Nebraska Poetry Society

Nebraska Poetry Society Workshop: Todd Robinson (Read More)

The Nebraska Poetry Society is offering monthly Saturday morning online poetry workshops. Registration is required, and registration information may be found on the Nebraska Poetry Society webpage. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership. "To believe you are magnificent. And gradually to discover that you are not magnificent. Enough labor for one human life." —Czeslaw Milosz With Milosz’s immortal wisdom as our lodestar, we will take a tour through autobiographical poems ancient and modern, studying the ways personal poems capture self and other, place and purpose, sound and sense, framing the self as both mirror and window, at once magnificent and minute. Todd Robinson affectionately known to acolytes as "Toddfather," is a poet and educator based in Omaha. He is the author of Mass for Shut-Ins (Backwaters Press, 2018) and Note at Heart Rock (Main Street Rag Publishing, 2012). His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in such epic venues as Prairie Schooner, Flyway—Journal of Writing and Environment, Kestrel, North American Review, Sugar House Review, Cortland Review, Natural Bridge, Superstition Review, Weber: The Contemporary West, Chiron Review, A Dozen Nothing, and many others. Recipient of the 2011-2012 Thompson Learning Community’s Outstanding Faculty Award, he has conducted writing workshops with The Seven Doctors Project, The Naturalist School, Nebraska Warrior Writers, Nebraska Writers Collective, and the CÚRAM center for research in medical devices. He is founder and host of the Kaneko Art Museum’s Bibliophilia reading series, which is currently on a long pandemic pause. He earned a B.A. and M.A. from Creighton University, and a Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He serves as vice president on the board of directors of Big Feels Lab.

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Nebraska Poetry Society Workshop: Courtney LeBlanc (Read More)

The Nebraska Poetry Society is offering monthly Saturday morning online poetry workshops. Registration is required, and registration information may be found on the Nebraska Poetry Society webpage. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership. How can pop culture provide new and inventive ways to write poems, present complex truths, and provide an avenue into our deepest emotions? In this generative workshop, poet Courtney LeBlanc will provide examples that effectively, and creatively, weave pop culture into their poems. How does an American Girl doll represent your childhood? How does Nirvana or Taylor Swift inspire you? How does your favorite horror movie reflect your own truth or trauma? We'll read poems together, discuss them, and then Courtney will provide prompts to write your own pop culture-inspired poems. Courtney LeBlanc is the author of the full-length collections Her Dark Everything; Her Whole Bright Life (winner of the Jack McCarthy Book Prize); Exquisite Bloody, Beating Heart; and Beautiful & Full of Monsters. She is the Arlington County Poet Laureate and the founder and editor-in-chief of Riot in Your Throat, an independent poetry press. She is also the founder of the Poetry Coven, a monthly generative poetry workshop. She loves nail polish, tattoos, and a soy latte each morning.

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Nebraska Poetry Society Workshop: Melissa Fite Johnson (Read More)

The Nebraska Poetry Society is offering monthly Saturday morning online poetry workshops. Registration is required, and registration information may be found on the Nebraska Poetry Society webpage. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership. In this workshop we’ll discuss how often poetry is perceived as something very serious—unsmiling writers wearing black and spouting purposefully obscure references. And while poetry is certainly sometimes that (or a version of that), it absolutely doesn’t have to be. There’s so much room for playfulness and joy and humor in poetry—and those qualities don’t mean the poems themselves are necessarily light or light-hearted. Humor can happen for many reasons, one of which is that it can help make traumatic topics more palatable and accessible. Of course, another reason to write with humor is just to give others something to read that moves them to tears of laughter rather than tears of despair, and now more than ever that is as noble and necessary a purpose as any. Together we’ll read terrific humorous poems by writers like Erin Adair-Hodges, Chen Chen, and Luisa Muradyan—and then we’ll write and share our own. Melissa Fite Johnson is the author of three full-length collections, most recently Midlife Abecedarian (Riot in Your Throat, 2024). Her poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Pleiades, HAD, Whale Road Review, SWWIM, and elsewhere. Melissa teaches high school English in Lawrence, KS, where she and her husband live with their dogs.

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Nebraska Poetry Society Workshop: Brad Modlin (Read More)

The Nebraska Poetry Society is offering monthly Saturday morning online poetry workshops. Registration is required, and registration information may be found on the Nebraska Poetry Society webpage. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership. A quiet painting of farmers except a tiny man falls from the sky. A poem with a commercial break. The childhood memory that lands on your head on your grocery store run. Some art insists the out of place actually belongs—as if it's meant to be. We'll explore such art, fill some pages, and build some creative bridges that may freshen our perspectives on the things we make and the days we live. Bred MOdlin is The Paul and Clarice Reynolds Endowed Chair of Creative Writing and an associate professor. His book, Everyone at This Party Has Two Names won the Cowles Poetry Prize. His Surviving in Drought (fiction stories) won the Cupboard Contest. His poetry has been the basis for orchestral scores, a Brooklyn art exhibition, and numerous speeches, reflections, meditations, and podcasts. His poetry is featured in an episode of The Slowdown with U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón (American Public Media & The Poetry Foundation) and the premier episode of Poetry Unbound with Pádraig Ó Tuama (On Being Studios). He has been invited to read at the American School of Paris, been commissioned for poetry by the art gallery of the University of Melbourne (Australia), and given the keynote at Philsophique Poetica’s World Poetry Conference in India. He coordinates the Reynolds Visiting Writers Series, bringing writers from across the nation to share with us. On the other side of the equation, he happily gives readings as the guest of other universities, recently including University of Southern California, Los Angeles; Monroe Community College in New York; Western Kentucky University; and Northern Arizona University. He likes laughing with his students.

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Nebraska Poetry Society Workshop: Abby E. Murray (Read More)

The Nebraska Poetry Society is offering monthly Saturday morning online poetry workshops. Registration is required, and registration information may be found on the Nebraska Poetry Society webpage. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership. Participants in this workshop will consider several poems born in times of struggle to carry clarity and the doggedness of hope. We’ll explore the poetry of political upheaval and war, as well as familial and personal grief; in doing so, we’ll rediscover the techniques good listeners and writers have used for centuries to create poems that help us persevere. Prompts generated by the work at hand will get us writing, and poets will leave with drafts to carry onward through the dark. Abby E. Murray (they/them) is the editor of Collateral, a literary journal concerned with the impact of violent conflict and military service beyond the combat zone. Their first book, Hail and Farewell, won the Perugia Press Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award; their second book, Recovery Commands, recently won the Richard-Gabriel Rummonds Poetry Prize and will be published by Ex Ophidia Press in 2025. Abby served as the 2019-2021 poet laureate for the city of Tacoma, Washington, and currently teaches rhetoric in military strategy to Army War College fellows at the University of Washington. Their poems can be found in recent or forthcoming issues of One Art, the Pushcart Prize 2025 Anthology, Rattle: Poets Respond, and Birdbrains: A Lyrical Guide to the Birds of Washington State.

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Nebraska Poetry Society Workshop: Maria Zoccola (Read More)

The Nebraska Poetry Society is offering monthly Saturday morning online poetry workshops. Registration is required, and registration information may be found on the Nebraska Poetry Society webpage. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership. This generative workshop will explore the enduring influence of mythology, examining how ancient stories continue to shape our understanding of identity, power, beauty, and human nature. We’ll begin by looking at how classical myth informs contemporary poetry, starting with Helen of Troy, 1993, and expanding into works by poets like Rita Dove and Alice Oswald, who reimagine myth through ancient and modern lenses. These texts will serve as a springboard for discussing how myth lives within literature, poetry, and art. Participants will then receive creative prompts to write their own myth-inspired poems, whether drawing from ancient sources or reinventing archetypes to reflect today’s world. No prior knowledge of mythology is required—just curiosity and a love for creating stories with poetry. Maria Zoccola is a poet and educator from Memphis, Tennessee. She has writing degrees from Emory University and Falmouth University, and has spent many years leading creative writing workshops for middle and high school youth. Maria’s work has previously appeared in The Atlantic, Ploughshares, Kenyon Review, The Sewanee Review, ZYZZYVA, and elsewhere, and has received a special mention for the Pushcart Prize. Her debut poetry collection, Helen of Troy, 1993 (Scribner, 2025), earned a starred review from Publishers Weekly and was a New York Times Editor’s Choice pick. ​

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Nebraska Poets Reading Series: Allison Adelle Hedge Coke (Read More)

The free monthly Nebraska Poets Reading Series highlights the talent of Nebraska poets and invites discussion with audience members. All events are free online, but registration is required to receive an event link. Registration links for each poet’s event and additional details about each poet are available on the Nebraska Poetry Society’s website. Allison Adelle Hedge Coke came of age working in fields, factories, and waters. A labor and environmental poet, Hedge Coke was a sharecropper by the time she was mid-teens and continued manual labor until retraining for former fieldworkers nearing thirty years of age, after disabilities precluded continuation. Allison Adelle Hedge Coke teaches for UC Riverside, and is the author/editor of 18 books, including Look at This Blue, Burn, Streaming, Blood Run, Off-Season City Pipe, Dog Road Woman, The Year of the Rat, Effigies I, II, & III, Ahani, and Sing.

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Nebraska Poets Reading Series: Charles Fort (Read More)

The free monthly Nebraska Poets Reading Series highlights the talent of Nebraska poets and invites discussion with audience members. All events are free online, but registration is required to receive an event link. Registration links for each poet’s event and additional details about each poet are available on the Nebraska Poetry Society’s website. Charles Fort is the author of eight books of poetry and ten chapbooks including: The Town Clock Burning (St. Andrews Press)--We Did Not Fear the Father (Red Hen Press)--Darvil, Prose Poems Book 1 (St. Andrews Press)—We Did Not Fear the Father (Carnegie Mellon University Press, reprint, Contemporary Classic)--Frankenstein was a Negro, Prose Poems Book 2 (Backwaters Press)-- Mrs. Belladonna’s Supper Club Waltz, Book 3 (Backwaters Press) and appears in 43 anthologies and The Best American Poetry, 2001, 2003, and 2016. Fort is Emeritus Distinguished Endowed Professor at the University of Nebraska at Kearney and Founder of the Wendy Fort Foundation Theater of Fine Arts.

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Nebraska Poets Reading Series: Mary K. Stillwell (Read More)

The free monthly Nebraska Poets Reading Series highlights the talent of Nebraska poets and invites discussion with audience members. All events are free online, but registration is required to receive an event link. Registration links for each poet’s event and additional details about each poet are available on the Nebraska Poetry Society’s website. Mary K. Stillwell has studied with William Packard and Erica Jong in New York and Ted Kooser and Hilda Raz on the plains. She earned her PhD in plains literature from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. Her poems and criticism has appeared in The Paris Review, The Massachusetts Review, Prairie Schooner, Midwest Quarterly, South Dakota Review, The New York Quarterly, Midwest Quarterly, Book of Re-reading of Recent American Poetry II, Women’s Studies, More in Time, and numerous anthologies. Most recently, her poem, “Open Door, Green and Pine,” was published in the spring 2023 issue of Prairie Schooner.

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Nebraska Poets Reading Series: Jewel Rodgers (Read More)

The free monthly Nebraska Poets Reading Series highlights the talent of Nebraska poets and invites discussion with audience members. All events are free online, but registration is required to receive an event link. Registration links for each poet’s event and additional details about each poet are available on the Nebraska Poetry Society’s website. Jewel Rodgers is an interdisciplinary spoken word poet, performer, and visual artist from North Omaha, Nebraska. She is the 2025-2029 Nebraska State Poet, a 2023 Union for Contemporary Art Fellow and Populus Fund Grantee, and a 2022-2023 Omaha Entertainment & Arts Awards nominee for Best Performance Poet in Omaha. Alongside her artistic practice, she creates and maintains privately-held community amenities for public use while working professionally in commercial real estate.

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Nebraska Poets Reading Series: Janice N. Harrington (Read More)

The free monthly Nebraska Poets Reading Series highlights the talent of Nebraska poets and invites discussion with audience members. All events are free online, but registration is required to receive an event link. Registration links for each poet’s event and additional details about each poet are available on the Nebraska Poetry Society’s website. Harrington writes descriptive, lyrical, and experimental poems that speak to the Black American Imagination in all its multiplicity, advocating for a future that celebrates pleasure and self-fulfillment within Black communities. Janice N. Harrington’s writing reflects her interest in cultural history, the natural world, visual arts, and African American Life in the South and Midwest. Her latest book of poetry, Yard Show (BOA Editions), grows out of her three earlier books of poems, Even the Hollow My Body Made Is Gone, The Hands of Strangers, and Primitive: The Art and Life of Horace H. Pippin. Harrington is also an award-winning children’s author. She is a Cave Canem fellow and teaches creative writing at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

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Nebraska Poets Reading Series: Hadara Bar-Nadav (Read More)

The free monthly Nebraska Poets Reading Series highlights the talent of Nebraska poets and invites discussion with audience members. All events are free online, but registration is required to receive an event link. Registration links for each poet’s event and additional details about each poet are available on the Nebraska Poetry Society’s website. Hadara Bar-Nadav's latest book casts spells and confronts illusions, ignites grief and awe, and challenges our assumptions about what it means to heal our bodies, our families, and our shared histories. Hadara Bar-Nadav is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry, the Lucille Medwick Award from the Poetry Society of America, a fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, and other honors. Her books include The Animal Is Chemical (Four Way Books, 2024), awarded the Levis Prize in Poetry, selected by Jericho Brown; The New Nudity (Saturnalia Books, 2017); Lullaby (with Exit Sign) (Saturnalia Books, 2013), awarded the Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize; The Frame Called Ruin (New Issues, 2012), Editor’s Selection/Runner Up for the Green Rose Prize; and A Glass of Milk to Kiss Goodnight (Margie/Intuit House, 2007), awarded the Margie Book Prize. She is also the author of two chapbooks, Fountain and Furnace (Tupelo Press, 2015), awarded the Sunken Garden Poetry Prize, and Show Me Yours (Laurel Review/Green Tower Press 2010), awarded the Midwest Poets Series Prize.  In addition, she is co-author with Michelle Boisseau of the best-selling textbook Writing Poems, 8th ed. (Pearson, 2011). Her poetry has appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Believer, The Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, and elsewhere.  A current reader for Poetry, she is a Professor of English and teaches in the MFA program at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

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Nebraska Poetry Society Workshop: Matt Mason (Read More)

Matt Mason State Poet Photo
The Nebraska Poetry Society is offering monthly Saturday morning online poetry workshops. Registration is required, and registration information may be found on the Nebraska Poetry Society webpage. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership. Some songs have a magical way of transporting us through time. They evoke vivid memories, stirring up feelings of nostalgia, joy, or reflection. In this workshop, we’ll explore the songs that have shaped us and look at how music can serve as a powerful gateway to poetry. We’ll look at the songs that connect us to our past, reliving moments of youth while discovering fresh insights in the present. Then, we’ll discuss how to transform these emotional snapshots into poems. Whether you’re a seasoned poet or a newcomer to writing, this workshop invites you to turn the soundtrack of your life into art. MATT MASON is the former Nebraska State Poet and was the Executive Director of the Nebraska Writers Collective from 2009-2022. Through the US State Department, he has run workshops in Botswana, Romania, Nepal, and Belarus. Mason is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and fellowships from the Academy of American Poets and the Nebraska Arts Council. His work can be found in The New York Times, on NPR’s Morning Edition, in American Life in Poetry, and more. Mason's 5th book, Rock Stars, was released by Button Poetry in 2023.

