How to Love the World

by James Crews

  Dale Biron is a poet, an author, a speaker, and a professor. He has presented and taught classes in many venues, including TEDx Marin, Herbst Theatre, Moveon, and OLLI Dominican University. He served on the Marin Poetry Center board and was past poetry editor for A Network for Grateful Living. He is the author of a book of collected poems, Why We Do Our Daily Practices (2014), and his latest prose book is Poetry for the Leader Inside You: A Search and Rescue Mission for the Heart and Soul (2018).

  Sally Bliumis-Dunn teaches modern poetry at Manhattanville College and the Palm Beach Poetry Festival. Her poems have appeared in New Ohio Review, On the Seawall, The Paris Review, Prairie Schooner, PLUME, Poetry London, New York Times, and upstreet, and on PBS NewsHour, The Writer’s Almanac, Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, and American Life in Poetry, among others. Her books include Talking Underwater (Wind Publications, 2007), Second Skin (2010), Galapagos Poems (Kattywompus Press, 2016), and Echolocation (Madhat Press, 2018).

  Laure-Anne Bosselaar is the author of The Hour Between Dog and Wolf, Small Gods of Grief, which won the Isabella Gardner Prize for Poetry, and A New Hunger, selected as a Notable Book by the American Library Association. Winner of the 2020 James Dickey Prize for Poetry and the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, she is the editor of four anthologies and a member of the founding faculty at the Solstice MFA in Creative Writing. Her latest collection is These Many Rooms (Four Way Books). She is Santa Barbara poet laureate (2019-2021).

  Abigail Carroll is the author of Habitation of Wonder; A Gathering of Larks: Letters to Saint Francis from a Modern-Day Pilgrim; and Three Squares: The Invention of the American Meal. Carroll’s poems have appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Midwest Quarterly, Sojourners, Terrain, and the anthology Between Midnight and Dawn: A Literary Guide to Prayer for Lent, Holy Week, and Eastertide (Paraclete Press, 2016). She serves as pastor of arts and spiritual formation at Church at the Well in Burlington, Vermont, and enjoys weaving, playing Celtic harp, and walking the pastures behind her farmhouse.

  Kristen Case’s poetry collections include Little Arias (New Issues Press, 2015) and Principles of Economics (Switchback Books, 2018), which won the Gatewood Prize. She is the recipient of a MacDowell Fellowship and has twice been awarded the Maine Literary Award in poetry. Case is also the author of numerous scholarly essays and is coeditor of the volumes Thoreau at 200: Essays and Reassessments (Cambridge, 2016) and 21|19: Contemporary Poets in the 19th Century Archive (Milkweed Editions). She teaches American literature at the University of Maine at Farmington.

  Judith Chalmer is the author of two collections of poems, Minnow (Kelsay Books, 2020) and Out of History’s Junk Jar (Time Being Books, 1995). She is cotranslator of two books of haiku and tanka with Michiko Oishi: Red Fish Alphabet (Honami Syoten, 2008) and Deepening Snow (Plowboy Press, 2012). She was director of VSA Vermont, a nonprofit in arts and disability. In 2018 she received the Arthur Williams Award from the Vermont Arts Council for Meritorious Service in the Arts. She lives with her partner, Lisa, in Vermont.

  Lucille Clifton (1936–2010) authored many collections of poetry, including Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems 1988–2000 (BOA Editions, 2000), which won the National Book Award; Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir 1969–1980 (BOA Editions, 1987), which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize; and Two-Headed Woman (University of Massachusetts Press, 1980), also a Pulitzer Prize nominee as well as the recipient of the University of Massachusetts Press Juniper Prize. Her honors include an Emmy Award from the American Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, a Lannan Literary Award, two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and the 2007 Ruth Lilly Prize.

  Lisa Coffman’s work has been featured on The Writer’s Almanac and BBC News, in the Oxford American, Village Voice, Philadelphia Inquirer, and elsewhere. She is the author of Likely and Less Obvious Gods and has been awarded the Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize from Kent State University Press and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Pew Charitable Trusts, and Bucknell University’s Stadler Center for Poetry. She collaborated with composer Timothy Melbinger on the six-poem cycle Hymns to Less Obvious Gods, which premiered in spring 2019.

