Contemporary Poets on Emily Dickinson & Today’s Issues
Contact: melodyorwitchcraftATgmailDOTcom
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Poets are truthtellers. We need more of those.
The Melody or Witchcraft podcast conversations begin with a love for poetry, its craft, and a major literary ancestor: Emily Dickinson. The two poems you’ll hear each episode are chosen by the guests: a Dickinson poem and one of their own. Amongst the poem-talk and new discoveries around our 19th Century sister, we do our best to follow an organic flow of dialogue that moves us around a poet’s POV on the real life challenges of the 21st Century and the particular interests of the guest.
I’m your host, Kathryn Petruccelli, a poet, workshop leader, Substacker, & former guide for the Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst, Massachusetts. I’m interested in things like the sources of creative inspiration, time & how the past influences the present, challenging cultural norms, social justice, and poetry as a tool for survival. The poets I select to interview are people whose work I love and admire. I have yet to fail to fall further in love with each of them after our conversations.
Non-poets & poetry skeptics: you are very welcome here!!
- Things you are at risk of as a listener:
Learning new ways to understand poetry.
Filling up your “new writers/books to read” dance card.
Finding healing and companionship around the stress of living.
“The Past is such a curious Creature,” Dickinson wrote. (J1203). What if Then and Now is just one more binary that doesn’t serve us anymore?
The name “Melody or Witchcraft” comes from an April 25, 1862 letter Dickinson wrote to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, where she asked a question of this man who would become one of her lifelong correspondents and an editor of her posthumously-collected works. In her letter, she says, “I would like to learn – Can you tell me how to grow – or is it unconveyed – like Melody or Witchcraft?” (L 261)
**To get the full show notes with links and photos, become a free or paid subscriber to the Melody or Witchcraft Podcast through the Ask the Poet Substack.**
The complete Season 4 is below.
See also Season 1, Season 2, and Season 3.
Season 4 Trailers:
Season 4 Poets
Episode 20, Audrey Molloy: “the poem as a made thing”
Available October 5, 2026
Audrey & I talk about the nuances of “Truth,” the cadence of Irish poets, what has & hasn’t changed for women in the 21st century & more.
Audrey Molloy was born in Dublin and has lived in Sydney since 1998. She has an MA in Creative Writing (Poetry) from Manchester Metropolitan University. Her debut collection, The Important Things (2021), was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney First Collection Poetry Prize and won the Anne Elder Award. Her third collection, Fallen (2025), was long-listed for the Forward Prize. She has been shortlisted for major awards including the Montreal, Peter Porter, Bridport and Moth poetry prizes. She is co-founder and editor of The Marrow International Poetry.
Episode 21, Sunu Chandy: “not a one-note situation”
Available October 12, 2026
Sunu & I discuss communal grief, the risk involved in taking care of each other, her civil rights law work, & the complicated nature of standing in one’s truth.
Photo Credit Sarah Sharaf-Eldien
Sunu P. Chandy (she/her) is a social justice activist including through her work as a poet and a civil rights attorney. She is the daughter of immigrants from Kerala, India, and lives in Washington, DC with her family. Her collection of poems, My Dear Comrades, was published by Regal House. She is also a Senior Advisor with Democracy Forward, and on the board of the Transgender Law Center. Sunu is a proud alum of Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana, Northeastern Law School in Boston, Massachusetts, and she completed her MFA in Creative Writing from Queens College/CUNY. Sunu has been recognized as one of the Queer Women of Washington.
Episode 22, James Crews: “that closed door”
Available October 19, 2026
James & I talk about life’s package deal of pain & beauty, his unique poetry writing process, what poets can do to lift each other up, & more!
James Crews is the author and editor of fourteen books, including Breathing Room, Turning Toward Grief, How to Love the World, and Love Is for All of Us, winner of a Nautilus Gold Medal Award. He has been featured on NPR’s Morning Edition, in People Magazine, The Boston Globe, and The New York Times Magazine. James lives with his husband on forty rocky acres in Southern Vermont that they are restoring to a habitat for pollinators and native species.
Episode 23, Jane Huffman: “to change her own mind”
Available October 26, 2026
Jane & I ruminate on the uses of fear and anxiety, her relationship with the narrative, a positive caveat in AI’s influence, & more.
Jane Huffman (she/her) is the author of Public Abstract (American Poetry Review, 2023), winner of the 2023 APR/Honickman First Book Prize. She is a PhD candidate in English and literary arts at the University of Denver, where she is managing editor of Denver Quarterly, and she has an MFA from the University of Iowa. Her poems have appeared in The Nation, The Atlantic, Poetry Magazine, The New Yorker, New England Review, and elsewhere. She was a 2019 recipient of the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation.
Episode 24, Angela Narciso Torres: “making do”
Available November 2, 2026
Angela & I chat about moving beyond grief, defining home, & she breaks down for us the idea of “bricolage” – making things from the scraps of what we have handy.
Angela Narciso Torres is the author of What Happens Is Neither, Blood Orange, and the chapbook, To the Bone. A graduate of the Harvard Graduate School of Education and Warren Wilson’s MFA program, she has been awarded a Pushcart Prize, a BreadLoaf Fellowship, and the Yeats Poetry Prize. Born in Brooklyn and raised in Manila, she lives in San Diego and serves as reviews editor for RHINO.
Episode 25, Dorianne Laux: “quiet blasphemy”
Available November 9, 2026
Dorianne & I get into monorhymes, the mind of the poet, going beyond what satisfies us on the page, & Carolyn Forché.
Photo Credit: Kim Addonizio
Dorianne Laux is the author of seven books of poetry, including Only As the Day is Long: New and Selected Poems, which was named a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Her other collections include The Book of Men, Facts About the Moon, Awake; What We Carry, a finalist for the National Book Critic’s Circle Award; and Smoke. Her latest collection of poetry is Life On Earth and was released in January of 2024. Finger Exercises for Poets, a book of concise craft essays and exercises for poets was released in July 2024.