Our Queer Poem-a-Day "outro" episode, featuring three "extras" for Year 5!
Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language.
Queer Poem-a-Day is founded and co-directed by poet and professor Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Library and host of the Deerfield Public Library Podcast. Music for this fifth year of our series is “L’Ange Verrier” from Le Rossignol Éperdu by Reynaldo Hahn, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by generous donations from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission.
Day 20: Ocean Vuong reads his poem "The Last Dinosaur.” This poem first appeared in a slightly different form in The Boston Review (2021) and in his collection Time is a Mother (Penguin Press, 2022).
Writer, professor, and photographer, Ocean Vuong is the author of The Emperor of Gladness. Born in Saigon, Vietnam and raised in Hartford, Connecticut in a working class family of nail salon and factory laborers, he currently splits his time between western Massachusetts and New York City, where he serves as a Professor in Modern Poetry and Poetics in the MFA Program at NYU.
Text of today’s poem and more details about our program can be found at: deerfieldlibrary.org/queerpoemaday/
Find books from participating poets in our library's catalog.
Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language.
Queer Poem-a-Day is founded and co-directed by poet and professor Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Library and host of the Deerfield Public Library Podcast. Music for this fifth year of our series is “L’Ange Verrier” from Le Rossignol Éperdu by Reynaldo Hahn, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by generous donations from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission.
Day 19: Mark Doty reads his poem, “A Display of Mackerel,” which first appeared in his collection Atlantis (Harper Perennial, 1995).
Mark Doty is the author of nine books of poetry. Fire to Fire: New & Selected Poems, won the National Book Award for Poetry in 2008.
Text of today’s poem and more details about our program can be found at: deerfieldlibrary.org/queerpoemaday/
Find books from participating poets in our library's catalog.
Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language.
Queer Poem-a-Day is founded and co-directed by poet and professor Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Library and host of the Deerfield Public Library Podcast. Music for this fifth year of our series is “L’Ange Verrier” from Le Rossignol Éperdu by Reynaldo Hahn, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by generous donations from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission.
Day 18: Rose Zinnia reads her poem, “I'm Like If Mary Oliver Had Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.” This poem was originally published in Poetry (April 2025).
Rose Zinnia is a poet, novelist, essayist, teaching artist, editor, and designer. Born in Akron, Ohio, she is the author of Togethering (Ledge Mule Press, 2024), a chapbook of poetry & lyric essay. A 2025 National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellow, Zinnia’s honors also include fellowships and residencies from Vermont Studio Center, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, and the Kinsey Institute. Her writing appears or is forthcoming in The Offing, Poetry, CV2, Black Warrior Review, Poem-A-Day, The Journal, Gulf Coast, and West Branch, among others. She holds an MFA from Indiana University, works at the LGBTQ+ journal and press Foglifter, and lives in Cleveland, Ohio.
Text of today’s poem and more details about our program can be found at: deerfieldlibrary.org/queerpoemaday/
Find books from participating poets in our library's catalog.
Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language.
Queer Poem-a-Day is founded and co-directed by poet and professor Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Library and host of the Deerfield Public Library Podcast. Music for this fifth year of our series is “L’Ange Verrier” from Le Rossignol Éperdu by Reynaldo Hahn, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by generous donations from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission.
Day 17: Nikky Finney reads her poem “Charm,” originally published in her collection The World is Round (InnerLight Publishing, 2003).
Nikky Finney is the author of On Wings Made of Gauze; Rice; The World Is Round; and Head Off & Split, which won the National Book Award for Poetry in 2011. Her new collection of poems, Love Child’s Hotbed of Occasional Poetry, was released in 2020. Finney is Carolina Distinguished Professor at USC in Columbia where she is also Director of the Ernest A. Finney Jr. Cultural Arts Center.
Text of today’s poem and more details about our program can be found at: deerfieldlibrary.org/queerpoemaday/
Find books from participating poets in our library's catalog.
Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language.
Queer Poem-a-Day is founded and co-directed by poet and professor Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Library and host of the Deerfield Public Library Podcast. Music for this fifth year of our series is “L’Ange Verrier” from Le Rossignol Éperdu by Reynaldo Hahn, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by generous donations from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission.
Day 16: Oliver Baez Bendorf reads his poem “What the Dead Can Do, which was originally published in West Branch (2021), reprinted in Best American Poetry 2022, and in his book Consider the Rooster (Nightboat Books, 2024).
