“Rikki Santer has always been a rad and ready wrangler of pop culture, an alchemist who is expert at excavating the universal and the personal in the popular and remixing it all into a glorious concoction that tingles the tongue as it reflects, refreshes and nourishes.”  —John Burroughs, National Beat Poet Laureate

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Thank you, John Burroughs, for the endorsement, and thank you, Reader, for visiting my website.

I’ve worked as a journalist, a magazine and book editor, co-founder and managing editor of an alternative city newspaper in Cleveland , a poet-in-the schools, a high school teacher of English and film studies, director of a student writing center, and a vice-president of the Ohio Poetry Association. Currently, I’m an Ohio teaching artist through the Ohio Arts Council, and a member of the poetry troupe, Concrete Wink.

I earned a M.A. degree in journalism from Kent State University and a M.F.A. degree in creative writing from The Ohio State University. My work has won honors from The Poetry Forum (the William Redding Memorial Contest), Black Lawrence Press (finalist the St. Lawrence Book Award Competition), the Ohio Poetry Association,  Ohio Poetry Day, Zachary Doss Friends in Letters Fellowship through Heavy Feather Review, the Derick Burleson Poetry Contest from Choeofpleirn Press, the Poetry Society of Tennessee, the Pennsylvania Poetry Society, the National Federation of State Poetry Societies, and the Best of Ohio Writer Contest sponsored by the Poets’ & Writers’ League of Greater Cleveland, as well as six Pushcart, three Ohioana Book Award nominations, several individual artist grants from the Greater Columbus Arts Council, and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities.  In 2023 I was named Ohio Poet of the Year.

My collection, Resurrection Letter was grand prize short-listed for the Eric Hoffer Book Award and my forthcoming collection, Shepherd’s Hour, won the Paul Nemser Book Prize from Lily Poetry Review Books. 

BOOKS:

I’m thrilled to announce that my newest full-length collection, Zebra Lashes, is forthcoming from Fernwood Press this summer.  As for the rest of my books:

Two of my published poetry collections have explored place: Front Nine (the Hopewell earthworks of Newark, Ohio) and Kahiki Redux (the late Kahiki Supper Club of Columbus, Ohio). Clothesline Logic, was published by Pudding House as finalist in their national chapbook competition.

I have also published five full-length collections:  Fishing for Rabbits (Kattywompus Press), Make Me That Happy (NightBallet Press), Dodge Tuck, Roll (Crisis Chronicles Press), In Pearl Broth (Stubborn Mule Press) and most recently, How to Board a Moving Ship (Lily Poetry Review Books) in September 2021.

Drop Jaw, inspired by the art of ventriloquism, was published in March 2020 through NightBallet Press.  Head to Toe of It, a chapbook of poems exploring the complicated notions of fashion, was published by Kelsay Books in May 2021.  Stopover, which emerged as my conversation with Rod Serling and his classic series The Twilight Zone, was published by Luchador Press in September 2021, and Resurrection Letter; Leonora, Her Tarot, and Me, a poetic sequence in tribute to the surrealist artist Leonora Carrington and was published by the arts press, Cereal Box Studio in 2023.

INDIVIDUAL POEMS HAVE APPEARED IN or are FORTHCOMING FROM:

Journals:

3Elements Review. 404 Ink, Adanna Literary Journal, The Adirondack Review, Alabama Literary Review, American Journal of Poetry, Asphodel, The Atlanta Review, Botticelli Magazine, Bryant Literary Review, Burningwood Literary Journal, Call Me [Brackets], Columbus Landmarks Association, The Comstock Review, Common Ground Review, Common Threads, The Comstock Review, Crab Orchard Review, Cultural Weekly, Curbside Review, Dante’sHeart, Driftwood Press, Dune’s Review, Earth’s Daughters, The Ekphrastic Review, Fifth Estate, Fifth Wednesday, Gasconade Review, Grimm, Gyroscope Poetry Review, Heavy Feather Review, Hotel Amerika, Indolent Books What Rough Beast, I-70, Inverted Syntax, Little Patuxent Review, Lumina, Main Street Rag, Margie, Maryland Literary Review, Midway Journal, Midwest Review, Mojave River Review, Museum of Poetry, OPEN:  Journal of Arts & Letters, Oxford Magazine, [PANK], Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Pittsburgh Poetry Journal, Plainsongs (Award Poem), Plath Poetry Project, Poetry East, Poets Reading the News, Poor Yorick, Potomac Review, Rabbit, Rhino Literary Journal, Santa Fe Literary Review, Slipstream, South Loop Review, Synchronized Chaos Magazine, Third Wednesday,U.S. 1 Worksheets, Vassar Review

