“The Plague Doctor” by James Morehead Explores the Fleeting Nature of Existence and Friendship

The Plague Doctor, the third collection of poetry by James Morehead (Poet Laureate – Dublin, California) is a mesmerizing collection of eerie, image-rich poems that explore the fleeting nature of existence and friendship, inspired by the world of art and artists. The poetry is accompanied by hand drawn ink artwork by Natalia Ardus, art by Mark Kulas and Tony Rubino, and photography by the author. Poet and singer-songwriter Lisa Marie Simmons writes in her foreword to the collection, “I’ve read this collection three, four, then five times. In my office, in the tour van and the green room, after yoga, and once bundled up beneath an ancient olive tree. Despite those many deep dives, it never seems enough to complete this foreword. So I returned; six, seven, ten times. Each reading has me focusing on something new, and a year from now, I know more discoveries will be made as my perspective shifts with my own experiences.”

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Transforming Trauma into Verse: Tennison S. Black on “Survival Strategies” [INTERVIEW]

Tennison S. Black is the author of Survival Strategies (winner of the National Poetry Series, UGA Press 2023). Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in SWWIM, Hotel Amerika, Booth, Wordgathering, and New Mobility, among others. Black received their MFA at Arizona State University. They are the Managing Editor at Sundress Publications and Best of the Net and are the editor of the anthology on contemporary disability, A Body You Talk To. Though Sonoran born, Black resides in Washington state. Below are excerpts from the interview with James Morehead on the Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast.

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Announcing the Pushcart Prize 2025 Nominees from Viewless Wings

The Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast, in its third season, explores the art of poetry through interviews with poets, songwriters, and artists including Safia Elhillo, Olivia Gatwood, Daniel Ash + David J, Kari Byron, A.E. Stallings, Dana Gioia, Yanyi, and many more. The podcast also invites poets to submit their work to appear on periodic submitted poetry episodes. It is from those episodes, where we uniquely combine the poem in written form and the poet reciting their poem for the podcast in audio form, that we have found six wonderful nominees for the Pushcart Prize 2025.

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Brennan DeFrisco Explores the Spectrum of Love in “Honeysuckle & Nightshade” [INTERVIEW]

Brennan DeFrisco is a poet, teaching artist, editor, voice actor, & ekphrastic artist from the San Francisco Bay Area. He’s been a National Poetry Slam finalist, a Pushcart Prize nominee, Grand Slam Champion of the Oakland Poetry Slam, & regional coordinator for California Poets in the Schools, Poetry Out Loud, & the San Francisco Arts Commission. He’s the author of A Heart With No Scars, published by Nomadic Press, & has served as poetry editor on the mastheads of Lunch Ticket, Caesura & Meow Meow Pow Pow. His work has been published in Red Wheelbarrow, Oracle Fine Arts Review, Drunk in a Midnight Choir, JMWW Journal, Words Dance, & elsewhere. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing with a focus in poetry from Antioch University Los Angeles. Below are excerpts from the interview with James Morehead on the Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast.

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Five Poets Recite (Esteban Allard-Valdivieso, Lucy Rattner, Daude Teel, Derek Kannemeyer, Alison Davis)

The Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast October submitted poems episode features five wonderful contributions read by the poets. Different forms and themes are featured. The Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast explores the art of poetry through interviews with poets and artists including Safia Elhillo, A.E. Stallings, Dana Gioia, Yanyi, Olivia Gatwood, Lisa Marie Simmons and more. Subscribe today.

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Loreena McKennitt on Amplifying the Human Condition Through Song [INTERVIEW]

Loreena McKennitt, currently on a North America, Europe, and United Kingdom tour, is a multi-faceted Canadian artist known for her unique blend of pop, folk, and worldbeat music, often described as “eclectic Celtic.” With over 14 million records sold worldwide, she has achieved gold and platinum status in 15 countries. McKennitt owns her record label, Quinlan Road, and has an extensive catalog that includes hits like “The Mummers’ Dance.” She has received numerous awards, including two Junos and a Grammy nomination. Not just a musician, she’s also an advocate for intellectual property rights and a philanthropist with her own charitable organizations. From small-town roots to global stardom, she’s a self-managed powerhouse in the music industry. Below are excerpts from the interview with James Morehead on the Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast.

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Carol Guess on Being a Poet Masquerading as a Fiction Writer in “Sleep Tight Satellite” [INTERVIEW]

Carol Guess is the author of numerous books of poetry and prose, including Doll Studies: Forensics and Tinderbox Lawn. Forthcoming books include a short story collection, Sleep Tight Satellite (Tupelo Press), and a hybrid poetry collection, Infodemic (Black Lawrence Press). A frequent collaborator, she writes across genres and illuminates historically marginalized material. In 2014 she was awarded the Philolexian Award for Distinguished Literary Achievement by Columbia University. She is Professor of English at Western Washington University, where she teaches Queer Literature and Creative Writing. Below are excerpts from the interview with James Morehead on the Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast.

