March 15, 2026: Iain Haley Pollock

“If the spirit is generous, and the balance between living and letters match, a fine book of poems sings the author and the reader free.”—Cornelius Eady

“Beyond the bracing intelligence in these poems, beyond the surges of joy and trouble, beyond the poet’s awe in this split second, he plunges with imagination into the timeless work of loving witness, resonant with high style and the blues.”—Brooks Haxton

“We all hear a personal music, and it’s up to us to create the moves to go with it. Pollock listens well, and his dance is all strut and stomp, wild and wooly, and filled with the stories he’s seen, heard, and lived. Focusing on themes of racial identity, romance, the everyday things in life, and ever-looming mortality, these poems are built on jazz, troubles, pain, gunfire in the night, blues…” —Louis McKee, Library Journal

Iain Haley Pollock is the author of three poetry collections, Spit Back a Boy (2011), Ghost, Like a Place, and, the most recent, All the Possible Bodies (Alice James, September 2025). He has received several honors for his work including the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, the Alice Fay di Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America, a NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship in Poetry, the Bim Ramke Prize for Poetry, and a nomination for an NAACP Image Award. His poems have appeared in many literary outlets, including African American Review, American Academy of Poets Poem-a-Day, American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, The New York Times Magazine, PoetrySociety.org and The Progressive. Outside of publishing poems, Pollock has performed his work widely, from the Dodge Poetry Festival to libraries and art centers; he curated the Rye Poetry Path, a public poetry installation in Rye, NY; he serves on the editorial board at Slapering Hol Press and on the board of Tiger Bark Press; and he edits the literary journal Inkwell. Pollock directs the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Manhattanville University in Purchase, NY and lives in the Lower Hudson Valley. iainhaleypollock.com