Word of Mouth Feature-Open Poetry Reading

Name: Word of Mouth Feature-Open Poetry Reading
Start: 2026-04-26T18:00:00-04:00
Location: MOTR

Schedule

Sun, 26 Apr, 2026 at 06:00 pm

UTC-04:00

Location

MOTR | Cincinnati, OH

Word of Mouth Cincinnati wraps up National Poetry Month on April 26 with a dynamic trio of women writers:
TAYLOR BYAS is a Black Chicago native currently living in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she is a Features Editor for The Rumpus, an Editorial Advisor for Jackleg Press, a member of the Beloit Poetry Journal Editorial Board, and a Poetry Editor-at-Large for Texas Review Press. Her debut full-length, "I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times" from Soft Skull Press, won the 2023 Maya Angelou Book Award, the 2023 Chicago Review of Books Award in Poetry, and the 2024 Ohioana Book Award in Poetry. Her second full-length, "Resting Bitch Face" (2025), was a September 2025 pick for Roxane Gay’s Audacious Book Club. She is also a coeditor of The Southern Poetry Anthology, Vol X: Alabama, from Texas Review Press, and Poemhood: Our Black Revival, a YA anthology from HarperCollins.
KATE POLAK is an artist, writer, and teacher. Her work has recently appeared in DIAGRAM, Miracle Monocle, McSweeney’s, and Inverted Syntax, who nominated her for “Best of the Net.” Her previous books, “Ethics in the Gutter and Science Fiction and the Historical Novel”, are scholarship dealing with the intersections between atrocity, visual culture, and historical fiction. She has three collections of poetry she is shopping around with potential publishers. She lives in south Florida with her familiars and aspires to a swamp hermitage.
PHOEBE REEVES earned her MFA in poetry at Sarah Lawrence College and now is Professor of English at the University of Cincinnati. She has three chapbooks of poetry, most recently “The Flame of Her Will” (Milk & Cake), and her first full length collection, “Helen of Bikini” (Lily Poetry Review) was published in March, 2023. Her poems have appeared in The Gettysburg Review, Best New Poets, Grist, Forklift OH, and The Chattahoochee Review, and she has been awarded fellowships by the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Vermont Studio Center. She lives in Cincinnati, OH with her husband Don Peteroy, amidst her unruly urban garden.
As always, Word of Mouth welcome poets of all stripes to show up, mouth off and listen. Lightning round precedes the feature to honor the voices in the room. Open reading follows the feature presentation.