The University of Cincinnati Libraries and the Elliston Poetry Room announce the next roster of poets for Poetry Stacked, a semi-regular poetry reading series held in the 6th floor east stacks of the Walter C. Langsam Library.

At the next event, scheduled for Wednesday, Oct. 7 at 4:30pm, three poets will read their original work:

• Kevin Oberlin is the author of two chapbooks: Steamboat Alley (2022) and Spotlit Girl (2008). His poems have appeared in neat journals like Pilgrimage, Thimble and Dunes Review, as well as in the anthologies Tributaria: Poetry, Prose, and Art Inspired by Tributaries of the Ohio Watershed and Wayfinding: Poetry Celebrating America’s Parks and Public Lands. He is Professor of English at UC Blue Ash College and lives in Moscow, Ohio.
• Matt Farley is a poet, educator and warehouse worker living in Southwest Ohio. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Miami University and teaches composition there. His recent work explores labor, class, place and the strange systems and intimacies of working life. He is active in Greater Cincinnati’s literary and community arts scene through readings, workshops, storytelling, and community-based projects. His current poetry project documents life on the warehouse floor.
• Leila Chatti is a Tunisian-American poet and author of Wildness Before Something Sublime (Copper Canyon Press, 2025)and Deluge (Copper Canyon Press, 2020), winner of the 2021 Levis Reading Prize, the 2021 Luschei Prize for African Poetry and longlisted for the 2021 PEN Open Book Award, as well as four chapbooks. Her honors include multiple Pushcart Prizes, grants from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund and the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and Cleveland State University, where she was the inaugural Anisfield-Wolf Fellow in Publishing and Writing. Her poems appear in The New York Times Magazine, The Nation, The Atlantic, POETRY and elsewhere.

The mission of Poetry Stacked is to celebrate poetry and raise awareness of the collections of both UC Libraries and the Elliston Poetry Room.

Each reading engages audiences via exposure to contemporary poetry and increases appreciation for both the talents of UC and community poets, as well as for poetry itself. Poetry Stacked is free and open to all to attend. Following each reading, guests are invited to tour the Elliston Poetry Room.

Can’t make it to Poetry Stacks in person? It will be live streamed via the Elliston Poetry Room’s Instagram.