Oliver Baez Bendorf is the author of three books of poetry, including Consider the Rooster, a finalist for the 2024 National Book Critics Circle Award. Born and raised in Iowa, he now lives and writes in exile.
Text of today’s poem and more details about our program can be found at: deerfieldlibrary.org/queerpoemaday/
Find books from participating poets in our library's catalog.
Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language.
Queer Poem-a-Day is founded and co-directed by poet and professor Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Library and host of the Deerfield Public Library Podcast. Music for this fifth year of our series is “L’Ange Verrier” from Le Rossignol Éperdu by Reynaldo Hahn, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by generous donations from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission.
Day 15: Jayson P. Smith reads their poem, “I Arrive in a Place with a High Level of Psychic Distress.” Queer Poem-a-Day is honored to be the first publication of this poem.
Jayson P. Smith is a poet, dancer, educator, & curator from the Bronx. J is the recipient of fellowships from Hawthornden Foundation, NYFA, The Poetry Project, and Callaloo. They curate NOMAD Readings in Brooklyn (& elsewhere).
Text of today’s poem and more details about our program can be found at: deerfieldlibrary.org/queerpoemaday/
Find books from participating poets in our library's catalog.
Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language.
Queer Poem-a-Day is founded and co-directed by poet and professor Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Library and host of the Deerfield Public Library Podcast. Music for this fifth year of our series is “L’Ange Verrier” from Le Rossignol Éperdu by Reynaldo Hahn, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by generous donations from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission.
Day 14:
Jessica Jacobs reads her poem, "Saturday Services at the Provincetown Shore" from her book unalone (Four Way Books, 2024). Recorded with permission of Four Way Books. All rights reserved.
Jessica Jacobs, a 2025 Guggenheim Fellow, is the author of unalone, poems in conversation with the Book of Genesis (Four Way Books, March 2024); Take Me with You, Wherever You’re Going (Four Way Books, 2019), one of Library Journal’s Best Poetry Books of the Year, winner of the Devil’s Kitchen and Goldie Awards, and a finalist for the Brockman-Campbell, American Fiction, and Julie Suk Book Awards; Pelvis with Distance (White Pine Press, 2015), a biography-in-poems of Georgia O’Keeffe, winner of the New Mexico Book Award in Poetry and a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award; and co-author of Write It! 100 Poetry Prompts to Inspire (Spruce Books/Penguin RandomHouse). She is the founder and executive director of Yetzirah: A Hearth for Jewish Poetry.
Text of today’s poem and more details about our program can be found at: deerfieldlibrary.org/queerpoemaday/
Find books from participating poets in our library's catalog.
Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language.
Queer Poem-a-Day is founded and co-directed by poet and professor Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Library and host of the Deerfield Public Library Podcast. Music for this fifth year of our series is “L’Ange Verrier” from Le Rossignol Éperdu by Reynaldo Hahn, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by generous donations from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission.
Day 13: Francisco Márquez reads his poem, “The Bulge,” first published in The Adroit Journal (April 2025).
Francisco Márquez is a poet from Maracaibo, Venezuela, born in Miami, Florida. His work has been featured in the Yale Review, the Brooklyn Rail, the Slowdown podcast, and the Best American Poetry anthology. He has received support from the Tin House Writer's Workshop, The Poetry Project, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, where he was a 2019-2020 Poetry Fellow. He works and lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Text of today’s poem and more details about our program can be found at: deerfieldlibrary.org/queerpoemaday/
Find books from participating poets in our library's catalog.
Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language.
Queer Poem-a-Day is founded and co-directed by poet and professor Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Library and host of the Deerfield Public Library Podcast. Music for this fifth year of our series is “L’Ange Verrier” from Le Rossignol Éperdu by Reynaldo Hahn, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by generous donations from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission.
Day 12: Jaz Sufi reads her poem, “Ode to My Lover's Sequined Dress.” Queer Poem-a-Day is honored to be the first publication of this poem.
Jaz Sufi (she/hers) is a queer Iranian-American poet and arts educator. Her work has been published or is upcoming in Best New Poets, Best of the Net, AGNI, Black Warrior Review, Muzzle, and elsewhere. She is a National Poetry Slam finalist and has received fellowships from Kundiman, the Watering Hole, and New York University, where she received her MFA. She is the current Poet Laureate of San Ramon, CA, where she lives with her dog, Apollo.
