NB: This essay was originally commissioned and published by The Dark Horse for its Autumn/Winter edition in 2020. I republish it here to complement my contribution to the recently published The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht: Voices from the Frontline of Scotland’s Battle for Women’s Rights. (London: Constable, 2024)

Hello Friends, We hope you are having a great spring season filled with inspiration! Thank you for taking the time to read our newsletter—it’s filled with creative opportunities for you and your writing: our annual Online Poetry Retreat is back; award-winning poet Jane Hirshfield will join us for a Zoom conversation; our Chapbook Prize is accepting submissions; and we have just released a new book in our Wilder Prize Poetry Book Series!

Hello and welcome back to The Fourth Wheel, the weekly watch newsletter that needs to take a little trip - thankfully a rare occurrence - to Corrections Corner. I appreciated the response to last week’s newsletter on the Ressence ‘catalogue raisonné’ but as several people pointed out (among them, awkwardly enough, people who had worked on it directly) a…

Hey poets — this bulletin is late, because I’ve been spending time with family, walking in the woods with my dad, stopping for trilliums whenever we find them. We recently found out he has cancer, and the most honest thing I can say is that when he’s not well, I’m not well… We’re sorting out what this means in the near-term, and I’m listening for where …

After thousands of you voted in the Trump Haiku Contest Runoff, we have a winner! This TBR Contest Special newsletter features the winning poem, analysis of the voting, and an exclusive interview with the triumphant poet. Contestants were asked to submit haikus on this theme: “Trump’s innermost musings as he sits in court.”

dark-blistered foxgloves Geoffrey Hill Once, before my children started school, we went on holiday to Cornwall in early June. Arriving in West Penwith, the southernmost part of the county, I was thinking of the poet W.S. Graham, who lived there for much of his life and was friendly with the artists around St. Ives.

THE WHO: The Poetry Edit is a weekly poetry newsletter promoting proper recompense for poets and creating opportunities within the poetry industry. The Poetry’s Dead Podcast is a weekly poetry podcast exploring the work of poets old and new, with an “Agony Poet” and a little bit of craic mixed in!

In my mid-20s, before I landed my first job in journalism, I had a blog. We don’t need to talk about the blog—it’s embarrassing now. But my loyal readers back then, consisting mostly of friends and family, loved one particular feature the most: the Annual Mermaid Cock Haiku Competition.

Lately I’ve been reading the books of poet Kenneth Koch, an acclaimed writer who brought poetry into elementary schools in the 1960s. The lessons he created led to deeply imaginative poems. He shares them in his books ROSE, WHERE DID YOU GET THAT RED

May has been a pretty brutal month for me in terms of work. I’ve been drowning under acres of marking, from university. I’ve also been completing my first term as an External Examiner for Edge Hill University - which has been interesting, but also exhausting - in the way that doing anything new is exhausting in its uncertainty.

Bless you, your circle, and all living things, Dear Soul, I am excited to join you next Wednesday, June 5 at 9am Pacific Daylight Time for our next virtual gathering as a part of my world tour, The Gathering, a poetry / book reading ceremony for collective freedom from oppression.

Free Submissions NOW OPEN for Poet of the Week and Poem of the Month Molly Zhu is a Chinese-American poet and attorney. She writes about alter egos, chasms, dreams, tears, rage, translation and the women in her life. She was twice nominated for Pushcart prizes and her work appears in

A few quick notes to start: My new novel, Small Rain, is out on September 3. Please preorder it by asking at your local bookstore, or from your favorite online retailer. Here are a few links: Bookshop, Powells, Barnes & Noble, Books-a-Million, Amazon

Hey y’all, Here are 10 things I thought were worth sharing this week: I am deep into writing at the moment and I keep repeating to myself: “It doesn’t matter if it’s good right now. It just needs to exist.” “Better stop short than fill to the brim,” says the

Welcome to the Poetry Fix: Accessible to all subscribers this month only. HI My goal with The Newsletter is to offer writing and resources that make your life both gentler and more expansive through times of chaos and immersive challenge (aka always?). So in lieu of what I first imagined as a paid subscriber chat, I’m going to be sharing a monthly Poetry …

Dear friends, I’ve visited people in hospitals, prisons, new homes, refuges, temporary homes, on the road, off the grid, at protests and parades, in times of shock, and times of ease. I know you have too. What are your rules for visiting? What do you tend to? Often, the more intense a setting for a visit, the more preparation I do: the first time I visi…

Yes, you can start today, and still catch up. Day 1 is here. This is a fundraiser so if you’re able, please subscribe. There is a FAQ which will hopefully answer all your questions about this project. There is a companion book and it is wonderful and helpful.

There is nothing more infuriating to me than a growling stomach in the middle of a productive hour of writing. Before we get into it: I’m currently fundraising to help a family of 6 escape the war in Sudan! If you’ve gone out for coffee in the last week, if you have a very specific favorite pen that you loyally buy, if you’ve ever forgotten to cancel a …

A friend asks me, What is the Story that needs to be told at this time? Synchronicity. I glance over three letters in the mail today from strangers who each thank me for the ways we have interconnected in the past. Last night, a participant in my writing class read us a poem he had found in a book he had been gifted from the library of a friend after her death. It was W S Merwin’s amazing poem, Thanks, which ends

I felt the need to share this audio clip of a spoken word piece I wrote and performed for the Outro on my unreleased song, Algorithm Ghetto. The song will likely be released as a single before the album comes out, but that time is not yet. However, the time is now for the spoken word piece.

It’s June, and I bet you’re wondering what’s happening here at SmallStack! Well lucky you, I’m here to update you and give you a quick behind-the-scenes tour. Be sure to stop by the SmallStack home page to see all the ways we are growing and changing.

Hi, Friend. I know it’s not technically summer until the solstice, but school’s out here today, and the pools are opening, and my neighbor’s strawberry patch is coming up beautifully, and I’m just ready. I’m ready—and anyway, I’ve never been one who cares about technicalities.

It’s a rare occasion when I sit down for an interview—I’ve only agreed to two video interviews in the last 18 months. (The previous one is here.) But this one is a milestone in other ways. First, it’s the longest interview I’ve ever given on camera—we kept going for more than two hours without a break.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a hero, a staunch fighter against the violent intolerance and bossy control freakery of Islamism. She is also a personal friend of whom I am very fond. When she recently announced her conversion to Christianity, I assumed that she must be no more than a political Christian, regarding Christianity as a bulwark against Islam. I have som…

Dear friends, Last weekend, staying in Maine during the Camden poetry festival, I was at a night party hosted by Mark, one of the festival’s founders (poet and translator too, including a new forthcoming translation of Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus). It was a party for people, yes, but I was particularly delighted at how some people also brought their (gor…