A week from Sunday, 9/13 2-4 pm, I’ll be at the wonderful Stone Soup books in Waynesboro VA with Jeanne Larsen, Sarah Ann Winn, @stbrigidpress.bsky.social & others for a free reading, convo, and workshop! www.stonesoupbooks.net/event-detail...
Lesley Wheeler
@lesleymwheeler.bsky.social
Poetry Ed of Shenandoah. Author of Mycocosmic, Poetry’s Possible Worlds, Unbecoming, The State She’s In, & Radioland—poetry, fantasy fiction, CNF, scholarship. She/they. linktr.ee/lesleymwheeler
From Dave Bonta’s “Ice Mountain: An Elegy”: “what would the wind do without / the daffodils’ yellow / hoopla of blooms”? @davebonta.bsky.social #smallpoemsunday
I have a new poem you can read online. #poetry #poets #cadralor #gleam gleampoets.org/cadralor-iss...
Cadralor Issue 11
Gleam Issue 11 The following poems were selected by the editors for Issue 11 of Gleam: Singing the Earth Song, by Rose Mary BoehmWhen it is Today, by Jamey BoelhowerAnother thing to Aware, by Kate …
gleampoets.org
This week in the poetry blogs with @clareshawpoet.bsky.social @kimmoorepoet.bsky.social @billymills.bsky.social @kent-nj.bsky.social @mayacpopa.bsky.social @shotscarecrow.bsky.social @robin-gow-poet.bsky.social @alinaetc.bsky.social @emmalee1.bsky.social 1/3 www.vianegativa.us/2026/08/poet...
Poetry Blog Digest 2026, Week 34
A personal selection of posts from around the Anglophone blogosphere.
vianegativa.us
I enjoyed the heck out of this festival, and brought back copies of a collaborative chapbook, too. 🍄🍄🟫🍄 lesleymwheeler.substack.com/p/hyphae-and...
Hyphae--and gifts
What a mushroom festival gave me and other strange generosities.
lesleymwheeler.substack.com
"I was drawn to today's poem from the get-go because of its title," @maggiesmithpoet.bsky.social shares in today's encore episode. "I went in anticipating maximalism ... and the poem delivered." Read "Poem about everything except—" by Amy Lemmon: bit.ly/4hA6Wm2
Heading to the Telluride Mushroom Festival soon! Note the Fungi Poets Reading & Open Mic is moved to the library (rain) and the Saturday book signing will be 1 pm at Between the Covers. 🍄
Spending the first week of August within these two resonant, powerful collections: House of Sugar, House of Stone about surviving life in a woman’s body, and A Suit or a Suitcase about reintegration after suffering. Kudos to @maggiesmithpoet.bsky.social & Emily Pérez! #sealeychallenge
Getting ready to poet at the Telluride Mushroom festival! open.substack.com/pub/lesleymw...
Curiosity killed the writer
Okay, I'm exaggerating again. But it does fill one's schedule.
open.substack.com
Tomorrow I’ll be a link in the Chain Letters poetry series, 6:30 pm at 960 Monacan Dr in Charlottesville VA! Friday 7/31
"Magnolia teardrops—that first day they open / mauve into bay of pink, thick lipped / petals uncurling on a Saturday, / undressing until golden." July's Poetry Feature features the works of Amiya Moretta, Emily Marie Passos Duffy, Jose Hernandez Diaz, and John Kinsella!
July Poetry Feature: New Poems by Our Contributors
AMIYA MORETTA <br> Magnolia tree in the window, hammock— a loop in hours, a cradle of light we swing inside, naming what we’re afraid of. In this version, he is from halfway around the…
buff.ly
The Le Guin house in northwest Portland has been added to the National Register of Historic Places.
Ursula K. Le Guin House Added to National Register of Historic Places
The legendary author wrote in the former nursery after her kids were in bed.
pdxmonthly.com
Such a strong sense of place and history in these haunting #poetry collections. It’s been such a pleasure to spend time with them this July. @upittpress.bsky.social @thegallerypress.bsky.social
On connections, missed and made. Also Chain Letters, a #Charlottesville VA reading series in which each reader taps the next—cool model! I’ll join on 7/31, 6:30 pm, 960 Monacan Dr. lesleywheeler.org/2026/07/23/p...
