Hold Your Mouth Up
to the Sky and Drink the Rain
Hold Your Mouth Up to the Sky and Drink the Rain
Liner Notes
I’d had the idea for Twin Fin Projects in the back of my mind for a while. Then one morning, after a phone call with Dave Harrity, a sure and sudden clarity landed on me: the first project should be a poetry mixtape. I texted Dave (a contributor to this volume) the idea and his encouragement gave me a push to email the folks who now make up the track list above. It felt like the perfect beginning—I had known Twin Fin wouldn’t be a journal, exactly, but something that changes shape, following curiosity and inspiration and relationships. And also, something very chill. The form of the mixtape—homemade, digressive, and associative—seemed to embody that sensibility.
The volume you’re now listening to was loosely curated around attention and tenderness—I was wanting poems with cinematic feeling, poems about looking, poems of presence and mysterious charm. But ultimately, I wanted it to be shaped in collaboration with the poets themselves.
A few surprises happened along the way. At first, I thought there would be just poems, but pretty soon after the work began arriving in my inbox, the guitar and keyboard came out. After the music, the surprise of the interludes—Audre Lorde, Zadie Smith, and John Berger seemed to harmonize with unexpected ease.
I love where volume 01A landed and look forward to where it leads next. I’m grateful to each poet for their enthusiasm and generous response. I hope you find some companionship here as you listen. Think of it as a mix made for you by a friend. Dropped in your locker with affection and the not-so-below-the-surface desire to connect.
—CL, August 14, 2026
Contributors
Michael Bazzett is a poet and teacher. He is the author of five full-length poetry collections, two chapbooks, and two books of poetry-in-translation. His most recent books are Cloudwatcher (Copper Canyon, 2025) and the forthcoming collection The Morphologist (Milkweed Editions, 2026).
Mario Chard is a poet, critic, translator, and teacher. He is the author of Land of Fire (Tupelo Press, 2018), selected by Robert Pinsky for the 2016 Dorset Prize. His poems and essays have appeared widely in journals and magazines, including The Nation, The New Yorker, and POETRY.
Adam Clay is the author of five books of poetry, including Circle Back (Milkweed Editions, 2024) and To Make Room for the Sea (Milkweed Editions, 2020). He is an Associate Professor and Director of Creative Writing at Louisiana State University.
Maggie Boyd Hare is a writer from Kentucky whose work appears in publications such as Oxford American, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and Arkansas International. She currently serves as the founding co-editor of Strange Hymnal and creative director of Split/Lip Press.
Dave Harrity is an author, professor, and corporate strategy and culture advisor who publishes widely and teaches in a variety of environments, from classrooms to boardrooms. His most recent book of poems, Noctuary, is forthcoming from Accents Publishing in 2026.
Chris Ketchum is a writer from Moscow, Idaho. He received an MFA from Vanderbilt University. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Beloit Poetry Journal, Copper Nickel, Five Points, RHINO Poetry, and other publications.
Paige Lewis is the author of the poetry collection Space Struck (Sarabande Books, 2019) and the novel Canon (Viking Press, 2026). They co-edited Another Last Call: Poems on Addiction and Deliverance (Sarabande Books, 2023) with Kaveh Akbar. Paige teaches creative writing at the University of Iowa.
Maggie Smith is a New York Times-best-selling poet, writer, editor, teacher, and the host of The Slowdown. She’s published several books of poetry, including Good Bones, Dear Writer, and most recently A Suit or a Suitcase.
Morissa Young is a writer, an editor, and a Midwesterner. She serves as an editor at Milkweed Editions and as founding coeditor of Strange Hymnal.