Poetry Medicine for the Soul is a podcast inviting poets to share, explore, and celebrate poetry, hosted by John Gillespie. This summer in 2026, we are sharing some of our favorite episodes from the archives! Poetry Medicine for the Soul first began in 2020, in partnership with the Stockbridge Library in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. With the Stockbridge Library, over a hundred episodes were recorded over four seasons. This episode features Peter Kline and Brittany Perham from Season 4, and was originally recorded on recorded on April 11, 2023. Peter Kline teaches writing at the University of San Francisco and with Stanford University's Master of Liberal Arts Program. A former Wallace Stegner Fellow, he has also received residency fellowships from the Hemingway House, Amy Clampitt House, James Merrill House, Artsmith Orcas Island, Marble House Project, and Kimmel Harding Nelson Foundation. His poems have won First Prize in the River Styx International Poetry Contest, Southwest Review's Morton Marr Poetry Prize, and the Poetry Prize from The Columbia Review, and have appeared in Ploughshares, Five Points, Poetry, Tin House, and many other journals, as well as the Best New Poets series, the Verse Daily website, the Random House anthology of metrical poetry, Measure for Measure, and Persea Books' anthology of contemporary self-portrait poems, More Truly and More Strange. He is director of the San Francisco literary reading series Bazaar Writers Salon, which he founded in 2012. His first collection of poetry, Deviants, was published by Stephen F. Austin State University Press in 2013. His newest collection, Mirrorforms, was published by Parlor Press/Free Verse Editions in the fall of 2019. Learn more at www.peterklinepoetry.com. Brittany Perham is the author of Double Portrait (W.W. Norton), which was selected by Claudia Rankine for the Barnard Women Poets Prize; The Curiosities (Free Verse Editions); and, with Kim Addonizio, the collaborative word/art project The Night Could Go in Either Direction (SHP). Her writing has received support from the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, the Hemingway House, the James Merrill House Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, the Wallace Stegner Fellowship Program, and Yaddo. New poetry, fiction, and nonfiction may be found or is forthcoming in The Cortland Review, Gulf Coast, Poetry, Prairie Schooner, and Tupelo Quarterly. Her new book, Executrix, was selected by Cheryl Strayed for the AWP Sue William Silverman Prize for Creative Nonfiction and will be published by the University of Georgia Press in 2026. Learn more at www.brittanyperham.com.
Poetry Medicine for the Soul is a podcast inviting poets to share, explore, and celebrate poetry, hosted by John Gillespie. This summer in 2026, we are sharing some of our favorite episodes from the archives! Poetry Medicine for the Soul first began in 2020, in partnership with the Stockbridge Library in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. With the Stockbridge Library, over a hundred episodes were recorded over four seasons. This episode features Adam O. Davis from Season 2, and was originally recorded on recorded on April 7, 2022.
Adam O. Davis is the author of Pyrrhic Symphony(University of Nebraska Press, 2026), winner of the Raz/Shumaker Book Prize from Prairie Schooner and index of haunted houses (Sarabande books, 2020), winner of the Kathryn A. Morton poetry prize and finalist for the Big Other Book Award for Poetry. The recipient of the 2022 Poetry International Prize and the 2016 George Bogin Memorial award from thePoetry Society of America, he has received grants and fellowships from The Bishop's School, Columbia university, the New Literary Project, the Prague Summer program for writers, and Vermont studio center. He is also, with Colin Waters, the co-creator & host of the Poetry Goes to the Movies podcast. His work has appeared widely in journals and anthologies, including The believer, The Best American Poetry, Boston review, The Cincinnati Review, Denver Quarterly, the Paris Review, the Poetry Review, the Southern Review, West Branch, and zyzzyva.
Davis was born in Tucson, Arizona and raised in Scotland, Utah, France, New Jersey, and California. He holds a B.A. in Creative Writing from the University of California - Riverside, and an M.F.A. in Poetry from Columbia University. he currently teaches English at the Bishop's School in San Diego, California. Learn more at www.adamodavis.com.