at a time. Flowers or grasses make the dual toned (like the negative of a photograph) blue background.

Before

When I was an envelope, I enclosed
a red scrap:
say what you want, you know
what its shape was.

When I was the scrap
I'd never slept
so soundly, had never
been quartered
so close.

Solstice

I want to say I recognize everything, but I don't, not even the house
moving across the yard like a lit ship as I walk back from shutting in the hens.
Not even the hens do I recognize. The noises they make roosting
mean love or comfort or nothing, or, it is time to make these noises
because we can no longer see. I shut the hens in, and the house shifts slowly
over the yard like cruise ships used to ease across rectangles of daylight
at the ends of avenues in Red Hook. I aim my walking home
for where the house is and for where the house was and for where the house
could be. There is no ending up anywhere, even for the cat I buried yesterday.
That digging made me sweat. The cat's weight: a ream of paper
in a closed cardboard box. Teh dark in the box joined the dark in the hole
joined the dark the night made. My friend texts this word: ecliptic,
a noun, the great circle the earth's orbit makes where it intersects
the celelstial sphere. The face of my phone illuminates,
another lit plane. It's getting cold on this slice of sky. In the coop.
one bird's head tucked beneath the next bird's wing. Close quarters.

Burgi Zenhaeusern @burgi.bsky.social · 4mo ago

& don't forget to listen to her convo with @hanvanderhart.bsky.social on @ofpoetrypodcast.bsky.social ofpoetrypodcast.com/2026/03/17/e...

Episode 86: Zoë Ryder White (Of Wonder, Emily Dickinson, and Titling Poems)

Zoe Ryder White, author of The Visible Field Listen: On Spotify, Apple, Google, and elsewhere Read: “Listen to Yourself” (Sixth Finch) Purchase: The Visible Field (River River Books, 20…

ofpoetrypodcast.com

Of Poetry Podcast @ofpoetrypodcast.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Read two poems from Jennifer A Sutherland’s new collection House of Myth and Necessity and listen to Episode 88 here: ofpoetrypodcast.com/2026/04/22/e... @riverriverbooks.bsky.social @jasutherland.bsky.social

from "Alcestis as the Dead Woman's Auto-Roman à Clef"

It's a riot. Now I'm dead. This little distance brings the camera into focus. I thought he'd be
the roadway out and I climbed in. He popped the clutch. And I fell out.

Jennifer A Sutherland

Of Poetry Podcast @ofpoetrypodcast.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Jennifer A Sutherland, on Episode 88 (Of Greek Myth as Muse, Building a Bearable Myth, and Silence as Agency) Listen here: share.transistor.fm/s/f9379c0e @jasutherland.bsky.social @riverriverbooks.bsky.social @hanvanderhart.bsky.social 📚💙🎙️

"I think a lot of the way that Greek women lived during the time which the mythological Alcestis was living in her story. These were women who they lived in houses. They were responsible for the domestic space. They were responsible for raising the children. They were expected not to be seen outside of the house. They were expected not to speak. In general, they were expected to be basically hidden.
(cont' d)
JENNIFER A SUTHERLAND, EP 88

"In some ways for me, I see law, capitalism, all of these kinds of societal structures as structures that operate in a way similar to that kind of house, and not just for women, obviously. But I think that's on some level, that's what the law is doing in this book."
JENNIFER A SUTHERLAND, EP 88

Of Poetry Podcast @ofpoetrypodcast.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Of law, of myth, of persona poems, of muses, of Diane Seuss and Anne Carson and of using language that is close to you in your poems. Join @jasutherland.bsky.social on Episode 88, as Jennifer reads from her new collection HOUSE OF MYTH AND NECESSITY (@riverriverbooks.bsky.social). 📚💙

Episode 88: Jennifer A Sutherland (Of Greek Myth as Muse, Building a Bearable Myth, and Silence as Agency)

Jennifer A Sutherland, author of House of Myth and Necessity (River River Books, 2026) Listen: On Spotify, Apple, Google, and elsewhere Read: “Alcestis as the Dead Woman’s Auto-Roman à Clef&#…

ofpoetrypodcast.com

Nancy Huggett @nancyhuggett.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Loves this work when I read an early version/beginning in …. Hmmmm ? About Place?

Of Poetry Podcast @ofpoetrypodcast.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Catch up on the poetic nonfiction of @bettysueblue.bsky.social on Episode 87–Beth is truly a hybrid & lyrical writer, and you can hear her read from her newest collection THERE IS NEWS ALONG THE OHIO RIVER here: share.transistor.fm/s/629f008d

OF POETRY PODCAST
Beth Gilstrap

PLAINWATER
THERE IS NEWS
ALONG THE OHIO

(Of Genre as a Place to Leave & a Place to Come Back to, Finding the River's Flow, and Grief & Healing in Writing)
EPISODE 87

Burgi Zenhaeusern @burgi.bsky.social · 5mo ago

The tangents you can launch into while your body is at work taking in signals from its environment, transforming it and you—a two-way flow of connection. I love how @nematode.bsky.social's lyric essays in their Backyard Alchemy @riverriverbooks.bsky.social, 2026) do that! 🐛🌱❤️💫🌱🐛💖 📚💙

The book on a wooden surface. It features a nearly full-cover photo of a totally rusted, opened sardine tin with the title and author (Backyard Alchemy, on life with other creatures in a time of salvage) written into it. The background is dark brown to fit with the rust of the tin.