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Natalie Eilbert reads from her poem “Liquid Waste” for Real Pants, a literary community website cofounded by Adam Robinson and Amy McDaniel. Eilbert’s second poetry collection, Indictus (Noemi Press, 2018), is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
The most anticipated small press books of 2018; Israeli novelist Aharon Appelfeld has died; a profile of Chris Ware; and other news.
In this video, Sarah Kay reads her poem “Jakarta, January” at the Sheen Center for Thought & Culture in New York City. Kay is the author of No Matter the Wreckage (Write Bloody Publishing, 2016) and the forthcoming book, All Our Wild Wonder (Hachette, 2018), illustrated by Sophia Janowitz.
Fred Bass, the man who transformed the Strand Bookstore, dies; submission fees in poetry publishing; Academy of American Poets names three new chancellors; and other news.
Publishers Weekly looks at the biggest stories of 2017; Mary Jo Salter on the joys of being a poet; the language and words of 2017; and other news.
David Bowie’s son launches book club in honor of his father; Paper Darts rounds up the best book covers of 2017; the Guardian wraps up its hundred best nonfiction books of all time list; and other news.
In 1996, David Lehman gave himself the task of writing a poem a day and continued for the next two years. The best of these resulting poems became his collection The Daily Mirror: A Journal in Poetry. In the introduction, Lehman says of his writing process: “Inspiration was not something you needed to sit and wait for. It was something that came when you invited it.” This week, instead of waiting for inspiration, try to simply reach your hand out and gather some. Write down a list of observations each day from scraps of dialogue you overhear, images you encounter, and thoughts that cross your mind. Shape your daily observations into a poem and title each one with the date until you have seven for the week.
“Still winter. Snowing, still. Can it even be called action, this / patience…” Chen Chen reads from his debut poetry collection, When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities (BOA Editions, 2017), and discusses his writing with Lisa Grove for the Poetry.LA series. Chen is featured in “The Whole Self: Our Thirteenth Annual Look at Debut Poets” in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
For PBS NewsHour, U.S. poet laureate Tracy K. Smith recommends recent poetry titles, including Look (Graywolf Press, 2016) by Solmaz Sharif, who was featured in “Shadows of Words: Our Twelfth Annual Look at Debut Poets” in Poets & Writers Magazine, and Lessons on Expulsion (Graywolf Press, 2017) by Erika L. Sanchez, who was profiled in “First” by Rigoberto González in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
An ekphrastic poem reflects on a work of art. “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” written by John Keats in 1819 is a well-known example of this poetic tradition. But as the nature of art changes over time, so too does the nature of ekphrastic poetry. A more recent example, “BBHMM” by Tiana Clark, engages with a music video by Rihanna. This week, choose a piece of art from the digital age that speaks to you, and try speaking back to it in the form of a poem. Your subject could be a photograph, film, or television show. Or it could be even more unexpected: a podcast, a commercial, even a tweet or a meme.
