Cover Art - Donald Jackson
LISTEN to my February 10th, 2026 WIOX show (also a podcast!) featuring poet Barbara Leff. Barbara, joining the show from San Francisco, discusses and reads from her books AND GOD SAID…A Brief History of Creation, and Undertow. Planet Poet’s Poet-At-Large, Pamela Manché Pearce, also appears on the show.
Born and raised in New York, Barbara Leff discovered poetry at the age of 12 and has explored the genre ever since. Her work has appeared in various journals, including Fourteen Hills, Fault Line and Ibbetson Street. Her first collection, AND GOD SAID . . . A Brief History of Creation, finalist for the DA VINCI prize for the book cover, is based on the Book of Genesis and published by Broadstone Books. Her second Collection, LUCK, a collaboration with visual artist, David Maxim is devoted to forms and her most recent collection, UNDERTOW was published in 2024, also by Broadstone Books. She lives in San Francisco with her wife, Arlene Singer, and their dog, Baxter. Visit: barbaraleffpoet.com Visit: pamelampearce.com
Praise for AND GOD SAID . . . A Brief History of Creation…
AND GOD SAID... is a brilliant retelling of The Book of Genesis, one of the foundational texts of Western culture. The biases, gaps and silences of the original are given voice and texture by Leff's humane and compelling imagination which brings a fresh and passionate angle of vision to these familiar stories, transforming in the process not only our understanding of our religious past but also of the contemporary life which is in part a product of that past. This is a wonderful and exhilarating book --- Alan Shapiro, Author of ten poetry collections including Tantalus in Love and Old War Poems
Praise for UNDERTOW
….These deftly crafted poems treat the quotidian, the metaphysical, and the magical- “as if I could grab a handful of stars from the sky and toss them on the tiles at your feet.” Sharply observed, heartrending and celebratory by turns, UNDERTOW conducts us through a lifetime of landscapes its fascination with orientation in shifting memory and place becoming our own.--Susan Cobin, Author, What You Choose