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.

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).

This is the first 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. This episode features Daniel Ash (David J’s interview is available here). I spoke with Daniel and David while they were preparing for Love and Rocket’s first US tour in fifteen years. The second part goes live later this week. Below are excerpts from his interview with James Morehead on the Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast.

Katy Didden is the author of Ore Choir: The Lava on Iceland (Tupelo Press, 2022), and The Glacier’s Wake (Pleiades Press, 2013). Her poems, essays, and reviews appear in journals such as Public Books, Poetry Northwest, Ecotone, Diagram, The Kenyon Review, Image, 32 Poems, The Spoon River Poetry Review, The Sewanee Review, and Poetry, and her work has been featured on Verse Daily and Poetry Daily.  She has received fellowships and residencies from The Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Vermont Studio Center, the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, the Ragdale Foundation, the Hambidge Center, the MacDowell Colony, and the Listhús Residency in Ólafsfjörður, Iceland. She was also a 2013-2014 Hodder Fellow at Princeton University. Collaborating with members of the Banff Research in Culture’s Beyond Anthropocene Residency, she co-created Almanac for the Beyond (Tropic Editions, 2019). Katy is an Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing at Ball State University. Below are excerpts from her interview with James Morehead on the Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast.

Stephen Massimilla is a poet, professor, painter, and author, most recently of the poetry collection Frank Dark (Barrow Street Press, 2022) and the 2022 co-edited social justice poetry anthology, Stronger Than Fear. His multi-genre, co-authored Cooking with the Muse (Tupelo Press, 2016) won the Eric Hoffer Award and many others. Previous books and honors include The Plague Doctor in His Hull-Shaped Hat (SFASU Press Prize); Forty Floors from Yesterday (Bordighera Prize, CUNY); The Grolier Poetry Prize; the Van Rensselaer Prize, selected by Kenneth Koch; a study of myth in poetry; award-winning translations; etc. His work has been featured recently in hundreds of publications ranging from AGNI to Denver Quarterly to Huffpost to Poetry Daily. Massimilla holds an MFA and a PhD from Columbia University and has taught there and at many other schools, currently The New School. He is also a prolific artist. Below are excerpts from his interview with James Morehead on the Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast.

Katie Farris’s work has been commissioned by MoMA and appears in American Poetry Review, Granta, McSweeneys, The Nation, and Poetry. She is the author of the chapbook A Net to Catch My Body in its Weaving, which won the 2020 Chad Walsh Poetry Award from Beloit Poetry Journal, and boysgirls, a hybrid-form book, as well as co-translator of many books of poetry. She holds degrees from UC Berkeley and Brown University. She is currently Associate Professor in Creative Writing at Georgia Institute of Technology. Standing in the Forest of Being Alive (Alice James Books, 2023) is her first book of poems. Below are excerpts from her interview with James Morehead on the Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast.

Natalia Andrus (Eerie Ink) is a freelance artist who works in multiple media, both digital and traditional. I had a chance meeting with Natalia at her SiliCon booth in San Jose last summer and immediately knew her style of art would be perfect for my new book “The Plague Doctor“. Fast forward to today and Natalia has completed three incredible black ink drawings inspired by poems in my book. I interviewed Natalia for the Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast to learn more about how she transformed my poetry into exquisite ink art.

Morgan Liphart’s work has appeared in anthologies and journals across the US, Canada, and England, such as Oxford University Press’ Literary Imagination, Popshot Quarterly, and Chicken Soup for the Soul. Her first chapbook, Barefoot and Running, was a finalist for the Colorado Book Award. She recently launched a groundbreaking poetry masterclass where students can learn step-by-step how to get their poetry placed in journals and magazines worldwide. When she’s not writing, she enjoys her career as an attorney and loves to adventure in the wild spaces surrounding her home near the Rocky Mountains. For more of her poetry, find her on Instagram at @mliphart or visit morganliphart.com. For her masterclass, visit poetry-masterclass.thinkific.com.

James Morehead interviewed Morgan for the Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast to discuss her new Poetry Masterclass: Writing and Publishing Powerful Poetry in Journals and Magazines.

Dana Gioia is the former Poet Laureate of California. An internationally recognized poet and critic, he is the author of seven collections of verse, including Interrogations at Noon (2001), which won the American Book Award, and 99 Poems: New & Selected (2016), which won the Poets’ Prize for the best new poetry volume of the year. His critical collections include Can Poetry Matter? (1992), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Award, and Studying with Miss Bishop: Memoirs from a Young Writer’s Life (2022). His poems have been set to music by numerous composers, including Morten Lauridsen, Ned Rorem, Lori Laitman, and Dave Brubeck. Gioia has also written four opera libretti and edited twenty literary anthologies.

James Morehead interviewed Dana for the Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast to discuss his latest collection “Meet Me at the Lighthouse” (Graywolf Press, 2023). Below is an edited excerpt from the full interview (which also includes Dana reciting selected poems.)

