Featured Poets - Benjamin Aleshire, Alexis Rhone Fancher, Maria Jastrzebska, & Pavana Reddy
Rattle Poetry series is presented the second Sunday of every month (except December) at 5 PM.
Benjamin Aleshire is based in New Orleans and travels the world as a poet-for-hire, composing poems for strangers on a manual typewriter. His work has been featured in The Times UK, Iowa Review, Boston Review, El Mundo, London Magazine, and on television in the U.S., China, and Spain. The second edition of his artist-book of visual poems, Currency, was released in 2017. An excerpt of his novel, Poet for Hire: Kismet of a 21st Century Troubadour is forthcoming in LitHub. Ben serves as assistant poetry editor for the Green Mountains Review. His poem “Good Manners” appears in Rattle #64.
Alexis Rhone Fancher is the author of How I Lost My Virginity to Michael Cohen and Other Heart Stab Poems (2014), State of Grace: The Joshua Elegies (2015), and the brand new erotic, LA-centric collection, Enter Here. She is published in Best American Poetry, 2016, Rattle, Slipstream, Plume, Nashville Review, Diode, Glass, and elsewhere. Alexis is poetry editor of Cultural Weekly. She lives in Los Angeles. Her poems appear in Rattle #41, #52, and #61.
Maria Jastrzebska was born in Warsaw, Poland, and came to the U.K as a child. She was co-editor of Queer in Brighton (New Writing South 2014) and has translated the work of Polish poet Justyna Bargielska with The Great Plan B(Smokestack 2017). Her drama Dementia Diaries toured nationally in 2011. Her work is widely anthologized and features in the British Library project Between Two Worlds—Poetry and Translation. For the last six months she has been working on Snow Q, a collaborative project funded by Arts Council England: www.snowqproject.wordpress.com. The True Story of Cowboy Hat and Ingénue (Cinnamon Press/Liquorice Fish 2018) is her fourth and most recent collection. She lives in Brighton in the U.K. Her poem “Dear Mama” appeared in Rattle #59.
Pavana Reddy is a Los Angeles-based poet and songwriter. She is most well-known for her first book of poetry, Rangoli, as well a song called “Remain the Sea” written for the critically acclaimed album Land of Gold by Anoushka Shankar. She is currently set to release her second book of poems, Where Do You Go Alone, and is already working on her third. She was interviewed for and has two poems in Rattle #64
Every second Sunday of the month, the Rattle Reading Series gathers a selection of performers from around the country for a series of poetry readings to celebrate recent issues of the magazine. Hosted by the editor, Timothy Green, the event also features an open mic, so bring a few poems and sign up to read!