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Nebraska Poetry Society Workshop: Kiara Nicole Letcher (Read More)

The Nebraska Poetry Society is offering monthly Saturday morning online poetry workshops. Registration is required, and registration information may be found on the Nebraska Poetry Society webpage. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership. Writing from out of the ordinary in an exploration in peculiar poetry. In this workshop, we will look at poems that deal with the supernatural — poems that peer beyond the veil and utilize a supernatural element. From Poe, Keats, Lorca, and Rossetti, among others, we will explore these poems and what they say about the seen and unseen world. Through these works, we’ll consider how the supernatural in poetry reflects deep-seated human questions about mortality, reality, and the limits of human understanding. By reading and discussing these pieces, participants will engage with how different eras and cultures have expressed universal themes of fear, mystery, and fascination with the unknown. Participants will have the opportunity to ruminate and investigate poems of the paranormal, gaining insights into how these eerie elements serve as a window into humanity's beliefs and values. They will also craft their own poems with a twist of the eerie, adding to a long-standing tradition of poetic exploration that bridges the tangible and intangible aspects of human experience. KIARA NICOLE LETCHER is the author of Oxblood, (Agape Editions, 2024) and the chapbook Scream Queen (Orchard Street Press, 2019). Her work has appeared in South Dakota Review, Green Mountains Review, Plainsongs Magazine, Solstice Literary Magazine, Querencia Press and Mulberry Literary, among other publications. Her work is also forthcoming in Laurel Review.      She received her MFA from The University of Nebraska at Omaha and previously served as a Board Member for the Nebraska Writer’s Collective. She was the 2024 Keynote Speaker for the Nebraska Scholastic Writing Awards and a Nebraska State Poet Nominee.

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Nebraska Poetry Society Workshop: ​Raena Shirali (Read More)

The Nebraska Poetry Society is offering monthly Saturday morning online poetry workshops. Registration is required, and registration information may be found on the Nebraska Poetry Society webpage. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership. In an era defined by turmoil, poetry of witness is newly defined by resistance. Although anger is culturally maligned as immature, reactionary, hysterical, and easily dismissed by the structures that be, what connects us to seemingly insurmountable forces of oppression is our fury in the face of indignity. In this workshop, participants will work in the lineage of poetry of witness, considering the evolution and contemporary iteration of the response poem. Together, we will work with, not through, righteous indignation at the state of the world. This is not fine. Let’s whine about it. RAENA SHIRALI is the author of two collections of poetry. Her first book, GILT, was released by YesYes Books in 2017 and won the 2018 Milt Kessler Poetry Book Award. Published by Black Lawrence Press in October 2022, her second book, summonings, won the 2021 Hudson Prize and was shortlisted for the 2022 Julie Suk Award. Winner of a Pushcart Prize & a former Philip Roth Resident at Bucknell University, Shirali is also the recipient of prizes and honors from VIDA, Gulf Coast, Boston Review, & Cosmonauts Avenue. Her work has appeared in American Poetry Review, Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A Day, The Nation, The Rumpus, & elsewhere. Formerly Co-Editor-in-Chief of Muzzle Magazine, Shirali now serves as Faculty Advisor for Folio—a literary magazine dedicated to publishing works by undergraduate students at the national level. She holds an MFA in Poetry from The Ohio State University and is an Associate Professor of English at Holy Family University.

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Nebraska Poetry Society Workshop: Anastacia Reneé (Read More)

The Nebraska Poetry Society is offering monthly Saturday morning online poetry workshops. Registration is required, and registration information may be found on the Nebraska Poetry Society webpage. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership. Memory (the deliberate act of remembering) is a form of willed creation. It is not an effort to find out the way it really was--that is research. The point is to dwell on the way it appeared and why it appeared in that particular way. -Toni Morrison In this genre-bending workshop we will collectively and independently explore and interrogate stories, communal folklore and our archival of memories. We will lay our memories (from multiple points of view) out and jigsaw them to create first drafts of The Haibun, and The Nines poems. All class text will be provided by workshop facilitator. ANASTACIA RENEÉ is a queer writer, educator, interdisciplinary artist, playwright, former radio host, TEDX speaker, and podcaster. She is the author of Here In The (Middle) Of Nowhere, Side Notes From The Archivist, (v.) and Forget It. Sidenotes from the Archivist was selected as one of “NYPL Best Books of 2023,” and, The American Library Associations (RUSA) “Notable Books of 2024.” She is a recipient of the James W. Ray Distinguished Artist Award (Literary) and she was selected by NBC News as part of the list of "Queer Artist of Color Dominate 2021's Must See LGBTQ Art Shows," for (Don’t Be Absurd) Alice in Parts, an installation at Frye Art Museum. Renee served as Seattle Civic Poet (2017-1019) during Seattle’s inaugural year of UNESCO status. Renee has been, Hugo House Poet-in-Residence, and Jack Straw Curator. Their work has been published widely.

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Nebraska Poetry Society Workshop: MK Chavez (Read More)

The Nebraska Poetry Society is offering monthly Saturday morning online poetry workshops. Registration is required, and registration information may be found on the Nebraska Poetry Society webpage. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership. This workshop will explore how hybrid poetry serves as a powerful tool for self-exploration and expression. By engaging with the fluid and transformative nature of hybrid forms, we’ll delve into how our identities, shaped by the intersections of various influences, can be authentically reflected in our writing. We will examine how hybrid poems, which blend elements of narrative, memoir, and cultural commentary, allow us to navigate the complexities of our inner and outer worlds. Participants will have the opportunity to create works that capture the richness of their experiences, exploring themes of identity, place, and the self in all its dimensions. This workshop invites writers to move beyond traditional forms, using hybrid poetry as a way to express the multifaceted nature of their authentic selves. Whether you’re experienced in poetry or new to this form, this workshop will provide a supportive space to explore the connections between our lived experiences and our creative expressions. MK CHAVEZ is a writer and educator whose work explores mixed-race identity, social justice, environmental resilience, horror cinema, magic, ritual, and the creative process. As founder of the Ouroboros Writing Lab, MK Chavez provides a nurturing space for writers to grow. The Lab offers workshops designed to expand creative boundaries and individual and group creative coaching. Chavez’s work is recognized with the Pen Josephine Miles Award, San Francisco Foundation/Nomadic Press Literary Award, and the Ruth Weiss Maverick Award. Chavez’s publications include Dear Animal, Mothermorphosis, the lyric essay chapbook A Brief History of the Selfie, and Virgin Eyes. Recent work can be found as part of the art installation Manifest Differently. ​

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Nebraska Poetry Society Workshop: Jessica Poli (Read More)

The Nebraska Poetry Society is offering monthly Saturday morning online poetry workshops. Registration is required, and registration information may be found on the Nebraska Poetry Society webpage. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership. How do the landscapes we've lived in shape the way we think, feel, and create? In Crossing Open Ground, Barry Lopez suggests that “the shape of the individual mind is affected by land as it is by genes.” There is a profound connection between our inner lives and the physical spaces we inhabit. In this generative workshop, we will consider the ways the physical world influences our interior landscapes, and how those interior landscapes, in turn, might shape our poems. Through guided prompts, reflective discussion, and close readings of place-inspired poems, you’ll learn to translate your experiences of land — whether wide-open spaces, urban corners, or intimate settings — into vivid, textured poetry. JESSICA POLI is the author of Red Ocher (University of Arkansas Press), which was a finalist for the 2023 Miller Williams Prize. Her work has appeared in Best New Poets, North American Review, Poet Lore, and Salamander, among other places. She is currently a PhD student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where she is an Associate Editor for Prairie Schooner.

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Nebraska Poets Reading Series: John Brehm (Read More)

The free monthly Nebraska Poets Reading Series highlights the talent of Nebraska poets and invites discussion with audience members. All events are free online, but registration is required to receive an event link. Registration links for each poet’s event and additional details about each poet are available on the Nebraska Poetry Society’s website. Brehm’s poems explore the darkest and brightest moments of our lives. Some show a path forward and others simply acknowledge and empathize with where we are, but all touch deep inside our hearts and into a greater connection with the world around us. John Brehm is the author of four books of original poetry: Sea of Faith, Help Is on the Way, No Day at the Beach, and most recently, Dharma Talk. He’s also the author of a book of essays, The Dharma of Poetry: How Poems Can Deepen Your Spiritual Practice and Open You to Joy, and the editor of the bestselling anthology The Poetry of Impermanence, Mindfulness, and Joy, both from Wisdom Publications. With his wife, Felden­krais teacher Alice Boyd, he leads mindfulness retreats that incorporate Feldenkrais Awareness through Movement lessons, meditation, and mindful poetry discussions. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

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Nebraska Poets Reading Series: Jeff Alessandrelli (Read More)

The free monthly Nebraska Poets Reading Series highlights the talent of Nebraska poets and invites discussion with audience members. All events are free online, but registration is required to receive an event link. Registration links for each poet’s event and additional details about each poet are available on the Nebraska Poetry Society’s website. Jeff's poetry interrogates how deep senselessness runs in a post-truth and truthiness world. Jeff Alessandrelli is most recently the author of the book And Yet (Future Tense Books, 2024). The Kenyon Review called his 2019 poetry collection Fur Not Light an “example of radical humility…its poems enact a quiet but persistent empathy in the world of creative writing.” Recent work by Alessandrelli appears or is forthcoming in The American Poetry Review, Chicago Review, and Buckmxn Journal. In addition to his writing Jeff also directs the nonprofit book press/record label Fonograf Editions.

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Nebraska Poets Reading Series: Steve Langan (Read More)

The free monthly Nebraska Poets Reading Series highlights the talent of Nebraska poets and invites discussion with audience members. All events are free online, but registration is required to receive an event link. Registration links for each poet’s event and additional details about each poet are available on the Nebraska Poetry Society’s website. This reading features modern-day parables that take stock of our society at the turn of the century. Steve Langan lived in Omaha for many years and now he lives in Maine. He graduated from the University of Nebraska Omaha and the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, where he received the James Michener Postgraduate Fellowship. Langan formed Seven Doctors Project (7DP), an ongoing creative writing workshop designed for mid-career physicians who were willing to claim job burnout and dissatisfaction, at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in 2008. He returned to his alma mater in 2019 to help form and lead UNO's Major in Medical Humanities. He currently teaches classes at Baylor University Medical Humanities. Langan's poems are in a variety of journals, including Columbia, Cutbank, Diagram, DoubleTake, Fence, Flyway, MAKE, Meridian, Pool, Shade, Slope, Sweet, Make, Verse, and Witness. His books are Freezing, Notes on Exile & Other Poems, Meet Me at the Happy Bar, What It Looks Like, How It Flies, and Bedtime Stories (Littoral Books, 2024)

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Nebraska Poets Reading Series: Elizabeth Clark Wessel (Read More)

The free monthly Nebraska Poets Reading Series highlights the talent of Nebraska poets and invites discussion with audience members. All events are free online, but registration is required to receive an event link. Registration links for each poet’s event and additional details about each poet are available on the Nebraska Poetry Society’s website. Wessel unspools layers of mythology—of places, people, historical and ahistorical time—and finds their entanglements with everyday life, revealing marvelous influences encoded in the ordinary. Originally from rural Nebraska, Elizabeth Clark Wessel now lives in Stockholm, Sweden and works as a translator of Swedish literature. She’s the author of four chapbooks of poetry, and her poems have appeared widely in journals, including Fence, Boston Review, and the American Poetry Review. None of It Belongs to Me (Game Over Books, 2024) is her first full-length collection.

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Nebraska Poets Reading Series: Lisa Fay Coutley (Read More)

The free monthly Nebraska Poets Reading Series highlights the talent of Nebraska poets and invites discussion with audience members. All events are free online, but registration is required to receive an event link. Registration links for each poet’s event and additional details about each poet are available on the Nebraska Poetry Society’s website. These readings explore parasitic relationships — between men and women, sons and mothers, and humans and the earth — and considers their consequences. How much control do we have over our lives? To what extent are we being controlled? Lisa Fay Coutley is the author of HOST (Wisconsin Poetry Series, 2024), tether (Black Lawrence Press, 2020), Errata (Southern Illinois University, 2015), winner of the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Open Competition, In the Carnival of Breathing (BLP, 2011), winner of the Black River Chapbook Competition, Small Girl: Micromemoirs (Harbor Editions, 2024), and she is the editor of In the Tempered Dark: Contemporary Poets Transcending Elegy (BLP, 2023). Her poetry has been awarded an NEA Fellowship, an Academy of American Poets Levis Prize, chosen by Dana Levin, and the 2021 Gulf Coast Poetry Prize, selected by Natalie Diaz. Recent prose & poetry appeared in the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, Barrelhouse, Brevity, North American Review, The Massachusetts Review, and on The Slowdown. She is an Associate Professor of Poetry & CNF in the Writer’s Workshop at UNO.

