Poetry Medicine for the Soul Podcast By John Gillespie cover art

Poetry Medicine for the Soul

Poetry Medicine for the Soul

By: John Gillespie
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Poetry readings and conversation Art
Episodes
  • Salvation in the vernacular: a reading with Ken Haas

    Salvation in the vernacular: a reading with Ken Haas
    Apr 1 2026

    Ken Haas grew up in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City but has lived for 50 years now in San Francisco, where he works in healthcare. He received an AB in History and Literature at Harvard College, and received an MA in English literature at the University of Sussex, U.K., where he wrote his thesis on Wallace Stevens. A life-long poetry writer, Ken has spent the majority of his career as a hi-tech executive and biotech venture capitalist in Silicon Valley. His first poetry book, Borrowed Light, won the 2020 Red Mountain Press Discovery Award, as well as a 2021 prize from the National Federation of Press Women. Ken has been nominated for multiple Pushcart Prizes, has won the Betsy Colquitt Poetry Award, and serves on the Board of the Community of Writers. His poems have appeared in over 50 journals and numerous anthologies.

    Check out the Penn Sound poetry archive mentioned in this episode at https://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/.

    Learn more about Ken at www.kenhaas.org.

    This podcast is hosted and produced by John Gillespie. Check out our website for more episodes: https://poetry-medicine-for-the-soul.simplecast.com/

    Listen and subscribe to Poetry Medicine for the Soul in Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

    Get in touch with us at: info@poetrymedicineforthesoul.com

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    36 mins
  • A ghost and a girl: a reading with Summer J. Hart

    A ghost and a girl: a reading with Summer J. Hart
    Mar 25 2026

    Summer J. Hart is an interdisciplinary artist and writer from Maine living in the Hudson Valley, New York. She is the author of two books of poetry: Boomhouse (2023, The 3rd Thing Press), which won the 2024 Eugene Paul Nassar Poetry Prize, and What Came Down in the Smoke (forthcoming in 2026 from JackLeg Press). Her creative work has been supported by Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, MacDowell, NYSCA/NYFA, and Vermont Studio Center.

    Her writing can be found or is forthcoming in Best Small Fictions 2023 (Alternating Current Press), Allium, Ballast, Bedfellows, Grist, Heavy Feather Review, Jet Fuel Review, The Massachusetts Review, North American Review, Northern New England Review, Tyger Quarterly, Waxwing, Wild Roof Journal, and elsewhere. Her mixed-media artworks have been featured in exhibitions across the United States. They are included in the permanent collections of The University of Hartford and The University of Southern Maine.

    Summer is an enrolled member of the Listuguj Mi’gmaq First Nation.

    Learn more at www.summerjhart.com.

    This podcast is hosted and produced by John Gillespie. Check out our website for more episodes: https://poetry-medicine-for-the-soul.simplecast.com/

    Listen and subscribe to Poetry Medicine for the Soul in Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

    Get in touch with us at: info@poetrymedicineforthesoul.com

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    34 mins
  • Things I need to name: a reading with Kimberly Ann Priest

    Things I need to name: a reading with Kimberly Ann Priest
    Mar 18 2026
    Kimberly Ann Priest (she/her) is a neurodivergent writer and photographer whose book Wolves in Shells won the 2024 Backwaters Prize in Poetry from the University of Nebraska Press. She is the author of tether & lung (Texas Review Press 2025) and Slaughter the One Bird (Sundress Publications 2021), finalist for the American Best Book Awards. Her chapbooks include The Optimist Shelters in Place (Harbor Editions 2022), Parrot Flower (Glass Poetry Press 2021), still life (PANK 2020), and White Goat Black Sheep (FLP 2017). Kimberly's writing and scholarly interests are deeply focused on gender-based trauma, domestic ecologies, eco-poetics, eco-spirituality, ecofeminism, women's studies, neurodivergence studies, classic film studies, narrative justice, arts-based research, and writing for therapeutic purposes. Hailing from the working-class world of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, Kimberly earned her BA (Regent University) and MA (Central Michigan University) degrees in English Language & Literature and her MFA (New England College) in Poetry/Nonfiction mid-life while raising two children to young adulthood. She is the great-granddaughter of Scottish immigrants and miners on her father's side, and the granddaughter of a traveling preacher on her mother's side. Her family history is a well-spring of Biblical lore and MacGregor clan legends, equally fraught with displacement, religious abuses, and troubled attachments. Growing up on the banks of Lake Superior, she spent her youth hiding among the rocks along the lakeshore to read scores of books during the warmer seasons while working as a carhop at a local 1950s-style drive-in restaurant. A survivor of gendered violence and an active outdoorswoman, she has participated in initiatives to increase awareness concerning sexual assault, survivorship, and healing through nature and artistic expression. Her literary interests include women poets and storytellers, stories that explore religious imaginations and spirituality, feminist narratives of trauma, migration, endangered species, and rewilding, and travel and nature writing. She has received fellowships and residencies from Monson Arts, SAFTA, Ghost Ranch, and Proximity Writer's House, and she has served as an editorial intern for Sundress Publications and Black Earth Institute as well as an associate editor for six years with the Nimrod International Journal of Prose and Poetry. Winner of the 2019 Heartland Poetry Prize and a Brooklyn Girls Books prize, her work has appeared in literary journals such as Copper Nickel, Poetry Wales, Salamander, RHINO, Chicago Quarterly Review,, and The Birmingham Poetry Review. Her work has also been selected for Poetry Daily and Verse Daily, and appears in the second edition of the textbook Environmental and Nature Writing: A Writer's Guide and Anthology from Bloomsbury Academic. Currently, Kimberly is an assistant professor of first-year writing at Michigan State University, a PhD candidate at the University of Aberdeen, and a guest teaching artist at The Telling Room in Portland, Maine. She is a member of the Association of Writers and Publishers, Poets & Writers, Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance, and the National Association for Poetry Therapy. She met her husband during the five years she worked at a summer camp and lived part-time in Maine hiking the state's breathtaking landscape. They eloped to Scotland and live together in Maine. Learn more about Kimberly Ann at www.kimberlyannpriest.com. **CONTENT WARNING** This episode contains depictions of domestic abuse and sexual violence. If you or someone you know needs help, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline 1-800-799-7233 or visit their website, www.thehotline.org. This podcast is hosted and produced by John Gillespie. Check out our website for more episodes: https://poetry-medicine-for-the-soul.simplecast.com/Listen and subscribe to Poetry Medicine for the Soul in Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Get in touch with us at: info@poetrymedicineforthesoul.com
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    46 mins
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