Along with unpredictable weather and the slow return of the sun to the Northern Hemisphere, March will bring your humble curator’s birthday — and as a gift to all of you, I’m thrilled to present two terrific poets for this month’s installment of What The Universe Is:

Patrick Donnelly is the author of five books of poetry, most recently WILLOW HAMMER, forthcoming from Four Way Books in 2025. About Donnelly, Gregory Orr wrote “everything he writes is suffused with tenderness and intelligence, lucidity and courage.” Former poet laureate of Northampton, Massachusetts, his poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Slate, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Yale Review, and many other journals. Donnelly is director of the Poetry Seminar at The Frost Place, Robert Frost’s old homestead in Franconia, NH, now a center for poetry and the arts. More at: patrickdonnellypoetry.com

Emma Trelles is the 9th Poet Laureate of Santa Barbara, California (2021-2023) and a Poet Laureate Fellow at the Academy of American Poets. She’s also received writing fellowships and honors from CantoMundo, Letras Latinas, and the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs. The daughter of Cuban immigrants, she is the author of Tropicalia (University of Notre Dame Press), winner of the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize, and is completing her second book of poems, Courage + the Clock. Recent work is forthcoming or appears in Anacapa Review; Chiricú Journal: Latina/o Literatures, Arts, and Culture; The Cortland Review; the New England Review; and Pedestal Magazine. She curates the Mission Poetry Series and is the series editor of the Alta California Chapbook Prize, open to Latina/o/x/e poets in California and published in bilingual editions in the spring by Gunpowder Press.

Come through to hear them read on March 22 at 7:30pm Eastern. Register at bit.ly/WTUIMar2023 to get your Zoom link!