LISTEN to my September l, 2020 conversation with poets Cheryl A. Rice and Guy Reed, on their collaborative chapbook, Until The Words Came, published by Post Traumatic Press in 2019 and their new full collections - Cheryl’s Love’s Compass, published this year by Kung Fu Treachery Press, an imprint of Spartan Press, and Guy Reed’s Second Innocence, published this year by Luchador Press, also an imprint of Spartan Press.

“It’s not unusual for poets to tackle the subject of craft or the ghosts and mentors who inspired their path. What sets Cheryl A. Rice & Guy Reed’s Until The WordsCame apart from so many collections is a thoughtful conviction, a strength of heart that makes their words more than just raw emotion, or a polished sense of poetics. It is all of these things. The late Richard Hugo once said, ‘Poetry is the art of meaning what you say.’ Well, Rice and Reed mean every word, and their work together offers a great sense of balance, in a world that sure could use some.”

-- John Dorsey

Cheryl A. Rice’s poems have appeared in magazines and journals around the world. In addition to Until the Words Came, her chapbooks include Until the Words Came (2019: Post Traumatic Press), coauthored with Guy Reed, Moses Parts the Tulips (2013: APD Press), and Lost and Found (2019: Flying Monkey Press). Rice is founder/host of the now defunct “Sylvia Plath Bake-Off.” Her blog is at: http://flyingmonkeyprods.blogspot.com/. Rice lives in New York’s Hudson Valley.

Guy Reed is the author of the chapbooks, The Effort To Hold Light Finishing Line Press), and Still Life With Acorn (Fool Head Press), in addition to Until the Words Came. Reed published in journals, anthologies and has red his work on the podcast, The Strange Recital. A Minnesota native, Reed’s lived in California and Oregon. He currently resides in the Catskill Mountains with his wife and their children.