WordTemple host Katherine Hastings airs a reading by Gregory W. Randall recorded at the WordTemple Poetry Series in June of 2017. Randall was celebrating the release of his first full-length collection of poetry, A Cartography of Selves. Susan Terris says “A Cartography of Selves is a series of complex, luminous poems. Some are in the voice of the poet, examining his many selves. Others are intimate views of the relationship of husband to wife, wife to husband, all told with a raw, loving, compelling urgency. There are also poems that delve into art, artists, music and nature, approaching these subjects with a similar sense of the transience of beauty.” Hastings says, “From the first poem in A Cartography of Selves where a young boy searches earnestly for the lunar Sea of Serenity as a place of refuge for himself and his mother, to poems where lovers discover each others bodies or “sit in lawn chairs in broad daylight/with shotguns and a case of beer,’ this collection offers a full palette of vulnerability, sensuality and surprise.”

Jodi Hottel sits with Hastings to discuss and read from her most recent collection, Voyeur, the result of her ongoing interest in poetry related to man other artistic forms, including literature and films. Marin County poet laureate emeritus, Joseph Zaccardi says “In Voyeur, a word that comes from the French meaning ‘one who views, one who sees’, (Hottel) composes her poems with a voraciousness of someone seeking to consume and somehow preserve every fiber of our senses; her poems are deftly crafted with a lyrical paintbrush of words like alabaster, bone who, and dry salt white ‘on a vast white canvas’, to touch and remind us of our shared human frailties and strengths.”