“We deserve to have our wrongdoing represented as much as our heroism, because when we refuse wrongdoing as a possibility for a group of people, we refuse their humanity,” writes Carmen Maria Machado in her new memoir, In the Dream House (Graywolf Press, 2019), about the need to acknowledge the queer community as human beings who are multifaceted and morally complex. Think of someone who at some point has occupied a heroic role in your life and write an essay that attempts to represent all the dimensions of this person. What possibilities are you allowing for when you articulate a person’s flaws or mistakes instead of simply presenting the best version?

2020 will mark the fifth year that directors Bill Lavender and Megan Burns have organized the New Orleans Poetry Festival. The four-day event will take place the third weekend of April, which is also National Poetry Month. If you’re a poet or affiliated with a literary journal or small press, they are actively seeking proposals for festival events and tables for their Small Press Fair, and the deadline is December 1. Anyone interested should jump on this opportunity.

What’s special about the festival is that the events are hosted outside of a university or convention hall. Attendees get a chance to truly be inside a New Orleans neighborhood while attending readings, workshops, and panel discussions at local venues around town.

Last year’s opening night featured readings by Oliver Baez Bendorf, Lee Ann Brown, Chen Chen, and Henk Rossouw. There was also a five-hour-long marathon open mic that I joined, which was electric. One night of the festival was dedicated solely to international poets and their translators, which included readings from Brazilian poet Salgado Maranhäo and translator Alexis Levitin, Uruguayan poet Martín Barea Mattos and translator Mark Statman, and fellow Uruguayan Javier Etchevarren and translator Jesse Lee Kercheval.

Of course when in New Orleans, you must have music and dancing. The Poets With Bands event highlighted poetry and music, while a traditional second line parade complete with a brass band honored poets who recently passed away.

The New Orleans Poetry Festival connects poets from all over the world to this wonderful city. Stay tuned for more details as the date approaches!

“I wanted to write a story and fit it all on a menu and call it ‘Myself as a Menu,’ writes Lynne Tillman in Frieze about a story she wrote for Wallpaper magazine in 1975. “This way I would have a structure and humorously author ‘a self’ as an assortment of so-called ‘choices’, while representing a text as arbitrary, like a menu of disparate dishes and tastes.” Write a story inspired by this menu form, perhaps using a real restaurant menu as a template or launchpad. Create a persona by choosing certain “courses” or “sides” to further elaborate on your character’s personality.

Last month poetry scholars from Keele University opened up a “Poetry Pharmacy” in a Victorian shop in a small town in England. Visitors can participate in poetry classes, specialist day retreats, and consultations and prescriptions for poetry, which all focus on providing mental health support for the local community and emphasize the therapeutic benefits of poetry. “We believe that poetry can do so much to match or alter a mood, to assist in so many ways with good mental health,” says Deborah Alma, the pharmacy’s designated “Emergency Poet.” This week write a poem with an intentional mood in mind, one that is designed to match a bright or pensive mood, or combat and soothe a conflicted one.

On October 25, the Slam at the Cube series invited twelve women poets from the city to fill the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. This was the second installment of this new poetry slam series. LaShaun “Phoenix” Kotaran, the event curator and host, took special care to ensure that each poet brought a different style to the stage, making for a dynamic show. After three rounds of poetry—covering topics such as police brutality, motherhood, and mental health—Brittany Rogers came out as the winner.

Brittany is a native Detroiter, public school teacher, and poet. Her work has been published widely and she is a poetry reader for Muzzle magazine. It just so happens that she is also my wife!

I asked Brittany what she feels is most worthwhile about participating in poetry slams. “I feel like the satisfaction of sharing something that is meaningful to me, in a space that is designed for me to be listened to, is most important,” she says. “I find that same satisfaction in publishing—any platform to elevate the work.”

I am excited about the ongoing growth of this series. Keep an eye on our Literary Events Calendar, or download the Poets & Writers Local app, to follow this series and more.

