Poetry Moment highlights the wealth of poets and poetry in Pennsylvania. The series is a collaboration between WPSU and a central Pennsylvania poet, who hosts the show.

Marjorie Maddox has hosted the show since 2023. Each week, Maddox selects, introduces, and reads poems by a sampling of Pennsylvania poets from different regions of our state. Poetry Moment seeks to focus attention on the ways poetry speaks to our individual and collective histories and arises out of the places we inhabit and that inhabit us.

She is Professor Emerita of English and creative writing at the Lock Haven campus of Commonwealth University. She has 17 collections of poetry, including How Can I Look It Up When I Don’t Know How It’s Spelled? Spelling Mnemonics and Grammar Tricks (kelsaybooks.com); Begin with a Question (paracletepress.com); Seeing Things (Wildhouse); and the ekphrastic collaborations Heart Speaks, Is Spoken For; Small Earthly Space (both with photographer Karen Elias); and In the Museum of My Daughter’s Mind with her artist daughter Anna Lee Hafer (hafer.work) and others.

In addition, she has published a short story collection, five children’s books, and, with Jerry Wemple, the anthologies Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania (psupress.psu.edu) and Keystone: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania (PSU Press, 2005 and 2025). Most recently, she has published Hover Here (Broadstone Books) and the YA biography A Man Named Branch: The True Story of Baseball’s Great Experiment (Sunbury Books).

Maddox is the great grandniece of Branch Rickey, the General Manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers who helped break the color barrier by signing Jackie Robinson to Major League Baseball. She lives with her husband in Williamsport, where they raised their two children, and where she twice served as visiting author for the Little League World Series. You can find out more about Marjorie Maddox on her website (marjoriemaddox.com). (Photo by Melanie Rae.)

The 2022-23 season was hosted by Penn State Altoona professor Todd Davis.

The 2021-22 season was hosted by then Penn State laureate Shara McCallum.

Poetry Moment's music is by Eric Ian Farmer.