Crystal Simone Smith is the author of Runagate: Songs of the Freedom Bound (Duke University Press, 2025) and Dark Testament (Henry Holt, 2023). In 2022, her collection of haiku, Ebbing Shore, won The Haiku Foundation Touchstone Distinguished Book Award. Smith is the recipient a Duke Humanities Unbounded Fellowship. Her work has appeared in numerous journals including POETRY Magazine, Harper’s Magazine, Rattle, Poetry Daily, Frogpond, and The Heron’s Nest. She teaches in the Thompson Writing Program at Duke University and writes poetry about the human condition and social change.
Find more on Crystal at her website:
https://www.crystalsimonesmith.com/
As always, we'll also include the live Prompt Lines for responses to our weekly prompt. A Zoom link will be provided in the chat window during the show before that segment begins.
For links to all the past episodes, visit:
https://www.rattle.com/page/rattlecast/
This Week’s Prompt:
Write a poem about the influence music has had on you over the years while making the poem itself as musical as possible.
Next Week’s Prompt:
Invent a form that borrows something you love about an existing form—but spins it in a new direction. (Also encouraged to submit this to our call for our invented forms tribute section, due January 15th, 2026.)
The Rattlecast livestreams on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, then becomes an audio podcast. Find it on iTunes, Spotify, or anywhere else you get your podcasts.
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Crystal Simone Smith is the author of Runagate: Songs of the Freedom Bound (Duke University Press, 2025) and Dark Testament (Henry Holt, 2023). In 2022, her collection of haiku, Ebbing Shore, won The Haiku Foundation Touchstone Distinguished Book Award. Smith is the recipient a Duke Humanities Unbounded Fellowship. Her work has appeared in numerous journals including POETRY Magazine, Harper’s Magazine, Rattle, Poetry Daily, Frogpond, and The Heron’s Nest. She teaches in the Thompson Writing Program at Duke University and writes poetry about the human condition and social change.
Find more on Crystal at her website:
https://www.crystalsimonesmith.com/
As always, we'll also include the live Prompt Lines for responses to our weekly prompt. A Zoom link will be provided in the chat window during the show before that segment begins.
For links to all the past episodes, visit:
https://www.rattle.com/page/rattlecast/
This Week’s Prompt:
Write a poem about the influence music has had on you over the years while making the poem itself as musical as possible.
Next Week’s Prompt:
Invent a form that borrows something you love about an existing form—but spins it in a new direction. (Also encouraged to submit this to our call for our invented forms tribute section, due January 15th, 2026.)
The Rattlecast livestreams on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, then becomes an audio podcast. Find it on iTunes, Spotify, or anywhere else you get your podcasts.
Isabella DeSendi is a Latina poet and educator, and a finalist for the 2023 Rattle Poetry Prize. Her debut poetry collection, Someone Else's Hunger, is just out from Four Way Books. Her chapbook, Through the New Body, won the Poetry Society of America's Chapbook Fellowship and was published in 2020. Recently, she has been named a 2025 New Jersey Poetry Fellow, a finalist for the Ruth Lilly Fellowship, and was included in the 2024 Best New Poets anthology, among other awards. Isabella has attended Bread Loaf Writers' Workshop, the Storyknife Writers’ Residency in Alaska, and holds an MFA from Columbia University. She currently lives in Hoboken, New Jersey.
Find more info here:
https://www.isabelladesendi.com/
As always, we'll also include the live Prompt Lines for responses to our weekly prompt. A Zoom link will be provided in the chat window during the show before that segment begins.
For links to all the past episodes, visit:
https://www.rattle.com/rattlecast/
This Week’s Prompt:
Write a persona poem that includes the word “prompt.”
Next Week’s Prompt:
Orange you glad you get to write a prompt poem?
The Rattlecast livestreams on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, then becomes an audio podcast. Find it on iTunes, Spotify, or anywhere else you get your podcasts.
Rattle Poetry
Crystal Simone Smith is the author of Runagate: Songs of the Freedom Bound (Duke University Press, 2025) and Dark Testament (Henry Holt, 2023). In 2022, her collection of haiku, Ebbing Shore, won The Haiku Foundation Touchstone Distinguished Book Award. Smith is the recipient a Duke Humanities Unbounded Fellowship. Her work has appeared in numerous journals including POETRY Magazine, Harper’s Magazine, Rattle, Poetry Daily, Frogpond, and The Heron’s Nest. She teaches in the Thompson Writing Program at Duke University and writes poetry about the human condition and social change.
Find more on Crystal at her website:
https://www.crystalsimonesmith.com/
As always, we'll also include the live Prompt Lines for responses to our weekly prompt. A Zoom link will be provided in the chat window during the show before that segment begins.
For links to all the past episodes, visit:
https://www.rattle.com/page/rattlecast/
This Week’s Prompt:
Write a poem about the influence music has had on you over the years while making the poem itself as musical as possible.
Next Week’s Prompt:
Invent a form that borrows something you love about an existing form—but spins it in a new direction. (Also encouraged to submit this to our call for our invented forms tribute section, due January 15th, 2026.)
The Rattlecast livestreams on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, then becomes an audio podcast. Find it on iTunes, Spotify, or anywhere else you get your podcasts.