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Submissions are open for the 2020 Bronx Recognizes Its Own (BRIO) grants. Administered by the Bronx Council on the Arts, each $5,000 BRIO grant provides direct support to a Bronx artist who demonstrates “compelling vision and original voice” and “high level of skill.” Grants are available across four categories—literary, media, visual, and performing arts—and literary applicants may apply in disciplines including fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and illustrated text. Winners are encouraged to organize a one-time public service activity known as an Artists for Community Enrichment (ACE) event within a year of receiving the award. These events are intended to offer artists additional visibility, while also fostering connections between the artists and their communities.  

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Using only the Bronx Council on the Arts Submittable system, submit a short bio, a headshot, a résumé, proof of Bronx residency, and a writing sample of ten to forty-five pages of poetry, prose, or illustrated text by December 16. All samples must represent work created within the last five years. Decisions will be announced in May 2020, and winners will be formally honored in a ceremony in June. There is no entry fee. Visit the website for complete guidelines.

Launched in 1989, the BRIO program has offered grants to 481 artists, and distributed more than $1,500,000. Every year, the awards are judged anonymously by a panel of art professionals representing the different disciplines. In 2019, more than 40 artists received grants. 

Do you believe in ghosts? Browse through the New York Times’ list of haunted hotels and National Geographic’s photo gallery of cemeteries with “views to die for” and think back to a hotel stay or cemetery visit from your own past that might have been tinged with something eerie in the air. Write an essay that centers on this haunting experience. What kind of decorative adornments, distinctive architecture, or imposing weather might have contributed to the mood? Was the tone of the visit tempered by more practical considerations and activities, or did you deliberately revel in the phantasmic atmosphere?

Every place has writers that reflect its culture. Literary place-making, I call it. If you want to know more about a place, you need to hear its stories. There are so many books to choose from, but here are just a few that celebrate New Orleans culture by writers who live, breathe, and love this city.

From a Bend in the River: 100 New Orleans Poets (Runagate Press, 1998) edited by Kalamu ya Salaam. This anthology captures the diverse voices of New Orleans, celebrating the multi-ethnic tapestry of the city. Established and emerging writers of all ages are included in this extensive collection of poetry.

Monday Nights: Stories From the Creative Writing Workshop at the University of New Orleans (University of New Orleans Press, 2016) edited by Fredrick Barton and Joanna Leake. The University of New Orleans MFA program in creative writing has produced some fantastic writers. The writers in this anthology took part in a Monday night workshop that has lasted over twenty-five years, where they met to share and discuss their work. Included are stories by graduates of the program, such as Rebecca Antoine, Maurice Carlos Ruffin, and Che Yeun, as well as faculty members, such as Fredrick Barton, Amanda Boyden, and M. O. Walsh.

N.O. Lit: 200 Years of New Orleans Literature (Lavender Ink, 2013) edited by Nancy Dixon. This book highlights the literature of New Orleans over the past two hundred years including prominent writers like Truman Capote, Eudora Welty, and Tennessee Williams, but also historic writers like the poets of Les Cenelles, French Creoles of color who published the first anthology of African American literature in 1845. The book was made possible by grants from the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities and the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation.

The Booklover’s Guide to New Orleans (LSU Press, 2013) by Susan Larson. For years, Susan Larson was the book editor for the New Orleans Times-Picayune and now hosts WWNO’s public radio program The Reading Life. Susan shares her wealth of knowledge for local bookstores, historic landmarks, current literary festivals, and more.

Congo Square: African Roots in New Orleans (University of Louisiana at Lafayette, 2011) by Freddi Williams Evans. This book explores the history of the Sunday gatherings of enslaved Africans at Congo Square beginning in the eighteenth century. Included are stories and descriptions of the songs, dances, and musical instruments of these gatherings. Congo Square is often considered the birth place of American music and continues to be a prominent venue for music festivals and community gatherings.

A marine heat wave known as a blob has recently been detected in the Pacific Ocean around Hawaii, similar to the hot spot discovered several years ago that led to massive amounts of coral reef bleaching. In other blob news, a unicellular organism, also known as a blob, has just gone on display at the Paris Zoological Park. The bright yellow slime mold can move an inch and a half per hour, is comprised of 720 sexes, is capable of solving problems, and can split itself into multiple parts and fuse back together. Write a short story in which a blob of your own making appears. Does it bring foreboding, mayhem, or wondrous joy?