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Nebraska Poets Reading Series: Carolina Hotchandani (Read More)

The free monthly Nebraska Poets Reading Series highlights the talent of Nebraska poets and invites discussion with audience members. All events are free online, but registration is required to receive an event link. Registration links for each poet’s event and additional details about each poet are available on the Nebraska Poetry Society’s website. Hotchandani's poems interrogate what it means to be full or empty (of words, of the past, of another human being). She examines shifts in identity due to Partition, immigration, illness, and birth. Carolina Hotchandani is the author of The Book Eaters, 2023 Perugia Press Prize Winner, which was one of the ten debut poetry books featured in Poets & Writers Magazine’s 2024 debut poets issue and winner of the Nebraska Book Prize in the Poetry Honor category. Hotchandani’s poetry has appeared in The Atlantic, AGNI, Beloit Poetry Journal, Missouri Review, Prairie Schooner, and various other journals. She is a Goodrich Assistant Professor of English in Omaha, Nebraska, where she lives with her husband and daughter.

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Nebraska Poetry Society Workshop: Julia Guez (Read More)

The Nebraska Poetry Society is offering monthly Saturday morning online poetry workshops. Registration is required, and registration information may be found on the Nebraska Poetry Society webpage. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership. December 14, Julia Guez "Mapping Our Poems" In "The Archaeology of Knowledge," Michel Foucault writes, “The frontiers of a book are never clear-cut: beyond the title, the first lines, and the last full stop, beyond its internal configuration and its autonomous forms, it is caught up in a system of references to other books, other texts, other sentences: it is a node within a network.” In this generative writing class, we will begin with a word or phrase, line or lines from another book of poetry. After mapping out ideas, feelings, rhythms, syntaxes and words we associate with the line or lines we have brought in, we will start work on our own poems. (Throughout, we will engage in mini-breaks that can be incorporated into people’s everyday writing rituals in the future, to spur our creativity and collaboration as a workshop). The lines we begin with may be embedded in the poem we write, or turn out to serve as the seed, scaffold or prompt. The process of building a poem in conversation with other poets and poetry, is one that will hopefully prove to be a rewarding approach for you to take in your writing practice moving forward. JULIA GUEZ is a writer and translator based in the city of Houston. "The Certain Body" (Four Way Books, 2022) is her second collection of poetry, written while she was recovering from COVID in the spring of 2020. Guez holds degrees from Rice and Columbia.

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Nebraska Poetry Society Workshop: Erica Reid (Read More)

The Nebraska Poetry Society is offering monthly Saturday morning online poetry workshops. Registration is required, and registration information may be found on the Nebraska Poetry Society webpage. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership. November 2, Erica Reid "Glorious Dailiness" As poet Mary Ruefle says, “I did not always know authors were ordinary people living ordinary lives.” What do we lose when we fail to celebrate — or worse, ignore! — the wondrous details of ordinary life? This generative workshop makes space for that celebration through conversation, example poems, and dedicated writing time with prompts to help capture the details of our own glorious dailiness. ERICA REID's debut collection "Ghost Man on Second" won the 2023 Donald Justice Poetry Prize and was published by Autumn House Press earlier this year. Erica’s poems appear in Rattle, Cherry Tree, Colorado Review, and more.

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Nebraska Poetry Society Workshop: Lisa Fay Coutley (Read More)

The Nebraska Poetry Society is offering monthly Saturday morning online poetry workshops. Registration is required, and registration information may be found on the Nebraska Poetry Society webpage. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership. October 26, Lisa Fay Coutley "Infecting the Text: Letting Trauma Take its Necessary Shape" By now you've heard writers—especially poets and lyric essayists—suggest that you should let your content inform your form as often as you've heard them say show don't tell, though as it is with most things, both are easier said than done. The former requires us to write from the body while letting go—a feat not easily mastered by any writer and complicated even more by difficult content. Often what we need most is permission and imaginative examples. This workshop will provide you with both. LISA FAY COUTLEY is the author of HOST (Wisconsin Poetry Series, 2024), tether (Black Lawrence Press, 2020), Errata (Southern Illinois University, 2015), winner of the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Open Competition, In the Carnival of Breathing (BLP, 2011), winner of the Black River Chapbook Competition, Small Girl: Micromemoirs (Harbor Editions, 2024), and she is the editor of In the Tempered Dark: Contemporary Poets Transcending Elegy (BLP, 2023).

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Nebraska Poetry Society Workshop: Javon Rustin (Read More)

The Nebraska Poetry Society is offering monthly Saturday morning online poetry workshops. Registration is required, and registration information may be found on the Nebraska Poetry Society webpage. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership. September 7, Javon Rustin "Bringing Home Metaphors - From Stars to Constellations" Every line of poetry is a star. In this class, we will be making constellations. We will lay out our stars into a shape that will guide readers / listeners to a deeper meaning the same way stars have guided ship captains through nights at sea. All constellations are extended metaphors. We will be going through the process of beginning and editing poems in ways that make our extended metaphors clear to audiences and easy to create. Our constellations will be made of stories and the people we hold close. JAVON RUSTIN is a poet, performer, and programmer; a writer of stories, stanzas, and software. He started competing in poetry slams after graduating from North Carolina A&T in 2013. Since then Javon has been a National Poetry Slam finalist and Regional Slam champion. He ranked 5th in the 2023 National Blackberry Peach Poetry Slam and has worked as a teaching artist for youth in D.C. and Dallas Public School Districts.

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Nebraska Poetry Society Workshop: Keisha-Gaye Anderson (Read More)

The Nebraska Poetry Society is offering monthly Saturday morning online poetry workshops. Registration is required, and registration information may be found on the Nebraska Poetry Society webpage. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership. August 24, Keisha-Gaye Anderson "Crafting Identity: How to Write Like Your Authentic Self" Who are we? Who are we told we are? Who do we know ourselves to be? This workshop will explore how identity—imagined, imposed, and re-imagined—is utilized in poetics to communicate and construct objective and subjective reality. Through close examination of language, structure, form and other devices used within selected poems, workshop participants will become familiar with approaches to this craft that focus on powerfully probing and defining identity, in ways that empower them and accurately reflect the themes or experiences they are exploring in their writing. To that end, a series of writing prompts will be used so that participants may generate poems from different perspectives in order to move closer to the expression of their essential/hidden selves in their writing. We will also tackle basic elements of poetry and discuss workshop poems using select poetic forms. KEISHA-GAYE ANDERSON is a Jamaican-born poet, writer, and visual artist based in Brooklyn, NY. Her poetry books include: Gathering the Waters (Jamii Publishing 2014) Everything Is Necessary (Willow Books 2019) and A Spell for Living (Agape 2020), which received the Editors’ Choice recognition for the Numinous Orisons, Luminous Origin Literary Award.  

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Nebraska Poetry Society Workshop: Matt Mason (Read More)

Matt Mason State Poet Photo
The Nebraska Poetry Society is offering monthly Saturday morning online poetry workshops. Registration is required, and registration information may be found on the Nebraska Poetry Society webpage. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership. July 20 - Matt Mason It's Time for the Lightening Round! Poetry is always about concision, about writing something small and quick with no excess of words or lines or ideas or lines like this way-too-long sentence. Let's see what we can do with shorter poems, fitting ideas into smaller spaces like snapshots or meditations. MATT MASON is the Nebraska State Poet and was Executive Director of the Nebraska Writers Collective from 2009-2022. Through the US State Department, he has run workshops in Botswana, Romania, Nepal, and Belarus.

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Michael Broder: Working with Story, Structure, Music & Imagination (Read More)

In an influential 1988 essay, poet Gregory Orr identifies story, structure, music, and imagination as the four temperaments that define poets and their poetry. What is your poetic temperament? In this class, we will explore Orr’s model, delving into his ideas about the interaction of finite temperaments (story, structure) and infinite temperaments (music, imagination). Reading poems by Julia Alvarez, Gwendolyn Brooks, Audre Lorde, Frank O’Hara, Dorothy Parker, James Wright, and others, we will observe how the four temperaments allow poets, in the words of Orr, “to forge language into the convincing unities we call poems.” This class is suitable for writers and readers alike. Poets will gain new insight into their own poetic temperament and how they can refine it to achieve their creative objectives. Readers will deepen their engagement with poetry by acquiring a new interpretive framework. A segment devoted to generative writing will allow writers and non-writers alike to explore their poetic temperament. ​Michael Broder is the author of "Drug and Disease Free" (Indolent Books, 2016) and "This Life Now" (A Midsummer Night’s Press, 2014), a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry. His work has been published in Columbia Poetry Review, The American Poetry Review, The New York Times, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and numerous others. He holds a BA from Columbia University, an MFA from New York University, and a PhD in classics from The Graduate Center, CUNY. ​Registration is required via the Nebraska Poetry Society website. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership.

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Kelsey Bigelow: Bridging the Page & Stage Gap (Read More)

Too often, poets segment our genre into "traditional page poetry" and "modern spoken word poetry," believing we are one or the other. This creates a divide and only grows the disconnect between page and stage poets. Join Kelsey Bigelow, a poet living in the spectrum between both styles, as she guides us through how to bridge this gap and learn how each style informs the other. Kelsey Bigelow is a spoken word and page poet based in Des Moines. In her work, she molds incredibly specific emotions into something human, digestible, and cathartic. She released her chapbook, "Sprig of Lilac," in 2018 and released her spoken word album, Depression Holders and Secret Keepers, in 2021. Her work is published in or forthcoming with Central Avenue Publishing, Pile Press, Lyrical Iowa, Backchannels Journal, Spirit Lake Review, and elsewhere, and she is a 2024 Pushcart Prize nominee. She's the founder and leader of the Des Moines Poetry Workshop, the chair for the Iowa Poetry Association Poetry Slam, the co-tournament director for the BlackBerry Peach National Poetry Slam, and more. Registration is required via the Nebraska Poetry Society website. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership.

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Eleanor Reeds: Using “You” in Poems (Read More)

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Poems often address those who cannot be reached. We appeal to the west wind or reproach an absent lover, knowing it is impossible for them to hear us and yet trusting in the power of poetic language to communicate. In this session, we will explore poems that can be read by everyone except the "you" to whom they are addressed. We will then experiment with using techniques such as invocation and apostrophe in our own poems. Eleanor Reeds (she/her) is a poet, essayist, critic, and educator from the United Kingdom who has served as the Associate Editor for Plainsongs for the past five years. Her work has appeared in aurora journal and Long River Review. She received a PhD in English from the University of Connecticut and currently teaches at Hastings College. Registration is required via the Nebraska Poetry Society website. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership.

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Caleb “The Negro Artist” Rainey: Using Spoken Word Techniques (Read More)

When a poet steps to the microphone, truth on the tip of their tongue and vulnerability in their voice, you listen. But what writing techniques does a performance poet use to hook their audience? From the syntax of the first line, to the structure of the whole poem, spoken word artists have found multiple ways to keep the audience’s attention. You may be a master at creating images, a poet that can capture passion and pain, even a talented storyteller, but if you cannot hook your audience they won’t stick around long enough for you to prove it. This workshop, designed for novice and experienced poets, will focus on the hook by examining the spoken word artists that have found a way—in just a minute—to capture the attention of millions of viewers online. The artists include names such as Neil Hilborn, Javon Johnson, Sabrina Benaim, Blythe Bard, and many others. ​Caleb "The Negro Artist" Rainey is an author, performer, and producer. His debut book, "Look, Black Boy," was awarded first prize in the North Street Book Prize, and his second book, "Heart Notes" was published in 2019. He released two spoken word albums, a studio version of Look, Black Boy, and a performance album titled, Heart Notes Live! For three years in a row he was named Best Poet/Spoken Word Performer in Cedar Rapids & Iowa City. He is the winner of several slams across the United States, has shared the stage with spoken word titans such as Siaara Freeman, Javon Johnson, Ebony Stewart, Anthony McPherson, and Patricia Smith. Videos of his performances can be found on his YouTube channel, Write About Now, and Button Poetry. When he is not writing and performing he is actively curating a community of spoken word poets in Iowa City through his high school program, IC Speaks, and producing events like the Mic Check Poetry Fest. Registration is required via the Nebraska Poetry Society website. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership.

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Nebraska Poets Virtual Reading Series 2024 (Read More)

The free monthly Nebraska Poets Reading Series highlights the talent of Nebraska poets and invites discussion with audience members. All events are free online, but registration is required to receive an event link. Registration links for each poet’s event and additional details about each poet are available on the Nebraska Poetry Society’s website. February 6, AA Monet AA Monet is a poet, author, book publisher, editor, and space creator for emotions to freely and safely exist. AA Monet’s poetry book, Lost And Found, can be found in local stores in the Omaha area. March 5, Barbar Schmitz Barbar Schmitz taught writing and literature at Northeast College for 30 years; two of her books have won the Poetry Award from the Nebraska Center for the Book, and she received an Individual Artist Award from the Nebraska Arts Council. April 2, Katie Schmid Katie Schmid is a National Endowment for the Arts fellow in creative writing for 2023 and an Assistant Professor of English at Ursinus College in PA with a debut book entitled "Nowhere." May 7, J.V. Brummels J.V. Brummels is a poet, novelist, short-story writer, editor, and rancher. His collection "Book of Grass" was awarded the 2008 Nebraska Book Award for Poetry. June 4, Veronica Torraca-Bragdon Veronica Torraca-Bragdon is a poet, singer/songwriter, and special educator, with a degree in K-12 Vocal/Instrumental Education and a masters in Special Education from UNO whose poems have been set to music. July 2, Bonnie Johnson-Bartee Bonnie Johnson-Bartee teaches creative writing and literature at Wayne State College and Northeast Community College in Norfolk, and her latest book, "Cord Blood" won a 2023 Nebraska Book Award. August 6, Hannah Wilkinson Hannah Wilkinson has published two poetry collections: "Unto the Breach" and "Half Agony, Half Hope." September 3, Twyla Hansen Twyla Hansen is a HN Speaker’s Bureau member and the first female Nebraska State Poet from 2013 to 2018. October 1, Jon Volkmer Jon Volkmer is a professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at Ursinus College in PA who has published several books and a poetry collection. November 5, Kassandra Monta Kassandra Monta holds a master’s degree in English Literature and won an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Nebraska Arts Council. December 3, Julie S Paschold Julie S Paschold has published “Horizons” - a poetry collection honoring soil - and two of their chapbooks won honorable mention in Writer's Digest contest.  

