Tag: Kelli Russell Agodon

ONE ART’s September 2026 Reading

~ ONE ART ~ Leave a comment

ONE ART’s September 2026 Reading

Date: Sunday, September 13
Time: 2pm Eastern
Duration: 2 hours

Host: Mark Danowsky (Founder/EIC of ONE ART)

Featured Poets: James Crews, Denise Duhamel, Kelli Russell Agodon, Heather Swan, Gloria Heffernan, Laura Grace Weldon, Karen Paul Holmes


FREE event!
(donations appreciated)

>> Register Here <<

*

~ About Our Featured Readers ~

Gloria Heffernan is the author of four poetry collections, most recently Moments of Color and Cloud (Shanti Arts Publishing). Her craft book, Exploring Poetry of Presence (Back Porch Productions) won the CNY Book Award for Nonfiction. She received the 2022 Naugatuck River Review Narrative Poetry Prize. Gloria is the author of the collections Fused (Shanti Arts Publishing), Peregrinatio: Poems for Antarctica (Kelsay Books), and What the Gratitude List Said to the Bucket List, (New York Quarterly Books).  She holds an M.A. from New York University and teaches at the Downtown Writers Center in Syracuse, New York.

Karen Paul Holmes received the 2023 Lascaux Poetry Prize and a Special Mention in the 2024 Pushcart Prize Anthology. Credits include The Writer’s Almanac, The Slowdown, New Ohio Review, Plume, Gargoyle, and books: No Such Thing as Distance and Untying the Knot. Holmes hosted Writers’ Night Out in the Blue Ridge Mountains and continues to host Atlanta’s Side Door Poets. She has an MA in musicology from University of Michigan. karenpaulholmes.com 

Heather Swan is the author of two poetry collections, A Kinship with Ash and Dandelion, (Terrapin Books). She is also the author of the nonfiction books Where the Grass Still Sings: Stories of Insects and Interconnection and Where Honeybees Thrive: Stories from the Field, the latter of which won the Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award. She teaches at UW Madison and is the lead poet for the Ginny Soldner Poetry Collaborative.

Laura Grace Weldon lives in a township too tiny for traffic lights where she works as a book editor, leads writing workshops, serves as Braided Way editor, and chronically maxes out her library card. Laura was Ohio’s 2019 Poet of the Year and is the author of five books, the newest is Universe Marveled Into A Jar (Sheila-Na-Gig, 2026) Her background includes teaching nonviolence, writing poetry with nursing home residents, facilitating support groups for abuse survivors, and writing sardonic greeting cards. Laura lives on a small Ohio homestead where she and her husband host occasional house concerts. lauragraceweldon.com 

Kelli Russell Agodon (she/her) is a bi/queer poet and editor from the Pacific Northwest. Her most recent book is Accidental Devotions (Copper Canyon Press, 2026). She is the author of five poetry collections. Her work has received numerous honors, including the Dorothy Rosenberg Poetry Prize, a Poetry Society of America Prize, the Foreword Indies Book of the Year Award in Poetry, and three Washington State Book Award finalist selections. She is the cofounder of Two Sylvias Press, teaches in Pacific Lutheran University’s Rainier Writing Workshop MFA program, and cohosts the poetry series Poems You Need with Melissa Studdard. She lives in a sleepy seaside town where she’s an avid paddleboarder. agodon.com

Denise Duhamel’s most recent books of poetry are Pink Lady (Pitt Poetry Series, 2025), Second Story (2021) and Scald (2017). Blowout (2013) was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. In Which (2024) is a winner of the Rattle Chapbook Prize. A recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, she is a distinguished university professor in the MFA program at Florida International University in Miami.

James Crews is the author and editor of fourteen books, including The Sacred Everyday, Breathing Room, Turning Toward Grief, How to Love the World, and Love Is for All of Us, winner of a Nautilus Gold Medal Award. He has been featured on NPR’s Morning Edition, in People Magazine, The Boston Globe, and The New York Times Magazine. James lives with his husband on forty rocky acres in Southern Vermont that they are restoring to a habitat for pollinators and native species. jamescrews.net

ONE ART’s Top 10 Most-Read Poets of April 2026

~ ONE ART ~ Leave a comment

~ ONE ART’s Top 10 Most-Read Poets of April 2026 ~

  1. Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
  2. Ruth Bavetta
  3. Susan Vespoli
  4. Kelli Russell Agodon
  5. Timothy Green
  6. Magin LaSov Gregg
  7. Roseanne Freed
  8. Valerie Bacharach
  9. Dolo Diaz
  10. Joseph Chelius

Poem to the Future by Kelli Russell Agodon

~ ONE ART ~ 4 Comments

Poem to the Future

Future, if you stop by, I promise to open the door.
I know sometimes you arrive in combat boots,
laces braided with bombs and drones, even the way
you cuff your jeans feels like a subtle threat. Future,
if you come inside, I’ll offer you jasmine tea, but know
I have champagne chilling in the fridge as I keep hoping
we’ll get to celebrate you. And my neighbor will come by
with tortilla soup. She makes a hell of a martini. Maybe
we’ll get you a little tipsy so you can calm the fuck down.
Wait, sorry—that’s my anxiety, Future, you don’t even exist
yet, like one of those midnight panics that wakes me when
I’m certain the world has ended (has it ended?) Future,
I promise to treat you well. I’ll show you the faith I had
last fall when I planted daffodils, those van Gogh tulips
I ordered in a frenzy of hope. Future, I believe in spring.
I believe in you too. Come in—but take your shoes off,
leave the dirty parts in the mudroom. I keep telling
everyone you’re coming. Don’t make me a liar.
Sit with me. Show me how we survived this.

