Poet, Memoirist, Teacher and Editor Pauletta Hansel served as the first Poet Laureate of Cincinnati from April 2016 through March 2018. She is author of seven poetry collections, most recently Coal Town Photograph (Dos Madres Press, 2019) and Palindrome (Dos Madres Press, 2017), which was awarded the prestigious Weatherford Award for the best Appalachian poetry book of 2017. Read her blogs about the writing of Palindrome here. Read poet Linda Parson’s review in Still The Journal here.

Other recent books include Tangle (Dos Madres Press, 2015), The Lives We Live in Houses (Wind Publications, 2011) and What I Did There (Dos Madres Press, 2011). Pauletta’s poetry and prose has been featured recently in journals including Rattle, Main Street Rag, Literary Accents, PoetrySouth, Talisman, Now & Then: The Appalachian Magazine, Atlanta Review, ABZ Journal, Postcard Poems and Prose, Still: The Journal, The Mom Egg, and Appalachian Journal and anthologized in Undocumented: Great Lakes Poets Laureate on Social Justice; Feminine Rising; A Gathering at the Forks; Old Wounds, New Words; A Kentucky Christmas; Listen Here: Women Writing in Appalachia; the Motif series and Creatures of Habitat and Crossing Lines. Her poems have been featured on The Writer’s Almanac, Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry and Verse Daily. Links to poems and prose published online can be found below.

Pauletta leads community writing workshops and retreats in the Greater Cincinnati area and beyond. She is managing editor of Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, the literary publication of the Southern Appalachian Writers Cooperative. (Submission guidelines here.) In addition to her role of Cincinnati’s Poet Laureate, Pauletta served as Writer in Residence at Thomas More College’s Creative Writing Vision Program and at WordPlay, a literary and literacy organization for younger writers. Pauletta received her MFA from Queens University of Charlotte. Originally from southeastern Kentucky, Pauletta lives in Cincinnati with her husband, Owen Cramer.

The Road

Where I’m from, everybody had a flower garden,
and I’m not talking about landscaping—
those variegated grasses poking up between
the yellow daylilies that bloom more than once.
Even the rusted-out trailer down in the green bottoms
had snowball bushes that outlived the floods.
Even the bootlegger’s wife grew roses up the porch pillar
still flecked with a little paint, and in the spring
her purple irises rickracked the rutted gravel drive.
Even the grannies changed out of their housedresses
to thin the sprouts of zinnias so come summer
they’d bloom into muumuus of scarlet and coral
down by the road.

Now driving that road that used to take me home,
I think how maybe it’s still true.
Everybody says down here it’s nothing
but burnt-out shake and bakes and skinny girls
looking for a vein, but everywhere I look
there’s mallows and glads, begonias in rubber tire
planters painted to match, cannies red
as the powder my mother would pat high
on her cheekbones when she wanted to be noticed
for more than her cobblers and beans.
Everywhere there’s some sort of beautiful
somebody worked hard at, no matter
how many times they were told
nobody from here even tries.

From Coal Town Photograph, Dos Madres Press (2019)

Recordings

Reading: Harlan County, USA (2019) in Rattle (Poets Respond)

Reading: I Confess in Rattle (Poets Respond)

Reading: Villanelle in a Minor Key on WVXU Around Cincinnati

Reading: When She Was Done from Coal Town Photograph on WVXU Around Cincinnati

Reading: Tracy Crow’s Accept Your Gifts Podcast (Poetry Month collection of poems from several poets.)

Reading: The River at Brier Books. (Note: public video on Facebook)

Reading at Lees College, Jackson, KY, 2/12/19 (Note: public video on Facebook)

Reading: Tending Green at Word of Mouth, Cincinnati

Reading: Strawberry Moon at Word of Mouth, Cincinnati

Reading: Of What We Make Our Poems on WVXU Around Cincinnati.

Reading: Our Words: Cincinnati, April 2017 on WVXU Around Cincinnati.

Poems and Essays

Poem: Harlan County, USA (2019) in Rattle (Poets Respond)

Poem: I Confess in Rattle (Poets Respond)

Poem: The View from There on American Life in Poetry selected by Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate

Poem: Villanelle in a Minor Key in Still: The Journal

Poem: Morning, Loretto Motherhouse, Late November in Still: The Journal

Poem: The City in Appalachian Heritage

Poem: To Break a Thing a collaborative poem by Leigh Cheak, Ron Houchin, and Pauletta Hansel in Still: The Journal.

Poem: Portrait of My Mother as a Dried Sunflower in Verse Daily

Poem: “A Blessing for the Feast of All Poets” read by the young Kentucky poet, Mackenzie Berry, in her first Word to Wellness Podcast.

Poem: Palindrome in Still: The Journal

Poem: Girl Villanelle in Silver Birch Press, ME at 17

Microfiction/Prose Poem: Secrets in Postcards Poems and Prose Magazine, 1/31/17

Poem: Photograph of a Woman at a Funeral in Journal of Kentucky Studies, Vol. 31, 2016

Poem: Portrait of My Mother’s Dementia as Saturn’s Rings in Still The Journal, Summer 2016

Poems on Accents Publishing’s Lexington Poetry Month Blog, June 2016

Of What We Make Our Poems: May 2016 Picture/Poem in Movers & Makers Cincinnati

Poem 314 it on the HIV Here & Now Project (For poet Joseph Enzweiler, who died of brain cancer, April 16, 2011. We miss you Joe!)

National Poetry Month: A Poem From Cincinnati Poet Laureate Pauletta Hansel on WVXU

Poem on Postcard Poems and Prose, online magazine, published February 17, 2014

Poems in Still: The Journal, author page
Poems in Still: The Journal, Haints & Saints: A Poetry Sampler
Creative Nonfiction in Still: The Journal, “My Father’s Photograph”

Poems in Appalachian Heritage, author page

Poem: Husbands on American Life in Poetry selected by Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate, April 2015, the Poetry Foundation, and read by Garrison Keillor on The Writers Almanac, July 15, 2015.

Poems in The Whirlwind Review, online journal, published Autumn 2013