  James Crews is the author of four collections of poetry: The Book of What Stays, Telling My Father, Bluebird, and Every Waking Moment. He is also the editor of the anthology Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection. He lives with his husband in Shaftsbury, Vermont, and teaches creative writing privately and at the University at Albany. jamescrews.net

  Barbara Crooker is a poetry editor for Italian-Americana, and the author of nine books of poetry; Some Glad Morning (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019) is the latest. Her awards include the W. B. Yeats Society of New York Award, Thomas Merton Poetry of the Sacred Award, and three Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Creative Writing Fellowships. Her work appears in literary journals and anthologies, including The Valparaiso Poetry Review, The Chariton Poetry Review, Green Mountains Review, Tar River Poetry Review, The Beloit Poetry Journal, The Denver Quarterly, Smartish Pace, Gargoyle, The American Poetry Journal, Dogwood, Passages North, Nimrod, The Bedford Introduction to Literature, Nasty Women: An Unapologetic Anthology of Subversive Verse, and has been read on ABC, the BBC, The Writer’s Almanac, and featured in American Life in Poetry.

  Noah Davis grew up in Tipton, Pennsylvania, and writes about the Allegheny Front. Davis’s manuscript Of This River was selected by George Ella Lyon for the 2019 Wheelbarrow Emerging Poet Book Prize from Michigan State University’s Center for Poetry. His poems and prose have appeared in The SUN, Best New Poets, Orion, North American Review, River Teeth, Sou’wester, and Chautauqua, among others. He was awarded a Katharine Bakeless Nason Fellowship at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the 2018 Jean Ritchie Appalachian Literature Fellowship from Lincoln Memorial University. Davis earned an MFA from Indiana University and now lives with his wife, Nikea, in Missoula, Montana.

  Todd Davis is the author of six collections of poetry, most recently Native Species, Winterkill, and In the Kingdom of the Ditch, all published by Michigan State University Press. He has won Foreword INDIES Book of the Year bronze and silver awards, the Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Prize, the Chautauqua Editors Prize, and the Bloomsburg University Book Prize. His poems have appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, American Poetry Review, Gettysburg Review, Iowa Review, Missouri Review, North American Review, Orion, and Poetry Northwest. He teaches environmental studies, American literature, and creative writing at Pennsylvania State University’s Altoona College.

  Amy Dryansky has published two poetry collections; Grass Whistle (Salmon Poetry) received the Massachusetts Book Award, and How I Got Lost So Close to Home won the New England/New York Award from Alice James. Her work is included in several anthologies and in Barrow Street, Harvard Review, New England Review, Memorious, Orion, The SUN, Tin House, and other journals. She’s received honors from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, MacDowell Colony, and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and is the former poet laureate of Northampton, Massachusetts. She directs the Culture, Brain, and Development Program at Hampshire College and parents two children. amydryansky.com

  Jehanne Dubrow is the author of nine poetry collections, including Wild Kingdom (Louisiana State University Press, 2021) and Simple Machines, winner of the Richard Wilbur Poetry Award, and a book of creative nonfiction, throughsmoke: an essay in notes. Her work has appeared in Poetry, New England Review, and The Southern Review. She is professor of creative writing at the University of North Texas.

  Terri Kirby Erickson is the author of six collections, including Becoming the Blue Heron (Press 53) and A Sun Inside My Chest. Her work has appeared in American Life in Poetry, Asheville Poetry Review, Atlanta Review, Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection, Connotation Press, JAMA, Latin American Literary Review, Plainsongs, Poetry Foundation, Poet’s Market, storySouth, The Christian Century, The SUN, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Verse Daily, and many others. Her awards include the Joy Harjo Poetry Prize, the Atlanta Revi
ew International Publication Prize, the Nazim Hikmet Poetry Award, and a Nautilus Silver Book Award. She lives in North Carolina.

  Cathryn Essinger is the author of four books of poetry, including The Apricot and the Moon (Dos Madres Press, 2020). A chapbook titled Wings, about raising monarch butterflies, is forthcoming. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, River Styx, and PANK and have been featured on The Writer’s Almanac and in American Life in Poetry. She lives in Troy, Ohio, where she raises monarch butterflies and tries to live up to her dog’s expectations. cathrynessinger.com

  Patricia Fargnoli was born in Hartford, Connecticut. A retired psychotherapist, she began studying poetry in her mid-thirties. Her first book, Necessary Light (Utah State University Press, 1999), was published when she was 62. Fargnoli served as New Hampshire poet laureate from 2006 to 2009 and was associate editor of the Worcester Review. Awards include an honorary BFA from the New Hampshire Institute of Arts and a MacDowell fellowship. She resides in Walpole, New Hampshire.

