Poetose

06/11/2026

"The first thing Lana learned about love, she learned from the gannets..."

Read "The Language of the Gulls" by David I. Hughes: https://www.poetose.com/pub/the-language-of-the-gulls-david-i-hughes #/

David writes of the story: "The Language of the Gulls" follows Lana Trevelyan, a bird observatory warden on the Cornish coast, whose disciplined, scientific understanding of the seabird colonies around Gwennap Head is unsettled by the arrival of Finn, a poet seeking refuge from personal grief. As their relationship deepens through a shared attention to the landscape, they become divided by a fundamental question: whether human beings should intervene in the natural world’s brutal indifference. When Lana attempts to rescue a stranded guillemot chick during the aftermath of a violent storm, the decision leads to a devastating tragedy that permanently alters her understanding of love, loss, and the coast itself."

06/05/2026

Happy Pride Month! 🌈 We're so delighted to have Lo Riddell's gorgeous poem “Pomegranate Seed," as well as our books THESE AREN'T MY WOODS ANYMORE by Soon Jones and TRANSLATING BLUE by Sherre Vernon, included in CLMP's latest booklist: https://www.clmp.org/news/a-reading-list-for-pride-month-2026/

05/30/2026

Poetose Continues to Tiptoe Out Into Various Worlds: On liminality, AAPI Month, being bookish, making love, tea, our new titles, and more!

On liminality, AAPI Month, being bookish, making love, tea, our new titles, and more!

05/30/2026

"Slow Dissolve" by Gerry Sloan: https://www.poetose.com/pub/slow-dissolve-gerry-sloan #/

Gerry Sloan is a retired music professor living in the Arkansas Ozarks. His poetry collections are PAPER LANTERNS (2011), CROSSINGS: A MEMOIR IN VERSE (2017), and CEMETERY PLUMS (2026). Recent work appears in Tar River Poetry, Cave Region Review, and Slant Poetry Journal.

Gerry writes of the poem: "This poem is very minimalistic. In music we would call it a text painting because the text unspools to reflect the way sugar granules dissolve in liquid. The title also flirts with a term from film editing. The dedication is to my 9-year-old grandson who recently discovered the charms of tea culture."

05/28/2026

"Making Love as an Old Man" by David Radavich: https://www.poetose.com/pub/making-love-as-an-old-man-david-radavich #/

David Radavich has published a variety of poetry, drama, and essays. His plays have been performed across the U.S. and in Europe. His latest books are UNTER DER SONNE / UNDER THE SUN: GERMAN POEMS (Deutscher Lyrik, 2021) and HERE'S PLENTY (Cervena Barva, 2023).

05/20/2026

We're delighted that BLUE WHITE WATER by Xue Di is now available! It's a beautiful bilingual sequence of lyrical prose poems addressed to a distant love, and two illuminating interviews with the renown Chinese poet.

Xue Di was born in Beijing. He is the author of four volumes of collected works and one book of criticism on contemporary Chinese poetry in Chinese. In English translation, he has published five full length books and four chapbooks. His work has appeared in numerous American journals and anthologies and has been translated into several languages. Xue Di is a two-time recipient of the Hellman/Hammett Award, a recipient of the Artemis A. Joukowsky fellowship through Brown University, and a recipient of the Lannan Foundation Fellowship.

“Xue Di’s poems are flamboyant, full of images, direct in their emotion, full of personal anguish but exuberantly sensual.” —Keith Waldrop, 2009 National Book Award winner

You can buy the book on our website or these sites:

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Blue-White-Water-Xue-ebook/dp/B0GXCF2BQS/

B&N: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/blue-white-water-xue-di/1150054044?ean=9781646724048

Bookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/p/books/blue-white-water-xue-di/25f8e168969e69ee

Thanks so much to the Community of Literary Magazines & Presses (CLMP) for including BLUE WHITE WATER in their booklist of titles launching in May 2026! View the full list here: https://www.clmp.org/news/books-launching-in-may-2026/

05/17/2026

We're delighted to announce that THE CALLING by Sarah Schwartz is available for pre-order!: https://www.poetose.com/store/p17/the-calling-sarah-schwartz.html #/ The pub date is August 1.

THE CALLING is an exquisite and often humorous catalogue of poems that offer an array of ways we might see the world and by extension, our place in it.

Schwartz's beautiful debut collection of poems contends that we are each called to a way of seeing the world. Moving from the microscopic view of a chemist to the macroscopic view of a geologist, the mathematical view of an architect to the exuberant view of a painter, these poems both delight in and resist the notion of an “occupation.” Schwartz writes: "We are made of many strange shapes, and we don’t even think about it." These poems ponder our abundant strangeness and don't shy away from "what is most radical about human existence."

“With THE CALLING, Sarah Schwartz takes on the guises of various professions, ranging from ‘The Astronaut’ to ‘The Matriarch’ to ‘The Poet,’ to ask meditative questions about what it means to be human and the lines between ‘biological essentialism versus cultural socialization.’ The speakers in these poems are seeking answers about life’s abounding mysteries: the nature of desire, how to form meaningful connections, among others. Schwartz’s poems are like little jewels, finely shaped and expertly polished.” -Stevie Edwards, author of THE WEATHER INSIDE and QUIET ARMOR

“These poems are dedicated to different professions, their jargon, their trade secrets. In a community of highly specialized workers, Schwartz’s speaker is unique, since the vocation of The Poet is both a job among other jobs and the special title of the one who turns the others into life narratives: ‘not just these fifteen / fish, I am the whole / aquarium.’ As Ion put it in Plato’s dialogue, the greatest poet may turn out to be the greatest general.” -Aaron Kunin, author of LOVE THREE

Sarah Schwartz’s poetry has been published in various nationally recognized journals. She earned her BA in English at Pomona College, MFA in Poetry at Brown University, and MA in English at University of California, Irvine. She teaches English at The Park School of Baltimore.

The beautiful cover art is by Vanessa Cecil.

05/17/2026

Happy Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month! Celebrate with this list of literature, including Poetose author Soon Jones' THESE AREN'T MY WOODS ANYMORE, from the Community of Literary Magazines & Presses!:
https://www.clmp.org/news/a-reading-list-for-asian-pacific-american-heritage-month-2026/

With irresistible and unflinching honesty, Soon Jones' gorgeous debut collection of poems, THESE AREN'T MY WOODS ANYMORE, captures the experience of living as a mixed-race, q***r, Asian American from the rural South.

Jones' poems reflect on a deep connection to the natural landscape, burgeoning sexuality and futile attempts to hide it, the violent homophobia of their church-steeped childhood, and what can only be described as "the unrelenting hunger of the world."

These visceral poems re-live and re-imagine, question and declare. Reading them, we are reminded of how language and life can so powerfully dislocate, and yet how home may be found in re-writing a world of one's own making.

05/10/2026

"I think place informs a piece, even indirectly, and I believe that feeling of disconnect between where you’re raised and where the motherland is is something many of the diaspora struggle with. I’m out of place where I was born, and I’m out of place in the motherland – there’s a liminal quality to it, always being stuck between worlds and never able to fully fit into one or the other."

A wonderful interview with Poetose author Soon Jones and writer E Ce Miller: https://fourwayreview.com/interview-with-soon-jones/