The Hive Poetry Collective

A native of San Francisco, Cole Swensen is the author of twenty collections of poetry, most recently Veer (Alice James Books, 2026), and And And And (Shearsman Books, 2023), which was long-listed for the Griffin Prize. She has also published a volume of hybrid poetic essays on innovative landscape artists, Art in Time (Nightboat Books, 2021) and a volume of critical essays, Noise That Stays Noise (University of Michigan, 2011). She has collaborated with visual artists on a variety of artists’ books, including with Karen Randall on The Leyden Jar, (Propolis Press, 2017) and with the painter Thomas Nozkowski on Flare (Yale University Art Gallery, 2009). She co-edited the Norton anthology American Hybrid (2009) and currently serves as the translation editor for Fence magazine and curates “Publishing in Transit,” a monthly program on the Brooklyn Rail that spotlights presses and organizations that enable contemporary poetry.Much of Swensen’s work is engaged with land, from urban park design to landscape painting to a kind of activist attention to the non-human world. Her books have been awarded the National Poetry Series, the Iowa Poetry Prize, Sun & Moon’s New American Writing Award, and the San Francisco State Poetry Center Book Award and has twice been a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award and once for National Book Award. A former Guggenheim Fellow, she is also a translator of contemporary French poetry, prose, and art criticism. Her translations have won the 2004 PEN USA Award in Literary Translation, the 2024 ALTA National Translation Award, and the 2025 Stephen Mitchell Award. Recipient of the 2025 Paul Engle Prize from the Iowa City UNESCO City of Literature, she was the founding editor of La Presse, which ran from 2006 to 2020, publishing contemporary French poetry translated by English-language poets. She taught for ten years on the faculty of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and for twelve years in Brown University’s Literary Arts Department. She divides her time between Paris and California.

Join Avia Tadmor and Farnaz Fatemi as they discuss Avia's Berkshire International Prize-winning debut, Song in Tammuz (Tupelo Press 2026). This episode includes five poems read by the poet and conversation which examines her "language of longing, of an urge for intimacy" (Fatemi) along with what Ellen Bass says about the book: "A brilliant exploration of displacement, migration and loss." Hear the poet read more along with Keetje Kuipers on Tuesday November 10 at Bookshop Santa Cruz for The Hive Live! Order Tadmor's book here. Also mentioned in the episode, Traci Brimhall's poem, "What They Found in the Diving Bell" and Brimhall's new book of prose, The Grief Artist.

Poet Kelly Grace Thomas joins Julie Murphy to discuss Future Tense (Alice James Books), a collection exploring infertility, the loss of her mother, and becoming a mother through adoption. With candor, humor, and vivid imagery, her poems hold grief and joy in the same breath. Kelly reads from the collection and discusses the craft of writing about the body, longing, and an uncertain future. The conversation opens with Keith Leonard’s “Spratchet.” Follow Kelly on Instagram and Substack.

Farnaz Fatemi and Leila Farjami spend time with Leila's deeply resonant and highly-prasied poetry collection, Daughter of Salt (Trio House Press, 2026). Listen as they discuss: trusting poetry's source and the arrival of images, sounds, and meaning; Farjami's journey from her childhood in Iran to writing poetry in English in California., memory and displacement, and more. Leila reads 7 poems from the collection offering a preview of her appearance in Santa Cruz for The Hive Live! February 2027. Order Daughter of Salt Here

We read and discuss "Astronaut," by Simona Regina Adams, then take a deep dive into Zack's amazing new book, The Kama Sutra for Senior Citizens and Other Poems on Aging. Zack Rogow is the author, editor, or translator of more than twenty books or plays. His tenth book of poems, The Kama Sutra for Senior Citizens and Other Poems on Aging, is now available from Valley Press. Click here for USA orders, and click here for UK orders.Hugging My Father’s Ghost: A Memoir of a Shortened Life, Zack’s book about his writer dad, will be republished by Cirque Press on October 6, 2026.His previous books of poetry include Irreverent Litanies, from Regal House.Zack’s play, Colette Uncensored (coauthored with Lorri Holt), had its first public reading at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, and has been staged in London, Catalonia, San Francisco, Indonesia, and Portland.Zack’s most recent book of translations is The Water Drinkers and Other Sketches of Paris in the Romantic Era by Henry Murger, the writer who inspired La Bohème. Zack is the editor of an anthology of poetry of the U.S.A., The Face of Poetry, from University of California Press. His song lyrics include “A Love for Just Part” recorded by Carrie Wicks. He has taught in several MFA creative writing programs, and serves as a contributing editor of Catamaran Literary Reader.Zack has received the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize, the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award in Translation, the Celestine Award for Poetry from Holy Names University, and the Tanka Splendor Award.Simone Regina Adams (1967– ) is best known as a fiction writer, but her poetry is also excellent, dealing with provocative subjects. Her novel, Die Halbruhigen [The Half-Restless], was awarded the Werner Bräunig Prize. Adams lives in Freiburg, Germany, and works as a psychotherapist. Her poem “Astronauts” evokes the wonder and emptiness of going into space, perhaps as a metaphor.