Anthologies:

•  Women and Death edited by Jesse of the Genesee and Dorian Arana (Ground Torpedo Press)
• The Pudding House Gang:  Provocative Rascals Thundering Main Street for the Poems of Our Lives edited by Jennifer Bosveld (Pudding House)
•  I Will Bear This Scar edited by Marietta W. Bratton (iUniverse)
• Cradle Songs:  An Anthology on Motherhood edited by Kristin Roedell (Quill and Parchment Press)
• IMPACT: An Anthology of Short Memoirs edited by CoCo Harris (Telling Our Stories Press)
• Everything Stops and Listens edited by Steve Abbott (The Ohio Poetry Association)
• Raising Lilly Ledbetter:  Women Poets Occupy the Workspace (Lost Horse Press)
• Joys of the Table (Richer Resources Press)
• My Cruel Invention  (Meerkat Press)
• Dead Inside:  Poems and Essays About Zombies (Foiled Crown Press)
• 2016 Hessler Street Fair Poetry Anthology (Crisis Chronicles Press)
• Forgotten Women (Grayson Books)
• A Rustling and Waking Within:  Poems Inspired by the Arts in Ohio edited by Sharon Fish Mooney (The Ohio Poetry  Association)
• Common Threads 2017 edited by Steve Abbott (The Ohio Poetry Association)
• Last Call:  The Anthology of Beer, Wine & Spirits Poetry edited by James Bertolino (World Enough Writers)
• Coffee Poems: Reflections on Life With Coffee; edited by Lorraine Healy, World Enough Writers Press
• Gluttony:  7 Deadly Sins Vol. 2 (Pure Slush Books)
• Common Threads 2018 edited by Steve Abbott (The Ohio Poetry Association)
• The Gasconade Review Presents: Ladies’ Night edited by Rebecca Weber, John Dorsey, Jason Ryberg
• The Konza Poetry Project Presents:  Somewhere Between Kansas City and Denver edited by Jason Ryberg
• We Are Beat (National Beat Poetry Festival Anthology) edited by James P. Wagner (Ishwa)
• Women Speak edited by Kari Gunter-Seymour (Mountain State Press)
• Eclipsing the Dark:  The Sun & Moon Poetry Festival 2014-2019 edited by Steve Abbott and Christopher Minton (Ohio Poetry Association)
• Voices Amidst the Virus:  Poets Respond to the Pandemic edited by Eileen Cleary and Christine Jones (Lily Poetry Review Books)
• Season of Women: Celebrating the 100th Anniversary of the 19th Amendment published by Artemis Journal
• Dead of Winter; poetry anthology published by Milk & Cake Press
• Pandemic Evolution Days 1-100: Poets Respond to the Art of Matthew Wolfe published by Sheila-Na-Gig Editions
• What But The Music: Baby Boomers Write About the Soundtrack of Their Lives; editors Sandi Gells-Cole and Kenneth Salzmann
• I Thought I Heard a Cardinal Sing: Ohio’s Appalachian Poets sponsored by the Academy of American Poets and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, edited by Kari Gunter-Seymour, Ohio Poet Laureate.
• Wolf at the Door/Nobody Home; anthology from Gasconade Review edited by John Dorsey and Jason Ryberg
• Poem for Cleveland; edited by Cleveland Heights Poet Laureate Ray McNiece; Red Giant Press