Text of today’s poem and more details about our program can be found at: deerfieldlibrary.org/queerpoemaday/
Find books from participating poets in our library's catalog.
Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language.
Queer Poem-a-Day is founded and co-directed by poet and professor Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Library and host of the Deerfield Public Library Podcast. Music for this fifth year of our series is “L’Ange Verrier” from Le Rossignol Éperdu by Reynaldo Hahn, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by generous donations from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission.
Day 11: Gabrielle Calvocoressi reads their poem, “Miss you. Would like to take a walk with you” originally published in Poetry (October 2021).
Gabrielle Calvocoressi is the author of The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart, Apocalyptic Swing (a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize), and Rocket Fantastic, winner of the Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry. Calvocoressi is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships including a Stegner Fellowship and Jones Lectureship from Stanford University; a Rona Jaffe Woman Writer's Award; a Lannan Foundation residency in Marfa, TX; the Bernard F. Conners Prize from The Paris Review; and a residency from the Civitella di Ranieri Foundation, among others. Calvocoressi's poems have been published or are forthcoming in numerous magazines and journals including The Baffler, The New York Times, POETRY, Boston Review, Kenyon Review, Tin House, and The New Yorker. Calvocoressi is an Editor at Large at Los Angeles Review of Books, and Poetry Editor at Southern Cultures. Works in progress include a non-fiction book entitled, The Year I Didn't Kill Myself and a novel, The Alderman of the Graveyard. Calvocoressi was the Beatrice Shepherd Blane Fellow at the Harvard-Radcliffe Institute for 2022 - 2023. Calvocoressi teaches at UNC Chapel Hill and lives in Old East Durham, NC, where joy, compassion, and social justice are at the center of their personal and poetic practice. Their new collection of poetry, The New Economy, will be released from Copper Canyon in 2025.
Text of today’s poem and more details about our program can be found at: deerfieldlibrary.org/queerpoemaday/
Find books from participating poets in our library's catalog.
Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language.
Queer Poem-a-Day is founded and co-directed by poet and professor Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Library and host of the Deerfield Public Library Podcast. Music for this fifth year of our series is “L’Ange Verrier” from Le Rossignol Éperdu by Reynaldo Hahn, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by generous donations from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission.
Day 10: Jan-Henry Gray reads his poem “On Therapy,” first published in the anthology Permanent Record: Poetics Towards the Archive (Nightboat Books, 2025), edited by Naima Yael Tokunow.
Jan-Henry Gray is the author of Documents, selected by D.A. Powell as the winner of BOA Editions’ Poulin Poetry Prize, and the chapbook Selected Emails. His poems have been included in various anthologies, including Here to Stay: Poetry and Prose from the Undocumented Diaspora (HarperCollins, 2024), Permanent Record: Poetics Towards the Archive (Nightboat, 2024), as well as Essential Queer Voices of U.S. Poetry, Queer Nature, and Nepantla: An Anthology for Queer Poets of Color. He’s received fellowships from Undocupoets, the Cooke Foundation Award, and Kundiman. He was born in the Philippines, raised in California, and worked as a chef for over 12 years. He is an assistant professor at Adelphi University and teaches in their low-residency MFA program.
Text of today’s poem and more details about our program can be found at: deerfieldlibrary.org/queerpoemaday/
Find books from participating poets in our library's catalog.
Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language.
Queer Poem-a-Day is founded and co-directed by poet and professor Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Library and host of the Deerfield Public Library Podcast. Music for this fifth year of our series is “L’Ange Verrier” from Le Rossignol Éperdu by Reynaldo Hahn, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by generous donations from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission.
Day 9: Timothy Liu reads his poem “The Price of Kissing is Your Life,” originally published in the Georgia Review (Spring 2025).
Timothy Liu's most recent books of poems are Down Low and Lowdown and Luminous Debris, both out from Barrow Street. A reader of occult esoterica, he teaches at SUNY New Paltz and Vassar College.
Text of today’s poem and more details about our program can be found at: deerfieldlibrary.org/queerpoemaday/
Find books from participating poets in our library's catalog.
Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language.
Queer Poem-a-Day is founded and co-directed by poet and professor Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Library and host of the Deerfield Public Library Podcast. Music for this fifth year of our series is “L’Ange Verrier” from Le Rossignol Éperdu by Reynaldo Hahn, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by generous donations from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission.
