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 six poetry collections, most recently 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.

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 Talisman, Now & Then: The Appalachian Magazine, Atlanta Review, ABZ Journal, Postcard Poems and Prose, Still: The Journal, The Mom Egg, Penwood Review and Appalachian Journal and anthologized in 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.

Morning, Loretto Motherhouse, Late November
by Pauletta Hansel

Wasp, old friend

from yesterday, wakes too

with the sun, first a wide swath of silk

draped against the far knobs,

now a pulsing orb

I lean away from in my chair

to save my sight.

The wasp navigates the screen

that keeps him from flight

and death, come evening

frost that has already chilled

the leaves from the sycamore

where dark birds alight, then swoop

as in one gathered breath

away. Oh wasp!

Your careful crawl toward

blaze of death

from which, for all my pretty words,

I would not save you.

Published in Still The Journal Fall 2018

Recordings

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: 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