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heathenderr.bsky.social
Poet, 5 books, most recently Thrust (Lexi Rudnitsky Prize, Persea Books, 2018) and Outskirts(University of Akron Press, 2022).
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Some of you are still afraid of angry women — and that brings me great joy. Hark, my heart is swole and pinkened with joy when I imagine your fear. It's almost spring! Life buds and beckons!

ode to that little recharge hug toddlers give you after they fall but are totally ok

“You say you’re not going to make the same mistakes your parents made. But I didn’t realize how many other mistakes were available.” – Sharon Olds

The poems in this book are so deft, so layered, so beautiful. You won't be able to get them out of your head, and you won't want to. I know that I'll be returning to @akwenstrup.bsky.social's work again and again. It's brilliant! Get yourself a copy, pronto!

Cool to see the print edition of the starred review from Kirkus for my essay collection, The Body Is A Temporary Gathering Place. autofocusbooks.com/store/p/the-...

“The trouble is that once you see it, you can’t unsee it. And once you’ve seen it, keeping quiet, saying nothing, becomes as political an act as speaking out. There’s no innocence. Either way, you’re accountable.” - Arundhati Roy

my book came out when the lockdowns started. I barely promoted it. Then when the protests began I continued to stay silent. I felt small and insignificant and unworthy. I’ve since heard several people say they needed my poems. Please. Don’t keep your art from those who need it. Especially not now.

newly posted at @periodicities.bsky.social : Han VanderHart : Three poems / @hanvanderhart.bsky.social ; periodicityjournal.blogspot.com/2025/02/han-...

Night was paper and we were ink: - Adonis, “the beginning of the road” (translated by Khaled Mattawa)

Adonis (or Ali Ahmad Said Esber) and Khalida Said, Beirut 1956. And two poems by Adonis translate by Khaled Mattawa.

All a poem is is an emotionally disturbing structure made of words. -- X.J. Kennedy

Brightest news today so far. Hugging you @mitchnobis.bsky.social in my mind.

A lot of folks have great resources circulating—adding ours to the mix. Here's ACLU of Virginia's Know Your Rights / What To Do If Stopped By Police or ICE, translated in English, Spanish, French, Dari & Pashto, plus Va. immigration legal services orgs & contact info: www.acluva.org/en/know-your...

podcast.feedspot.com/poetry_podca...

I got Ann Patchett’s annotated Bel Canto for Christmas & I wish there were more books w author annotations!! It’s her own handwritten notes looking back at the book 30 years later or so. I love that she still writes things like “Ack! This is terrible” or “too many adverbs” in between “lovely.”

Helloooo… this site is weird like I’m a ghost. Hellooooooo?

Sarajevo, 2005

One of the best things you can do right now is read books. Buy them. Borrow them from the library. Gift them. Read history. Read fiction. Read science writing. Read anything that shows you the world is bigger than what fascists say it is. Read to remember why your resistance matters. 📚💙

“The memory is a living thing—it too is in transit. But during its moment, all that is remembered joins, and lives—the old and young, the past and present, the living and the dead.” —from One Writer’s Beginnings by Eudora Welty

“Home is about the earth. Whether the earth open up to you. Whether it pull you down so close the space between you and it melt and y’all one and it beats like your heart. Same time.” —Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward

"A thin sauce of ideology covered lewdness, greed, sadism, and fathomless lust for power..." - Friedrich Reck writing about the rise of Hitler in 'Diary of a Man in Despair,' a book that's a grim portrait of its time and a chilling glimpse of ours.

“But it’s your existence I love you for, mainly. Existence seems to me now the most remarkable thing that could ever be imagined.” —Gilead by Marilyn Robinson

“I realize there is nothing more astonishing than a human face…It has something to do with incarnation…Any human face is a claim on you, because you can’t help but understand the singularity of it, the courage and loneliness of it” -Gilead, Marilyn Robinson.

Pass it along—D.A. Powell

I could not be more excited about this book, you guys - there are so many really incredible writers in here, so many stories I absolutely lost my shit over - and now it’s print! And look at this cover! altcurrentpress.com/2025/01/22/b...

remember, the blitzkrieg is intended to make you feel like there is nothing you can do about it; that’s the only reason to go forward in this haphazard and sloppy manner all in the first week and the choice of that strategy tells you they are afraid you *will* do something about it

Maybe we should hate all writers who are rich. It’s too much power. Why is it ok that writers have multiple homes and islands and castles? Writers like Gaiman/Rowling/Munro should lose the respect of other writers automatically once they become celebrities/famous.

Maria Wisława Anna Szymborska would be 101 years young this year, and younger in spirit. It’s been a tough year, if you need a holiday break, here is a 10 day book club I did on her work— all free, courtesy of The Public Space: apublicspace.org/aps-together...

In the spirit of That Time Of Year-In-Review, I only truly have two—An anchor poem from my ms-in-progress in @newyorker.com in March called "Late Shift" & a dream slot on TNY Poetry podcast where I got to read/honor my Poetry Dad, Charles Wright, both linked here: www.newyorker.com/podcast/poet...

“I used to think I wrote because there was something I wanted to say. Then I thought, ‘I will continue to write because I have not yet said what I wanted to say’: but I know now I continue to write because I have not yet heard what I have been listening to.” Mary Ruefle