Day 8: Lloyd Schwartz reads his poem “Who’s On First?” This poem was originally published in Ploughshares (1981) and reprinted in Who's On First: New and Selected Poems (University of Chicago Press, 2021).
Lloyd Schwartz is poet laureate of Somerville, the Frederick S. Troy Professor of English Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Boston, and a longtime arts critic for NPR’s Fresh Air. He’s published five books of poetry, a collection of his music reviews, and has edited three volumes devoted to the works of Elizabeth Bishop. Among his honors are the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, NEA, and Academy of American Poets for his poetry. His poems have been selected for the Pushcart Prize, The Best American Poetry, and The Best of the Best American Poetry. His next collection, “Artur Schnabel and Joseph Szigeti Play Mozart at the Frick Collection (April 4, 1948)” and Other Poems, will appear next year from Arrowsmith Press.
Text of today’s poem and more details about our program can be found at: deerfieldlibrary.org/queerpoemaday/
Find books from participating poets in our library's catalog.
Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language.
Queer Poem-a-Day is founded and co-directed by poet and professor Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Library and host of the Deerfield Public Library Podcast. Music for this fifth year of our series is “L’Ange Verrier” from Le Rossignol Éperdu by Reynaldo Hahn, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by generous donations from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission.
Day 7: Keetje Kuipers reads her poem “Cremello Horse,” which first appeared in the magazine 32 Poems and was then published in Lonely Women Make Good Lovers (BOA Editions, 2025).
Keetje Kuipers’ fourth collection of poetry, Lonely Women Make Good Lovers, was the recipient of the Isabella Gardner Award. Her poetry and prose have appeared in American Poetry Review, New York Times Magazine, and Poetry, and have been honored by publication in the Pushcart Prize and Best American Poetry anthologies. Keetje has been a Stegner Fellow, NEA Literature Fellow in Creative Writing, and the Margery Davis Boyden Wilderness Writing Resident. She lives with her wife and children in Montana, where she is Editor of Poetry Northwest.
Text of today’s poem and more details about our program can be found at: deerfieldlibrary.org/queerpoemaday/
Find books from participating poets in our library's catalog.
Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language.
Queer Poem-a-Day is founded and co-directed by poet and professor Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Library and host of the Deerfield Public Library Podcast. Music for this fifth year of our series is “L’Ange Verrier” from Le Rossignol Éperdu by Reynaldo Hahn, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by generous donations from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission.
Day 6: Gaia Rajan reads his poem “Essay on Class,” which originally appeared in Frontier Poetry (2023).
Gaia Rajan is the author of the chapbooks Moth Funerals (Glass Poetry Press 2020) and Killing It (Black Lawrence Press 2022). His work is published in the Academy of American Poets' Poem-A-Day, Best New Poets, the Best of the Net anthology, The Kenyon Review, THRUSH, Split Lip Magazine, diode, Palette Poetry, and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn and online at @gaiarajan on Twitter or Instagram.
Text of today’s poem and more details about our program can be found at: deerfieldlibrary.org/queerpoemaday/
Find books from participating poets in our library's catalog.
Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language.
Queer Poem-a-Day is founded and co-directed by poet and professor Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Library and host of the Deerfield Public Library Podcast. Music for this fifth year of our series is “L’Ange Verrier” from Le Rossignol Éperdu by Reynaldo Hahn, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by generous donations from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission.
Day 5: Rick Barot reads his poem “Pleasure,” which appears in his recent book, Moving the Bones.
Rick Barot's most recent book of poems is Moving the Bones, published by Milkweed Editions in 2024. His previous book, The Galleons, was longlisted for the National Book Award. He lives in Tacoma, Washington, and directs the Rainier Writing Workshop, the low-residency MFA program at Pacific Lutheran University.
Text of today’s poem and more details about our program can be found at: deerfieldlibrary.org/queerpoemaday/
Find books from participating poets in our library's catalog.
Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language.
Queer Poem-a-Day is founded and co-directed by poet and professor Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Library and host of the Deerfield Public Library Podcast. Music for this fifth year of our series is “L’Ange Verrier” from Le Rossignol Éperdu by Reynaldo Hahn, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by generous donations from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission.