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Nebraska Poets Virtual Reading Series 2024 (Read More)

The free monthly Nebraska Poets Reading Series highlights the talent of Nebraska poets and invites discussion with audience members. All events are free online, but registration is required to receive an event link. Registration links for each poet’s event and additional details about each poet are available on the Nebraska Poetry Society’s website. February 6, AA Monet AA Monet is a poet, author, book publisher, editor, and space creator for emotions to freely and safely exist. AA Monet’s poetry book, Lost And Found, can be found in local stores in the Omaha area. March 5, Barbar Schmitz Barbar Schmitz taught writing and literature at Northeast College for 30 years; two of her books have won the Poetry Award from the Nebraska Center for the Book, and she received an Individual Artist Award from the Nebraska Arts Council. April 2, Katie Schmid Katie Schmid is a National Endowment for the Arts fellow in creative writing for 2023 and an Assistant Professor of English at Ursinus College in PA with a debut book entitled "Nowhere." May 7, J.V. Brummels J.V. Brummels is a poet, novelist, short-story writer, editor, and rancher. His collection "Book of Grass" was awarded the 2008 Nebraska Book Award for Poetry. June 4, Veronica Torraca-Bragdon Veronica Torraca-Bragdon is a poet, singer/songwriter, and special educator, with a degree in K-12 Vocal/Instrumental Education and a masters in Special Education from UNO whose poems have been set to music. July 2, Bonnie Johnson-Bartee Bonnie Johnson-Bartee teaches creative writing and literature at Wayne State College and Northeast Community College in Norfolk, and her latest book, "Cord Blood" won a 2023 Nebraska Book Award. August 6, Hannah Wilkinson Hannah Wilkinson has published two poetry collections: "Unto the Breach" and "Half Agony, Half Hope." September 3, Twyla Hansen Twyla Hansen is a HN Speaker’s Bureau member and the first female Nebraska State Poet from 2013 to 2018. October 1, Jon Volkmer Jon Volkmer is a professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at Ursinus College in PA who has published several books and a poetry collection. November 5, Kassandra Monta Kassandra Monta holds a master’s degree in English Literature and won an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Nebraska Arts Council. December 3, Julie S Paschold Julie S Paschold has published “Horizons” - a poetry collection honoring soil - and two of their chapbooks won honorable mention in Writer's Digest contest.  

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Nebraska Poets Virtual Reading Series 2024 (Read More)

The free monthly Nebraska Poets Reading Series highlights the talent of Nebraska poets and invites discussion with audience members. All events are free online, but registration is required to receive an event link. Registration links for each poet’s event and additional details about each poet are available on the Nebraska Poetry Society’s website. February 6, AA Monet AA Monet is a poet, author, book publisher, editor, and space creator for emotions to freely and safely exist. AA Monet’s poetry book, Lost And Found, can be found in local stores in the Omaha area. March 5, Barbar Schmitz Barbar Schmitz taught writing and literature at Northeast College for 30 years; two of her books have won the Poetry Award from the Nebraska Center for the Book, and she received an Individual Artist Award from the Nebraska Arts Council. April 2, Katie Schmid Katie Schmid is a National Endowment for the Arts fellow in creative writing for 2023 and an Assistant Professor of English at Ursinus College in PA with a debut book entitled "Nowhere." May 7, J.V. Brummels J.V. Brummels is a poet, novelist, short-story writer, editor, and rancher. His collection "Book of Grass" was awarded the 2008 Nebraska Book Award for Poetry. June 4, Veronica Torraca-Bragdon Veronica Torraca-Bragdon is a poet, singer/songwriter, and special educator, with a degree in K-12 Vocal/Instrumental Education and a masters in Special Education from UNO whose poems have been set to music. July 2, Bonnie Johnson-Bartee Bonnie Johnson-Bartee teaches creative writing and literature at Wayne State College and Northeast Community College in Norfolk, and her latest book, "Cord Blood" won a 2023 Nebraska Book Award. August 6, Hannah Wilkinson Hannah Wilkinson has published two poetry collections: "Unto the Breach" and "Half Agony, Half Hope." September 3, Twyla Hansen Twyla Hansen is a HN Speaker’s Bureau member and the first female Nebraska State Poet from 2013 to 2018. October 1, Jon Volkmer Jon Volkmer is a professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at Ursinus College in PA who has published several books and a poetry collection. November 5, Kassandra Monta Kassandra Monta holds a master’s degree in English Literature and won an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Nebraska Arts Council. December 3, Julie S Paschold Julie S Paschold has published “Horizons” - a poetry collection honoring soil - and two of their chapbooks won honorable mention in Writer's Digest contest.  

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Nebraska Poets Virtual Reading Series 2024 (Read More)

The free monthly Nebraska Poets Reading Series highlights the talent of Nebraska poets and invites discussion with audience members. All events are free online, but registration is required to receive an event link. Registration links for each poet’s event and additional details about each poet are available on the Nebraska Poetry Society’s website. February 6, AA Monet AA Monet is a poet, author, book publisher, editor, and space creator for emotions to freely and safely exist. AA Monet’s poetry book, Lost And Found, can be found in local stores in the Omaha area. March 5, Barbar Schmitz Barbar Schmitz taught writing and literature at Northeast College for 30 years; two of her books have won the Poetry Award from the Nebraska Center for the Book, and she received an Individual Artist Award from the Nebraska Arts Council. April 2, Katie Schmid Katie Schmid is a National Endowment for the Arts fellow in creative writing for 2023 and an Assistant Professor of English at Ursinus College in PA with a debut book entitled "Nowhere." May 7, J.V. Brummels J.V. Brummels is a poet, novelist, short-story writer, editor, and rancher. His collection "Book of Grass" was awarded the 2008 Nebraska Book Award for Poetry. June 4, Veronica Torraca-Bragdon Veronica Torraca-Bragdon is a poet, singer/songwriter, and special educator, with a degree in K-12 Vocal/Instrumental Education and a masters in Special Education from UNO whose poems have been set to music. July 2, Bonnie Johnson-Bartee Bonnie Johnson-Bartee teaches creative writing and literature at Wayne State College and Northeast Community College in Norfolk, and her latest book, "Cord Blood" won a 2023 Nebraska Book Award. August 6, Hannah Wilkinson Hannah Wilkinson has published two poetry collections: "Unto the Breach" and "Half Agony, Half Hope." September 3, Twyla Hansen Twyla Hansen is a HN Speaker’s Bureau member and the first female Nebraska State Poet from 2013 to 2018. October 1, Jon Volkmer Jon Volkmer is a professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at Ursinus College in PA who has published several books and a poetry collection. November 5, Kassandra Monta Kassandra Monta holds a master’s degree in English Literature and won an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Nebraska Arts Council. December 3, Julie S Paschold Julie S Paschold has published “Horizons” - a poetry collection honoring soil - and two of their chapbooks won honorable mention in Writer's Digest contest.  

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Nebraska Poets Virtual Reading Series 2024 (Read More)

The free monthly Nebraska Poets Reading Series highlights the talent of Nebraska poets and invites discussion with audience members. All events are free online, but registration is required to receive an event link. Registration links for each poet’s event and additional details about each poet are available on the Nebraska Poetry Society’s website. February 6, AA Monet AA Monet is a poet, author, book publisher, editor, and space creator for emotions to freely and safely exist. AA Monet’s poetry book, Lost And Found, can be found in local stores in the Omaha area. March 5, Barbar Schmitz Barbar Schmitz taught writing and literature at Northeast College for 30 years; two of her books have won the Poetry Award from the Nebraska Center for the Book, and she received an Individual Artist Award from the Nebraska Arts Council. April 2, Katie Schmid Katie Schmid is a National Endowment for the Arts fellow in creative writing for 2023 and an Assistant Professor of English at Ursinus College in PA with a debut book entitled "Nowhere." May 7, J.V. Brummels J.V. Brummels is a poet, novelist, short-story writer, editor, and rancher. His collection "Book of Grass" was awarded the 2008 Nebraska Book Award for Poetry. June 4, Veronica Torraca-Bragdon Veronica Torraca-Bragdon is a poet, singer/songwriter, and special educator, with a degree in K-12 Vocal/Instrumental Education and a masters in Special Education from UNO whose poems have been set to music. July 2, Bonnie Johnson-Bartee Bonnie Johnson-Bartee teaches creative writing and literature at Wayne State College and Northeast Community College in Norfolk, and her latest book, "Cord Blood" won a 2023 Nebraska Book Award. August 6, Hannah Wilkinson Hannah Wilkinson has published two poetry collections: "Unto the Breach" and "Half Agony, Half Hope." September 3, Twyla Hansen Twyla Hansen is a HN Speaker’s Bureau member and the first female Nebraska State Poet from 2013 to 2018. October 1, Jon Volkmer Jon Volkmer is a professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at Ursinus College in PA who has published several books and a poetry collection. November 5, Kassandra Monta Kassandra Monta holds a master’s degree in English Literature and won an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Nebraska Arts Council. December 3, Julie S Paschold Julie S Paschold has published “Horizons” - a poetry collection honoring soil - and two of their chapbooks won honorable mention in Writer's Digest contest.  

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Nebraska Poets Virtual Reading Series 2024 (Read More)

The free monthly Nebraska Poets Reading Series highlights the talent of Nebraska poets and invites discussion with audience members. All events are free online, but registration is required to receive an event link. Registration links for each poet’s event and additional details about each poet are available on the Nebraska Poetry Society’s website. February 6, AA Monet AA Monet is a poet, author, book publisher, editor, and space creator for emotions to freely and safely exist. AA Monet’s poetry book, Lost And Found, can be found in local stores in the Omaha area. March 5, Barbar Schmitz Barbar Schmitz taught writing and literature at Northeast College for 30 years; two of her books have won the Poetry Award from the Nebraska Center for the Book, and she received an Individual Artist Award from the Nebraska Arts Council. April 2, Katie Schmid Katie Schmid is a National Endowment for the Arts fellow in creative writing for 2023 and an Assistant Professor of English at Ursinus College in PA with a debut book entitled "Nowhere." May 7, J.V. Brummels J.V. Brummels is a poet, novelist, short-story writer, editor, and rancher. His collection "Book of Grass" was awarded the 2008 Nebraska Book Award for Poetry. June 4, Veronica Torraca-Bragdon Veronica Torraca-Bragdon is a poet, singer/songwriter, and special educator, with a degree in K-12 Vocal/Instrumental Education and a masters in Special Education from UNO whose poems have been set to music. July 2, Bonnie Johnson-Bartee Bonnie Johnson-Bartee teaches creative writing and literature at Wayne State College and Northeast Community College in Norfolk, and her latest book, "Cord Blood" won a 2023 Nebraska Book Award. August 6, Hannah Wilkinson Hannah Wilkinson has published two poetry collections: "Unto the Breach" and "Half Agony, Half Hope." September 3, Twyla Hansen Twyla Hansen is a HN Speaker’s Bureau member and the first female Nebraska State Poet from 2013 to 2018. October 1, Jon Volkmer Jon Volkmer is a professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at Ursinus College in PA who has published several books and a poetry collection. November 5, Kassandra Monta Kassandra Monta holds a master’s degree in English Literature and won an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Nebraska Arts Council. December 3, Julie S Paschold Julie S Paschold has published “Horizons” - a poetry collection honoring soil - and two of their chapbooks won honorable mention in Writer's Digest contest.  

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Nebraska Poets Virtual Reading Series 2024 (Read More)

The free monthly Nebraska Poets Reading Series highlights the talent of Nebraska poets and invites discussion with audience members. All events are free online, but registration is required to receive an event link. Registration links for each poet’s event and additional details about each poet are available on the Nebraska Poetry Society’s website. February 6, AA Monet AA Monet is a poet, author, book publisher, editor, and space creator for emotions to freely and safely exist. AA Monet’s poetry book, Lost And Found, can be found in local stores in the Omaha area. March 5, Barbar Schmitz Barbar Schmitz taught writing and literature at Northeast College for 30 years; two of her books have won the Poetry Award from the Nebraska Center for the Book, and she received an Individual Artist Award from the Nebraska Arts Council. April 2, Katie Schmid Katie Schmid is a National Endowment for the Arts fellow in creative writing for 2023 and an Assistant Professor of English at Ursinus College in PA with a debut book entitled "Nowhere." May 7, J.V. Brummels J.V. Brummels is a poet, novelist, short-story writer, editor, and rancher. His collection "Book of Grass" was awarded the 2008 Nebraska Book Award for Poetry. June 4, Veronica Torraca-Bragdon Veronica Torraca-Bragdon is a poet, singer/songwriter, and special educator, with a degree in K-12 Vocal/Instrumental Education and a masters in Special Education from UNO whose poems have been set to music. July 2, Bonnie Johnson-Bartee Bonnie Johnson-Bartee teaches creative writing and literature at Wayne State College and Northeast Community College in Norfolk, and her latest book, "Cord Blood" won a 2023 Nebraska Book Award. August 6, Hannah Wilkinson Hannah Wilkinson has published two poetry collections: "Unto the Breach" and "Half Agony, Half Hope." September 3, Twyla Hansen Twyla Hansen is a HN Speaker’s Bureau member and the first female Nebraska State Poet from 2013 to 2018. October 1, Jon Volkmer Jon Volkmer is a professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at Ursinus College in PA who has published several books and a poetry collection. November 5, Kassandra Monta Kassandra Monta holds a master’s degree in English Literature and won an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Nebraska Arts Council. December 3, Julie S Paschold Julie S Paschold has published “Horizons” - a poetry collection honoring soil - and two of their chapbooks won honorable mention in Writer's Digest contest.  

