New Book

NOCTURNE

Courses

October 3 - December 12: Reading and Writing Robert Frost — Poetry School (Online)

To see a list of past Events and workshops click here.

Poetry in the Parks is a project I began in 2018 with the aim of helping people to deepen their connection to public lands through poetry. During these free (NPS sponsored) poetry workshops, participants have the opportunity to explore the remarkable beauty of their public lands and write original poems. No experience is necessary to attend. The workshops are free and open to all.

Participating National Parks, State Parks, and National Monuments

Walnut Canyon National Monument, Arizona, 2018; 2019; 2022; 2023

Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument, Arizona, 2019; 2023

Wupatki National Monument, Arizona, 2019, 2024

Casa Grande Ruins National Monument, Arizona, 2022

Montezuma Well National Monument, Arizona, 2022

Saguaro National Park, Arizona, 2022; 2023; 2023

Joshua Tree National Park, California, 2023

Asilomar State Park, California, 2024

Sitka National Historic Monument, Sitka, Alaska, 2024

Eugene O' Neill National Historic Site, August 2024

Pearl Harbor National Monument, January 2025

Redwood National and State Parks, August 2025

Press for Poetry in the Parks

KCAW — Poetry workshops draw inspiration from Sitka’s national park

Daily Sitka Sentinel — Noted Poet to Hold Workshop at Sitka Park

Pomona College Magazine — Poetry in the Parks

Western National Parks Association — Poetry and National Parks Connect

Arizona Daily Sun — Poetry in the parks: Poet Jodie Hollander visits Arizona’s national parks

Forbes — Poetry in Joshua Tree National Park

The Orange County Register — Making poetry in Joshua Tree

AZPM — Poetry in Our Parks

Arizona Daily Sun — Poetry in the Parks: Poet Jodie Hollander Visits Arizona’s National Parks

Interviews & Articles

Click on the titles below to listen or read:

Terrain — Intrinsic Beauty: An Interview with Jodie Hollander

Forbes — Poetry in Joshua Tree National Park

The Orange County Register — Making poetry in Joshua Tree

CPR News | Making Colorado history more inclusive through poetry

KNAU Public Radio | PoetrySnaps! Jodie Hollander: Prairie Smoke

Interview with Liverpool University Press | Nocturne: An Interview with Jodie Hollander

Western National Parks Association | Poetry and National Parks Connect

Napkin Poetry Review | Where Craft Meets Courage

Arizona Daily Sun | Poetry in the Parks: Poet Jodie Hollander Visits Arizona’s National Parks

Interview on Arizona Public Radio | Poetry in the Parks, starts at minute 7:31

Colorado Public Radio | Fort Collins Poet Jodie Hollander Finds Inspiration Outdoors

The Kenyon Review | In Memoriam: Robert Mezey by Jodie Hollander

Interview with KNAU Arizona Public Radio | Poetry Friday: Poet In Residence, 'My Dark Horses'

Portland Mercury | Jodie Hollander’s Poems Surmount Emotional Milestones

The Voice of America | The High Window Journal’s Featured American Poet: Winter 2017, Jodie Hollander

Interview with KDNK Community Radio | Poetess Jodie Hollander

Interview on KGNU Boulder | Colorado poet Jodie Hollander

The Denver Post | Staff Pick: “My Dark Horses” by Jodie Hollander 

Colorado Public Radio Interview | Poetry Collection Takes On Mother-Daughter Strife

Interview with WUWM Milwaukee Public Radio Interview | Making Music out of Words

Bath Spa Alumni Interview | The Rhythm of Life as a Poet

Vail Daily Interview. | Bookworm of Edwards hosts poetry writing workshop Thursday

Books

Nocturne, March, 2023

My Dark Horses, September, 2017

Selected Publications

The Hudson Review: "Rain" (forthcoming spring 2025)

North American Review: "A Picture of Vail" (forthcoming spring 2025)

The Elmet Trust: “1 Aspinall Street”

KNAU PoetrySnaps!: “Prairie Smoke”

Drunken Boat: “Horse Swimming”

Poetry Magazine: "Avenue of Plane Trees"

The Friday Poem: "Evening on the Porch”

The Harvard Review: “Geiger Key”

The Sun: “In the Freezer”

