Poetry For All
In this podcast, poetry leaps from the page in accessible ways. Award-winning teachers introduce listeners to poems that transform, enliven, challenge, and enrich our lives.
The hosts teach out of wonder and appreciation. Each episode introduces a poem and shows how it works. The hosts come from very different interests and worlds, but in each fun discussion they learn from one another and open the world of poetry for anyone who wants to explore.
“Poems are not finished until we read them. They crave conversation. They call for community. They live in the breath of each new reader and come alive in the exchanges they create.”
Poetry often presents itself as a solitary exercise—a single writer and a single reader—but it actually reaches for response. Every poem engages in dialogue with other poets, and every reader joins the conversation. A podcast is the perfect way to experience poetry.
Why Poetry for All?
Our Hosts
Our hosts are award-winning teachers who embrace the potential of poetry and hope to share its power with others.
Joanne Diaz
Co-Host of Poetry For All
Joanne Diaz is the Isaac Funk Endowed Professor of English at Illinois Wesleyan University and the winner of multiple teaching awards. She is author of two books of poetry, My Favorite Tyrants (winner of the 2013 Brittingham Prize in Poetry) and The Lessons (winner of the 2009 Gerald Cable Book Award), and with Ian Morris, Joanne is the co-editor of The Little Magazine in Contemporary America. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Illinois Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts, and her recent poems have been published in American Poetry Review, Bennington Review, Colorado Review, New England Review, and Poetry.
Abram Van Engen
Co-Host of Poetry For All
Abram Van Engen is the Stanley Elkin Professor in the Humanities at Washington University in St. Louis. He brings several teaching awards to his work on the podcast. Abram’s scholarly work, meanwhile, takes him to early America with books and articles on Puritanism and early New England, such as City on a Hill: A History of American Exceptionalism (winner of the Pelikan Prize and the Peter Gomes Memorial Book Award). From early American subjects, Abram’s teaching, speaking, and writing expand outward to multiple audiences with numerous publications in journals and magazines on poetry, religion, and literature. Such writings have led to his forthcoming book, Word Made Fresh: An Invitation to Poetry for the Church, an illuminating and encouraging guide for anyone interested (and intimidated) by poetry.