Advertise on podcast: The Hive Poetry Collective

Farnaz Fatemi and Leila Farjami spend time with Leila's deeply resonant and highly-prasied poetry collection, Daughter of Salt (Trio House Press, 2026). Listen as they discuss: trusting poetry's source and the arrival of images, sounds, and meaning; Farjami's journey from her childhood in Iran to writing poetry in English in California., memory and displacement, and more. Leila reads 7 poems from the collection offering a preview of her appearance in Santa Cruz for The Hive Live! February 2027. Order Daughter of Salt Here

We read and discuss "Astronaut," by Simona Regina Adams, then take a deep dive into Zack's amazing new book, The Kama Sutra for Senior Citizens and Other Poems on Aging. Zack Rogow is the author, editor, or translator of more than twenty books or plays. His tenth book of poems, The Kama Sutra for Senior Citizens and Other Poems on Aging, is now available from Valley Press. Click here for USA orders, and click here for UK orders. Hugging My Father’s Ghost: A Memoir of a Shortened Life, Zack’s book about his writer dad, will be republished by Cirque Press on October 6, 2026. His previous books of poetry include Irreverent Litanies, from Regal House. Zack’s play, Colette Uncensored (coauthored with Lorri Holt), had its first public reading at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, and has been staged in London, Catalonia, San Francisco, Indonesia, and Portland. Zack’s most recent book of translations is The Water Drinkers and Other Sketches of Paris in the Romantic Era by Henry Murger, the writer who inspired La Bohème. Zack is the editor of an anthology of poetry of the U.S.A., The Face of Poetry, from University of California Press. His song lyrics include “A Love for Just Part” recorded by Carrie Wicks. He has taught in several MFA creative writing programs, and serves as a contributing editor of Catamaran Literary Reader. Zack has received the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize, the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award in Translation, the Celestine Award for Poetry from Holy Names University, and the Tanka Splendor Award. Simone Regina Adams (1967– ) is best known as a fiction writer, but her poetry is also excellent, dealing with provocative subjects. Her novel, Die Halbruhigen [The Half-Restless], was awarded the Werner Bräunig Prize. Adams lives in Freiburg, Germany, and works as a psychotherapist. Her poem “Astronauts” evokes the wonder and emptiness of going into space, perhaps as a metaphor.

Roxi Power, co-editor of the new anthology,⁠Winter in America (Still: Poets, Writers, and ArtistsRespond to a Fractured World⁠, talks with Julie Murphy and Dion O’Reilly about poems by Lynne Thompson, Marcella Durand, Carolina Ebeid, Bill Lavender, Gabriella Guttiérez y Muhs, Addie Mahmassani, and Brenda Cárdenas. We showcase the wide variety of styles and responses to the erosion of our democracy in this 430-page sequel to Winter in America (Again (2025) featuring 200 contributors and color art (Carbonation Press, 2026). From Ebeid’s “technologies of grief” to Thompson’s hope–“this poem about the wreck we have made of the world/cannotforget: the ewe drum, the tǎr, the seed-filled gourd”–we dive deep into the book’s prominent themes (ICE, oligarchs, Gaza, and more) in a sample of the book's many poets that include Joy Harjo, Cornelius Eady, Anne Waldman, Nathaniel Mackey, and Ellen Bass. Follow our events and order this important sequel anthology to Winter in America (Again (Carbonation Press) at ⁠⁠winterinamerica.org⁠⁠ . Join our next Santa Cruz launch event at InterAct Open Mic October 6, 7pm at Satori Arts

Jen Siraganian joins Farnaz Fatemi for a conversation about her debut collection of poetry, Everything Has Been Moved, Even the Dead, a richly deep exploration of memory, identity, motherhood, & erasure. Jen reads six poems and they discuss the way her work rebuilds and un-erases people across lifetimes and inherited traumas. Order the book directly from the publisher, Perugia Press. Jen will join the Hive locally to celebrate her official launch date, Tuesday 9/15, 7pm at the Hive Live! at Bookshop Santa Cruz, reading along with Amber Coverdale Sumrall.

Six local poets, including anthology editor David Allen Sullivan, join Hannah Tool to read and discuss poems from Magpie on the Gallows: Poems on the Art of Bosch and Bruegel (Carbonation Press). The anthology, co-edited by Allen Sullivan and his late mother, Margaret Allen Sullivan, is a celebration and exploration of the ubiquitous, unsettling, curious worlds of Hiernymous Bosch and Peter Bruegel the Elder.  Jessica Breheny, Taylor Gorman, and Ken Weisner start the hour reading pieces that pick apart and zero in on the weird and unwieldy detail in the paintings they responded to, then Nancy Miller Gomez, Adela Najarro - who also reads a poem from the anthology by Natalia Treviño - and David Allen Sullivan join to share poems that weave the personal into the fabric of the pieces they responded to.

(STRANGE IN THE BEST WAY!!) Lexi kicks off the interview by reading Susan Browne's, "Strange Ode." Then we talk about Lexi's newest book, Let Go With The Lights On, Winner of the 2022 Jack McCarthy Book Prize Lexi Pelle was the winner of the Academy of American Poets Award and the 2022 Jack McCarthy Book Prize. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Southern Review, Plume, West Branch, Rattle, 32 Poems, and River Styx. She is the author of the poetry collection Let Go With The Lights On (Write Bloody Publishing, 2023).

