One of my favorite things about Baltimore is its diverse, vibrant, and inclusive literary scene. In any given week, you can find readings at local bookstores, libraries, cafes, bars, and even private residences where attendees are warmly welcomed into the community. Indeed, it was through such events that I met each of the authors highlighted below. In honor of National Poetry Month, we wanted to share a bit about their recent books which represent a range of voices and subjects, offering insight, connection, and hope to help us survive these trying times.
Clare Banks – Notes on Endings (Terrapin Books 2025)
For years, Clare Banks has been a notable literary figure in Baltimore, co-editing Smartish Pace since 1998 and co-hosting the popular The HOT L reading series since 2019. I have known Clare, a fellow educator, since the early 2000s and was delighted when, in spring of 2025, Terrapin Books published her debut poetry collection, Notes on Endings. This book is filled with elegies for Banks’ sister. The speaker throughout the collection reckons with her grief, but the beauty of the natural world, the joy of childhood memories, and the healing that comes with passing time temper the sadness that infuses the work. Each poem creates its own world with lush sensory details, often offering an alternative to despair through image, as in “We Remember for You”: “we breathe at the cave’s mouth / half in darkness half in sunlight / our feet among the pebbles / of the creek bottom // what story there is plays here / clear fish in clear water.”
Edward Doyle Gillespie – The Slow Lament of Dying Ice (Bold Venture Press 2026)
It was at a holiday celebration of local writers at Bird in Hand Café back in 2021 that I first encountered Edward Doyle Gillespie. At that point, he had published four poetry collections and had left a career as a teacher to serve as a Baltimore City police officer. As incongruous as these identities seemed to me, I came to understand that his desire for connection and understanding is a thread that links his police work, his teaching, and his writing. Since that first meeting, Gillespie has returned to the classroom and published two more books. The most recent, The Slow Lament of Dying Ice, is a series of character studies that bring to life figures ranging from a Senegalese cab driver –“He is solid silence / poured out of a jet-black shell / cracked down its middle, / left to fill the well behind / the driver’s wheel” – to a “perfume girl at Harrods — / Polish, tiny pixie-sprite . . . .Smoke-black stockings, / tiny-bow ballet slippers, / grape-skin skirt, / she came this way / by jam-packed van.” Gillespie treats them all with reverence, sharing through their stories a message of resilience.
Hillary Gonzalez – Wild, Unfelt World (Gnashing Teeth Publishing 2026)
I met Hillary Gonzalez last year when I was invited to a book club that was reading my first collection, Chaos Theories. It was a small group and my first such event, but Hillary put me at ease with their generous and enthusiastic questions. After that, I started to see Hillary around at other literary events, as one does in Smalltimore, and when their second collection, Wild, Unfelt World, was released, I knew I wanted to read it. The poems here, characterized as “eco-poetry,” pay homage to the natural world and invite readers to look more closely at their surroundings. In “Pawpaws” they write: “I could hide these trees away, / tell no one, and keep this / treasure to myself, / but I know these joys / are meant to be shared.” Indeed, reading this collection is like walking through the woods with a dear friend who points to all the miraculous plants and creatures that populate the wild world.
Jennifer Keith – Terminarch (Able Muse Press 2026)
One of the first poems I read by Jenny Keith was “Selfie,” which she submitted to a journal where I was poetry editor. I was struck by the ease with which she navigated a strict meter and rhyme scheme, the wit of her word play, and the acuity of her critique of selfie culture: “Consider the distraction: what it took / to blister reels of real life, snagged within / the teeth of the projector, motion stilled– / in hopes that he would look, and look, and look.” Indeed, all the poems in Terminarch, selected by David Yezzi for the Able Muse Book Award back in 2023 and finally published this spring, display a sharp ear and eye. A collection that explores passing time and, as the title suggests, endings, the voice throughout Terminarch is confident, clever, and wise, and the poems touch on a range of human experiences with precision and compassion.
Gregg Mosson – Singing the Forge (Wasteland Press 2025)
Before I met Gregg Mosson, I noticed him at open mics around Baltimore (including Clare Banks’ series, the HOT L), and I was struck by his affable, unassuming presence and genuine interest in his fellow poets’ work. Mosson, a lawyer by trade, has published six poetry collections. The most recent, Singing the Forge, is a mixture of personal reflections, ekphrastic poems, and stories of people from the past. The idea of song is captured in the rich sounds of Mosson’s work; the mouth feel of these poems, which are both free verse and metered, is rewarding. But Mosson also offers readers insights about what it is to be alive, as in “Night Studies”: “Far off, the wheeling seagulls mew. / They fade like choices I could have made. // Instead, I trace how night grows young, / tattooing my mind with this seized time // beside an open window, and drift / into the flow of surfacing dreams.”
To take a deeper dive
Learn more about these poets — and buy their books — at the links below.
Clare Banks – Writer
E. Doyle-Gillespie
Hillary Gonzalez Poetry
Jennifer Keith, Writer
G. H. Mosson
