Electric Poetry: Aleigha Kely This episode of Electric Poetry features Aleigha Kely and aired on November 24th, 2020. About the poet: Aleigha Kely is a poet living in Grand Rapids. She is a writer, musician, and supporter of all things creative. You can find more of her poetry at poetryaleigha.wordpress.com.
Electric Poetry: Elana Bell This episode of Electric Poetry features Elana Bell and aired on November 3rd, 2020. About the poet: The author of Mother Country (BOA Editions 2020), Elana Bell is a poet, sound practitioner, and creative alchemist. She facilitates artistic rituals and processes that support people in accessing their authentic voice and alchemizing raw experience and emotion into artistic expression. Her debut collection of poetry, Eyes, Stones (LSU Press 2012), received the 2011 Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets, and brings her complex heritage as the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors to consider the difficult question of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Elana is the recipient of grants and fellowships from the Jerome Foundation, the Edward Albee Foundation, and the Brooklyn Arts Council. Her writing has appeared in AGNI, Harvard Review, and the Massachusetts Review, among others. She was an inaugural finalist for the Freedom Plow Award for Poetry & Activism, an award that recognizes and honors a poet who is doing innovative and transformative work at the intersection of poetry and social change. In addition to facilitating her own Creative Fire workshops, Elana teaches poetry to actors at the Juilliard School and sings with the Resistance Revival Chorus, a group of womxn activists and musicians committed to bringing joy and song to the resistance movement.www.elanabell.com.
Electric Poetry: Samantha Kolber This episode of Electric Poetry features Samantha Kolber and aired on October 27th, 2020. About the poet: Samantha Kolber’s poems have appeared in Oddball Magazine, Mom Egg Review, Tiny Seed Journal, Rise Up Review, Hunger Mountain, and anthologies. She received a Ruth Stone Poetry Prize in 2010, and a Vermont Poetry Society prize in 2014. She has her MFA from Goddard College. Originally from New Jersey, she lives in Montpelier, Vermont, where she coordinates author events for her favorite independent bookstore, Bear Pond Books, and is the Poetry Series Editor for Rootstock Publishing. "Birth of a Daughter" (Kelsay Books, 9/1/20) is her first chapbook. Learn more at samanthakolber.com.
Electric Poetry: Emily Uduwana This episode of Electric Poetry features Emily Uduwana and aired on September 15th, 2020. About the poet: Emily Uduwana (she/her) is a California-based poet and short fiction author with recent publications in Stonecoast Review, Miracle Monocle, and Rubbertop Review. In part due to her role as a Ph.D. student with an emphasis on gender and women’s history in nineteenth-century California, her work frequently touches on issues of heterosexism, gender, and sense of place. Over the course of the last year, she took part in the Autry Museum’s Revealing Women in the Archives Discovery Fellows program, a series of workshops co-hosted with WriteGirl and centered on introducing women writers to the archival process. In July of 2020, Uduwana was selected as the featured poet of Neologism Poetry Journal’s thirty-eighth issue. Her first two poetry chapbooks, "Knotted" and "An Expedition to the Desert of Andromeda", will be released in the fall of 2020 from OrangeApple Press and Roaring Junior Press.
Electric Poetry: Jose Hernandez Diaz This episode of Electric Poetry features Jose Hernandez Diaz and aired on August 25th, 2020! About the poet: Jose Hernandez Diaz is a 2017 NEA Poetry Fellow. He holds degrees in English and Creative Writing from the University of California at Berkeley and Antioch University Los Angeles. His book, "The Fire Eater", is now available from @texasreviewpress.
Electric Poetry: Allayne Thomas This episode of Electric Poetry features Allayne Thomas and aired on August 4th, 2020. About the poet: Allayne Thomas has loved poetry since she was a child. For her, poetry is a way to express ideas and emotions that she can't share otherwise. It allows her to connect with others, and process the experiences that she has had. She wrote "Ode to my Black and Blue Brothers Who are Scared of the Dark" after watching a vice documentary of the experiences of the LGBTQIA+ community in Jamaica, where her parents and extended family are from. She saw connections in the treatment of Black Americans and LGBTQ+ individuals by the police and community in the area. If you've loved this poem, check out more of her work can be read at her Instagram @laneysfirstdream.
Electric Poetry: Marty McConnell This episode of Electric Poetry features Marty McConnell and aired on July 28th, 2020. About the poet: Marty McConnell is the author of “wine for a shotgun," “when they say you can’t go home again, what they mean is you were never there,” and “Gathering Voices: Creating a Community-Based Poetry Workshop." She lives in Chicago with her wife and their several thousand favorite books.
Electric Poetry: Tim Hawkins (2020) This episode of Electric Poetry features Tim Hawkins and aired on July 21st, 2020. About the poet: Tim Hawkins's newest collections are "Synchronized Swimmers" and "Jeremiad Johnson."
Electric Poetry: Kelly Grace Thomas This episode of Electric Poetry aired on July 14th, 2020 and features Kelly Grace Thomas! About the poet: Kelly Grace Thomas is an ocean-obsessed Aires from Jersey. She is a self-taught poet, editor and educator. Kelly is the winner of the 2017 Neil Postman Award for Metaphor from Rattle, 2018 finalist for the Rita Dove Poetry Award and multiple pushcart prize nominee. Her first full-length collection, Boat Burned, was released with YesYes Books in January 2020. Kelly is the Director of Education for Get Lit and co-author of Words Ignite: Explore, Write and Perform, Classic and Spoken Word Poetry (Literary Riot), currently taught in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Kelly’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in: Best New Poets 2019, Los Angeles Review, Redivider, Muzzle, Diode and more. She lives in the Bay Area with her husband Omid.
Electric Poetry: Robin Gow This episode aired on WYCE on June 23rd, 2020 and features Robin Gow. About the poet: Robin Gow is a white queer and trans poet and young adult author. They are the author of "Our Lady of Perpetual Degeneracy" (Tolsun Books 2020) and "Honeysuckle" (Finishing Line Press 2019). Their poetry has recently been featured in Washington Square Review, New Delta Review, and Ghost City Press. "A Million Quiet Revolutions," Gow's first Young Adult novel, is forthcoming with FSG.
