Media Coverage of Caitlin Doyle’s Work: Interviews, Articles, & Features

Note: Some of the content on the “Media Coverage” 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

Caitlin’s poem “Not It” has been featured on The Slowdown. The show’s host, Major Jackson, introduces and reads “Not It” on Episode 922. About the poem, Jackson says:

“Through a universal child’s game, today’s exquisite formally driven poem makes poignant observations about the challenges of adulting. One of them being that we eventually actualize as grownups and settle into our roles, however, not without those occasional feelings of loneliness, failure, and hard-earned victories…”

  • To read Jackson’s full introduction and listen to Episode 922 of The Slowdown, you can click here

Caitlin’s poem “Wish” was selected by Alice White for the 20th Anniversary of the “Read a Little Poetry” Series. In her introduction to the piece, White writes the following:

“When I first read “Wish,” I knew it would go in the internal anthology of poems I’ve committed to memory, to carry always, to carry me… “Wish” is a meticulously crafted, deceptively simple poem that feels like an incantation, a nursery rhyme, a riddle, a myth. Its well deepens with every reading…”

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.”

Caitlin was selected as the recipient of the P.E.O Presidential Endowed Scholar Award. According to the P.E.O Foundation, those who receive P.E.O Scholar Awards are chosen for “their exceptional achievement and their potential for having a significant impact on society,” and the P.E.O Presidential Endowed Scholar Award, which is granted to only one recipient every two years, is “reserved for our finest scholars.”

  • An article about Caitlin’s selection for the P.E.O Presidential Endowed Scholar Award appeared in The Key Reporter. To read the article, which includes an interview with her and a detailed description of her endeavors as a poet, critic, teacher, editor, and librettist, 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.”

Caitlin has been featured as the subject of articles, news stories, and profiles across a range of publications, including Bostonia, The East Hampton Star, The PBS NewsHour Online Poetry Series, The Irish Echo, The Irish Examiner, The University of Cincinnati Arts & Sciences News, Boston University Today, The East Hampton Press, W&J News, and others.

  • To read “Caitlin Doyle: Following in Robert Frost’s Footsteps,” an article about her selection as the winner of the Frost Farm Poetry Prize, in Bostonia, you can click here
  • To read “Doctoral Student’s Leadership Skills are Pure Poetry,” an article in the University of Cincinnati News about Caitlin’s receipt of the Presidential Medal of Graduate Student Excellence, you can click here
  • To read “BU’s Literary Lions Read Tonight,” an article in Boston University Today that discusses Caitlin’s participation as the Featured Poetry Alumna in the annual Boston University Faculty Reading, you can click here
  • To read “Doyle’s Star is Rising,” an article about Caitlin by Peter McDermott in The Irish Echo, you can click here
  • To read “Frost Farm Prize Announcement” on the Frost Farm Website, which announces Caitlin’s receipt of the award and includes contest judge Deborah Warren‘s comments about Caitlin’s winning poem, you can click here
  • To read “Poet and Doctoral Student Caitlin Doyle Wins Prestigious National Award,” an article about Caitlin’s work in The Key Reporter, you can click here
  • To Read “Poetic Sparks in the Hooley Tradition,” an article about Caitlin’s work by Irene Silverman in The East Hampton Star, you can click here
  • To read “Poet explores the explosive potential of the bikini,” a feature about Caitlin’s work by Mary Jo Brooks in the PBS NewsHour Online Poetry Series, you can click here
  • To read “Gathering Focus for Cork Literary Review,” an article in The Irish Examiner that discusses Caitlin background and her essay “Hungry Hills: Coming of Age as an Irish American Poet,” you can click here
  • To read “A Ringing Echo: The Poetry of Caitlin Doyle,” an article about Caitlin’s work in The Critical Flame, you can click here
  • To read “Acclaimed Poet Caitlin Doyle to Give Reading at W&J College” in the Washington & Jefferson News, you can click here
  • To read “Poet Caitlin Doyle Comes Home” in The East Hampton Press, an article about Caitlin’s selection as a Guild Hall Artist-In-Residence, you can click here
  • To read “UC Elliston Poet Wins Frost Farm Poetry Prize” in the University of Cincinnati News, you can click here
  • To read “UC Honors Grad Students with a Talent for Teaching,” a news piece about Caitlin’s receipt of the Graduate School Excellence in Teaching Award, in the University of Cincinnati News, you can click here
  • To read “Sunday Poet: Caitlin Doyle,” a feature about Caitlin’s work by Michelle Aldredge in Gwarlingo, you can click here
  • To read “Four Emerging Poets to Watch,” an article in Stay Thirsty that highlights Caitlin’s work along with the work of poets Chloe Honum, Dariel Suarez, and Binh Nguyen, you can click here
  • Additional details about several of these articles, new stories, and profiles can be found below