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Nebraska Poets Virtual Reading Series 2024 (Read More)

The free monthly Nebraska Poets Reading Series highlights the talent of Nebraska poets and invites discussion with audience members. All events are free online, but registration is required to receive an event link. Registration links for each poet’s event and additional details about each poet are available on the Nebraska Poetry Society’s website. February 6, AA Monet AA Monet is a poet, author, book publisher, editor, and space creator for emotions to freely and safely exist. AA Monet’s poetry book, Lost And Found, can be found in local stores in the Omaha area. March 5, Barbar Schmitz Barbar Schmitz taught writing and literature at Northeast College for 30 years; two of her books have won the Poetry Award from the Nebraska Center for the Book, and she received an Individual Artist Award from the Nebraska Arts Council. April 2, Katie Schmid Katie Schmid is a National Endowment for the Arts fellow in creative writing for 2023 and an Assistant Professor of English at Ursinus College in PA with a debut book entitled "Nowhere." May 7, J.V. Brummels J.V. Brummels is a poet, novelist, short-story writer, editor, and rancher. His collection "Book of Grass" was awarded the 2008 Nebraska Book Award for Poetry. June 4, Veronica Torraca-Bragdon Veronica Torraca-Bragdon is a poet, singer/songwriter, and special educator, with a degree in K-12 Vocal/Instrumental Education and a masters in Special Education from UNO whose poems have been set to music. July 2, Bonnie Johnson-Bartee Bonnie Johnson-Bartee teaches creative writing and literature at Wayne State College and Northeast Community College in Norfolk, and her latest book, "Cord Blood" won a 2023 Nebraska Book Award. August 6, Hannah Wilkinson Hannah Wilkinson has published two poetry collections: "Unto the Breach" and "Half Agony, Half Hope." September 3, Twyla Hansen Twyla Hansen is a HN Speaker’s Bureau member and the first female Nebraska State Poet from 2013 to 2018. October 1, Jon Volkmer Jon Volkmer is a professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at Ursinus College in PA who has published several books and a poetry collection. November 5, Kassandra Monta Kassandra Monta holds a master’s degree in English Literature and won an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Nebraska Arts Council. December 3, Julie S Paschold Julie S Paschold has published “Horizons” - a poetry collection honoring soil - and two of their chapbooks won honorable mention in Writer's Digest contest.  

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Nebraska Poets Virtual Reading Series 2024 (Read More)

The free monthly Nebraska Poets Reading Series highlights the talent of Nebraska poets and invites discussion with audience members. All events are free online, but registration is required to receive an event link. Registration links for each poet’s event and additional details about each poet are available on the Nebraska Poetry Society’s website. February 6, AA Monet AA Monet is a poet, author, book publisher, editor, and space creator for emotions to freely and safely exist. AA Monet’s poetry book, Lost And Found, can be found in local stores in the Omaha area. March 5, Barbar Schmitz Barbar Schmitz taught writing and literature at Northeast College for 30 years; two of her books have won the Poetry Award from the Nebraska Center for the Book, and she received an Individual Artist Award from the Nebraska Arts Council. April 2, Katie Schmid Katie Schmid is a National Endowment for the Arts fellow in creative writing for 2023 and an Assistant Professor of English at Ursinus College in PA with a debut book entitled "Nowhere." May 7, J.V. Brummels J.V. Brummels is a poet, novelist, short-story writer, editor, and rancher. His collection "Book of Grass" was awarded the 2008 Nebraska Book Award for Poetry. June 4, Veronica Torraca-Bragdon Veronica Torraca-Bragdon is a poet, singer/songwriter, and special educator, with a degree in K-12 Vocal/Instrumental Education and a masters in Special Education from UNO whose poems have been set to music. July 2, Bonnie Johnson-Bartee Bonnie Johnson-Bartee teaches creative writing and literature at Wayne State College and Northeast Community College in Norfolk, and her latest book, "Cord Blood" won a 2023 Nebraska Book Award. August 6, Hannah Wilkinson Hannah Wilkinson has published two poetry collections: "Unto the Breach" and "Half Agony, Half Hope." September 3, Twyla Hansen Twyla Hansen is a HN Speaker’s Bureau member and the first female Nebraska State Poet from 2013 to 2018. October 1, Jon Volkmer Jon Volkmer is a professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at Ursinus College in PA who has published several books and a poetry collection. November 5, Kassandra Monta Kassandra Monta holds a master’s degree in English Literature and won an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Nebraska Arts Council. December 3, Julie S Paschold Julie S Paschold has published “Horizons” - a poetry collection honoring soil - and two of their chapbooks won honorable mention in Writer's Digest contest.  

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Nebraska Poets Virtual Reading Series 2024 (Read More)

The free monthly Nebraska Poets Reading Series highlights the talent of Nebraska poets and invites discussion with audience members. All events are free online, but registration is required to receive an event link. Registration links for each poet’s event and additional details about each poet are available on the Nebraska Poetry Society’s website. February 6, AA Monet AA Monet is a poet, author, book publisher, editor, and space creator for emotions to freely and safely exist. AA Monet’s poetry book, Lost And Found, can be found in local stores in the Omaha area. March 5, Barbar Schmitz Barbar Schmitz taught writing and literature at Northeast College for 30 years; two of her books have won the Poetry Award from the Nebraska Center for the Book, and she received an Individual Artist Award from the Nebraska Arts Council. April 2, Katie Schmid Katie Schmid is a National Endowment for the Arts fellow in creative writing for 2023 and an Assistant Professor of English at Ursinus College in PA with a debut book entitled "Nowhere." May 7, J.V. Brummels J.V. Brummels is a poet, novelist, short-story writer, editor, and rancher. His collection "Book of Grass" was awarded the 2008 Nebraska Book Award for Poetry. June 4, Veronica Torraca-Bragdon Veronica Torraca-Bragdon is a poet, singer/songwriter, and special educator, with a degree in K-12 Vocal/Instrumental Education and a masters in Special Education from UNO whose poems have been set to music. July 2, Bonnie Johnson-Bartee Bonnie Johnson-Bartee teaches creative writing and literature at Wayne State College and Northeast Community College in Norfolk, and her latest book, "Cord Blood" won a 2023 Nebraska Book Award. August 6, Hannah Wilkinson Hannah Wilkinson has published two poetry collections: "Unto the Breach" and "Half Agony, Half Hope." September 3, Twyla Hansen Twyla Hansen is a HN Speaker’s Bureau member and the first female Nebraska State Poet from 2013 to 2018. October 1, Jon Volkmer Jon Volkmer is a professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at Ursinus College in PA who has published several books and a poetry collection. November 5, Kassandra Monta Kassandra Monta holds a master’s degree in English Literature and won an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Nebraska Arts Council. December 3, Julie S Paschold Julie S Paschold has published “Horizons” - a poetry collection honoring soil - and two of their chapbooks won honorable mention in Writer's Digest contest.  

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Nebraska Poetry Society: Tyler Michael Jacobs, A Nature Poem is an Elegy (Read More)

To write a nature a poem is to grieve nature. We already have poems that capture the beauty of nature and how it once was. The importance of capturing nature today is to see it as it is and how it might one day be. Naturally, we must move away from the traditional pastoral that romanticizes nature to some perversion of it as only we can experience, feel, and understand. In this workshop, we will explore the contemporary pastoral from contemporary writers to see how the past and the present blend so well that it captures, possibly, a bleakness moving forward into some stark future only we can imagine. At the end of the workshop, we will meditate on our own relationship with nature as we’ve moved through time. We will sit and write from an imagined future that pulls from our current experiences. Then, we’ll share our work. We’ll end the workshop with some time for questions. TYLER MICHAEL JACOBS is the author of "Building Brownville" (Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2022). His words have appeared in Variant Literature, Plainsongs, Pidgeonholes, Sierra Nevada Review, Thin Air Magazine, White Wall Review, Funicular Magazine, and elsewhere. His poems have also been featured on Nebraska Public Media’s Friday LIVE! He is a second-year poetry MFA candidate at Bowling Green State University where he serves as an assistant editor and Blog Co-Editor for Mid-American Review. Registration is required via the Nebraska Poetry Society website. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership.

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Nebraska Poetry Society: Ramya Ramana, Grace and Wonder (Read More)

Whether it is the arduous nature of looking, or the radical possibility of silence, wonder is always following us. At one moment, what appears as the vast sky, or a simple cup of coffee, on a second look becomes a miracle—a container of some wondrous secret. In this class, we'll explore poems that contain and investigate wonder. We’ll exit realism and delve into prompts that search out childlikeness, examine and define what wonder means to us and wander through the maze of gentle introspection. We will investigate what it means to write without metaphor and write with metaphor. We’ll visit the texts of the ancient Persian poets, and maybe poems by Mary Oliver, Ada Limon, Marie Howe, Wendell Berry and more. We'll consider different forms of short and long poems and find the structures that resonate with us. RAMYA RAMANA is an award-winning American author, poet, lyricist and writer. She was born, raised and currently resides in New York. Ramana won the NY Knicks Poetry Slam, which awarded her a full tuition scholarship to St. John’s University. Soon after, she became the Youth Poet Laureate of NYC. She has since performed at events such as the US Open, Tribeca Film Festival, TV One’s “Verses and Flow,” Pharrell’s Adidas Campaign, SONY TV’s Asian Women in the Arts Awards, the Immigrant Gala, Apollo Theatre Slam Finals, Celebrate Bklyn!, the Source Magazine Festival and many more. Her work can be found on the Poetry Foundation and Academy of American Poets websites and in Seventh Wave and the Southampton Review. Ramana published her first collection of poems through Penmanship Books, which was released at Lincoln Center. In addition to performing and writing, Ramana has also worked as an educator and mentor for young poets and young women. She recently received her MFA in creative writing from the New School. Ramana is currently working as a librettist for an operetta film. Her hope is to remain a student of wonder and to explain truth sincerely through her work and her life. Registration is required via the Nebraska Poetry Society website. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership.

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Nebraska Poetry Society Poetry Workshops (Read More)

The Nebraska Poetry Society will offer monthly Saturday morning online poetry workshops occurring on June 10, July 15, August 26, September 23, October 21. November 4, and December 2. Each workshop will begin with a 60 minute presentation by the featured speaker. Afterwards participants will have 30 minutes to practice what they learned and share with the group. Featured speakers include: June 10, Lisa Gluskin Stonestreet "I Stop Somewhere Waiting for You" July 15, Adrienne Christian "Writing the Elegant Sex Poem" August 26, Meghan Sterling "Submerged in the Sublime" September 23, Matt Mason "Let's Just Write a Sestina" October 21, Kathryn Winograd "Discovering the Kintsugi" November 4, Kelly Weber "Tongues in a Greening Field" December 2, Freesia McKee "Tethering Poems to Place" Registration is required, and registration information may be found on the Nebraska Poetry Society webpage. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership.

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Nebraska Poetry Society Poetry Workshops (Read More)

The Nebraska Poetry Society will offer monthly Saturday morning online poetry workshops occurring on June 10, July 15, August 26, September 23, October 21. November 4, and December 2. Each workshop will begin with a 60 minute presentation by the featured speaker. Afterwards participants will have 30 minutes to practice what they learned and share with the group. Featured speakers include: June 10, Lisa Gluskin Stonestreet "I Stop Somewhere Waiting for You" July 15, Adrienne Christian "Writing the Elegant Sex Poem" August 26, Meghan Sterling "Submerged in the Sublime" September 23, Matt Mason "Let's Just Write a Sestina" October 21, Kathryn Winograd "Discovering the Kintsugi" November 4, Kelly Weber "Tongues in a Greening Field" December 2, Freesia McKee "Tethering Poems to Place" Registration is required, and registration information may be found on the Nebraska Poetry Society webpage. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership.

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Nebraska Poetry Society Poetry Workshops (Read More)

The Nebraska Poetry Society will offer monthly Saturday morning online poetry workshops occurring on June 10, July 15, August 26, September 23, October 21. November 4, and December 2. Each workshop will begin with a 60 minute presentation by the featured speaker. Afterwards participants will have 30 minutes to practice what they learned and share with the group. Featured speakers include: June 10, Lisa Gluskin Stonestreet "I Stop Somewhere Waiting for You" July 15, Adrienne Christian "Writing the Elegant Sex Poem" August 26, Meghan Sterling "Submerged in the Sublime" September 23, Matt Mason "Let's Just Write a Sestina" October 21, Kathryn Winograd "Discovering the Kintsugi" November 4, Kelly Weber "Tongues in a Greening Field" December 2, Freesia McKee "Tethering Poems to Place" Registration is required, and registration information may be found on the Nebraska Poetry Society webpage. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership.

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Nebraska Poetry Society Poetry Workshops (Read More)

The Nebraska Poetry Society will offer monthly Saturday morning online poetry workshops occurring on June 10, July 15, August 26, September 23, October 21. November 4, and December 2. Each workshop will begin with a 60 minute presentation by the featured speaker. Afterwards participants will have 30 minutes to practice what they learned and share with the group. Featured speakers include: June 10, Lisa Gluskin Stonestreet "I Stop Somewhere Waiting for You" July 15, Adrienne Christian "Writing the Elegant Sex Poem" August 26, Meghan Sterling "Submerged in the Sublime" September 23, Matt Mason "Let's Just Write a Sestina" October 21, Kathryn Winograd "Discovering the Kintsugi" November 4, Kelly Weber "Tongues in a Greening Field" December 2, Freesia McKee "Tethering Poems to Place" Registration is required, and registration information may be found on the Nebraska Poetry Society webpage. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership.

