Today’s featured poet is Elizabeth Sylvia, (03:39) who speaks with Ann Wallace about her new manuscript Eating Cake in the Garden with Marie Antoinette, as well as her 2022 collection, None But Witches: Poems on Shakespeare’s Women (Three Mile Harbor Press). They spoke about Marie Antoinette’s model farm, a product of opulent privilege but also a site of refuge at a time of revolution, and the unexpected connections to our current moment of climate crisis. Elizabeth’s pastoral poems are...

Episode 17 features poet Nadia Colburn (03:47), who joins Ann Wallace from Massachusetts to speak about her new collection, I Say the Sky, published this year by University of Kentucky Press. Nadia’s collection is a work of meditative healing, moving from silence into power. She invites us to see ourselves reflected in nature, and that poetry, in the words of Audre Lorde, indeed is not a luxury.    Next up, Kim Correro speaks with Sarah F. Jayne (0:37:29)about her new book Nature’s Action...

This episode of The WildStory is all about the southernmost point in New Jersey—beautiful Cape May, known to beachgoers as a summer destination. But for nature lovers, September is migration season and the very best time to head to Cape May. Which is exactly what many of us from the Native Plant Society of New Jersey will be doing, for a special trip to Cape May the weekend of September 27th through the 29th. The retreat sold out faster than we anticipated, but we wanted to share some of the...

This episode features an interview with best-selling author Barbara Kingsolver (0:04:34) from 2022. It was recorded for The WildStory’s predecessor, an Instagram series called Saturday Morning Poetry, hosted by the Hudson County Chapter of NPSNJ. Barbara Kingsolver is of course most widely known for her brilliant novels, but she is also a poet with two published collections. In this interview, recorded a week before the release of the internationally acclaimed novel Demon Copperhead, we...

In episode 14, Kai Coggin, Poet Laureate of Hot Springs, Arkansas, and host of Wednesday Night Poetry (0:02:56), talks with Ann Wallace about her new book Mother of Other Kingdoms, published in April 2024 by Harbor Editions. Kai speaks about the many ways in which the tender act of mothering living things, whether wild or human, has enriched her life and provides sustaining lessons on finding joy and wonder through difficult times.   In Ask Randi, Dr. Randi Eckel, the native plant expert...

In episode 13, Camille T. Dungy (0:03:00), a renowned poet, essayist, and memoirist, joins Ann Wallace in conversation about her book Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden, published by Simon and Schuster in 2023 and now out in paperback. Soil is a book that invites us into Camille’s native plant prairie project at her home in Colorado, but it is also about much more than that, taking us back to the year 2020 and making record not only of the story of a garden but of the...

In episode 12, we reflect on the nature that is close at hand, in our backyards, neighborhoods, and nearby wild places—as our featured guests invite us into the habitats they explore, celebrate, and help preserve—and share the joy those spaces spark.   First, J. Drew Lanham (02:49)—poet, ecologist, and ornithologist—speaks with Ann about his new book Joy is the Justice We Give Ourselves, and the lessons he learned from his grandmother about seeking out joy in whatever places we might find...

Hosted by Ann E. Wallace, PhD Poet Laureate of Jersey City Co-host Kim Correro, Rutgers Master Gardener Special Contributor Dr. Randi Eckel Entomologist and Vice President of Membership of NPSNJ Do you have a question about native plants for Randi? Email: [email protected] In this episode, we reflect on the passage of time – as we hear from two authors who each created books that span the course of a single year, leading us into joy and sorrow, community and collaboration,...

In this episode, Lauren Camp, (02.38) Poet Laureate of New Mexico, speaks with Ann Wallace about her recent collection Worn Smooth Between Devourings (NYQ Books, 2023), as well as In Old Sky, forthcoming in April from Grand Canyon Conservancy. We discuss the intensification of attention required for writing the desert landscape, the limits and opportunities offered by language, and the ways that a place can transform us.   We then hear from Dr. Randi Eckel (32.33) who answers a listener's...

