Interviews & Features

Note: Some of the content on the “Interviews & Features” page overlaps with information on the “News and Highlights” page

Caitlin’s poem “Not It,” which originally appeared in 32 Poems, has been featured in The Guardian Poetry Column, along with an introduction and close reading by poet, critic, and editor Carol Rumens. In the column, Rumens writers:

“Not It” is past-paced and fear-provoking… a compressed “coming of age” where time incessantly makes out-of-time demands… Death hovers in the dark; the word “Not” becomes a tocsin and a toxin. When “the wind / makes ghost-chimes of the Not,” that brief allusion to the supernatural is a reminder of the ballad form Doyle has adapted for her story. The traditional fatalism of the ballad is imported with marvelous effect… “

To read Rumens’s full analysis in of “Not It” in The Guardian, you can click here

An article about Caitlin’s Writer-In-Residence Reading at Washington & Jefferson College appears in W&J News. To read the piece, which also covers Caitlin’s background as a writer and teacher, you can click here.

Caitlin has been selected for the Emerging Poet Feature Series at 32 Poems Magazine. The feature includes an introduction to her poetry, an interview, and a new poem. About Caitlin’s work, the magazine’s associate editor writes:

“Doyle’s poems are deeply attentive to the valences of meaning and sound in each word, giving them almost magical power. Upon repeated readings, they flower. It is as if Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience have been braided together, so that the child cannot escape the looming dark, just as the adult remains lulled by the sounds that first ordered their world.”

To read the full Emerging Poet Feature online, you can click here

Poet, critic, and essayist Forester McClatchey has written an essay about Caitlin’s poem “Not It” for the 32 Poems Marginalia Series. In his piece, which combines lyrical nonfiction and traditional literary analysis, he writes:

“Caitlin Doyle’s poem “Not It”… dances around the dread of lost youth… The thirty-two line poem consists of one long sinuous sentence … What is pursuing the speaker? Death? Time? No abstraction seems appropriate, because whatever it is, whatever dreadful thing pursues the speaker through the poem’s fugitive syntax, it lives in the poem’s sound… The eeriness of Doyle’s poem, its atmospheric menace, comes precisely from its formal techniques…”

To read Forester McClatchey’s full essay about “Not It” in the 32 Poems Marginalia Series, you can click here.

Caitlin’s poem “Wish” has been featured as “Poem of the Day” in The NY Sun, along with an introduction and close-reading by the column’s poetry editors. They write:

“The contemporary poet Caitlin Doyle belongs to a younger generation of poets whose work evinces, without self-consciousness or strained effort, a deep sense of traditional poetic form. Ms. Doyle, a native of Long Island, New York, stands out in an impressive field as a poet for whom the structures of rhyme and meter are so embedded in the ear and imagination that her formal play feels as reflexive as laughter.”

The editors continue:

“Wish” by Caitlin Doyle… “alternates unrhymed mostly-trimeter couplets with single parenthetical, tetrameter lines which, though they change, function as a rhymed refrain or antiphon. The poem’s call and response motion echoes both the ticking of a clock and the movement of a mind arguing with itself. At the mind’s forefront, a conscious voice rehashes and rationalizes the dissolution of a love affair. The second interior voice, meanwhile, resonant as a heartbeat, knows better and tells a bitter truth.”

To read the full feature on Caitlin’s work in The NY Sun, you can click here. Subscribers to The NY Sun can also access the feature by clicking here.

Caitlin was interviewed as a special guest for National Poetry Month on 91.7 WVXU, an NPR affiliated radio station located in Cincinnati. She read and discussed three of her poems on the air, and conversed with the show’s host about her early influences as a poet, the relationship between form and content in language, and her poem-making process. She also talked with the host about some of the noteworthy developments happening at The Cincinnati Review during her time as an Assistant Editor. To listen to a podcast of the interview, you can click here

An article titled “Caitlin Doyle: Following in Robert Frost’s Footsteps” appears in Boston University Today.  The feature highlights Caitlin’s selection as the winner of the 2017 Frost Farm Prize and includes excerpts from an interview about her background and work. To read the article, in which three-time US poet laureate Robert Pinsky describes Caitlin as a poet with a “gorgeous, original imagination,” you can click here