Sandy Longhorn has received the Porter Fund Literary Prize for Arkansas authors and the Collins Prize from the Birmingham Poetry Review. She is the author of three books of poetry: The Alchemy of My Mortal Form (Trio House Press, 2015), The Girlhood Book of Prairie Myths, and Blood Almanac. Her poems have appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review, North American Review, Oxford American, and elsewhere. Longhorn studied poetry at the College of St. Benedict (St. Joseph, MN) and the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. She now teaches in the Arkansas Writers MFA program at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway, AR. Below are excerpts from her interview with James Morehead on the Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast.

Eric Stiefel lives in Athens, Ohio with his dog, Violet.  He is a PhD candidate at Ohio University, where he teaches poetry and composition .  He received the Sequestrum New Writer Award for Poetry in 2018, and his work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, the Penn Review Prize, and others.  He earned his MFA from Washington University in St. Louis and his undergraduate degree from NYU.  His first collection, Hello Nothingness, was published by Main Street Rag in 2022, and his work has been published in journals across the globe. Below are excerpts from his interview with James Morehead on the Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast.

Kristina Marie Darling is the author of thirty-six books. Her work has been recognized with multiple residencies, fellowships, and grants, including an an artist-in-residence position at Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris; six residencies at the American Academy in Rome, and an artist-in-residence position with the Andorran Ministry of Culture. She was recognized with the Dan Liberthson Prize from the Academy of American Poets, which she received on three separate occasions, among many other awards and honors. Kristina serves as Editor-in-Chief of Tupelo Press & Tupelo Quarterly. Kristina’s latest book, “Look to your Left: A Feminist Poetics of Spectacle” was recently published by The University of Akron Press. Below are excerpts from her interview with James Morehead on the Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast.

On this week’s episode of the Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast we interview not one, but three wonderful poets about their collaboration to create Chalk Song (Lily Poetry Review, 2021).

Stelios Mormoris is a resident of Boston and Martha’s  Vineyard, Massachusetts, and formerly lived in Paris most  of his life, working as an executive in the beauty industry.  Stelios is currently Chief Executive Officer of Scent Beauty,  Inc. He studied architecture at Princeton University, where  he received his BA, and he received his MBA from INSEAD in  Fontainebleau, France. He has held positions on the boards  of the French Cultural Center of Boston, ACT-UP, Historic  New England, and The Fragrance Foundation. 

The latest episode of the Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast features poet and author Tess Taylor. Tess, who Ilya Kaminsky recently hailed as “the poet for our moment” resides in El Cerrito, California. Her poems have received wide national and international acclaim.  Taylor’s chapbook, The Misremembered World, was selected by Eavan Boland for the Poetry Society of America’s inaugural chapbook competition. The San Francisco Chronicle called her first book, The Forage House, (an exploration of hidden family histories through archive and shard) “stunning,” and it was a finalist for the Believer Poetry Award.

Yanyi is the author of Dream of the Divided Field (One World 2022) and The Year of Blue Water (Yale University Press 2019), winner of the 2018 Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize. His work has been featured in or at NPR’s All Things Considered, New York Public Library, Tin House, Granta, and A Public Space, and he is the recipient of fellowships from Asian American Writers’ Workshop and Poets House. He holds an MFA in Poetry from New York University. He was most recently poetry editor at Foundry. Currently, he teaches creative writing at large and gives creative advice at The Reading.

This week’s episode of the Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast takes you behind the scenes of an independent bookstore courtesy of Phoenix Books in Rutland, Vermont. As writers and poets we have all spent many hours – and dollars – in bookstores. No online experience can replace walking down an aisle of bookshelves, searching for the poetry section, and being distracted by an intriguing book cover.

Sarah Kobrinsky was the 2013-2015 Poet Laureate of Emeryville, CA. She is the author of Nighttime on the Other Side of Everything (New Rivers Press, 2019). Her poems and stories have appeared in Magma Poetry, Red Light Lit, Eleven Eleven, Monkeybicycle, *82 Review, 100 Word Story, Fjords Review, among many others. She was long-listed for the 2019 University of Canberra Vice Chancellor’s Poetry Prize. She was born in Canada, raised in North Dakota, seasoned in England, and tempered in California.

Cynthia Good is an award-winning author, journalist and former TV news anchor. She has written six books including Vaccinating Your Child, which won the Georgia Author of the Year award. She has launched two magazines, Atlanta Woman and the nationally distributed PINK magazine for women in business. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in numerous journals including Free State Review, Main Street Rag and Terminus Magazine. Cynthia’s new chapbook What We Do with Our Hands from Finishing Line Press will be published this summer. Cynthia is also a frequent speaker and global women’s advocate.

Poet and author Safia Elhillo is interviewed by James Morehead (host of the Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast and Poet Laureate of Dublin, CA). Safia discusses how she crafted the poetry for her new Penguin Random House book Girls That Never Die.