Poet Amber Coverdale Sumrall joins Julie Murphy to talk about her new collection, That Other Song, and a writing life shaped by memory, landscape, love, loss, and close attention to the natural world. Amber reads poems from the new book and reflects on her mother’s influence, her many journeys to Ireland, the role of silence and writing retreats in her creative practice, and decades spent nurturing Santa Cruz’s literary community through In Celebration of the Muse and Hummingbird Press. The conversation begins with Marilyn Robertson's “You Say." Amber is the author of Litany of Wings and Refuge and has edited or co-edited thirteen anthologies. For twenty-eight years she co-produced In Celebration of the Muse, and she received a Gail Rich Award in 2010. Amber will read from That Other Song at Hive Live on September 15, alongside Jen Siraganian, who will also be celebrating a new book.

Roxi Power, co-editor of the forthcoming anthology, Winter in America (Still: Poets, Writers, and Artists Respond to a Fractured World, talks with Dion O’Reilly about poems in the book by Carolyn Forché, Maxine Chernoff, Andrew Schelling, Gary Copeland Lilley, Brenda Hillman, Rodrigo Toscano, and Donna de la Perrière. With their usual verve and humor, Power and O’Reilly highlight the book’s depth and variety of styles. Featuring color art and the work of 200 writers–Joy Harjo,Cornelius Eady, Anne Waldman, Nathaniel Mackey, Ellen Bass and more–the sequel anthology to Winter in America (Again (Carbonation Press) composes roadmaps inward to our deeper feelings and outward toward new forms of resistance andwitness during an unprecedented time. Join our launch event at Bookshop Santa Cruz, Aug. 25, 7pm with readers Victoria Bañales, Julia Chiapella, Farnaz Fatemi, Nancy Miller Gomez, Dion O’Reilly, Roxi Power, Ken Weisner. Follow us at winterinamerica.org for information on ordering the book and events.

Jillian Stacia buzzes in to read Ellen Bass’s “The Thing is” and selections from her new collection Set the Bone (Arcana Poetry Press). Her work pulls threads from the outrage and awe of existing in these dystopian times as a woman, partner, parent, and poet, and celebrates the women before her as “tubes of unused lipstick." Her humor and penchant for singing a borrowed line seep joy throughout this conversation which reminds us that we all contain "multitudes, babe.”

What transforms a grasshopper into part of a rapacious horde? Poet, essayist, playwright and activist Joel O'Connor uses his most recent work, Locust, as a bridge between science and politics, between our nature as humans and the world around us. Like a true scientist, he hypothesizes. Listen to this interview and be transported to an Australia that exists beneath and alongside the contemporary culture, a place of regard and humility in the face of all that threatens the natural world.

Farnaz Fatemi interviews current Santa Cruz Youth Poet Laureate Vicky Tinnell, along with Bella Dowd, Felice Rickwald and Ash Raznick. Hear poems and insights from each of these fabulous teen poets, all members of the current YPL cohort. More information about the YPL program here. Information about the poets along with more excerpts from their work can be found here.

What does it mean to inherit a story? How do memory, family, race, and identity shape the poems we write—and how do poems, in turn, reshape the stories we tell ourselves?In this episode of The Hive Poetry Collective, host Julie Murphy welcomes award-winning poet Lisa Low to discuss her remarkable new collection, Replica (University of Wisconsin Press, 2026). The conversation begins with Tiana Clark's exuberant "Broken Ode for the Epigraph," opening a rich discussion about literary lineage, artistic permission, revision, and the transformative power of poetry.Together they explore the craft behind several poems from Replica, including "Replica," "People Who Look Like You," "Palinode," and "On Effort," examining how ordinary objects, sharp observation, humor, and self-interrogation become vehicles for profound emotional and philosophical inquiry.Lisa Low is the author of Replica and the chapbook Crown for the Girl Inside. A recipient of the 2023 Pushcart Prize and the 2020 Gulf Coast Nonfiction Prize, her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Ecotone, The Massachusetts Review, Poetry, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. Originally from Maryland, she lives in Chicago.

Ally Ang buzzes into the hive to read poems from their book and also to share the poem "Friends with no Benefits" by Megan Fernandes. Ally is the author of Let the Moon Wobble (Alice James Books 2025). A National Endowment for the Arts fellow and MacDowell fellow, Ally’s work has appeared in The Rumpus, The Academy of American Poets' Poem-a-Day, The Seattle Met, and elsewhere. They co-host Other People’s Poems, a poetry open mic and reading series in Seattle.

Flags Sprouting Everywhere. Join Hannah Tool and Farnaz Fatemi as we read poems which unpack iconic American language and make room for more of us in the current cultural landscape. Poems by: Jean Prokott, Ada Limón, Natalie Diaz, Elana Bell, Julia Bouwsma, Aileen Cassinetto and Naomi Shihab Nye. "A New National Anthem" Ada Limón "They Don't Love You Like I Love You" Natalie Diaz "Flags" Elana Bell "There are No Kings in America" Aileen Cassinetto "No Explosions" Naomi Shihab Nye

In this episode of The Hive Poetry Collective, host Hannah Tool and fellow Hive member Julie Murphy dig into the work of Andrea Gibson in a conversation that touches on Gibson’s penchant for radical vulnerability, their humor and love of bright detail, and the way their body of work begs readers to “feel it all.” Plus, giraffes and aliens! This discussion of selected poems from Gibson’s final collection “You Better Be Lightening” (2021 Button Poetry) celebrates the way that they championed how we can unrelentingly love other people, and ourselves. Listen to Julie’s discussion with Grayson Thompson, where they discuss Gibson’s poem “Loveletter from the Afterlife” here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2EgTWprOCxcaPaSpG1y4K1?si=74c8d7af698b4cd3 and explore more of Gibson’s work and legacy at www.andreagibson.org