An article about Caitlin’s selection as the recipient of a P.E.O. Scholar Award through the P.E.O. Foundation has been published in The Key Reporter. P.E.O. Scholar Awards are granted to 100 doctoral students in the United States and Canada each year, and awardees  “are chosen for their exceptional level of academic achievement and their potential for having a significant impact on society.” Caitlin received the additional distinction of being named the 2018-2019 P.E.O. Presidential Endowed Scholar, an honor given through the foundation to one doctoral student in the United States and Canada every two years. According to the P.E.O. Foundation, endowed awards are “reserved for our finest scholars.”

• The article in The Key Reporter about Caitlin’s selection as the P.E.O. Presidential Endowed Scholar includes an interview with her and highlights her endeavors as a poet, critic, teacher, editor, and librettist. To read the feature, you can click here
• You can also read a post about Caitlin’s P.E.O. Presidential Endowed Scholar Award on the Boston University Creative Writing website by clicking here

An article titled “Poet Caitlin Doyle Comes Home” appears in The East Hampton Press. The piece centers on Caitlin’s experience as a Guild Hall Artist-In-Residence, and it includes an interview with her in addition to details about her background as a poet born and raised on the East End of Long Island. To read it, you can click here

An article titled “Three Artists to Watch” appears in The Independent. The piece highlights the three Fall Session 2019 Guild Hall Artists-In-Residence, Caitlin included. To read it, you can click here

Caitlin’s poem “Carnival” appears in the poetry column in The Guardian. The column’s editor Carol Rumens describes “Carnival” as a poem in which “funfair rides provide a giddying setting for an ambiguous – and perilous – erotic merry-go-round…” Further elaborating on the poem, Rumens writes:

“Carnival” demonstrates the effectiveness of a “combination of story and song,” with each element being used to complement and complicate the other. The poem’s external patterning depends on the carefully interlocked symmetry and repetition we associate with songs and their pleasurable memorability, but the narrative itself is oblique and teasing, with the potential for carnivalesque disruption…”

To read “Carnival” in The Guardian, along with the editor’s full commentary on it, you can click here

Caitlin selection as one of two Presidential Medal of Graduate Student Excellence awardees at the University of Cincinnati has been covered in a University of Cincinnati News story titled “Doctoral Student’s Leadership Skills are Pure Poetry.” The PMGSE distinction is “a prestigious honor awarded by the university president to exceptional graduate students… who best exemplify scholarship, leadership,  character, service, and the ideals of the University of Cincinnati.” To read the full UC News story, you can click here

Caitlin’s poem “Cradle Thief” has been featured in American Life in Poetry, along with an introduction by former Poet Laureate Ted Kooser, who highlights her “haunting, memorable poetry” and “strategic artistry.” To read “Cradle Thief” in Kooser’s American Life in Poetry column, you can click here. Caitlin’s poem “The Doll Museum” has also been featured in American Life in Poetry, described by Ted Kooser as a poem in which “every choice is necessary.” To read “The Doll Museum” along with Kooser’s full introduction, you can click here

• Following the appearance of “The Doll Museum” in American Life in Poetry, the poem was featured on 91.3 WYSO (an NPR affiliate in Ohio) as part of Conrad’s Corner, a show focused on presenting work by poets from the region and around the world. To hear the show’s host Lori Gravley read the poem, you can click here

Caitlin’s receipt of the 2019 University of Cincinnati Excellence in Teaching Award at the doctoral level has been covered in a University of Cincinnati News article titled “UC Honors Grad Students With a Talent for Teaching.” According to the award citation, as quoted in the article, “her pedagogy and attendant activities are truly exemplary, and her performance in and outside the classroom sets a very high standard.” To read the full UC News piece, you can click here

A piece about Caitlin’s selection as the winner of the 2017 Frost Farm Prize appears in the University of Cincinnati Arts & Sciences News. The article includes an interview with Caitlin about her literary background, her time in UC’s PhD Program in English Literature and Creative Writing, her earliest connections to poetry, her work with The Cincinnati Review, and more. It also includes information about the Elliston Poetry Fellowship Fund. To read the article, “UC Elliston Fellow Wins Frost Farm Poetry Prize,” you can click here

