Poetry: David Groff, Kazim Ali, Martha Rhodes, and Richard Smith

Award-winning poetry by established and emerging poets throughout the summer.

David Groff is the author of Live in Suspense, published in 2023 by Trio House Press. His previous book Clay, also from Trio House, was chosen by Michael Waters for the Louise Bogan Award. His first collection, Theory of Devolution (University of Illinois Press), was selected by Mark Doty for the National Poetry Series. With Philip Clark, he edited Persistent Voices: Poetry by Writers Lost to AIDS (Alyson); with Jim Elledge, he edited Who’s Yer Daddy?: Gay Writers Celebrate Their Mentors and Forerunners (University of Wisconsin Press), winner of a Lambda Literary Award. An independent book editor, he teaches poetry and publishing in the MFA creative writing program at the City College of New York.

Kazim Ali was born in the United Kingdom and has lived transnationally in the United States, Canada, India, France, and the Middle East. His most recent book is Sukun: New and Selected Poems (Wesleyan University Press, 2023), which Publisher’s Weekly called, “dazzling.” His books encompass multiple genres, including the volumes of poetry The Voice of Sheila Chandra (Alice James Books, 2020), Inquisition (Wesleyan University Press, 2018) All One’s Blue (HarperCollins India, 2016) Sky Ward (Wesleyan University Press, 2012) winner of the Ohioana Book Award in Poetry; The Fortieth Day (BOA Editions, 2008); The Far Mosque (Alice James Books, 2005) winner of Alice James Books’ New England/New York Award; and the cross-genre texts Bright Felon (Wesleyan University Press, 2009) and Wind Instrument (Spork Press, 2014). His most recent book is Northern Light: Power, Land and the Memory of Water (Milkweed Editions, 2021), which Literary Hub called “A balm for the soul." His novels include The Secret Room: A String Quartet (Kaya Press, 2017) and among his books of essays are the hybrid memoir Silver Road: Essays, Maps & Calligraphies (Tupelo Press, 2018) and Fasting for Ramadan: Notes from a Spiritual Practice (Tupelo Press, 2011). He is also an accomplished translator of Marguerite Duras, Sohrab Sepehri, Ananda Devi, Mahmoud Chokrollahi and others, and an editor of several anthologies and books of criticism.

Martha Rhodes is the author of 5 poetry collections, most recently The Thin Wall from the University of Pittsburgh Press. She is working on a new and selected collection. She teaches at the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College and is the publisher and executive editor of Four Way Books.

Richard Smith’s first book, Not a Soul but Us, won the 2021 May Sarton New Hampshire Poetry Prize and was released in 2022 by Bauhan Publishing. His second book, Beyond Where Words Can Go, has just been published, also by Bauhan. Both are narratives told in sonnets: Not a Soul but Us follows a 12-year-old boy orphaned and abandoned during the plague pandemic in mid-14th-century Yorkshire, and Beyond Where Words Can Go tracks a group of Tudor-era Benedictine monks before, during, and after Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries. Richard is a psychologist with a clinical practice in Washington, D.C.