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Gabriel Dozal’s “The Border Simulator” Brings the U.S. Border to Life with Poetic Theatre [INTERVIEW]

Gabriel Dozal is from El Paso, Texas. He received his MFA in poetry from the University of Arizona. His work appears in Poetry magazine, Guernica, Bomb Magazine, The Iowa Review, The Brooklyn Rail, The Literary Review, Hunger Mountain, The Volta, Contra Viento, and more. Below are excerpts from the interview with James Morehead on the Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast.

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Six Poets Recite (Ani Jones, Siavash Saadlou, Keith Mark Gaboury, Sara Femenella, Kelsey Kessler, Marianne Tefft)

The Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast September submitted poems episode features six wonderful contributions read by six poets. Different forms and themes are featured. The Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast explores the art of poetry through interviews with poets and artists including Safia Elhillo, A.E. Stallings, Dana Gioia, Yanyi, Olivia Gatwood, Lisa Marie Simmons and more. Subscribe today.

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Literary Speakeasy in San Francisco Hosts Bay Area Poets at Martuni’s Piano Bar

[SAN FRANCISCO, CA] Literary Speakeasy, a long-running poet & music event hosted and curated each month by poet James J. Siegel, returns on Thursday August 31 – 7pm at Martuni’s Piano Bar in San Francisco. Augusts featured readers are Paolo Bicchieri, James Morehead, Kim Shuck, Kimi Sugioka, and musical guest Emily Zisman. The show is free with no drink minimum. Arrive early to get a free raffle ticket for your chance to win some secret Speakeasy prizes.

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Jered’s Pottery Welcomes Bay Area Poets for Poetry at the Pottery [Sunday Aug 27 – 3pm]

Jered’s Pottery (Emeryville, CA), recognized as “the top choice for hand-crafted custom dinnerware for some of the world’s top chefs and designers,” will be hosting an afternoon of poetry on Sunday Aug. 27 – 3pm, featuring Heather Bourbeau, Brennan DeFrisco, and James Morehead. Free tickets for the event are available here.

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A Poetic Journey by Cable Car (from Exploring San Francisco)

This week’s episode of the Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast features a special excerpt from the Exploring San Francisco podcast by San Francisco Travel. Award-winning host and travel writer Aaron Millar invited Viewless Wings founder and City of Dublin Poet Laureate James Morehead to recite his poem “nine point five miles per hour”, recorded while riding a San Francisco cable car. Aaron also interviews James about his work with the City of Dublin and how he discovered the art of poetry.

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Brandon Rushton on Dissecting the American Landscape and Environmental Distress through Poetry [INTERVIEW]

Brandon Rushton is the author of The Air in the Air Behind It (Tupelo Press, 2022), selected by Bin Ramke for the Berkshire Prize. Born and raised in Michigan, his individual poems have received awards from Gulf Coast and Ninth Letter and appear widely in publications like The Southern Review, Denver Quarterly, Pleiades, Bennington Review, and Passages North. His essays appear in Alaska Quarterly Review, Terrain.org, the critical anthology, A Field Guide to the Poetry of Theodore Roethke, and have been listed as notable by Best American Essays. After earning his MFA from the University of South Carolina, he joined the writing faculty at the College of Charleston. Since the fall of 2020, he’s served as a visiting professor of Writing at Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Below are excerpts from the interview with James Morehead on the Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast.

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Caitlin Conlon’s “The Surrender Theory” Burrows Into the Depths of Human Emotion [INTERVIEW]

Caitlin Conlon is a poet and avid reader from Upstate New York. She holds a BA in English and a Creative Writing Certificate from the University at Buffalo and, while there, was chosen for the Friends of the University Libraries Undergraduate Poetry Prize, and the Arthur Axlerod Memorial Prize for Poetry. Her debut poetry collection, The Surrender Theory, was released in 2022 with Central Avenue Publishing. You can find her online almost anywhere @cgcpoems. Below are excerpts from the interview with James Morehead on the Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast.

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Poets Laureate & Pizza Night + Open Mic at Patxi’s Pizza (Dublin) Wed July 26 – 6pm

DUBLIN, CA–The 12th Poetry & Pizza Open Mic at Patxi’s Pizza (Dublin) will feature four current and former poets laureate, plus a one-hour open mic hosted by City of Dublin Poet Laureate James Morehead. Poetry & Pizza at Patxi’s Pizza has provided a unique venue for East Bay poets to share their poetry for over two years.