*

Kelli Russell Agodon’s most recent book is Accidental Devotions (Copper Canyon Press, 2026). She is the author of five poetry collections. Her work has received numerous honors, including the Dorothy Rosenberg Poetry Prize, a Poetry Society of America Prize, the Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award in Poetry, and three Washington State Book Award finalist selections. She is the cofounder of Two Sylvias Press, teaches in Pacific Lutheran University’s Rainier Writing Workshop MFA program, and cohosts the poetry series Poems You Need with Melissa Studdard. She lives in a sleepy seaside town in Washington State. www.agodon.com

Two Poems by Kelli Russell Agodon

~ ONE ART ~ 6 Comments
Leki Ruse Tonight, the mango is a beautiful gay moon and how I adored the men during the Pride parade who said, Pretty girl coming through, no matter the age. My brothers, the men I love, and when the world told them they were being punished and “gay cancer” was what they deserved, I held Joseph’s hand and said—You did everything right. A year later getting an HIV test at Planned Parenthood the nurse told me, You can do this anonymously, I said, No, I’m not ashamed. I said, In solidarity. She pushed, Live quietly. Said, We don’t want your insurance to worry you took this test, said, Don’t be you. So, at twenty, for a moment I became Leki Ruse, a misspeak, misspell of my name—Kelli Russell—to keep me safe, to say—No one will come for you. To say—My god, we all deserve not to be blamed.

*

Even the Rain Has a Side Hustle

Every tenth piece of wood on the woodpile
holds a spider. A miracle beetle or bitsy ants.
It’s first light, and robins have their coffeetalk
in a fir tree that looks exhausted. Without
one cloud in the sky, the sun decides
if it’s going to rise—you don’t believe
the rising is certain, right? The sun wakes
each day and then chooses to go to work.
There is a chipmunk that shrieks its demands
at 6:30 a.m. every morning. First shift.
A banana slug slogs across the bumpy path
—an hour later, it’s arrived to the corporation
of grass. The hummingbirds have been whirring
for hours, over the blossoms of poppies, who
finally raise their heads like sleepy rich girls
with nowhere to go.

*

Kelli Russell Agodon is a bi/queer poet from the Seattle area. Her book Accidental Devotions will be published by Copper Canyon Press in 2026. Her previous collection, Dialogues with Rising Tides, was a finalist for the Washington State Book Awards. Kelli is the cofounder of Two Sylvias Press and teaches in Pacific Lutheran University’s low-res MFA program, the Rainier Writing Workshop. She is also the cohost of the poetry series Poems You Need with Melissa Studdard.
www.agodon.com / www.twosylviaspress.com / www.youtube.com/@PoemsYouNeed

Two Poems by Kelli Russell Agodon

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

Spell to Find Meaning in Life

Stand on a cliff
until a redtail hawk mistakes you
as a friend, but don’t look down.

Trust the sense of heaven
even if you don’t
believe in heaven.

You may die skinny
dipping in the Mediterranean
or be hit in the head

by a loose screw sailing to earth
from above. You might drop dead
doing yoga. Done. Whatever

way, your future corpse awaits you.
Smile at the idea of your skull outside
your skin. Your bones like drumsticks

banging on a tympany. I saw a sweatshirt
that read, I just want my funeral
to sell out—to be that loved.

You are actually standing
on the cliff right now. Look down,
look down, look around.

*

Where I’m from: GenX Version

         after George Ella Lyon

I am from a folded note from a friend
passed beneath desks, evenings of talking
on a rotary phone. I am from eating
butter out of the container and always wanting
the cookies to be raw. I am from a paint-by-
number Last Supper in the hallway and
a Harvey Wallbanger god. From sitting
on the mustard-colored couch waiting
for love to drive by. I am from a mercury-
in-the-sink-broken-thermometer childhood,
watching Lawrence Welk with my Nana
while she knits everyone a scarf. I am
from payphones on the sunny side of a road
and the downpour of a neighborhood,
from kickball in the cul-de-sac until 10 pm
and no streetlights except the moon. I am from
children with no curfew, from go-out-and-play,
and popsicles cure split lips. I am from melting
crayons on the sidewalk for fun, ice cream truck
afternoons, skateboard down a hill, banana
bike with a basket and no one in a helmet.
I’m from scarred legs and burying the dead
rabbit we found by the creek of waterbugs.
I am the love letter of a generation who
had parents but weren’t parented, I am
the song who learned who to write herself.

*

Kelli Russell Agodon is a bi/queer poet from the Seattle area. Her book Accidental Devotions will be published by Copper Canyon Press in 2026. Her previous collection, Dialogues with Rising Tides, was a finalist for the Washington State Book Awards. Kelli is the cofounder of Two Sylvias Press and teaches in Pacific Lutheran University’s low-res MFA program, the Rainier Writing Workshop. She is also the cohost of the poetry series Poems You Need with Melissa Studdard.
www.agodon.com / www.twosylviaspress.com / www.youtube.com/@PoemsYouNeed