Those interested in Caitlin’s writing can now visit a YouTube Channel centered on her work. The channel features videos of poetry readings she has given and tutorials she has created, as well as audio files of interviews she has done with various venues. New content will be added on a regular basis. To check out the channel, you can click here

  • The channel features a video of the reading Caitlin gave as the winner of the Frost Farm Poetry Prize (which included a recitation of Frost’s “Birches”). To watch the reading, you can click here
  • The channel also features a video compilation of short clips from several different poetry readings given by Caitlin. To watch the compilation, you can click here

Caitlin has been interviewed about her work in a range of venues, including the 32 Poems Emerging Poets Series, the Identity Theory Interview Series, the Words With Writers Series, the National YoungArts Foundation, the Primal School Series, and the National Writers Series.

  • Sarah Rose Nordgren‘s interview with Caitlin, 32 Poems Emerging Poets Series: Available Here
  • Xinchen Li‘s interview with Caitlin, The Key Reporter: Available Here
  • J. Dee Cochran‘s interview with Caitlin, Identity Theory Series: Available Here
  • Marissa Bell Toffoli‘s interview with Caitlin, Words With Writers Series: Available Here
  • An interview with Caitlin conducted by the National YoungArts Foundation: Available Here
  • Hannah Lee Jones‘s interview with Caitlin, Primal School Series: Available Here
  • An interview with Caitlin conducted by the National Writers Series for their “Author Next Door” feature: Available 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.

An article about Caitlin’s Writer-In-Residence Reading at Washington & Jefferson College appeared in W&J News. To read “Acclaimed Poet Caitlin Doyle to Give Reading at W&J College,” you can click 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 three of her poems, and conversed with the show’s host about her early influences, her views on the relationship between form and content in language, and her poem-making process. She also discussed 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

Caitlin’s poem “Carnival” appeared 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 was selected as one of two Presidential Medal of Graduate Student Excellence awardees at the University of Cincinnati. 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 an article about Caitlin’s receipt of the PMSGE Award, titled “Doctoral Student’s Leadership Skills are Pure Poetry,” you can click here

Caitlin has been awarded the Frost Farm International Poetry Prize. Her poem “Wish” was selected by judge Deborah Warren, who calls the piece a “a masterpiece masquerading (with its incantatory beat and simple language) as a Mother Goose rhyme.” Caitlin received an honorarium and appeared as the featured reader at The Hyla Brook Reading Series at the Robert Frost Farm in Derry, NH.

  • You can read judge Deborah Warren‘s full commentary on “Wish,” along with more information about the Frost Farm Poetry Prize, by clicking here and here
  • To read an article in Bostonia about Caitlin’s selection for the prize, titled “Caitlin Doyle: Following in Robert Frost’s Footsteps,” you can click here
  • To read an article in the University of Cincinnati News about Caitlin’s selection for the prize, titled “UC Ellison Fellow Wins Frost Farm Poetry Prize,” 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 receipt of the 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 article, you can click here

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 PBS NewsHour feature also appears on the Poetry Foundation’s Harriet Blog, available by clicking here

Peter McDermott of The Irish Echo has profiled Caitlin as a “rising star in American poetry.” 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 served as a Guild Hall Artist-In-Residence. She spent the fellowship session in residence at Guild House, adjacent to Guild Hall, in East Hampton, NY, along with visual artist Luisa Caldwell and playwright Dipti Bramhandkar. The Artist-In-Residence Program at Guild Hall “was founded as a means to extend Guild Hall’s mission to foster the artistic spirit” by “bringing emerging artists to the region” and encouraging “the next generation to contribute to the creative environment” of the East End.

