National Poetry Month: Prompt 16 from Zoë Ryder White May Swenson’s “Question” is one of those poems perpetually knocking around in my mind. Her questions focus on  the self unhoused from the body. While you are still embodied, what questions do you h…

National Poetry Month: Prompt 16, from Zoë Ryder White, featuring May Swenson’s poem “Question” 📚💙

@zoeryderwhite.bsky.social #poetry #NaPoMo

The book on a wooden surface. It features a nearly full-cover photo of a totally rusted, opened sardine tin with the title and author (Backyard Alchemy, on life with other creatures in a time of salvage) written into it. The background is dark brown to fit with the rust of the tin.

The tangents you can launch into while your body is at work taking in signals from its environment, transforming it and you—a two-way flow of connection. I love how
@nematode.bsky.social's lyric essays in their Backyard Alchemy @riverriverbooks.bsky.social, 2026) do that!
🐛🌱❤️💫🌱🐛💖

📚💙

OF POETRY PODCAST Beth Gilstrap PLAINWATER THERE IS NEWS ALONG THE OHIO (Of Genre as a Place to Leave & a Place to Come Back to, Finding the River's Flow, and Grief & Healing in Writing) EPISODE 87

Catch up on the poetic nonfiction of @bettysueblue.bsky.social on Episode 87–Beth is truly a hybrid & lyrical writer, and you can hear her read from her newest collection THERE IS NEWS ALONG THE OHIO RIVER here: share.transistor.fm/s/629f008d

OpenAI: We’re burning money like the Joker. A miracle needs to happen for us to turn a profit

Microsoft: Please please use our AI systems, we’re teetering on the edge here

Anthropic: I wonder what’ll kill us first: lawsuits, regulations or model collapse

Media and universities: AI is here to stay

#poemoftheday

National Poetry Month: Prompt 14, from Lee Potts My favorite line from Wes Anderson’s film Asteroid City is “Everything is connected but nothing is working.” Spend some time considering this phrase and use it to begin a poem where robust connecti…

Good morning to DAY 14 of National Poetry month, and this incredible prompt from Lee Potts, editor of @stonecirclereview.bsky.social 📚🔥

@leepottspoet.bsky.social #poetry #prompt #NaPoMo

SONG FOR FOUR DANCERS the four dancers move like the blood on their feet is fire; that man on the street, a sweat-damp field.

Douglas Kearney

@fencebooks.bsky.social

—hearing this story...

James Brolin told Barbra Streisand he didn't want to fall asleep because “he would miss her,” inspiring Diane Warren to write the Aerosmith hit
"I Don't Want to Miss a Thing"

—my god—to be loved like that

Again, if you have a Substack, the best time to switch away was months ago -- but today's the second best time.

Bookstore Bookstore selling contemporary poetry collections published by River River Books.

Read Lauren Camp’s AN EYE IN EACH SQUARE this #ArabAmericanHeritageMonth!

This @riverriverbooks.bsky.social poetry collection features “an imaginative biography of enigmatic painter Agnes Martin and a treatise on the multiplicities of the natural world.”
riverriverbooks.org/store/An-Eye...

Find Lauren’s amazing collection here: riverriverbooks.org/store/An-Eye... #ArabAmericanHistoryMonth

National Poetry Month: Prompt 11, Jennifer A Sutherland Imagine that the events of a given day in your life have, many years in the future, become a mythological story. Write a poem in the voice of a speaker who is telling the story. Consider who the sp…

National Poetry Month: Prompt 11, from Jennifer A Sutherland 🌬️

Memoir & myth! @jasutherland.bsky.social

#poetry #NaPoMo 📚💙

i'm not exactly sure what "race communism" is but i'm intrigued and would like to give it a try

absolutely horrifying how many people I’ve heard say, this new generation will save us! like, hey cheryl, why don’t you also get off your ass and do something instead of dumping your generation’s violence onto their shoulders

Fuck this. As an industry, we are in an existential crisis of book banning because of homophobia and transphobia weaponized by racist authoritarians. “Dirty books” are not the problem. Censorship is.

Make whatever books you like, but don’t you dare call other books dirty in your shitty marketing.

"A good poem doesn't give up all of its secrets right away." Scythe author Elizabeth Sylvia, interviewed in The New Bedford Light

SCYTHE author Elizabeth Sylvia talks poetry, process, and pleasure in this interview with The New Bedford Light ...

newbedfordlight.org/poet-elizabe...

