On Wednesday, September 24, Iain Haley Pollock visited Stockton University while touring his newest poetry collection, “All The Possible Bodies.” After reading multiple poems from the collection and revealing the inspirations behind his writing, students were given the opportunity to speak with Pollock before being awarded with signed copies of his work.

The 2025 publication “All The Possible Bodies” is Pollock’s third poetry book following 2018’s “Ghost, Like a Place” and 2011’s “Spit Back a Boy,” which was a Cave Canem Poetry Prize winner.

Recounting a memory that guided his writing philosophy after “Spit Back a Boy,” Pollock said, “My first book is a lot about being mixed race, I’m feeling between two cultures. I was like, how is this going to play for people that don’t have my experience? But I was at a reading in Box County, Pennsylvania, which is, as you probably know, it was a pretty rural part of Pennsylvania. And this student came up to me after the reading and was like, hey, your poems really resonated with me. I was like taken aback because […] demographically, I did not think we had much in common.”

“He was like, you know, I’m a Ukrainian immigrant and I came here and I’ve felt like I’m not Ukrainian enough for Ukrainians and I’m not American enough for Americans and I felt that being that tension in your poem. And that reminded me, right, like, when I tell my story, I can help other people see some part of themselves, right? And maybe they then go and tell their story and that’s part of the literary conversation. So I’ve sort of learned to trust that things that are important to me will somehow get important with other folks, in ways I can’t quite imagine.”

In addition to being a decorated author, Pollock serves as the director of the MFA Creative Writing program at Manhattanville University. During a Q&A segment of the event, one student asked, “How do you know that a specific thought or feeling deserves to be a poem?”

To this, Pollock advised, “I think to be a writer, you have to be a good reader. As you read more, you become aware of what other people are writing.” However, he then warned the room of aspiring writers to steer clear of overused cliches: “So I read for a literary magazine at Manhattanville, and at one point I was reading the poems that people sent in and the moon was in every poem. It’s like, okay, no more moons in my poems.”

This event comes as another enlightening installment of the Stephen Dunn Visiting Writers Series. as sponsored by Murphy Writing of Stockton. Information regarding the next reading can be found here.