  Farnaz Fatemi is an Iranian American writer and editor in Santa Cruz, California. She is a member and cofounder of the Hive Poetry Collective (hivepoetry.org). Her poetry and prose appear in SWWIM Daily, Grist Journal, Catamaran Literary Reader, Crab Orchard Review, Tahoma Literary Review, Tupelo Quarterly, and several anthologies, including My Shadow Is My Skin: Voices from the Iranian Diaspora and The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 3: Halal If You Hear Me. She taught writing at the University of California, Santa Cruz, from 1997–2018. farnazfatemi.com

  Molly Fisk, as an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow, recently edited California Fire and Water: A Climate Crisis Anthology. She’s the author of The More Difficult Beauty, Listening to Winter, and Houston, We Have a Possum among other books, and has won grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the California Arts Council, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Fisk lives in the Sierra foothills, where she teaches writing to cancer patients, provides weekly commentary to community radio, and works as a radical life coach. patreon.com/mollyfisk

  Laura Foley is the author of seven poetry collections, including Why I Never Finished My Dissertation, which won an Eric Hoffer Award, and It’s This (Salmon Press, 2021). Her poems have been read on The Writer’s Almanac and appear in American Life in Poetry. She lives with her wife, Clara Gimenez, among the hills of Vermont. laurafoley.net

  Patricia Fontaine teaches classes using expressive art and writing as a refuge for those living with illness, and their caregivers. Her self-published book of poems is Lifting My Shirt: The Cancer Poems. She lives on a big lake in northwestern Vermont with birds, wind, and a grand collection of friends and family.

  Sarah Freligh is the author of Sad Math, winner of the 2014 Moon City Press Poetry Prize and the 2015 Whirling Prize from the University of Indianapolis; A Brief Natural History of an American Girl (Accents Publishing, 2012); and Sort of Gone (Turning Point Books, 2008). Her work has appeared in the Cincinnati Review, SmokeLong Quarterly, Diode, and in the anthologies New Microfiction and Best Microfiction 2019 and 2020. She received a 2009 poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and a grant from the Constance Saltonstall Foundation in 2006.

  Albert Garcia is the author of three collections of poetry: Rainshadow (Copper Beech Press, 1996), Skunk Talk (Bear Starr Press, 2005), and A Meal Like That (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2015). His poetry has been published in American Life in Poetry and on The Writer’s Almanac, as well as in numerous journals. A former professor and dean at Sacramento Community College, Garcia lives in Wilton, California.

  Ross Gay is the author of four books of poetry: Against Which; Bringing the Shovel Down; Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, winner of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award; and Be Holding (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020). His best-selling collection of essays, The Book of Delights, was released by Algonquin Books in 2019.

  Crystal S. Gibbins is a Canadian American writer, the founder of Split Rock Review, the editor of Rewilding: Poems for the Environment (Flexible Press), and the author of Now/Here (Holy Cow! Press). Her poetry and comics have appeared in Cincinnati Review, Coffee House Writers Project, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Hobart, North American Review, Minnesota Review, Verse Daily, The Writer’s Almanac, and elsewhere. Originally from the Northwest Angle and Islands in Lake of the Woods, she now lives on Lake Superior in northern Wisconsin. crystalgibbins.com

  Jessica Gigot is a poet, farmer, teacher, and musician. She is the author of Flood Patterns (Antrim House Books, 2015) and Feeding Hour (Wandering Aengus Press, 2020). Her work has appeared in Orion, Taproot, Gastronomica, The Hopper, Mothers Always Write, and Poetry Northwest. She makes artisan sheep cheese and grows organic herbs on her farm in Bow, Washington.

  Alice Wolf Gilborn is the founding editor of the literary magazine Blueline, published by the English department at SUNY Potsdam. Her poems have appeared in Healing the Divide (Green Writers Press) and After Moby-Dick (Spinner Publications). She is the author of Apples and Stones (Kelsay Books, 2020); the chapbook Taking Root (Finishing Line Press); the nonfiction book What Do You Do With a Kinkajou? (Lippincott); and an essay collection, Out of the Blue. alicewolfgilborn.com

  Nancy Miller Gomez lives in Santa Cruz, California. She cofounded Poetry in the Jails, a program that provides poetry workshops to incarcerated men and women. Her work has appeared in New Ohio Review, The Massachusetts Review, Shenandoah, River Styx, Rattle, Verse Daily, American Life in Poetry, and elsewhere. Her first chapbook, Punishment, was published by Rattle Books. She has worked as a stable hand, an attorney, and a television producer.

