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Breaking into Blossom: Poems with Extraordinary Endings

Breaking into Blossom: Poems with Extraordinary Endings

An Online Poetry Reading & Conversation

Featuring acclaimed poets and a live conversation on the art of poetic endings.

 
Date: Wednesday, April 8, 2026
Time: 6:00 PM (CT)
Location: Online (Registration Required)
 

Join TRP: The University Press of SHSU for a conversation with Breaking into Blossom co-editors Luke Hankins and Nomi Stone, moderated by TRP Director J. Bruce Fuller, followed by poetry readings from contributors including José Antonio Rodríguez, Keith Flynn, francine j. harris, Ellen Bass, Mathew Olzmann, Ross White, and Nathan McClain.

Breaking into Blossom: Poems with Extraordinary Endings gathers contemporary poems that showcase a wide range of approaches to ending the poem—lines that surprise, reverse expectation, unfold gradually, or resonate beyond the page. In their introductory essay, the editors explore the craft, ethics, and power of poetic closure, offering a framework for thinking about how poems conclude and continue.

Featuring work that spans themes of love, violence, identity, and transformation, the anthology brings together both celebrated and emerging voices. Some poems break into blossom; others fracture or linger—leaving readers in wonder at what endures.

 

 

Choose your registration option:

Observer (Free) — $0

Join the live event and enjoy the readings and discussion.

  • Live event access
  • 15% off press titles

REGISTER FOR FREE

 

Anthology Companion — $25 (Most Popular)

Attend the event and receive your own copy of Breaking into Blossom (shipped after the event).

  • Live event access
  • 1 copy of Breaking into Blossom
  • 15% off additional titles

REGISTER - BOOK BUNDLE

 

Literary Explorer — $40 (Best Value)

For readers who want to explore more—includes the anthology and a curated press title (shipped after the event).

  • Live event access
  • 1 copy of Breaking into Blossom
  • 1 additional, thoughtfully selected title from our catalog
  • 15% off additional titles

A great way to discover another standout work from our list.

REGISTER - PREMIUM BUNDLE

About the Editors

  • Luke Hankins

    Author of two full-length poetry collections, Radiant Obstacles and Weak Devotions, as well as a poetry chapbook, Testament (TRP, 2023). He is also the author of a collection of essays, The Work of Creation, and a volume of translations from the French of Stella Vinitchi Radulescu, A Cry in the Snow & Other Poems. With Nomi Stone, Hankins is co-editor of Between Paradise & Earth: Eve Poems. He is the founder and editor of Orison Books, a non-profit literary press focused on the life of the spirit from a broad and inclusive range of perspectives.

  • Nomi Stone

    Author of three books, most recently the poetry collection Kill Class (Tupelo, 2019), finalist for the Julie Suk Award, and the ethnography Pinelandia: An Anthropology and Field Poetics of War and Empire (University of California Press, 2023), first prize in the Middle East Studies Award from the American Anthropological Association and Honorable Mention of the Middle East Studies Association’s Albert Hourani Prize. With Luke Hankins, Stone is co-editor of Between Paradise & Earth: Eve Poems. Winner of a Pushcart Prize and a Fulbright fellowship, she was most recently a Postdoctoral Researcher in Anthropology at Princeton and she is currently an Assistant Professor of Poetry at the University of Texas, Dallas.

About the Contributors

  • Ellen Bass

    A Chancellor Emerita of the Academy of American Poets. Her most recent collection, Indigo (2020), follows Like a Beggar (2014), a finalist for multiple major awards, and Mules of Love (2002), which won the Lambda Literary Award. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and The New York Times Magazine. She has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as four Pushcart Prizes. Her nonfiction includes The Courage to Heal, which has sold over a million copies.

  • Keith Flynn

    Author of six poetry collections, including The Skin of Meaning (2020) and Colony Collapse Disorder (2013). His work has appeared widely in journals in the U.S. and abroad. He received the Paumanok Poetry Prize and the North Carolina Literary Fellowship. Founder and editor of The Asheville Poetry Review, he has given thousands of readings and served as the Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poet for North Carolina.

  • francine j. harris

    Author of three books including Here Is the Sweet Hand (2020) and allegiance (2012), a finalist for the PEN Open Book Award and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. She has received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and won the Boston Review Poetry Contest. Her work has appeared in Poetry, Ploughshares, and Callaloo, and others. A Cave Canem fellow, she is associate professor of English at the University of Houston and consulting faculty editor at Gulf Coast.

  • Nathan McClain

    Author of Scale (Four Way Books, 2017) and Previously Owned (Four Way Books, 2022), a recipient of fellowships from The Frost Place, Sewanee Writers' Conference, Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and a graduate of the M.F.A. Program for Writers at Warren Wilson.  A Cave Canem fellow, his poems and prose have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry Northwest, Green Mountains Review, Zocalo Public Square, The Critical Flame, and On The Seawall, among others.  He teaches at Hampshire College and serves as Poetry Editor for The Massachusetts Review.  

  • Mathew Olzmann

    Author of Constellation Route as well as two previous collections of poetry: Mezzanines and Contradictions in the Design. A recipient of fellowships from Kundiman, MacDowell, and the National Endowment for the Arts, Olzmann’s poems have appeared in the New York Times, Best American Poetry, the Pushcart Prizes, Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. He is a Senior Lecturer of Creative Writing at Dartmouth College and also teaches in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.

  • José Antonio Rodríguez

    Author of several poetry collections, including The Day’s Hard Edge (2024) and The Shallow End of Sleep, winner of the Bob Bush Memorial Award. His work has been shortlisted for the PEN America Los Angeles Literary Award, the Lambda Literary Award, the International Latino Book Award, the Foreword INDIES book award. His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and major anthologies. He has received the Discovery Award from the Writers’ League of Texas and the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award, and teaches at the University of Texas–Rio Grande Valley.

  • Ross White

    Author of Charm Offensive, winner of the Sexton Prize for Poetry, and three chapbooks. He is the director of Bull City Press, an independent publisher of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, where he hosts The Chapbook, a podcast devoted to chapbooks. He teaches at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in American Poetry Review, New England Review, Ploughshares, Poetry Daily, Tin House, and The Southern Review, among others. With Matthew Olzmann, he edited Another & Another: An Anthology from the Grind Daily Writing Series.

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