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Roger Craik on Crafting a Collage of Poetic Memories for “In Other Days” [INTERVIEW]

Roger Craik, Professor Emeritus of English at Kent State University, Ohio, has written four collections of poetry: I Simply Stared (2002), Rhinoceros in Clumber Park (2003), The Darkening Green (2004), and Down Stranger Roads (2014), along with two chapbooks, Those Years (2007), (translated into Bulgarian in 2009), and Of England Still (2009). His poetry has appeared in several national poetry journals, such as The Formalist, Fulcrum, The Literary Review, The Atlanta Review, The London Grip and The London Magazine. English by birth and educated at the universities of Reading and Southampton, he has worked as a journalist, TV critic, and chess columnist. Before coming to the USA in 1991, he worked in Turkish universities and was awarded a Beinecke Fellowship to Yale in 1990. He is widely traveled, having visited North Yemen, Egypt, South Africa, Tibet, Nepal, Japan, Bulgaria (where he taught during spring 2007 on a Fulbright Scholarship), the United Arab Emirates, Austria, Croatia and Romania, (where from 2013-14 he was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Oradea). He is glad every day that he is living in the USA. He watches the birds throughout the year, with joy.

Below are excerpts from the interview with James Morehead on the Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast.

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L.J. Sysko Explores the Heroine from Maiden to Warrior in “The Daughter of Man” [INTERVIEW]

L.J. Sysko is the author of “The Daughter of Man” (April ’23, University of Arkansas Press), the 2023 Miller Williams Poetry Series first finalist selected by Patricia Smith, and BATTLEDORE (Finishing Line Press), a chapbook about early motherhood. Sysko’s poems have been anthologized in “Best New Poets” and “Let me Say This: A Dolly Parton Poetry Anthology” (Madville Publishing) and have appeared in publications such as Ploughshares, The Missouri Review’s “Poem of the Week,” and Mississippi Review, among others. An MFA in poetry from New England College, a Virginia Center for Creative Arts Fellow, and a 2022 Palm Beach Poetry Festival Thomas Lux Scholar, Sysko is Director of Executive Communications at Delaware State University. Below are excerpts from the interview with James Morehead on the Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast.

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Kweku Abimbola Explores Colonization and the Power of Names in “Saltwater Demands a Psalm” [INTERVIEW]

Born in the Gambia, Kweku Abimbola earned his MFA in poetry from the University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers’ Program. He is of Gambian, Ghanaian, and Sierra Leonean descent. Abimbola’s first full-length poetry collection, Saltwater Demands a Psalm, was published by Graywolf Press in 2023. In 2022, the début collection was selected by Tyehimba Jess to receive the Academy of American Poets’ First Book Award. Abimbola’s writing primarily investigates colonization, Black mourning, Black boyhood, gender politics, and the spiritual consequences of climate change in West Africa. He is a Visiting Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Tampa. Below are excerpts from his interview with James Morehead on the Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast.

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Five Poets Recite (Sinead McGuigan, Heather MacKechnie, Lawrence Bridges, Denise Alden, Dana Kinsey)

The Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast June submitted poems episode features five wonderful contributions read by five poets. Different forms and themes are featured. The Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast explores the art of poetry through interviews with poets and artists including Safia Elhillo, A.E. Stallings, Dana Gioia, Yanyi, Olivia Gatwood, Lisa Marie Simmons and more. Subscribe today.

Please note that this episode contains adult language and includes poetry that touches on suicide, and is not suitable for children. If you are having suicidal thoughts please reach out for support resources in your area.

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“She” Documentary Transforms True Crime with Aimée Baker’s Poetry of Missing and Unidentified Women [INTERVIEW]

On this episode we welcome poet Aimee Baker and filmmakers Jason Greer and Vanessa Cicarelli to discuss the award-winning documentary “She” based on Baker’s collection “Doe” which tells the stories of missing and unidentified women through poetry. “She” is available to stream for free on Tubi, Plex, and Roku.

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David J on Crafting the Lyrics for “Love and Rockets” (Part 2) [INTERVIEW]

This is the second interview in a two-part series with Daniel Ash and David J, lyricists and songwriters behind Love and Rockets, Bauhaus, and multiple other band and solo projects. I interviewed Daniel and David separately, with a similar set of questions. The success of their projects can be attributed, in part, to their distinctly different approaches to writing lyrics and crafting songs. Today’s episode features Daniel Ash with David J’s interview coming later this week. I spoke with Daniel and David while they were preparing for Love and Rocket’s first US tour in fifteen years. Below are excerpts from his interview with James Morehead on the Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast (Daniel’s interview is available here).

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