  Amanda Gorman is the first Youth Poet Laureate of the United States. Her first poetry book is The One for Whom Food Is Not Enough (Penmanship Books, 2015). She is founder and executive director of One Pen One Page, which promotes literacy through free creative writing programming for underserved youth. She writes for the New York Times’s student newsletter, The Edit.

  David Graham is the author of seven collections of poetry, including The Honey of Earth (Terrapin Books, 2019), Stutter Monk (Flume Press), and Second Wind (Texas Tech University Press). He coedited the anthologies Local News: Poetry About Small Towns (MWPH Books, 2019) and After Confession: Poetry as Confession (Graywolf Press, 2001). He was a faculty member at The Frost Place in Franconia, New Hampshire, where he also served as poet in residence in 1996. He taught and directed the visiting writers series at Ripon College for 28 years. He is a contributing editor and writer at Verse-Virtual, and lives in Glens Falls, New York. davidgrahampoet.com

  Joy Harjo was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and is a member of the Mvskoke Nation. Her books of poetry include How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems, The Woman Who Fell From the Sky, and She Had Some Horses. She has received the New Mexico Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers Circle of the Americas, and the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America. Harjo served as United States poet laureate from 2019–2021, and was the first Native American to serve in the position.

  Jeffrey Harrison is the author of five books of poetry: The Singing Underneath (1988), selected by James Merrill for the National Poetry Series; Signs of Arrival (1996); Feeding the Fire (2001); Incomplete Knowledge (2006); and Into Daylight (2014), winner of Tupelo Press’s Dorset Prize. A recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and National Endowment for the Arts, he has published poems in The New Republic, The New Yorker, The Nation, Poetry, The Yale Review, The Hudson Review, American Poetry Review, The Paris Review, Poets of the New Century, The Twentieth Century in Poetry, and elsewhere. He lives in Massachusetts.

  Penny Harter’s poems have appeared in Persimmon Tree, Rattle, Tiferet, American Life in Poetry, and the anthologies Healing the Divide and Poetry of Presence. She has published 22 collections, including A Prayer the Body Makes (2020), The Resonance Around Us (2013), One Bowl (2012), Recycling Starlight (2010), and The Night Marsh (2008). A featured reader at th
e 2010 Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival, she has been awarded poetry fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts; received the Mary Carolyn Davies Award from the Poetry Society of America and the William O. Douglas Nature Writing Award for her work in the anthology American Nature Writing 2002; and held two residencies at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. pennyharterpoet.com

  Margaret Hasse is the author of five books of poems: Stars Above, Stars Below (1985); In a Sheep’s Eye, Darling (1993); Milk and Tides (2008); Earth’s Appetite (2013); and Between Us (2016). She is a recipient of grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, McKnight Foundation, Loft Literary Center’s Career Initiative Program, Minnesota State Arts Board, and Jerome Foundation. Her work has been published in magazines, broadsides, and anthologies, including Where One Voice Ends, Another Begins: 150 Years of Minnesota Poetry and To Sing Along the Way: Minnesota Women’s Voices from Pre-Territorial Day to the Present, and on The Writer’s Almanac. She lives in Minnesota.

  Jane Hirshfield’s ninth and most recently published collection is Ledger (Knopf, 2020). A former chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, her work appears in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Times Literary Supplement, The New York Review of Books, and ten editions of The Best American Poetry. In 2019, she was elected into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

  Tony Hoagland (1953–2018) was born in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. He is author of the poetry collections Sweet Ruin (1992), which was chosen for the Brittingham Prize in Poetry and won the Zacharis Award from Emerson College; Donkey Gospel (1998), winner of the James Laughlin Award; What Narcissism Means to Me (2003); Rain (2005); Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty (2010); Application for Release from the Dream (2015); Recent Changes in the Vernacular (2017); and Priest Turned Therapist Treats Fear of God (2018). He also published two collections of essays about poetry: Real Sofistakashun (2006) and Twenty Poems That Could Save America and Other Essays (2014).