Poetry Medicine for the Soul is a podcast hosted by John Gillespie that invites poets to read, explore, and celebrate poetry. While the 2025 National Poetry Month is over, this summer, Poetry Medicine for the Soul is still celebrating. Episode 28 features Rosa Lane reading “Wild Night—Wild Nights” by Emily Dickenson and her own poem, “French Sardines,” from her new poetry collection Called Back, which just received the 2025 Maine Literary Book Award. Rosa and John then discuss the question: What does national poetry month mean to you?
Rosa Lane is author of four poetry collections including Called Back, published by Tupelo Press in fall 2024; Chouteau’s Chalk, winner of the Georgia Poetry Prize, published by the University of Georgia Press in 2019;Tiller North, winner of the National Indie Excellence Award, published by Sixteen Rivers Press in 2016; and Roots and Reckonings, a chapbook.
Her work was named Best of Poetry for the 2024 Geminga Prize, chosen as winner of the 2023 Morton Marcus Memorial Poetry Prize, and selected finalist for the 2023 Gregory O’Donoghue International Poetry Competition among other awards. Rosa Lane’s poems have appeared in Cloudbank, Five Points, Nimrod, RHINO, Third Coast, and elsewhere.
Learn more at: www.rosalane.com.