Caitlin’s poem “Wish,” which originally appeared in The Yale Review, has been featured on Poetry Daily

Caitlin has been featured in the PBS NewsHour Online Poetry Series. The feature contains an interview, a sample of Caitlin’s poetry, and a recording of her reading her poem “A Brief History of the Bikini.” To check it out on the PBS NewsHour website, you can click here. Caitlin’s NewsHour feature also appears on the Poetry Foundation’s Harriet Blog, available by clicking here

Caitlin has been featured in the Poetry Sunday Column, a literary series run by poet, editor, and critic Rebecca Foust. Past writers who have appeared in the column include Joy Harjo, Natasha Tretheway, Marie Howe, and A.E. Stallings. Though the series generally focuses on poets over forty, Foust occasionally highlights the work of younger poets. In this particular edition, she offers a close reading of Caitlin’s poems “Wish” and “The Dress Code,” both of which originally appeared in The Yale Review. The feature also includes a “poet’s note” for each poem and links to Caitlin reading the two pieces. To check out Foust’s discussion of the relationship between form and content in “Wish” and “The Dress Code,” you can click here

Peter McDermott of The Irish Echo has profiled Caitlin as “a rising star” in the poetry world. The piece discusses her path as a poet, her family history, her aims as a teacher of writing and literature, and her connection to Irish culture and literary influences. To read the profile, you can click here

Caitlin was interviewed for The Primal School about a variety of literary topics, including the value of becoming a “homemade writer,” potential pros and cons of the MFA system, what it’s like to forge a life as a young poet in American today, and her own journey as a writer. To read “On Pleasure, Devotion, MFA’s and PhD’s, and Self-Determination: An Interview With Caitlin Doyle,” you can click here

A poem of Caitlin’s was recently featured by the PoetryNow Series through the Poetry Foundation. As described on the Poetry Foundation website, “PoetryNow is a weekly four-minute radio series featuring some of today’s most accomplished and innovative poets who offer an acoustically rich and reflective look into a single poem.” The poem also appeared as a Poetry Foundation “Poem of the Day.” To check out the poem and listen to a recording of Caitlin reading it on the Poetry Foundation’s “Poem of the Day” page, you can click here

Caitlin has been interviewed by the National Young Arts Foundation about her early recognition through the YoungArts Program, her insights as an educator in the literary arts, and her recent honors and publications. She also discusses her time at the Jack Kerouac House, the James Merrill House, and Interlochen Arts Academy, as well as her experience in the Boston University Master of Fine Arts Program. To read the feature “Interview with a YoungArts Alumna: Award Winning Poet and Educator Caitlin Doyle,” you can click here

Caitlin has been interviewed for the Drunken Odyssey Series about her work as a poet. Hosted by John King, the interview spans several topics, including popular culture, the role of sound in language, song lyrics, and more. The segment also features Caitlin reading several of her poems. Past guests on the series include Tony Hoagland, David Sedaris, Cheryl Strayed, and Chuck Klosterman. To listen to the interview, you can click here

Caitlin appeared as the featured poet for the Identity Theory Emerging Poet Interview Series.  During the interview, she discussed her writing, her background in film, class issues in the poetry world, approaches to the teaching of prosody, and more. To read her Identity Theory interview, you can click here

Caitlin has been interviewed on Functionally Literate Radio (WPRK 91.5) about her work as a poet. Hosted by Jared Silvia and Ryan Rivas of Burrow Press, the discussion traverses a range of subjects, including the role of form in poetry, the relationship between poetry and film, humor and play in language, and notions of literary community. She also reads four poems during the segment. Past guests on the show include Jeff VanderMeer, Boris Fishman, Sapphire, and Ellen Datlow. To listen to the interview, you can click here

Caitlin has been featured in the Author Next Door Spotlight through the National Writers Series. To read her Author Next Door interview, in which she discusses inspiration, writers who have impacted her, the books on her bedside table, and more, you can click here.

