A panel of poets and I take a look back at the year in poetry. We discuss some of the bigger poetry related news, share poems by poets we've lost this year, and talk about the state of poetry. The panel consisted of returning guests Jonathan Everitt, Sarah Freligh, Ryan Shepard, and newcomer Tom Holmes.
About Jonathan Everitt
Jonathan Everitt is a freelance writer whose creative writing has been published in Lake Affect magazine, The Finger, The ImageOutWrite annual, Escape Into Life magazine, Upstate Gardener's Journal, the Hobo Dog video series, and a short film by Rochester filmmakers Alex Weiser, Andrew Ballerstein, and Ander Kazmerski. He has performed at numerous venues including the Genesee Reading Series at Writers and Books, Flash Night at The Yards, ImageArt, and as an a la mode poet at Poetry & Pie Night in Rochester, and has co-led a workshop for LGBTQ poets at Rochester’s Out Alliance. He co-hosts the monthly open mic, New Ground Poetry Night, with Al Abonado at Equal=Grounds coffeehouse. Jonathan will begin an MFA program at Bennington College in January.
About Sarah Freligh
Sarah Freligh is the author of Sad Math, winner of the 2014 Moon City Press Poetry Prize and the 2015 Whirling Prize from the University of Indianapolis. Other books include A Brief Natural History of an American Girl, winner of the Editor’s Choice award from Accents Publishing, and Sort of Gone. Her work has appeared in Sun Magazine, Hotel Amerika, BOAAT Journal, diode, SmokeLong Quarterly, on Writer’s Almanac, and anthologized in the 2011 anthology Good Poems: American Places. Among her awards are a 2009 poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and a grant from the Constance Saltonstall Foundation in 2006
About Tom Holmes
Tom Holmes is the editor of Redactions: Poetry & Poetics and the author of three full-length collections of poetry, most recently The Cave (winner of The Bitter Oleander Press Library of Poetry Book Award for 2013), as well as four chapbooks. He is currently a Visiting Full-Time Instructor at The University of Southern Mississippi.
About Ryan Shepard
Ryan Shepard is a local poet who will be graduating from Goddard College in Vermont next month. His first book, Still, the Body Moved, will be out soon.