Day 4: S. Brook Corfman reads her poem “Before & After.” The poem first appeared in Pigeon Pages (2020), in a slightly different form.
S. Brook Corfman is the author of My Daily Actions, or The Meteorites, one of The New York Times Best Poetry Books of 2020, finalist for the Leslie Feinberg Award for Trans and Gender-Variant Literature, and winner of the Fordham University Press POL Prize, chosen by Cathy Park Hong. She is also the author of the poetry collection Luxury, Blue Lace, chosen by Richard Siken for the Autumn House Rising Writer Prize, and several chapbooks. In 2024 she received the Lyric Poetry Award from the Poetry Society of America.
Text of today’s poem and more details about our program can be found at: deerfieldlibrary.org/queerpoemaday/
Find books from participating poets in our library's catalog.
Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language.
Queer Poem-a-Day is founded and co-directed by poet and professor Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Library and host of the Deerfield Public Library Podcast. Music for this fifth year of our series is “L’Ange Verrier” from Le Rossignol Éperdu by Reynaldo Hahn, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by generous donations from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission.
Day 3: Marcelo Hernandez Castillo reads his poem “Eclogue: A Field Guide and Cure.” The poem was published in the recent anthology Like A Hammer: Poets on Mass Incarceration (Haymarket Books, 2025).
Marcelo Hernandez Castillo is the author of Children of the Land: a Memoir (Harper Collins); Cenzontle (BOA Editions), winner of the A. Poulin, Jr. prize; Dulce (Northwestern University Press), winner of the Drinking Gourd Prize; and, most recently, he is the co-editor of the anthology Here to Stay: Poetry and Prose from the Undocumented Diaspora (Harper Perennial). He is the 2025 guest editor of the Michigan Quarterly Review and has also curated the Academy of American Poet’s Poem-A-Day Series. His work has been long listed for the California Book Award, the Foreword Indies Prize, and the Lambda Literary Award, among other recognitions.
He was the first undocumented student to graduate from the Helen Zell Writers Program at the University of Michigan and co-founded the Undocupoets, which eliminated citizenship requirements from all major poetry book prizes in the U.S., and for which he was recognized with the Barnes and Noble Writers for Writers award.
Text of today’s poem and more details about our program can be found at: deerfieldlibrary.org/queerpoemaday/
Find books from participating poets in our library's catalog.
Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language.
Queer Poem-a-Day is founded and co-directed by poet and professor Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Library and host of the Deerfield Public Library Podcast. Music for this fifth year of our series is “L’Ange Verrier” from Le Rossignol Éperdu by Reynaldo Hahn, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by generous donations from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission.
Day 2: Faylita Hicks reads their poem “A Gxrl's Trip Home.” This poem was originally published in A Map of My Want (Haymarket Books, 2024).
Faylita Hicks (she/they) is a writer, interdisciplinary artist, Hoodoo practitioner, and cultural strategist exploring the intersections of social justice and spirituality. They are the author of A Map of My Want (Haymarket, 2024), HoodWitch (Acre, 2019), and the forthcoming memoir A Body of Wild Light (Haymarket, 2027). A 2025 Haymarket Writing Freedom Fellow and Definition Theatre Amplify finalist, Hicks contributed to a Grammy-nominated album and has earned awards and honors from Art for Justice Fund, Lambda Literary, and the Right of Return Fellowship. They hold an MFA from the University of Nevada, Reno, and have received fellowships from Black Mountain Institute, Tin House, and others. Hicks serves as Chair of the Board for The Guild Literary Complex, Core Poetry Faculty at StoryStudio, adjunct faculty for the University of Nevada’s MFA program, and is a voting member of the Recording Academy.
Text of today’s poem and more details about our program can be found at: deerfieldlibrary.org/queerpoemaday/
Find books from participating poets in our library's catalog.
Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language.
Queer Poem-a-Day is founded and co-directed by poet and professor Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Library and host of the Deerfield Public Library Podcast. Music for this fifth year of our series is “L’Ange Verrier” from Le Rossignol Éperdu by Reynaldo Hahn, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by generous donations from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission.
Day 1: Jericho Brown reads his poem “Duplex.” This poem was originally published in The Progressive Magazine (2019).
Jericho Brown is the author of The Tradition, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. He is also a recipient of the MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship.
Text of today’s poem and more details about our program can be found at: deerfieldlibrary.org/queerpoemaday/
Find books from participating poets in our library's catalog.
Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language.
Queer Poem-a-Day is founded and co-directed by poet and professor Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Library and host of the Deerfield Public Library Podcast. Music for this fifth year of our series is “L’Ange Verrier” from Le Rossignol Éperdu by Reynaldo Hahn, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by generous donations from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission.
We’re back for year five of Queer Poem-a-Day! Queer Poem-a-Day is a unique podcast series for Pride Month, presenting a public archive of original poems written and read by contemporary LGBTQIA+ poets. For this fifth year, we’ll be sharing a poem each weekday in June. Get exciting with this audio collage "cento" trailer, featuring some of the voices from year five (see if you can recognize the voice of a favorite poet!). Then tune in Monday, June 2, for our first episode on our Queer Poem-a-Day page, and on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere you get podcasts.
Queer Poem-a-Day is founded and co-directed by Deerfield-raised poet and professor Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Library and host of the Deerfield Public Library Podcast. Music for this fifth year of our series is “L’Ange Verrier” from Le Rossignol Éperdu by Reynaldo Hahn, performed by pianist Daniel Baer.
We are once again grateful to have received generous support from both the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission. We also invite you to check out our archives from year one, year two, year three’s “Lineage Edition,” and year four.
Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language.
Once again, we have several related programs this year. Register to join in at the links below!
5 Years of Queer Poem-a-Day: An Anniversary Poetry Reading
Saturday, June 7: 1:00 pm - 2:15 pm (Virtual)
Participating poets from the past five years of our Queer Poem-a-Day podcast will read and discuss their poetry!
Classics Book Discussion: Nikki Giovanni
Thursday, June 12: 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm (Hybrid)
Our Classics Book Discussion pays tribute to the recently passed U.S. poet Nikki Giovanni and the Black Arts Movement. Co-led by our Queer Poem-a-Day co-director Lisa Hiton. Join us either in person or on Zoom. Register to get a pdf packet of poems sent to you, or pick one up at the Adult Services Desk.
Queer Poem-a-Day Capstone Lecture
Thursday, June 26: 7:00pm - 8:00pm (Virtual)
The co-directors of Queer Poem-a-Day give their annual lecture on the unique themes of this year’s collection of poems. Register for the Zoom link.
A conversation with Dr. Jo Freer, a leading scholar on the work of American novelist Thomas Pynchon. I'm currently leading our Library’s Classics Book Discussion Seminar series on Pynchon’s 1973 masterpiece Gravity’s Rainbow and Dr. Freer’s work has been incredibly helpful for me in understanding this challenging novel and Pynchon’s work as a whole. We’re thrilled to get Dr. Freer's perspective on this important writer.
Dr. Jo Freer is Senior Lecturer in American and Postcolonial Literature in the Department of English and Creative Writing at the University of Exeter. She is the author of Thomas Pynchon and American Counterculture (Cambridge University Press, 2014), which considers Thomas Pynchon as a political philosopher. While Gravity’s Rainbow centers around the saga of American Lt. Tyrone Slothrop, stationed in England at the end of WWII, Freer shows how the novel often responds directly to debates within the 1960s counterculture; the different approaches of the New Left, Yippies, The Black Panther Party, the Women’s Movement, and the proto-countercultural Beat writers who influenced Pynchon are all game for comparison, revealing Pynchon to be a subtle and profound political thinker.
Dr. Freer is also editor of the excellent essay collections The New Pynchon Studies (Cambridge UP, 2019) and co-editor of Thomas Pynchon, Sex and Gender, (Georgia UP, 2018). Our conversation also considers the various ways Pynchon’s depictions of gender and sexuality have been interpreted by Freer and others. Famously, the judges of the Pulitzer Prize selected Gravity's Rainbow, but the Pulitzer Advisory Board said the book was “unreadable,” “turgid,” and “obscene” and chose to not award a prize that year. This is a fascinating conversation about form and content and the value of this difficult, challenging, anti-authoritarian reading experience for us today. Like the graffiti that appears in Gravity’s Rainbow, Dr. Freer tells us that Pynchon creates texts that are “revealed in order to be thought about, expanded on, translated into action by the people.”
You can check out books by Dr. Freer, and work by all of our previous podcast guests, here at the library in our Podcast Collection. You can also find Dr. Freer on her University of Exeter page.