An essay about Caitlin’s work, titled “A Ringing Echo: The Poetry of Caitlin Doyle,” has been featured in The Critical Flame. The essay, written by Maya Sloan, explores the way that “technical savvy and emotional content function in tandem, reflecting and playing off of each other” within Caitlin’s work. The essay also highlights “the risk-taking ingenuity” with which Caitlin “navigates the relationship between structure and content.” Here’s more:

“Doyle has the unique ability to both adhere to and experiment with traditional formal properties, such as rhyme and meter, while shaping poems that simultaneously gesture toward poetic tradition and seek innovative new ground… She builds her poems in such a way that they seek space in the reader’s memory… ”

To read the full article “A Ringing Echo: The Poetry of Caitlin Doyle” in The Critical Flame, you can click here

Caitlin was interviewed as a featured writer for Words With Writers. To read the interview, in which she talks about her creative process, notions of an “ideal reader,” her path as a poet, and several other topics, you can click here

Michelle Lewis has written an essay entitled “Doyle & The Ersatz Life,” in which she examines several of Caitlin’s individual poems and her work as a whole. Of Caitlin’s poem “The Bells,” Lewis says:

“In the sonorous (and exquisitely rendered) “The Bells,” ringing bells are obscured by their own echo until their signifying breaks into chaos and no one can hear the chime behind each chime. The poet suggests the echo could be there to “stop the urge to steep us in too faithful a refrain” – a rabbit hole that gets straight to the seductive powers and dangers of authentic (and elusive) emotion.”

To read the full essay “Doyle & The Ersatz Life,” you can click here

Caitlin has been featured in The East Hampton Star newspaper in an article entitled “Poetic Sparks In The ‘Hooley’ Tradition.” The piece highlights her recent fellowships, details her path as a writer, and describes some of the early experiences that made her fall in love with poetry. To read the article, you can click here

Caitlin has appeared as the featured poet on Gwarlingo, where editor Michelle Aldredge says of her work:

“Doyle’s poetry hovers in the surprising place between music and meaning. She is always aware of the larger effect of her poems, but no small detail escapes her notice. Her ability to balance content and form, humor and seriousness, seems effortless.”

To read Aldredge’s full exploration of Caitlin’s work and see some of Caitlin’s poem’s featured on Gwarlingo, you can click here

Mark Simpson of WMFE hosted a radio show at the Kerouac House featuring the house’s founder Bob Kealing. They discussed Jack Kerouac, the Beats, and the history of the house. Simpson also interviewed Caitlin about her time as the winter term Jack Kerouac House Writer-In-Residence and invited her to read a poem. To hear a podcast of Caitlin’s short interview segment, you can locate the recording on the WMFE website by clicking here (scroll down and click on “Hear An Interview With Winter Kerouac Writer-In-Residence Caitlin Doyle”)

As the 2008-2009 Writer-In-Residence at St. Albans School in Washington, DC, Caitlin was invited to give a reading and an interview for the Ellison Library Podcast Series. To listen to the podcast, you can click here

Caitlin has appeared numerous times as the featured alumna on the Boston University Creative Writing Department website. You can check out the headlines below and click the links to see her appearances on the site:

• 2018: Poet Caitlin Doyle Receives Presidential Endowed Scholar Award (click here)
• 2018: Poet Caitlin Doyle Awarded Pushcart Prize Special Mention (click here)
• 2018: Caitlin Doyle’s Poem Featured in The Guardian (click here)
• 2017: Caitlin Doyle Wins Prestigious Frost Farm Poetry Prize (click here)
• 2016: Caitlin Doyle Featured on PBS NewsHour Poetry Series (click here)
• 2016: Caitlin Doyle Interviewed by the MFA Project (click here)
• 2014: Caitlin Doyle Interviewed by National YoungArts Foundation (click here)
• 2013: “Doyle & the Ersatz Life” – A Reading of Poet Caitlin Doyle (click here)
• 2013: New Literary Honors for Caitlin Doyle (click here)
• 2013: Caitlin Doyle Featured in Emerging Poet Series (click here)
• 2012: Caitlin Doyle’s Poem in The Atlantic (click here)
• 2012: New Publications and Grants for Caitlin Doyle (click here)