PN Review: Two Dream Poems, fall 2022

The Poetry Review: Dream #1 Liebestraum fall 2022

Oxford Poetry: "Japan in the Spring" fall, 2022

Literary Matters: "Hands," "Viola" "Glacier Lilies" spring, 2022

Shenandoah: "Mother's Parrots" winter, 2022

The Hudson Review: "Mouse" fall, 2022

Poetry Northwest: “Rosebank Cottage,” winter 2022

Poetry Wales: "Horse," winter, 2022

The Colorado Review: "Her Singing Horses"

Poetry London: "Green Beans" fall, 2021

New Welsh Review: "The Little House," "Chicken Soup"

The Moth: "The Marigolds"

The Los Angeles Review of Books | Robert Mezey: Four Uncollected Poems (with intro by Jodie Hollander)

The Kenyon Review | In Memoriam: Robert Mezey by Jodie Hollander

Poetry Wales: “Crow,” “After the Storm”

The Poetry Review: “Storm”

The Dark Horse: “A Bell from Kathmandu”

The Hopkins Review: "The Sock Off," "Uluru"

Alaska Quarterly Review: "Outside Accra"

The Poetry Review: "Corn on the Cob"

PN Review: "And what if in the end he's Just a Bird," "Two Horses," "The Worry Book"

Quadrant: "Vegetable," "Visiting the Horses" 

The Yale Review: "The Potato Plants."

Liverpool University Press: (Pavilion Poetry) My Dark Horses, April 2017.

Tall-lighthouse Publishing, The Humane Society, November 2012

The Best Australian Poems of 2015: “Oblivion.”

The Best Australian Poems of 2011: “The Humane Society.”

PN Review: “Caprice for Violin:” “Mother’s Tomato Plants,” “Mother’s Wrists,” Winter 2016

The New Criterion: “Ruts.”

The Rialto: "Horse Bones,"  "History Class," November 2016; “How to Fry a Chicken,” June 2015

The Manhattan Review: “A Box,” Fall 2016

Westerly: “Zero Hour,” Fall 2015

The Poetry Review: “He’s,” Fall 2015; “Splitting and Fucking,” Summer 2014

Australian Book Review: “A Box,” Fall 2015

Drunken Boat: “Draft of a Dream,” issue 23, 2015

The Evansville Review: “The Sound of Scissors,” Winter 2015

Verse Daily: “My Mother’s Will Emailed in pdf,” June 5, 2014

The Dark Horse: “Oblivion,” Spring 2014

The North: “The Metronome,” “Migraine” Spring 2014

The Raintown Review: “Speaking With the Dead,” Spring 2014

Stand: “Dream of a Burning Woman,” “Talking in Lamu,” “The Family Freezer,” Spring 2014

The Reader: “The Talking Tree,” “Taking my Mother to England,” Fall 2013

The Manchester Review: “The Humane Society,” Romancing Herself,” Fall 2013

Ambit: “Green,” “Skyping with my Mother,” Fall 2013

The Warwick Review: “Little Serenade,” “Mother’s Persian Rugs,” Fall 2013; “Migraine,” “My Mother’s Will  Emailed in pdf,” Fall 2011

Poet Lore: “Metronomes,” Spring 2012

Poetry New Zealand: “The Glass Elephants,” Spring 2012

Poetry Ireland Review: “Victoria Park,” Fall 2011

Residencies & Awards

April 13, 2025 - May 13, 2025: Poet in Residence, Morrab Library, Penzance, UK

August 15-29, 2024: Travis Bogard Artist in Residence Fellow, Danville, CA

June 2024: Poet in Residence, Elmet Trust, Calderdale, UK

August-September 2022: Vashon Artist Residency, Poet in Residence, Vashon, Washington

February 2022: Visiting Writer at the Key West Literary Seminars, Key West, Florida

November 2020: St. Croix Residency

June 2020: Storyknife Writers Residency, Homer, Alaska

September 2018 - January 2019: Poet in Residence, Museum of Northern Arizona, Flagstaff, Arizona

May-June 2018: The Studios of Key West, Key West, Florida

January 2018: Artist in Residence, The Morris Squire Foundation, Santa Barbara, California

January 2017: Escape2Create, Seaside, Florida, Artist in Residence

September 2016: Artist in Residence, The Morris Squire Foundation, Santa Barbara, California