Poetic circuitry
I just had tea with the lovely poet, person, and letterpress publisher Emily Hancock of St. Brigid Press. She’s planning an ecopoetry event at Stone Soup Books in Waynesboro, Virginia on Sept…
lesleywheeler.org
Thanks to my college’s news office for giving my poem in The Slowdown a little boost: columns.wlu.edu/lesley-wheel...
Lesley Wheeler’s Poem ‘Return Path’ is Featured on The Slowdown Podcast
Lesley Wheeler, Henry S. Fox Professor of English at Washington and Lee University, had her poem “Return Path” featured on the American Public Media daily podcast The Slowdown on the morning of Tue…
columns.wlu.edu
From Aracelis Girmay's book, Kingdom Animalia: bookshop.org/a/862/9781934414620 #poem #booksky #writing
This is a form that kicked my butt for years so I’m extra tickled to be featured for it. Thank you so much @maggiesmithpoet.bsky.social !
The Slowdown@slowdownshow.org · 2mo ago"Today’s poem is a villanelle, and its use of the word 'circuit' makes the repetition especially apropos," @maggiesmithpoet.bsky.social shares in episode 1563. Read “Return Path” by @lesleymwheeler.bsky.social, from MYCOCOSMIC: bit.ly/4ffeAke 📖: @tupelopress.bsky.social
My dirty villanelle “Return Path” is on The Slowdown. (Perhaps not dirty in the sense you’re hoping, but mycelium is pretty wonderful.) /https://www.slowdownshow.org/episode/2026/07/21/1563-return-path-by-lesley-wheeler
Poetry, Björk, and friends getting us through the dark times—a beauty
The Slowdown@slowdownshow.org · 2mo ago"Today's poem speaks to the way we show up for our friends ... and the ways we can be saved by our friendships, even long-distance ones," @maggiesmithpoet.bsky.social shares in episode 1562. Read “Listening to Vespertine for Twenty Hours Straight" by @paradiselaust.bsky.social: bit.ly/4fr1UWk
25 years ago Kelly & I published our first season's titles — all 2 of them: first collections from Kelly (Stranger Things Happen; art: Shelley Jackson) & Ray Vukcevich (Meet Me in the Moon Room; art Rafał Olbinski). Buy either this month, we'll send you both: smallbeerpress.com/not-a-journa...
I’ll be joining other wild species in poetry performances at the Telluride Mushroom Festival this August—reading from Mycocosmic, of course, plus a couple of newer things. Hope to see you there! 🍄🍄🟫 @tupelopress.bsky.social
Enchanted to see a poem from Mycocosmic reprinted in the summer issue of Fungi Magazine! @tupelopress.bsky.social 🍄🍄🟫 #fungi
Writing tip: Give your protagonist a pet cat. In the final pages, shift to the cat's point of view. Follow the cat outside, through moonlit woods, to a pasture where cows kneel in worship around a glowing spacecraft. As the cat trots up its gangway, we glimpse in the windows an all-cat crew.
Feeling blue instead of red-white-and-blue and thinking about the weirdness of being a writer on social media. But my partner is up to good things: lesleywheeler.org/2026/07/05/a...
Aiming vs. wandering
Oppressive weather, oppressive politics. Sometimes it’s hard to see a way forward, with billionaires controlling the show and the current government chipping away at the integrity of a voting…
lesleywheeler.org
It feels right to spend this weekend reading righteously and catching up with a few friends. Thanks to Ecotone for this beautiful and moving anniversary issue—it’s a stunner @ecotonemagazine.bsky.social
A long time off, but I’m excited about the Poets for Science gathering this November at Kent State—not least to be in conversation with forager-poets Anne Haven McDonnell and Mildred K. Barya! poetsforscience.org/session/myce...
