Former Poets House Workers and Board Dispute Reasons for Suspension
A look inside the dispute between the former workers and board of Poets House over why the poetry nonprofit and library temporarily closed and laid off staff in November.
Genre: Poetry
Deadline Approaches for Kresge Artist Fellowships
Applications are open for the 2021 Kresge Artist Fellowships, which offer $25,000 no-strings-attached grants and professional development to Detroit artists. Administered by Kresge Arts in Detroit, the fellowship program is open to artists in different disciplines each year; this cycle, Kresge will award ten fellowships to artists working in the literary arts, and ten to artists working in the visual arts. Literary arts may include arts criticism, creative nonfiction, graphic novels, poetry, spoken word, zines, or interdisciplinary work. Across disciplines, the fellowship program seeks to “recognize creative vision and commitment to excellence” and is available to emerging and established artists alike. Within the fellowship application, artists are invited to indicate if they would also like to be considered for the Gilda Awards—$5,000 no-strings-attached grants specifically designated for emerging artists—if they are not selected as fellows.
Using only the online submission system, complete a series of questionnaires and statements about your practice, biography, and community impact, and submit this information along with a resume and three to eight work samples by January 14. Residents of Michigan’s Macomb, Oakland, and Wayne counties are eligible. There is no entry fee. Work samples may be text, audio, or video files. An anonymous panel of both national and local artists and art professionals will judge. Visit the website for complete guidelines.
Funded by the Kresge Foundation and administered by the College for Creative Studies, Kresge Arts in Detroit seeks to strengthen and celebrate the artistic communities in metropolitan Detroit. In addition to the Kresge Artists Fellowships and Gilda Awards, the organization also selects a single artist each year for the $50,000 Kresge Eminent Artist Award. Over the past twelve years, Kresge has dispensed over $6 million in funding to local artists.
Adrienne Rich
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“There’s a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill / and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows…” In this 2009 video, pioneering feminist poet Adrienne Rich reads her poem “What Kind of Times Are These?” at the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival. Rich died at the age of eighty-two on March 27, 2012.
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Poets House Presents: Tyree Daye
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“The road I’m walking on now is howling and full of moon, / hopefully it’ll lead to myself, / hopefully they’ll take me home.” In this installment of Poets House Presents, Tyree Daye reads a selection of poems from his second poetry collection, Cardinal (Copper Canyon Press, 2020), which is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
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Louise Glück for the Academy of Achievement
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“There are a number of people my own age, who are doing extraordinary, remarkable work, but I feed more on the young—the sounds they are making are different, new.” In this 2012 interview for the Academy of Achievement, Nobel Prize–winning poet Louise Glück speaks on a variety of subjects, including falling in love with poetry, starting out as a writer, teaching, and her prolific career.
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A Political Poetry With Solmaz Sharif
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“It matters what you call a thing,” reads Solmaz Sharif from her poem “Look” in this 2017 reading and conversation with Evie Shockley for the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. For more Sharif, read “Shadows of Words: Our Twelfth Annual Look at Debut Poets” from the January/February 2017 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
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Stridulation
“Everybody’s got a song / they’ve gotta sing. / So they say. So they / think,” begins Rita Dove’s poem “The Spring Cricket’s Discourse on Critics,” published in the Believer this month. The deftly enjambed poem uses the perspective of a cricket and its ability to use its legs to chirp, known as stridulation, to discuss an artist’s defense against critics believing “they can / just… crank out the golden / tunes.” Use the perspective of an insect or an animal whose abilities come naturally to examine an aspect of being a poet. Try enjambment in your poem to emphasize particular words.
Disquiet Prize Accepting Submissions
Submissions are now open for the 2021 Disquiet Prize. Sponsored by the Disquiet International Literary Program, an annual writers workshop held in Lisbon, the prize awards three fellowships for tuition to writers working in the genres of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction; a grand prize winner will additionally receive a travel stipend and housing in Lisbon for the duration of the workshop. In the event that public health conditions prohibit the conference from being held in 2021, winners will be offered the option to defer their fellowships to a future year or to accept an alternative cash prize of $1,000. All three fellows will also receive publication. The winning poet’s work will appear in the Common, and the work of the winning fiction writer and nonfiction writer will be published on the Granta and Ninth Letter websites respectively.
Submit up to six poems, totaling up 10 pages, or one story, novel excerpt, or essay of up to 25 pages with a $15 entry fee by January 15. Visit the website for complete guidelines.
Established in 2010, the Disquiet International Literary Program “aims to deepen mutual understanding among writers from North America and writers from Portugal” and takes its name from Lisbon poet Fernando Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet. A decision about whether or not the conference will proceed in 2021 will be announced on the workshop’s website in February.
We Are of a Tribe
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“The sky is our common home, the place we all live. / There we are in the world together.” In this video, Alberto Ríos reads “We Are of a Tribe” from his latest poetry collection, Not Go Away Is My Name (Copper Canyon Press, 2020).
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Love After Love
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“You will love again the stranger who was your self.” Dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson reads Derek Walcott’s poem “Love After Love” from Collected Poems: 1948–1984 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1986) for a tribute to the poet and playwright. Walcott, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992, passed away on March 17, 2017.
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