In this episode, poet and herbalist Adrie Rose speaks with Ann Wallace (02:22) about her new chapbook Rupture, published last month by Gold Line Press. They discuss the pain Adrie experienced following a life-threatening ruptured ectopic pregnancy, along with other losses, and how poetry, nature, and native plants together allow space for the cycles of grief and healing.  Dr. Randi Eckel (34:51) provides information on the upcoming Spring Annual Meeting & Conference on March 2nd and...

Poet Tess Taylor (2:10) speaks with Ann Wallace about her new anthology Leaning Toward Light: Poems for Gardens and the Hands That Tend Them (Storey Publishing, 2023) and the ability of poems to carry us through the seasons of planting, tending, grieving, harvesting, sharing in a world filled with both joy and crisis. We reflect on the deliberate cultivation of happiness as a discipline, and at the end of our conversation, we spend some time with Tess’s most recent solo collection, Rift Zone,...

Poet Emily Hockaday (2:07) speaks with Ann Wallace about her new poetry collection, In a Body, published in October 2023 by Harbor Editions. Emily discusses the layered ways in which new motherhood, the death of her father, a diagnosis of fibromyalgia—as well as science and ecology—have shaped Emily’s work, much of which she composed while walking with her child on the trails of Forest Park in Queens, New York. We then hear from Dr. Randi Eckel (32:52) about the new NPSNJ programs that...

Guest host N. West Moss, author of the memoir Flesh and Blood (Algonquin Press), joins us for the opening interview of this episode. West turns the tables to interview The WildStory host and Jersey City Poet Laureate Ann E. Wallace about her new poetry collection, Days of Grace and Silence: A Chronicle of COVID’s Long Haul, forthcoming from Kelsay Books in winter 2024. They speak about Ann’s isolation and turn to writing when she fell ill at the start of the pandemic and through her long...

Poet Susan Glass, who has been blind since birth, speaks with Ann Wallace about the integral role birds have played in her life—and in her poetry—as she uses their songs and calls to locate herself, spatially and metaphorically, in the natural world. She also brings listeners into the creative process of completing her chapbook The Wild Language of Deer, published in 2022 by Slate Roof Press. It is a collection filled with delight, birdsong, and wonder. Dr. Randi Eckel announces what members...

In this episode, poet Christine Klocek-Lim talks with Ann Wallace about the ways in which her work engages with nature, whether she is taking us onto the trail with her or creating the sequence of persona poems in her new chapbook Nomenclatura, forthcoming from Glass Lyre Press. Christine reflects on the human history held within seemingly wild spaces, the precarity of life, and the communal element of the being outdoors. We then hear from Dr. Randi Eckel for a new installment of Ask Randi....

Poet Christine Klocek-Lim talks with Ann Wallace about the ways in which her work engages with nature, whether she is taking us onto the trail with her or creating the sequence of persona poems in her new chapbook Nomenclatura, forthcoming from Glass Lyre Press. Christine reflects on the human history held within seemingly wild spaces, the precarity of life, and the communal element of the being outdoors. We then hear from Dr. Randi Eckel for a new installment of Ask Randi. And co-host Kim...

Poet January Gill O’Neil speaks with Ann Wallace about her new collection, Glitter Road, forthcoming from CavanKerry Press in February 2024. January discusses her year as the John and Renee Grisham Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi, and her immersion in the difficult cultural history of the south, as laid against its rich and fertile landscape. She also reflects on the ways in which the pandemic, which began toward the end of residency, allowed time for family, writing, and...

Episode 2: Lisbeth White, a poet from Washington State and author of American Sycamore (Perugia Press, 2022) speaks with Ann Wallace about how ancestry, myth, and stories are contained within the American landscape, reflecting on the simultaneous beauty and historic violence evoked and held within the trees and waterways of this nation, and how ritual might help restore connection to the land. We also hear from Dr. Randi Eckel, President of the Native Plant Society of New Jersey, about the...

Episode 1: Sati Mookherjee, a poet from the Pacific Northwest, speaks with Ann Wallace about her new collection Ways of Being (MoonPath Press, 2023) and the way grief, language, and the natural world intersect within her work. NPSNJ President Dr. Randi Eckel discusses the role of cultivars in our gardens. Co-host Kim Correro then joins in for a conversation with Kim Rowe, leader of the Monmouth Chapter of NPSNJ, about the Independent Garden Center Initiative and strategic efforts to bring...