May 2016: Varda Artist’s Residency, Sausalito, California. Click here for an article Jodie wrote about her experience on the SS Vallejo

February 2016: Rivendell Writers Colony, Lisa Percy fellowship, Sewanee, Tennessee

April 2015: Artist in Residence, Stanley, Idaho

February-March 2015: The MacDowell Colony Poet in Residence, Peterborough, New Hampshire

October-November 2014: Chateau de la Napoule, Nice, France

January 2014: The Betsy Hotel, Writer-in-residence, Miami, Florida

July 2014: Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Amherst, Virginia

June 2014: Cil Rialaig Arts Foundation, Kerry, Ireland

March-April 2013: Hawthornden Fellowship, Midlothian, Scotland

August 2012: Wilfred Owen Association, Full bursary at Ty Newydd Centre, Wales

July 2011: Grace Marion Wilson Trust, Rosebank Writer’s Bursary, Australia

2007: Fulbright Fellowship for Study of Literature and Education in South Africa

2005: National Endowment for the Humanities, Award for Study of Dante in Siena, Italy

Reviews

Read this beautiful reflection on Nocturne by poet Clare Shaw.

The High Window Reviews

Review in Artemis Poetry.

Review from poet Juliano Zaffino:

“A torrent of shocking and revelatory poetry simmers between the covers of My Dark Horses , pulling the reader in with the very first poem, “Splitting and Fucking”: “My mother, / poor woman / somehow she was / always the victim / of splitting and fucking.” Talented, unpredictable, and dangerous, this mother is a malevolent force of nature, pitting her children against each other, ridiculing her husband, and “always the victim” of her bad decisions, lusts and passions.” Read the review by Erica Goss at Pedestal Magazine

“The poems in this collection, both blunt and lyric, stoic and tender, roll over the palate like the flavors of a complex dish." Read the review by Donna Vorreyer at Rhino

“Jodie Hollander’s powerful debut collection is as hypnotic and rich as a dream, taking as its epigraph Rimbaud’s assertion that “A thousand dreams within me softly burn”, and returning to the word “dream” repeatedly, balancing dreamscapes with vividly realized portraits from life.” Read the review by Suzannah V. Evans at The Times Literary Supplement

"This is a technically competent, enjoyable collection...You will feel your humanity strengthened by reading it." Read the entire review at The High Window

"My Dark Horses offers no easy solutions but rather, hard-won understanding." Read the entire review at The Poetry School
 

"The past also preoccupies Jodie Hollander’s compelling My Dark Horses, which traces the troubled relationship of the poet with her mother. The collection returns, obsessively, to the mother – the trauma she inflicts and the trauma she suffers – and in doing so throws events and objects that seem innocuous into sharp relief. ‘The Red Tricycle’, for example, sparks recollections of Hollander’s mother being sexually abused by her father, and the poem imagines how ‘she held her mother’s big body / in her skinny white arms’. This is a heart-rending example of how Hollander charges even the plainest of lines with violent meanings: in its child-like simplicity, ‘big’ envelopes the poem in the consciousness of the abused child and emphasises the horrific inversion of a traumatised daughter having to comfort her own mother." Read the review by Stephen Grace at The Compass.
 

The underlying emotional urgency of Jodie Hollander's poems is undeniable - but it's their tone that makes them unignorable. This meeting of searing family dysfunction and poignant metaphor with her matter-of-fact American vernacular strikes sparks.

-Susan Wicks
 

These poems bristle with the contained energy of conflicts that continue to shape who we are and impel what we do. The collection moves satisfyingly from wry observation – “at least nothing important got burnt / like Mother’s cello, or Father’s Steinway piano” (with its telling capital) – towards the uneasy peace of accepting that “destruction will do what it will do” and the discovery that poetry has the power to lay ghosts to rest – “I sat back, and watched what was here.”

-Andrew McCulloch, The Times Literary Supplement
 

These poems are full of situations redolent of grief and loss; yet they are far too vigorous to be depressing. The effect… is not of despair, but of rising to the occasion.

-Meg Crane, The Wilfred Owen Association
 

Online reviews at Sphinx Reviews
Excerpt below:
"This slim, elegant pamphlet is American poet Jodie Hollander’s first collection. I found it hauntingly sad and emotionally powerful."