  • For additional details about the Guild Hall Artist in Residence Program, you can click here. 
  • An article titled “Poet Caitlin Doyle Comes Home” appeared in The East Hampton Press. The piece centers on Caitlin’s experience as a Guild Hall Artist-In-Residence. To read it, you can click here  
  • An article titled “Three Artists to Watch” appears in Dan’s Papers. The piece highlights the three Guild Hall Artists-In-Residence, Caitlin included. To read it, you can click here

Caitlin has been featured in the Poetry Sunday Column, a literary series run by poet, editor, and critic Rebecca Foust. Foust writes that “Caitlin Doyle’s poems harness tradition to allow expression of a voice that is fresh, urgent, and resonant.” Past writers who have appeared in the column include Natasha Tretheway, Marie Howe, and A.E. Stallings. To check out Foust’s discussion of the relationship between form and content in Caitlin’s work, you can click here

A poem of Caitlin’s was 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 Caitlin’s poem in the PoetryNow series and listen to a recording of Caitlin reading it on the Poetry Foundation’s “Poem of the Day” page, you can click here

Caitlin was featured in The Irish Examiner in reference to her essay “Hungry Hills: Coming of Age as an Irish American Poet,” which originally appeared in Cork Literary Review, Vol. 15. Colette Sheridan from The Irish Examiner writes:

“Among established poets from Ireland’s literati, such as Séamus Heaney, Gerard Smyth, Bernard O’Donoghue, Gabriel Fitzmaurice, William Wall and Matthew Sweeney, one of the new voices is that of Irish-American Caitlin Doyle, an emerging poet who has published widely in America.”

  • To read more about Caitlin’s essay “Hungry Hills: Coming of Age as an Irish American Poet,” as discussed in The Irish Examiner, 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. Past guests on the series include Tony Hoagland, David Sedaris, and Cheryl Strayed. To listen to the 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. To listen to the interview, 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

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.”

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

Caitlin has been highlighted in The Los Angeles Review of Books by critic A.M. Juster as “serious competition” for the role of “heir apparent” to the generation of poets with “formalist” leanings who came of age during the late 20th-and early 21st-century.” Juster’s mention of Caitlin appears in a review of Petty Theft by poet Nicholas Friedman. To read the full piece, 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 journey as a writer, and describes some of the early experiences that made her fall in love with poetry. To read “Poetic Sparks In The ‘Hooley” Tradition,” you can click here

John O’Rourke of Boston University Today published an article about the Boston University Faculty Reading. Each year, a graduate of the Boston University Master of Fine Arts Program in poetry and/or fiction receives an invitation to read with the Creative Writing faculty. Caitlin was invited to participate as the Featured Poetry Alumna Reader. She shared the stage with Robert Pinsky, Dan Chiasson, Leslie Epstein, Ha Jin, Sigrid Nunez, and Nell Stevens. In his article, O’Rourke writes:

“Where can you find a three-time US poet laureate, the poetry critic for The New Yorker, and three acclaimed novelists—along with two literary newcomers, each in possession of a highly original voice—all on the same stage?”

  • To learn more about the annual Boston University Faculty Reading, which O’Rourke notes as “one of Boston’s most distinguished literary events,” and to see Caitlin interviewed and profiled along with the other readers, you can read “BU’s Literary Lions Read Tonight” in Boston University Today by clicking here

Caitlin has been featured in Stay Thirsty as one of four “Emerging Poets to Watch.” Poet and critic Abriana Jette writes:

“Doyle’s devotion to musicality is the edifice of her poetry… she uses rhyme as a device to puncture the expectations of the physical world… producing work both cosmopolitan and mythic… Doyle’s poems, whether playful or serious in tone, always possess layers of complexity that reward multiple readings.”

  • To read Abriana Jette’s full article “Emerging Poets to Watch” in Stay Thirsty, you can click here

Caitlin was commissioned by Grammy-nominated composer Anna Clyne to write lyrics for Silent Voices, a program featuring the nationally acclaimed Brooklyn Youth Chorus. The concert, titled Silent Voices: If You Listen, took place at the National Sawdust Theatre in Brooklyn, NY. Other lyricists for If You Listen included Jane Hirshfield, Brenda Shaughnessy, Safiya Sinclair, and Toshi Reagon. 

  • For information about the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, you can click here
  • To learn more about composer Anna Clyne, you can check out a profile of her in The New York Times by clicking here
  • To read an overview of Body Compass, the choral work on which Caitlin and Anna collaborated, you can click here

As the 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:

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