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Nebraska Poetry Society Poetry Workshops (Read More)

The Nebraska Poetry Society will offer monthly Saturday morning online poetry workshops occurring on June 10, July 15, August 26, September 23, October 21. November 4, and December 2. Each workshop will begin with a 60 minute presentation by the featured speaker. Afterwards participants will have 30 minutes to practice what they learned and share with the group. Featured speakers include: June 10, Lisa Gluskin Stonestreet "I Stop Somewhere Waiting for You" July 15, Adrienne Christian "Writing the Elegant Sex Poem" August 26, Meghan Sterling "Submerged in the Sublime" September 23, Matt Mason "Let's Just Write a Sestina" October 21, Kathryn Winograd "Discovering the Kintsugi" November 4, Kelly Weber "Tongues in a Greening Field" December 2, Freesia McKee "Tethering Poems to Place" Registration is required, and registration information may be found on the Nebraska Poetry Society webpage. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership.

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Nebraska Poetry Society Poetry Workshops (Read More)

The Nebraska Poetry Society will offer monthly Saturday morning online poetry workshops occurring on June 10, July 15, August 26, September 23, October 21. November 4, and December 2. Each workshop will begin with a 60 minute presentation by the featured speaker. Afterwards participants will have 30 minutes to practice what they learned and share with the group. Featured speakers include: June 10, Lisa Gluskin Stonestreet "I Stop Somewhere Waiting for You" July 15, Adrienne Christian "Writing the Elegant Sex Poem" August 26, Meghan Sterling "Submerged in the Sublime" September 23, Matt Mason "Let's Just Write a Sestina" October 21, Kathryn Winograd "Discovering the Kintsugi" November 4, Kelly Weber "Tongues in a Greening Field" December 2, Freesia McKee "Tethering Poems to Place" Registration is required, and registration information may be found on the Nebraska Poetry Society webpage. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership.

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Nebraska Poetry Society Poetry Workshops (Read More)

The Nebraska Poetry Society will offer monthly Saturday morning online poetry workshops occurring on June 10, July 15, August 26, September 23, October 21. November 4, and December 2. Each workshop will begin with a 60 minute presentation by the featured speaker. Afterwards participants will have 30 minutes to practice what they learned and share with the group. Featured speakers include: June 10, Lisa Gluskin Stonestreet "I Stop Somewhere Waiting for You" July 15, Adrienne Christian "Writing the Elegant Sex Poem" August 26, Meghan Sterling "Submerged in the Sublime" September 23, Matt Mason "Let's Just Write a Sestina" October 21, Kathryn Winograd "Discovering the Kintsugi" November 4, Kelly Weber "Tongues in a Greening Field" December 2, Freesia McKee "Tethering Poems to Place" Registration is required, and registration information may be found on the Nebraska Poetry Society webpage. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership.

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Nebraska Poets Virtual Reading Series (Read More)

The Nebraska Poets Reading Series highlights the talent of Nebraska poets and invites discussion with audience members. All events are free online, but registration is required to receive an event link. Registration links for each poet's event are available on the Nebraska Poetry Society's website. February 7 Amy Haddad Amy Haddad is a poet, nurse and educator who taught in the health sciences at Creighton University where she is now a Professor Emerita. Her poetry and short stories have been published in several periodicals including the American Journal of Nursing, Janus Head, Journal of Medical Humanities, Touch, Bellevue Literary Review, Pulse, Persimmon Tree, Annals of Internal Medicine, Aji Magazine, DASH, and Oberon Poetry Magazine. Her first chapbook, “The Geography of Kitchens” was published by Finishing Line Press in August, 2021. Her first poetry collection, “An Otherwise Healthy Woman,” was published by Backwaters Press, an imprint of the University of Nebraska Press in March,  2022. It presents the intimate experiences of a nurse, the vulnerable perspective of a patient, and the lessons of caring for family. March 7 Marjorie Saiser Marjorie Saiser's eighth book, The Track the Whales Make: New & Selected Poems, is published by University of Nebraska Press in Ted Kooser’s series of Contemporary Poets and won the High Plains Book Award. Saiser’s Losing the Ring in the River (University of New Mexico Press) won the Willa Award in 2014. She has received four Nebraska Book Awards and is co-editor of Times of Sorrow/Times of Grace, a collection of writing by women of the Great Plains, and also co-editor of Road Trip, interviews with a dozen Nebraska writers. Saiser’s work has been published in Prairie Schooner, Alaska Poetry Review, Nimrod, Midwest Quarterly, and American Life in Poetry. Ted Kooser said of Saiser’s work that “no poet in this country is better at writing about love, and . . . all her poems are in some way about love.” April 4 Shyla Shehan Shyla Shehan is an analytical Virgo from the Midwest. She has an MFA in Writing from the University of Nebraska where she was awarded an Academy of American Poets Prize. Her work has appeared in over 25 journals and anthologies, including The Decadent Review, Heartwood Literary, Gyroscope Review, Plainsongs, and elsewhere and her debut poetry collection, Unsuspecting Cinderella, was released by Finishing Line Press in 2022. It tracks a female persona through the losses of love and the strangeness of life when one moves through it alone. The second section follows that same persona into a world of new love and the oddly haunting burden of unexpected affluence. Throughout, the poems are rich with vibrant language, surprising reversals, and insights into the difficulties of surviving emotionally in our stressful culture. The collection is both entertaining and moving, not to mention philosophically engaging. Shyla lives in Omaha with her husband, children, and four cats and currently splits her time between managing a healthy household and running a nonprofit literary journal, The Good Life Review. Her full bio and an account…

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Nebraska Poets Virtual Reading Series (Read More)

The Nebraska Poets Reading Series highlights the talent of Nebraska poets and invites discussion with audience members. All events are free online, but registration is required to receive an event link. Registration links for each poet's event are available on the Nebraska Poetry Society's website. February 7 Amy Haddad Amy Haddad is a poet, nurse and educator who taught in the health sciences at Creighton University where she is now a Professor Emerita. Her poetry and short stories have been published in several periodicals including the American Journal of Nursing, Janus Head, Journal of Medical Humanities, Touch, Bellevue Literary Review, Pulse, Persimmon Tree, Annals of Internal Medicine, Aji Magazine, DASH, and Oberon Poetry Magazine. Her first chapbook, “The Geography of Kitchens” was published by Finishing Line Press in August, 2021. Her first poetry collection, “An Otherwise Healthy Woman,” was published by Backwaters Press, an imprint of the University of Nebraska Press in March,  2022. It presents the intimate experiences of a nurse, the vulnerable perspective of a patient, and the lessons of caring for family. March 7 Marjorie Saiser Marjorie Saiser's eighth book, The Track the Whales Make: New & Selected Poems, is published by University of Nebraska Press in Ted Kooser’s series of Contemporary Poets and won the High Plains Book Award. Saiser’s Losing the Ring in the River (University of New Mexico Press) won the Willa Award in 2014. She has received four Nebraska Book Awards and is co-editor of Times of Sorrow/Times of Grace, a collection of writing by women of the Great Plains, and also co-editor of Road Trip, interviews with a dozen Nebraska writers. Saiser’s work has been published in Prairie Schooner, Alaska Poetry Review, Nimrod, Midwest Quarterly, and American Life in Poetry. Ted Kooser said of Saiser’s work that “no poet in this country is better at writing about love, and . . . all her poems are in some way about love.” April 4 Shyla Shehan Shyla Shehan is an analytical Virgo from the Midwest. She has an MFA in Writing from the University of Nebraska where she was awarded an Academy of American Poets Prize. Her work has appeared in over 25 journals and anthologies, including The Decadent Review, Heartwood Literary, Gyroscope Review, Plainsongs, and elsewhere and her debut poetry collection, Unsuspecting Cinderella, was released by Finishing Line Press in 2022. It tracks a female persona through the losses of love and the strangeness of life when one moves through it alone. The second section follows that same persona into a world of new love and the oddly haunting burden of unexpected affluence. Throughout, the poems are rich with vibrant language, surprising reversals, and insights into the difficulties of surviving emotionally in our stressful culture. The collection is both entertaining and moving, not to mention philosophically engaging. Shyla lives in Omaha with her husband, children, and four cats and currently splits her time between managing a healthy household and running a nonprofit literary journal, The Good Life Review. Her full bio and an account…

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Nebraska Poets Virtual Reading Series (Read More)

The Nebraska Poets Reading Series highlights the talent of Nebraska poets and invites discussion with audience members. All events are free online, but registration is required to receive an event link. Registration links for each poet's event are available on the Nebraska Poetry Society's website. February 7 Amy Haddad Amy Haddad is a poet, nurse and educator who taught in the health sciences at Creighton University where she is now a Professor Emerita. Her poetry and short stories have been published in several periodicals including the American Journal of Nursing, Janus Head, Journal of Medical Humanities, Touch, Bellevue Literary Review, Pulse, Persimmon Tree, Annals of Internal Medicine, Aji Magazine, DASH, and Oberon Poetry Magazine. Her first chapbook, “The Geography of Kitchens” was published by Finishing Line Press in August, 2021. Her first poetry collection, “An Otherwise Healthy Woman,” was published by Backwaters Press, an imprint of the University of Nebraska Press in March,  2022. It presents the intimate experiences of a nurse, the vulnerable perspective of a patient, and the lessons of caring for family. March 7 Marjorie Saiser Marjorie Saiser's eighth book, The Track the Whales Make: New & Selected Poems, is published by University of Nebraska Press in Ted Kooser’s series of Contemporary Poets and won the High Plains Book Award. Saiser’s Losing the Ring in the River (University of New Mexico Press) won the Willa Award in 2014. She has received four Nebraska Book Awards and is co-editor of Times of Sorrow/Times of Grace, a collection of writing by women of the Great Plains, and also co-editor of Road Trip, interviews with a dozen Nebraska writers. Saiser’s work has been published in Prairie Schooner, Alaska Poetry Review, Nimrod, Midwest Quarterly, and American Life in Poetry. Ted Kooser said of Saiser’s work that “no poet in this country is better at writing about love, and . . . all her poems are in some way about love.” April 4 Shyla Shehan Shyla Shehan is an analytical Virgo from the Midwest. She has an MFA in Writing from the University of Nebraska where she was awarded an Academy of American Poets Prize. Her work has appeared in over 25 journals and anthologies, including The Decadent Review, Heartwood Literary, Gyroscope Review, Plainsongs, and elsewhere and her debut poetry collection, Unsuspecting Cinderella, was released by Finishing Line Press in 2022. It tracks a female persona through the losses of love and the strangeness of life when one moves through it alone. The second section follows that same persona into a world of new love and the oddly haunting burden of unexpected affluence. Throughout, the poems are rich with vibrant language, surprising reversals, and insights into the difficulties of surviving emotionally in our stressful culture. The collection is both entertaining and moving, not to mention philosophically engaging. Shyla lives in Omaha with her husband, children, and four cats and currently splits her time between managing a healthy household and running a nonprofit literary journal, The Good Life Review. Her full bio and an account…

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Nebraska Poets Virtual Reading Series (Read More)

The Nebraska Poets Reading Series highlights the talent of Nebraska poets and invites discussion with audience members. All events are free online, but registration is required to receive an event link. Registration links for each poet's event are available on the Nebraska Poetry Society's website. February 7 Amy Haddad Amy Haddad is a poet, nurse and educator who taught in the health sciences at Creighton University where she is now a Professor Emerita. Her poetry and short stories have been published in several periodicals including the American Journal of Nursing, Janus Head, Journal of Medical Humanities, Touch, Bellevue Literary Review, Pulse, Persimmon Tree, Annals of Internal Medicine, Aji Magazine, DASH, and Oberon Poetry Magazine. Her first chapbook, “The Geography of Kitchens” was published by Finishing Line Press in August, 2021. Her first poetry collection, “An Otherwise Healthy Woman,” was published by Backwaters Press, an imprint of the University of Nebraska Press in March,  2022. It presents the intimate experiences of a nurse, the vulnerable perspective of a patient, and the lessons of caring for family. March 7 Marjorie Saiser Marjorie Saiser's eighth book, The Track the Whales Make: New & Selected Poems, is published by University of Nebraska Press in Ted Kooser’s series of Contemporary Poets and won the High Plains Book Award. Saiser’s Losing the Ring in the River (University of New Mexico Press) won the Willa Award in 2014. She has received four Nebraska Book Awards and is co-editor of Times of Sorrow/Times of Grace, a collection of writing by women of the Great Plains, and also co-editor of Road Trip, interviews with a dozen Nebraska writers. Saiser’s work has been published in Prairie Schooner, Alaska Poetry Review, Nimrod, Midwest Quarterly, and American Life in Poetry. Ted Kooser said of Saiser’s work that “no poet in this country is better at writing about love, and . . . all her poems are in some way about love.” April 4 Shyla Shehan Shyla Shehan is an analytical Virgo from the Midwest. She has an MFA in Writing from the University of Nebraska where she was awarded an Academy of American Poets Prize. Her work has appeared in over 25 journals and anthologies, including The Decadent Review, Heartwood Literary, Gyroscope Review, Plainsongs, and elsewhere and her debut poetry collection, Unsuspecting Cinderella, was released by Finishing Line Press in 2022. It tracks a female persona through the losses of love and the strangeness of life when one moves through it alone. The second section follows that same persona into a world of new love and the oddly haunting burden of unexpected affluence. Throughout, the poems are rich with vibrant language, surprising reversals, and insights into the difficulties of surviving emotionally in our stressful culture. The collection is both entertaining and moving, not to mention philosophically engaging. Shyla lives in Omaha with her husband, children, and four cats and currently splits her time between managing a healthy household and running a nonprofit literary journal, The Good Life Review. Her full bio and an account…