Every Galaxy a Circle by Chloe N. Clark: Review by Gabino Iglesias Every Galaxy a Circle, Chloe N. Clark (JackLeg 978-1-95690-722-3, $18.00, 202pp, tp) February 2026. Cover by Danika Isdahl. I know it’s early in the year, but I already know that I’ll be talking ab…

My review of @pintsncupcakes.bsky.social’s Every Galaxy a Circle is now up at @locusmag.bsky.social.
locusmag.com/review/every...

Kermit as a tarot card

Pause from scrolling for 5 mins and self reflect on what the rainbow connection means to you

Our! Elane! Kim! 🥰🎉🎉🎉

Order your copy of ANTIBODY, Elane’s spring 2026 debut containing multiple sonnets, here: riverriverbooks.org/store/Antibo...

❤️🙏

graphic featuring a portion of Elane Kim's poem, which can be found in full at the link in the post

photograph of poet Elane Kim

"The sonnet has survived multiple centuries by always adapting," @maggiesmithpoet.bsky.social shares in episode 1489. "If a sonnet is about turning to the unexpected, then the poet takes it further by looking in unexpected places."

Read "Sonnet Overheard at Phone Booth” by Elane Kim: bit.ly/4c83Cdq

Melina Matsoukas to Direct ‘Parable of the Sower’ for Warner Bros. (EXCLUSIVE) Melina Matsoukas is set to direct and produce the screen adaptation of Octavia E. Butler’s sci-fi odyssey "Parable of the Sower" for Warner Bros.

Melina Matsoukas to direct Octavia E. Butler’s classic “Parable of the Sower” for Warner Bros

Last but very much not least, beloved former Horn Booker J.D. Ho asked me to blurb their new book Backyard Alchemy: On Life with Other BACKYARD ALCHEMY Creatures in a Time of Salvage, a collection of gorgeous, plainspoken, and raw personal essays — and what a gift it was. Sometimes books just find you at the exact right time. Who else has had this alchemical experience?

“…a collection of gorgeous, plainspoken, and raw personal essays…”

Beautiful shout-out to J.D. Ho’s Backyard Alchemy by Elissa Gershowitz, editor at The Horn Book!

Read the full post here: www.hbook.com/story/out-of...

@nematode.bsky.social 📚💙

Screen shot of podcast player and the text: April 8, 2026 1489: Sonnet Overheard at Phone Booth by Elane Kim

So thrilled to see Elane Kim, author of ANTIBODY (@riverriverbooks.bsky.social, 2026), featured on The Slow Down today! 📚💙🎙️

Listen here: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t...

One of my most favorite pubs.

[I’m still trying] by Eva Eliav [I’m still trying] I’m still trying to nourish myself with words elusive prey once I was as well-fed as a bear words leapt like salmon into my waiting mouth * Eva Eliav received her BA in English L…

[I’m still trying] by Eva Eliav in ONE ART: a journal of poetry

oneartpoetry.com/2026/04/04/i...

"Look—I will tell you what it is if you do not know. If you will listen again. Not just pull me into the room so you may do your business. No more to line me up on the stand, slide my head through the wood, and squeeze me for what I have to give you by my body. Here I am and I will tell you."

Not writing (resting, eating a meal, reading a book, gardening—doing anything else) in order to write.

Blue graphic with book cover of The Visible Field and the text: "With a fresh lens that broadens the scope of the possible and the poetic, White challenges how we routinely estrange ourselves from the natural world and our own hearts." POEMS THE ZOE VISIBLE RYDER FIELD WHITE Eleanor Ball reviews THE VISIBLE FIELD in Cleaver Magazine

Read @eleanorball.bsky.social’s incredible review of @zoeryderwhite.bsky.social’s The Visible Field in Cleaver Magazine! 📚💙👇

www.cleavermagazine.com/the-visible-...

TOP 10 TITLES FROM CLMP.ORG MEMBERS, MARCH 2026 I. Strap - Iron Oak Editions - Dan Kraines 2. The Rose Metal Field Guide to Writing Flash Nonfiction - Rose Metal Press - Ed. Dinty W. Moore 3. Fifty Mothers - River River Books - Preeti Vangani 4. Southwest Reconstruction - Noemi Press - Raquel Gutierrez 5. The Swallows Come Out - Unbound Edition Press - Angie Estes 6. The Dragonfly Gambit - Neon Hemlock Press - A. D. Sui 7. Curtains of Rain - Jaded Ibis Press - Anel I. Flores 8. There is News Along the Ohio River - River River Books - Beth Gilstrap 9. The Visible Field - River River Books - Zoë Ryder White I0. Lonesome Ballroom - Rescue Press - Madeline McDonnell

Three River River titles on this list!

Thank you, @bookmobile-itasca.bsky.social!