We hope you enjoy our 66th interview episode! Each month (or so) we release an episode featuring a conversation with an author, artist, or other notable guests from Chicagoland or around the world. Learn more about the podcast on our podcast page. You can listen to all of our episodes in the player below or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts. We welcome your comments and feedback—please send to podcast@deerfieldlibrary.org.
Richard Powers talks about his new novel Playground (W. W. Norton & Co., 2024). Playground gives us a masterful braided narrative of lives devoted to oceanography, computer programming, art, and literature, taking us from French Polynesia to right here in Illinois.
Powers is the author of fourteen acclaimed novels, including Orfeo (2014), The Overstory (2018), and Bewilderment (2021). He is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, the Pulitzer Prize (for The Overstory), and the National Book Award.
Though he lives in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains, Powers’ has a unique connection to Chicagoland and our community. Not only did Powers grow up in nearby Evanston, but listeners will also hear of the mutual friendship we share with my former English teacher at Deerfield High School, Jeff Berger-White. Powers praises Jeff as having “raised generations of Deerfield High students to not just love literature, but to take it seriously as a tool with which to navigate life.” We explore this theme in Playground, which centers around the competitive intellectual high school friendship of two boys in Chicago.
This is a profound conversation about the huge sea changes we face, from the climate crisis, to artificial intelligence, to how we attend to one another, and the role art can play.
You can check out Playground and other books by Richard Powers here at the library, or check out his website.
In celebration of this special podcast conversation with Richard Powers, we’ll be hosting a book discussion on Playground on Thursday December 5, at 7pm Central. Register to join us—the discussion will be held in a hybrid format, both in person at the Library and on Zoom. (Copies will be available to check out one month before the discussion.)
We hope you enjoy our 65th interview episode! Each month (or so), we release an episode featuring a conversation with an author, artist, or other notable guests from Chicagoland or around the world. Learn more about the podcast on our podcast page. You can listen to all of our episodes in the player below or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts. We welcome your comments and feedback—please send to podcast@deerfieldlibrary.org.
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The Deerfield Public Library Podcast is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include Adult Language.
Lois Baer Barr—a poet and fiction writer living just next door to us in Riverwoods, IL—on her new novel The Tailor’s Daughter (Water’s Edge Press, 2023).
The Tailor’s Daughter uses Barr’s familial memories and prodigious research to explore the life of a Jewish immigrant family making their lives in Louisville, KY in the interwar years. Encompassing such dramatic history as the Great Depression, the Great Flood of the Ohio River in 1937, and the volunteer effort in WWII, the novel also brings us close to the quiet worries and hopes of children, parents, and grandparents. Listen to hear how a novelist turns fact into, “the truth of fiction.”
Barr is also the author of the poetry chapbook, Tracks: Poems on the “L” (Finishing Line Press, 2022), which uses observations and overheard conversations from her trips on Chicago’s “L” trains to make poems. Her unique project was covered by the Chicago Tribune in 2019. We hear a few poems from Tracks as well, as we get to know this fascinating writer, who just might be listening and staring
Look for The Tailor’s Daughter and Tracks: Poems on the “L” here at the library in our Podcast Collection. You can find out more about Lois Baer Barr on her website.
Barr was a finalist for the 2019 Rita Dove Poetry Award, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize for her fiction and poetry. She is also the author of the chapbook Biopoesis, which won Poetica’s 2013 chapbook award. Her chapbook of fiction, Lope de Vega’s Daughter, was published in 2019 by Red Bird Press. Barr is professor emerita of Spanish at Lake Forest College.
A note that Lois Baer Barr has no relation to our 2023 podcast guest Lisa Barr (episode 59), author of The Woman on Fire and The Goddess of Warsaw, however, Lois does have connections to (and thanks in her acknowledgements!) the Deerfield Poets group; we featured members of that group in a podcast episode (#18) back in 2018!
We hope you enjoy our 64th interview episode! Each month (or so), we release an episode featuring a conversation with an author, artist, or other notable guests from Chicagoland or around the world. Learn more about the podcast on our podcast page. You can listen to all of our episodes in the player below or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts. We welcome your comments and feedback—please send to podcast@deerfieldlibrary.org.
Follow us: Facebook Instagram YouTube TikTok
The Deerfield Public Library Podcast is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include Adult Language.