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Nebraska Poets Virtual Reading Series (Read More)

The Nebraska Poets Reading Series highlights the talent of Nebraska poets and invites discussion with audience members. All events are free online, but registration is required to receive an event link. Registration links for each poet's event are available on the Nebraska Poetry Society's website. February 7 Amy Haddad Amy Haddad is a poet, nurse and educator who taught in the health sciences at Creighton University where she is now a Professor Emerita. Her poetry and short stories have been published in several periodicals including the American Journal of Nursing, Janus Head, Journal of Medical Humanities, Touch, Bellevue Literary Review, Pulse, Persimmon Tree, Annals of Internal Medicine, Aji Magazine, DASH, and Oberon Poetry Magazine. Her first chapbook, “The Geography of Kitchens” was published by Finishing Line Press in August, 2021. Her first poetry collection, “An Otherwise Healthy Woman,” was published by Backwaters Press, an imprint of the University of Nebraska Press in March,  2022. It presents the intimate experiences of a nurse, the vulnerable perspective of a patient, and the lessons of caring for family. March 7 Marjorie Saiser Marjorie Saiser's eighth book, The Track the Whales Make: New & Selected Poems, is published by University of Nebraska Press in Ted Kooser’s series of Contemporary Poets and won the High Plains Book Award. Saiser’s Losing the Ring in the River (University of New Mexico Press) won the Willa Award in 2014. She has received four Nebraska Book Awards and is co-editor of Times of Sorrow/Times of Grace, a collection of writing by women of the Great Plains, and also co-editor of Road Trip, interviews with a dozen Nebraska writers. Saiser’s work has been published in Prairie Schooner, Alaska Poetry Review, Nimrod, Midwest Quarterly, and American Life in Poetry. Ted Kooser said of Saiser’s work that “no poet in this country is better at writing about love, and . . . all her poems are in some way about love.” April 4 Shyla Shehan Shyla Shehan is an analytical Virgo from the Midwest. She has an MFA in Writing from the University of Nebraska where she was awarded an Academy of American Poets Prize. Her work has appeared in over 25 journals and anthologies, including The Decadent Review, Heartwood Literary, Gyroscope Review, Plainsongs, and elsewhere and her debut poetry collection, Unsuspecting Cinderella, was released by Finishing Line Press in 2022. It tracks a female persona through the losses of love and the strangeness of life when one moves through it alone. The second section follows that same persona into a world of new love and the oddly haunting burden of unexpected affluence. Throughout, the poems are rich with vibrant language, surprising reversals, and insights into the difficulties of surviving emotionally in our stressful culture. The collection is both entertaining and moving, not to mention philosophically engaging. Shyla lives in Omaha with her husband, children, and four cats and currently splits her time between managing a healthy household and running a nonprofit literary journal, The Good Life Review. Her full bio and an account…

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Nebraska Poets Virtual Reading Series (Read More)

The Nebraska Poets Reading Series highlights the talent of Nebraska poets and invites discussion with audience members. All events are free online, but registration is required to receive an event link. Registration links for each poet's event are available on the Nebraska Poetry Society's website. February 7 Amy Haddad Amy Haddad is a poet, nurse and educator who taught in the health sciences at Creighton University where she is now a Professor Emerita. Her poetry and short stories have been published in several periodicals including the American Journal of Nursing, Janus Head, Journal of Medical Humanities, Touch, Bellevue Literary Review, Pulse, Persimmon Tree, Annals of Internal Medicine, Aji Magazine, DASH, and Oberon Poetry Magazine. Her first chapbook, “The Geography of Kitchens” was published by Finishing Line Press in August, 2021. Her first poetry collection, “An Otherwise Healthy Woman,” was published by Backwaters Press, an imprint of the University of Nebraska Press in March,  2022. It presents the intimate experiences of a nurse, the vulnerable perspective of a patient, and the lessons of caring for family. March 7 Marjorie Saiser Marjorie Saiser's eighth book, The Track the Whales Make: New & Selected Poems, is published by University of Nebraska Press in Ted Kooser’s series of Contemporary Poets and won the High Plains Book Award. Saiser’s Losing the Ring in the River (University of New Mexico Press) won the Willa Award in 2014. She has received four Nebraska Book Awards and is co-editor of Times of Sorrow/Times of Grace, a collection of writing by women of the Great Plains, and also co-editor of Road Trip, interviews with a dozen Nebraska writers. Saiser’s work has been published in Prairie Schooner, Alaska Poetry Review, Nimrod, Midwest Quarterly, and American Life in Poetry. Ted Kooser said of Saiser’s work that “no poet in this country is better at writing about love, and . . . all her poems are in some way about love.” April 4 Shyla Shehan Shyla Shehan is an analytical Virgo from the Midwest. She has an MFA in Writing from the University of Nebraska where she was awarded an Academy of American Poets Prize. Her work has appeared in over 25 journals and anthologies, including The Decadent Review, Heartwood Literary, Gyroscope Review, Plainsongs, and elsewhere and her debut poetry collection, Unsuspecting Cinderella, was released by Finishing Line Press in 2022. It tracks a female persona through the losses of love and the strangeness of life when one moves through it alone. The second section follows that same persona into a world of new love and the oddly haunting burden of unexpected affluence. Throughout, the poems are rich with vibrant language, surprising reversals, and insights into the difficulties of surviving emotionally in our stressful culture. The collection is both entertaining and moving, not to mention philosophically engaging. Shyla lives in Omaha with her husband, children, and four cats and currently splits her time between managing a healthy household and running a nonprofit literary journal, The Good Life Review. Her full bio and an account…

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Nebraska Poets Virtual Reading Series (Read More)

The Nebraska Poets Reading Series highlights the talent of Nebraska poets and invites discussion with audience members. All events are free online, but registration is required to receive an event link. Registration links for each poet's event are available on the Nebraska Poetry Society's website. February 7 Amy Haddad Amy Haddad is a poet, nurse and educator who taught in the health sciences at Creighton University where she is now a Professor Emerita. Her poetry and short stories have been published in several periodicals including the American Journal of Nursing, Janus Head, Journal of Medical Humanities, Touch, Bellevue Literary Review, Pulse, Persimmon Tree, Annals of Internal Medicine, Aji Magazine, DASH, and Oberon Poetry Magazine. Her first chapbook, “The Geography of Kitchens” was published by Finishing Line Press in August, 2021. Her first poetry collection, “An Otherwise Healthy Woman,” was published by Backwaters Press, an imprint of the University of Nebraska Press in March,  2022. It presents the intimate experiences of a nurse, the vulnerable perspective of a patient, and the lessons of caring for family. March 7 Marjorie Saiser Marjorie Saiser's eighth book, The Track the Whales Make: New & Selected Poems, is published by University of Nebraska Press in Ted Kooser’s series of Contemporary Poets and won the High Plains Book Award. Saiser’s Losing the Ring in the River (University of New Mexico Press) won the Willa Award in 2014. She has received four Nebraska Book Awards and is co-editor of Times of Sorrow/Times of Grace, a collection of writing by women of the Great Plains, and also co-editor of Road Trip, interviews with a dozen Nebraska writers. Saiser’s work has been published in Prairie Schooner, Alaska Poetry Review, Nimrod, Midwest Quarterly, and American Life in Poetry. Ted Kooser said of Saiser’s work that “no poet in this country is better at writing about love, and . . . all her poems are in some way about love.” April 4 Shyla Shehan Shyla Shehan is an analytical Virgo from the Midwest. She has an MFA in Writing from the University of Nebraska where she was awarded an Academy of American Poets Prize. Her work has appeared in over 25 journals and anthologies, including The Decadent Review, Heartwood Literary, Gyroscope Review, Plainsongs, and elsewhere and her debut poetry collection, Unsuspecting Cinderella, was released by Finishing Line Press in 2022. It tracks a female persona through the losses of love and the strangeness of life when one moves through it alone. The second section follows that same persona into a world of new love and the oddly haunting burden of unexpected affluence. Throughout, the poems are rich with vibrant language, surprising reversals, and insights into the difficulties of surviving emotionally in our stressful culture. The collection is both entertaining and moving, not to mention philosophically engaging. Shyla lives in Omaha with her husband, children, and four cats and currently splits her time between managing a healthy household and running a nonprofit literary journal, The Good Life Review. Her full bio and an account…

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Nebraska Poets Virtual Reading Series (Read More)

The Nebraska Poets Reading Series highlights the talent of Nebraska poets and invites discussion with audience members. All events are free online, but registration is required to receive an event link. Registration links for each poet's event are available on the Nebraska Poetry Society's website. February 7 Amy Haddad Amy Haddad is a poet, nurse and educator who taught in the health sciences at Creighton University where she is now a Professor Emerita. Her poetry and short stories have been published in several periodicals including the American Journal of Nursing, Janus Head, Journal of Medical Humanities, Touch, Bellevue Literary Review, Pulse, Persimmon Tree, Annals of Internal Medicine, Aji Magazine, DASH, and Oberon Poetry Magazine. Her first chapbook, “The Geography of Kitchens” was published by Finishing Line Press in August, 2021. Her first poetry collection, “An Otherwise Healthy Woman,” was published by Backwaters Press, an imprint of the University of Nebraska Press in March,  2022. It presents the intimate experiences of a nurse, the vulnerable perspective of a patient, and the lessons of caring for family. March 7 Marjorie Saiser Marjorie Saiser's eighth book, The Track the Whales Make: New & Selected Poems, is published by University of Nebraska Press in Ted Kooser’s series of Contemporary Poets and won the High Plains Book Award. Saiser’s Losing the Ring in the River (University of New Mexico Press) won the Willa Award in 2014. She has received four Nebraska Book Awards and is co-editor of Times of Sorrow/Times of Grace, a collection of writing by women of the Great Plains, and also co-editor of Road Trip, interviews with a dozen Nebraska writers. Saiser’s work has been published in Prairie Schooner, Alaska Poetry Review, Nimrod, Midwest Quarterly, and American Life in Poetry. Ted Kooser said of Saiser’s work that “no poet in this country is better at writing about love, and . . . all her poems are in some way about love.” April 4 Shyla Shehan Shyla Shehan is an analytical Virgo from the Midwest. She has an MFA in Writing from the University of Nebraska where she was awarded an Academy of American Poets Prize. Her work has appeared in over 25 journals and anthologies, including The Decadent Review, Heartwood Literary, Gyroscope Review, Plainsongs, and elsewhere and her debut poetry collection, Unsuspecting Cinderella, was released by Finishing Line Press in 2022. It tracks a female persona through the losses of love and the strangeness of life when one moves through it alone. The second section follows that same persona into a world of new love and the oddly haunting burden of unexpected affluence. Throughout, the poems are rich with vibrant language, surprising reversals, and insights into the difficulties of surviving emotionally in our stressful culture. The collection is both entertaining and moving, not to mention philosophically engaging. Shyla lives in Omaha with her husband, children, and four cats and currently splits her time between managing a healthy household and running a nonprofit literary journal, The Good Life Review. Her full bio and an account…

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Nebraska Poets Virtual Reading Series (Read More)

The Nebraska Poets Reading Series highlights the talent of Nebraska poets and invites discussion with audience members. All events are free online, but registration is required to receive an event link. Registration links for each poet's event are available on the Nebraska Poetry Society's website. February 7 Amy Haddad Amy Haddad is a poet, nurse and educator who taught in the health sciences at Creighton University where she is now a Professor Emerita. Her poetry and short stories have been published in several periodicals including the American Journal of Nursing, Janus Head, Journal of Medical Humanities, Touch, Bellevue Literary Review, Pulse, Persimmon Tree, Annals of Internal Medicine, Aji Magazine, DASH, and Oberon Poetry Magazine. Her first chapbook, “The Geography of Kitchens” was published by Finishing Line Press in August, 2021. Her first poetry collection, “An Otherwise Healthy Woman,” was published by Backwaters Press, an imprint of the University of Nebraska Press in March,  2022. It presents the intimate experiences of a nurse, the vulnerable perspective of a patient, and the lessons of caring for family. March 7 Marjorie Saiser Marjorie Saiser's eighth book, The Track the Whales Make: New & Selected Poems, is published by University of Nebraska Press in Ted Kooser’s series of Contemporary Poets and won the High Plains Book Award. Saiser’s Losing the Ring in the River (University of New Mexico Press) won the Willa Award in 2014. She has received four Nebraska Book Awards and is co-editor of Times of Sorrow/Times of Grace, a collection of writing by women of the Great Plains, and also co-editor of Road Trip, interviews with a dozen Nebraska writers. Saiser’s work has been published in Prairie Schooner, Alaska Poetry Review, Nimrod, Midwest Quarterly, and American Life in Poetry. Ted Kooser said of Saiser’s work that “no poet in this country is better at writing about love, and . . . all her poems are in some way about love.” April 4 Shyla Shehan Shyla Shehan is an analytical Virgo from the Midwest. She has an MFA in Writing from the University of Nebraska where she was awarded an Academy of American Poets Prize. Her work has appeared in over 25 journals and anthologies, including The Decadent Review, Heartwood Literary, Gyroscope Review, Plainsongs, and elsewhere and her debut poetry collection, Unsuspecting Cinderella, was released by Finishing Line Press in 2022. It tracks a female persona through the losses of love and the strangeness of life when one moves through it alone. The second section follows that same persona into a world of new love and the oddly haunting burden of unexpected affluence. Throughout, the poems are rich with vibrant language, surprising reversals, and insights into the difficulties of surviving emotionally in our stressful culture. The collection is both entertaining and moving, not to mention philosophically engaging. Shyla lives in Omaha with her husband, children, and four cats and currently splits her time between managing a healthy household and running a nonprofit literary journal, The Good Life Review. Her full bio and an account…

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Nebraska Poets Virtual Reading Series (Read More)

