Of Poetry Podcast - The Line Break / Of Poetry Crossover with Chris Corlew and Bob Sykora and Han VanderHart

The Line Break / Of Poetry Crossover with Chris Corlew and Bob Sykora and Han VanderHart

03/26/24 • 89 min

Chris Corlew is a writer and musician living in Chicago. His work has appeared in Cotton Xenomorph, Whisk(e)y Tit, Kicking Your Ass, Cracked.com, and elsewhere. With Bob Sykora, he co-hosts The Line Break, a podcast about poetry and basketball. With Brendan Johnson, he is 1⁄2 of Lazy & Entitled, the band that writes novels. You can find more Chris on Bluesky @thecorlew, a storiesfromvine.com, or at shipwreckedsailor.substack.com.

Bob Sykora is the author of the chapbook I Was Talking About Love–You Are Talking About Geography (Nostrovia! 2016) and the forthcoming collection Utopians in Love (Game Over Books 2025). A graduate of the UMass Boston MFA program, he teaches at community college, edits with Garden Party Collective, co-hosts The Line Break podcast, and curates the KC Poetry Calendar.

Han VanderHart is a queer writer and arts organizer living in Durham, North Carolina. Han is the author of the poetry collection What Pecan Light (Bull City Press, 2021) and the chapbook Hands Like Birds (Ethel Zine Press, 2019). They have poetry and essays published in The Boston Globe, Kenyon Review, The American Poetry Review, The Rumpus, AGNI and elsewhere. Han hosts Of Poetry Podcast, edits Moist Poetry Journal, and co-edits the poetry press River River Books with Amorak Huey.

Poems Read on the Show:

"Utopians in Love" by Bob Sykora (Cotton Xenomorph)

“Bottoms” by Jenny Johnson (American Poetry Review)

"What the Kids Don't Know" by Jill McDonough (The ThreePenny Review)

“Elusive Black Hole Pair” by Alina Pleskova (Toska, Deep Vellum)

"Last night I was sexting and reading June Jordan" by Han VanderHart (unpublished)

"human pastoral brick" by Chris Corlew

Poems Read on the Show:

"Utopians in Love" by Bob Sykora (Cotton Xenomorph)

“Bottoms” by Jenny Johnson (American Poetry Review)

"What the Kids Don't Know" by Jill McDonough (The ThreePenny Review)

“Elusive Black Hole Pair” by Alina Pleskova (Toska, Deep Vellum)

"Last night I was sexting and reading June Jordan" by Han VanderHart (unpublished)

"human pastoral brick" by Chris Corlew

Previous Episode

undefined - Amorak Huey and Han VanderHart (River River Books): Of Choosing Abundance, Creating a Small Press Community, and Weathering Manuscript Rejections

Amorak Huey and Han VanderHart (River River Books): Of Choosing Abundance, Creating a Small Press Community, and Weathering Manuscript Rejections

Read: Amorak Huey's "Estuary, Delta, Confluence, Mouth" and Han VanderHart's "Larks"(Up the Staircase Quarterly)

Purchase: Dad Jokes from Late in the Patriarchy (Sundress, 2021) and What Pecan Light (Bull City Press, 2021)

Amorak Huey is author of four books of poems including Dad Jokes from Late in the Patriarchy (Sundress Publications, 2021). Co-author with W. Todd Kaneko of the textbook Poetry: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology (Bloomsbury, 2018) and the chapbook Slash/Slash (Diode, 2021), Huey teaches in the BFA and MFA programs at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. His previous books are Boom Box (Sundress, 2019), Seducing the Asparagus Queen (Cloudbank, 2018), and Ha Ha Ha Thump (Sundress, 2015), as well as two chapbooks. He is recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and his poems appear in the Best American Poetry anthology, Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day, the Norton Critical Edition of The Odyssey, and many print and online journals.

Han VanderHart is a genderqueer, Southern writer living in Durham, North Carolina, under the loblolly pines. Han is the author of the poetry collection What Pecan Light (Bull City Press, 2021) and the chapbook Hands Like Birds (Ethel Zine Press, 2019). They have poetry and essays published in The Boston Globe, Kenyon Review, The American Poetry Review, The Rumpus, AGNI and elsewhere. Han hosts Of Poetry podcast and edits Moist Poetry Journal. Their aim is to live, edit, and write with transparency, care, and warmth. They love rescue pitbulls, and send a hello to your dog.

RiverRiverbooks.org

Recommended Reading/Listening

Jennifer A Sutherland

Joe Wilkins

Corrie Williamson

The Line Break podcast with Bob Sykora and Chris Corlew

Next Episode

Emilia Phillips (Of Queering Eve, Stanzaic Shape, and Intimate Community)

Of Poetry is hosted by Han VanderHart, author of Larks (Ohio UP, 2025).
--
Read: Book X and Book VII from "The Queerness of Eve"

Purchase: Nonbinary Bird of Paradise (University of Akron Press, 2024)

Emilia Phillips (they/them) is a poet, nonfiction writer, and book reviewer. They are the author of five poetry collections from the University of Akron Press, including Nonbinary Bird of Paradise (forthcoming February 2024) and Embouchure (2021), and four chapbooks. Winner of a 2019 Pushcart Prize, 2015 StoryQuarterly Nonfiction Prize, and the 2012 The Journal Poetry Prize, Phillips’s poems, lyric essays, and book reviews appear widely in literary publications including The Adroit Journal, Agni, American Poetry Review, Gulf Coast, The Kenyon Review, New England Review, The New York Times, Ploughshares, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. They are an Associate Professor of Creative Writing in the Department of English; MFA in Writing Program; and the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at UNC Greensboro, where they regularly teach MFA- and undergraduate-level poetry workshops, Queer Poetry & Poetics, and Women’s Health & Bodies.