The Nebraska Poets Reading Series highlights the talent of Nebraska poets and invites discussion with audience members. All events are free online, but registration is required to receive an event link. Registration links for each poet's event are available on the Nebraska Poetry Society's website. February 7 Amy Haddad Amy Haddad is a poet, nurse and educator who taught in the health sciences at Creighton University where she is now a Professor Emerita. Her poetry and short stories have been published in several periodicals including the American Journal of Nursing, Janus Head, Journal of Medical Humanities, Touch, Bellevue Literary Review, Pulse, Persimmon Tree, Annals of Internal Medicine, Aji Magazine, DASH, and Oberon Poetry Magazine. Her first chapbook, “The Geography of Kitchens” was published by Finishing Line Press in August, 2021. Her first poetry collection, “An Otherwise Healthy Woman,” was published by Backwaters Press, an imprint of the University of Nebraska Press in March,  2022. It presents the intimate experiences of a nurse, the vulnerable perspective of a patient, and the lessons of caring for family. March 7 Marjorie Saiser Marjorie Saiser's eighth book, The Track the Whales Make: New & Selected Poems, is published by University of Nebraska Press in Ted Kooser’s series of Contemporary Poets and won the High Plains Book Award. Saiser’s Losing the Ring in the River (University of New Mexico Press) won the Willa Award in 2014. She has received four Nebraska Book Awards and is co-editor of Times of Sorrow/Times of Grace, a collection of writing by women of the Great Plains, and also co-editor of Road Trip, interviews with a dozen Nebraska writers. Saiser’s work has been published in Prairie Schooner, Alaska Poetry Review, Nimrod, Midwest Quarterly, and American Life in Poetry. Ted Kooser said of Saiser’s work that “no poet in this country is better at writing about love, and . . . all her poems are in some way about love.” April 4 Shyla Shehan Shyla Shehan is an analytical Virgo from the Midwest. She has an MFA in Writing from the University of Nebraska where she was awarded an Academy of American Poets Prize. Her work has appeared in over 25 journals and anthologies, including The Decadent Review, Heartwood Literary, Gyroscope Review, Plainsongs, and elsewhere and her debut poetry collection, Unsuspecting Cinderella, was released by Finishing Line Press in 2022. It tracks a female persona through the losses of love and the strangeness of life when one moves through it alone. The second section follows that same persona into a world of new love and the oddly haunting burden of unexpected affluence. Throughout, the poems are rich with vibrant language, surprising reversals, and insights into the difficulties of surviving emotionally in our stressful culture. The collection is both entertaining and moving, not to mention philosophically engaging. Shyla lives in Omaha with her husband, children, and four cats and currently splits her time between managing a healthy household and running a nonprofit literary journal, The Good Life Review. Her full bio and an account…

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Nebraska Poetry Society: Katie Ford, Creative Varieties 5 Poems Finding Their Way (Read More)

How do poets find entry points to their poems? Is it via the image, a poetic form, an idea, an emotion, or something less easily named? In this short class, Ford offers her sense of how vastly different creative practices can be engaged to enlarge one’s poetic vision and articulation. The mind of haiku is not the mind of free verse, for instance, yet both minds can be beautifully activated through study and practice. We’ll traverse international terrain to discuss poems that Ford hopes will inspire you. Reading poetry connects you to an art where you can find yourself on the page. As we discuss how you are drawn to certain types of poetry, you will begin to see why some speak to you and others do not. KATIE FORD is the author of four books of poems, Deposition, Colosseum, Blood Lyrics, and If You Have to Go, all published by Graywolf Press. Blood Lyrics was a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize and the Rilke Prize. Colosseum was named among the “Best Books of 2008” by Publishers Weekly and the Virginia Quarterly Review. She completed graduate work in world religions, theology, and poetry at Harvard University and received her M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She has taught poetry and creative writing for over 20 years around the country. She is currently a Professor of Creative Writing and lives in South Pasadena with her daughter. Registration is required. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership.

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Nebraska Poetry Society: Jen Harris, Defying the Internal Censor (Read More)

Modeled after The Writing Workshop KC, founded by Poet Jen Harris, Defying the Internal Censor will involve prompt-based writing and sharing of these “sh*tty first drafts.” In doing so, we will discuss what an internal censor is, why we have it, and how we might turn it off. For the novice and professional alike, this writing workshop is about making time for your creative practice, building confidence in your inherent creative talents, expanding your experience, building a supportive and authentic community, and, of course, defying the internal censor. By attending you can expect: - A vulnerability and authenticity triathlon - This is not a critique workshop - Positive feedback only. Take a chance. All will be revealed upon attendance. JEN HARRIS is a sought-after performance artist and co-host of Confessing Animals Podcast, interviewing seasoned and fresh-faced artists of every genre to discuss how to make creativity work within the complexities and challenges of adult life. She is the founder and host of The Writing Workshop KC, whose mission is to nurture creative curiosity and inspire confidence within prompt-based writing workshops. Jen is particularly passionate about reaching queer people and those struggling to thrive within the multitude of oppressive systems. From dive bars to performance halls worldwide, reaching audiences in the thousands from ages 10-80, Jen cultivates passion and emboldens the aspirational through her work. She is inspired to eradicate the toxic mythology of the hapless creative, offering her students the opportunity to create, develop, edit and perform their work before engaged, paying audiences, all the while seeking validity in the process and not the outcome. Jen challenges her students to defy the internal censor, revive or discover the joy of creating and offer themselves the gift of fulfillment through art. Featured on NPR, TEDx, Button Poetry & Write About Now Poetry & Queer Eye, KC’s Best Poet 2021, Advocate Magazine’s Champions of Pride award 2021, Harris is the author of 3 books of poetry and the recipient of numerous accolades. Registration is required. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership.

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Nebraska Poetry Society: Toby Altman, Writing the Image (Read More)

The image is typically treated as one tool among many in the poet’s toolbox. You use an image, to make a point, or to ornament an idea. But images are really the building blocks of poetry—not an ornament, but the structure itself. In this class, we’ll study the work of Jenny Xie, a poet who shows how powerful images can be, when they stand on their own, asking us to find connections between them; or, alternately, to pause on each image, savoring its particular pungency. We will explore how we see ourselves in the images, and how the art of poetry connects people through the images it creates. We’ll talk about practical strategies for putting the image at the center of our own writing. What kind of poem emerges when your images are allowed to assemble into unpredictable, unexpected constellations when your images are magnetized by each other? What new connections are found between yourself and the world around you? TOBY ALTMAN is the author of two books, Discipline Park (Wendy’s Subway, 2022) and Arcadia, Indiana (Plays Inverse, 2017). He recently received a 2021 Fellowship in Poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts. He has held residencies from the Vermont Studio Center, the Millay Colony for the Arts, and MacDowell, where he was the 2020 Stephanie and Robert Olmstead Fellow. His poems can be found in Gulf Coast, jubilat, Lana Turner, and other journals and anthologies; his articles and essays can or will be found in Contemporary Literature, English Literary History, and Jacket2. He holds an MFA in Poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a Ph.D. in English from Northwestern University. He is currently Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Beloit College. Registration is required. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership.

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Nebraska Poetry Society: Radha Marcum, The Poetic Line From Breath to Perception (Read More)

How do lineation choices help poets achieve potent effects? Using the work of Joy Harjo, Jericho Brown, Lorine Niedecker, W.S. Merwin, Ruth Stone, and others, as an example, we will explore how poets use the poetic line to add layers of meaning to their work. The poet’s lineation choices build tension and emotion. As we uncover how the poet used the tools of lineation, we will uncover the meaning of their work. In this workshop, we’ll attune ourselves to possibilities in lineation to build emotional resonance, enhance meaning, and delight readers. We will discover how poetry connects to the reader using the visual lines on the page. There is a direct correlation between lineation and the author's humanity (individual and cultural). Lineation choices have roots in traditional forms, and these forms' effects are still present in contemporary poetry. Poems with very short lines echo song traditions—the lyric impulse. Short-lined poems may be meditative or, at times, express disruption. Longer lines have roots in epic traditions in which the poetic line carries the story. Contemporary poets echo traditional forms while also breaking from them in their poems' lineation. For example, Joy Harjo's long lines combine jazz rhythms with speech patterns from her indigenous culture. Lorine Neidecker's short lines, on the other hand, express an intense focus on the natural world—a focus that may have been augmented by her difficult life circumstances. In both cases, lineation supports the expression of the writer’s unique voice and lived experiences. RADHA MARCUM's work is rooted in ecological, social, and personal landscapes of the American West. Her poetry collection, Bloodline, received the 2018 New Mexico Book Award in Poetry, and her poems appear widely in journals, including Pleiades, Gulf Coast, FIELD, West Branch, Bennington Review, and Poetry Northwest, among others. Radha lives in Colorado where she writes the "Poet to Poet" newsletter (poettopoet.substack.com) and teaches at the Lighthouse Writers Workshop Registration is required. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership.

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Nebraska Poetry Society Workshop: Ryan Boyland, Make-Believe in the Modern Age (Read More)

Have you ever thought about what it was like to live as a brick? Or Sweeney Todd? Or maybe even Superman? From the Academy of American Poets, persona poems are poems in which the poet speaks through an assumed voice, creating a distance between the writer and speaker that can result in finding new truths previously left unconsidered. In this Nebraska Poetry Society workshop, we will be using the persona poem to convey thoughts, feelings, and ideas through the voice of a character of the author's choosing. In a phrase, telling our own stories through a perspective other than our own--finding our voice in another's mouth. RYAN BOYLAND is a writer, wanderer, medical student, and amateur astronomer currently based out of Omaha, Nebraska, where his love for both science and poetry motivates him to combine the two at every opportunity. His work addresses issues of identity, love, and death. And stars. Because they’re cool. His goal through his performance is to touch minds and hearts around the world and considers it a victory every time he can do so. Ryan and his work have been featured on Button Poetry, Poets and Writers, Nebraska Public Media, through Larksong Writers’ Place, in Omaha Magazine, The Cookout Literary Journal, and can be found on SoundCloud, Facebook, and YouTube. When not writing, Ryan enjoys listening to music, stargazing, and being Black, mixed in with the occasional intense discussion regarding the validity of the Star Wars prequels. Registration required. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership.

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Fall/winter virtual poetry workshops (Read More)

The Nebraska Poetry Society will offer five monthly online poetry workshops occurring on August 20, September 10, October 1, November 12, and December 3. Each workshop will begin with a 60 minute presentation by the featured speaker. After participants will have 30 minutes to practice what they learned and share with the group. Featured speakers include: Aug. 20, Gauri Awasthi “Ecopoetics and The Poet" Sept. 10, Rosebud Ben-Oni “Elegy as Epiphany: How Grief Leads to Illumination” Oct. 1, Torrin A Greathouse “Writing the Unreliable Speaker” Nov. 12, Kathryn Winograd “Chapbook Explorations into Culture, Gender & Identity” Dec. 3, Becca Klaver “Strange & Sublime Similes” Registration required. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership.

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Fall/winter virtual poetry workshops (Read More)

The Nebraska Poetry Society will offer five monthly online poetry workshops occurring on August 20, September 10, October 1, November 12, and December 3. Each workshop will begin with a 60 minute presentation by the featured speaker. After participants will have 30 minutes to practice what they learned and share with the group. Featured speakers include: Aug. 20, Gauri Awasthi “Ecopoetics and The Poet" Sept. 10, Rosebud Ben-Oni “Elegy as Epiphany: How Grief Leads to Illumination” Oct. 1, Torrin A Greathouse “Writing the Unreliable Speaker” Nov. 12, Kathryn Winograd “Chapbook Explorations into Culture, Gender & Identity” Dec. 3, Becca Klaver “Strange & Sublime Similes” Registration required. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership.

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Fall/winter virtual poetry workshops (Read More)

The Nebraska Poetry Society will offer five monthly online poetry workshops occurring on August 20, September 10, October 1, November 12, and December 3. Each workshop will begin with a 60 minute presentation by the featured speaker. After participants will have 30 minutes to practice what they learned and share with the group. Featured speakers include: Aug. 20, Gauri Awasthi “Ecopoetics and The Poet" Sept. 10, Rosebud Ben-Oni “Elegy as Epiphany: How Grief Leads to Illumination” Oct. 1, Torrin A Greathouse “Writing the Unreliable Speaker” Nov. 12, Kathryn Winograd “Chapbook Explorations into Culture, Gender & Identity” Dec. 3, Becca Klaver “Strange & Sublime Similes” Registration required. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership.

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Fall/winter virtual poetry workshops (Read More)

The Nebraska Poetry Society will offer five monthly online poetry workshops occurring on August 20, September 10, October 1, November 12, and December 3. Each workshop will begin with a 60 minute presentation by the featured speaker. After participants will have 30 minutes to practice what they learned and share with the group. Featured speakers include: Aug. 20, Gauri Awasthi “Ecopoetics and The Poet" Sept. 10, Rosebud Ben-Oni “Elegy as Epiphany: How Grief Leads to Illumination” Oct. 1, Torrin A Greathouse “Writing the Unreliable Speaker” Nov. 12, Kathryn Winograd “Chapbook Explorations into Culture, Gender & Identity” Dec. 3, Becca Klaver “Strange & Sublime Similes” Registration required. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership.

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Fall/winter virtual poetry workshops (Read More)

The Nebraska Poetry Society will offer five monthly online poetry workshops occurring on August 20, September 10, October 1, November 12, and December 3. Each workshop will begin with a 60 minute presentation by the featured speaker. After participants will have 30 minutes to practice what they learned and share with the group. Featured speakers include: Aug. 20, Gauri Awasthi “Ecopoetics and The Poet" Sept. 10, Rosebud Ben-Oni “Elegy as Epiphany: How Grief Leads to Illumination” Oct. 1, Torrin A Greathouse “Writing the Unreliable Speaker” Nov. 12, Kathryn Winograd “Chapbook Explorations into Culture, Gender & Identity” Dec. 3, Becca Klaver “Strange & Sublime Similes” Registration required. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership.

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