Genre: Poetry

A New Color

The Time Is Now
3.8.16

Visual artists who have been productive over long stretches of time often develop certain periods of work with shared characteristics, such as similar color palettes. For example, Paul Cézanne and Henri Matisse both had dark periods, Pablo Picasso had his blue and rose periods, and Victor Vasarely had a black-and-white period. As we begin to think about the year's transition from winter to spring, bringing along with it seasonal changes in light and sound, consider embarking on a new period of your own work. Write a series of short poems inspired by your observations of the different colors, moods, and scenery around you that signal the forthcoming spring season. To begin a green period, for example, what might be your key points of inspiration, in terms of imagery and vocabulary?

Windham Campbell Prize Winners Announced

G&A: The Contest Blog
3.1.16

The recipients of the 2016 Windham Campbell Prizes for Literature have been announced. Administered by Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, the annual awards are given to English-language writers of fiction, nonfiction, and drama for outstanding literary achievement or great potential. Each writer receives $150,000.

The winners in fiction are Tessa Hadley (U.K.), C. E. Morgan (U.S.), and Jerry Pinto (India); the winners in nonfiction are Hilton Als (U.S.), Stanley Crouch (U.S.), and Helen Garner (Australia); and the winners in drama are Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (U.S.), Hannah Moscovitch (Canada), and Abbie Spallen (Ireland).

The Windham Campbell Prizes were established in 2013 by Donald Windham and Sandy M. Campbell to “call attention to literary achievement and provide writers with the opportunity to focus on their work independent of financial concerns.” The prizes are open to writers from anywhere in the world at all stages of their careers. There is no application process for the prize; the awards are made by a group of nominators, a three-member jury in each category, and a nine-member selection committee. Past winners have included Teju Cole, Geoff Dyer, John Jeremiah Sullivan, James Salter, and Naomi Wallace. The 2017 prizes will expand to include a poetry category.

The winners will receive their prizes during an international literary festival at Yale in September celebrating their work. All festival events are free and open to the public. For more information about the prizes and the 2016 winners, visit the Windham Campbell Prizes website.

Below, watch 2016 nonfiction winner Hilton Als deliver the keynote lecture at last year's Windham Campbell Prizes Festival.

Hilton Als' 2015 Windham-Campbell Lecture from Windham Campbell Prizes on Vimeo.

Photos: C. E. Morgan, Stanley Crouch, Hilton Als.

Sounds Like a Collision

The Time Is Now
3.1.16

Scientists announced last month that they had recorded the sound of two black holes colliding and merging a billion light-years away. The sound was described as a small, quick, birdlike chirp. Create a list of object pairs; the items can be clearly connected—like a red car and a blue car, or you and a loved one—or disparate, or conceptual. Choose an especially inspiring pair from your list and write a poem about the two objects as they head on a collision course, and the unexpected sound that’s heard when they finally merge. 

Tour to End Queer Youth Homelessness Featuring Christopher Soto

Readings & Workshops Blog
2.29.16

Christopher Soto (aka Loma) is a queer latinx punk poet and prison abolitionist. Originally from Los Angeles, they now live in Brooklyn. Their first chapbook, Sad Girl Poems, is newly released from Sibling Rivalry Press. They have an MFA in poetry from New York University where they studied with Eileen Myles. For more information, visit christophersoto-poet.com.

Following the release of my chapbook, Sad Girl Poems (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2016), I decided to go on a national tour to end queer youth homelessness. Much of my writing in this initial chapbook discusses my personal relationship to domestic violence, gender tourism, housing instability, etc. I wanted to talk to poetry communities and queer youth across the country about these experiences and about producing poetry in the age of mass incarceration. What does it mean to write about queer youth homelessness while over two million people are incarcerated in the U.S.? What is the historical (and literary) relationship between homeless queer youth and mass incarceration? I wanted to talk about my poems and my histories. I wanted to talk about Vanguard, S.T.A.R. (street transvestite action revolutionaries), The Young Lords, Sylvia Rivera, the Nuyorican Poets Movement, June Jordan, Miguel James, and so on.

Independently, I was able to book events at a handful of universities and organizations. Yet, I was not able to book and venture to smaller organizations which could not afford my travel, accommodation, and reading fees. Artists need to get paid for their labor. We are the thinkers, feelers, culture producers, visionaries in the county! This is where Poets & Writers comes in. At several of my readings in New York City and Chicago, the hosts applied for (and received funding) from Poets & Writers so that I can come speak to their communities. Thank you Poets & Writers! This funding allows me to travel and speak and be paid for the artistic work that I do. I believe that one of the greatest ways to appreciate an artist is to financially support their lives lived as creative people. Currently, the status quo in many literary communities is to underfund artists. Many organizers believe that artists are getting paid with visibility and recognition. These frameworks are false. When artists are not paid it is classist and exploitative (not a privilege). We need to be able to pay for food and rent and living! I am so thankful to Poets & Writers for the funding that they provide to creative people and literary organizations.

I am so thankful for the opportunity to read at all of the universities that have invited me to speak. I remember growing up, and as a teenager listening to spoken word artists feature their work around Southern California venues (such as A Mic and Dim Lights). I wanted so badly to be invited to speak as a feature for someone. I wanted so badly to share my work with the world. Now, years later, I am doing it. I am speaking and writing and traveling and making money from my poems: these little words thrown across the page. My tour dates will be available on my website christophersoto-poet.com and my creative work is also available online for anyone who wants to take a gander. I guess, I will close by saying this: PAY YOUR ARTISTS / END QUEER YOUTH HOMELESSNESS / DEMAND RESPECT FOR YOUR LIFE AND FOR YOUR WORK / YOU DESERVE IT.

Photos: Christopher Soto. Photo credit: Irmand Trujillo

Support for Readings & Workshops in New York City is provided, in part, by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, with additional support form the Louis & Anne Abrons Fondation, the Axe-Houghton Fondation, the A.K. Starr Charitable Trust and Friends of Poets & Writers, as well as by an endowment established with generous contributions from the Poets & Writers Board of Directors and others.

Gate A-4

Caption: 

"And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and I / thought, This / is the world I want to live in. The shared world." Naomi Shihab Nye reads her poem "Gate A-4" as part of "Incredible Bridges: Poets Creating Community," a project developed by the Academy of American Poets in partnership with EDSITEment, the educational website of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).

Genre: 
Poetry
Tags: 
Academy of American Poets
Naomi Shihab Nye
National Endowment for the Humanities

Begin at the End

The Time Is Now
2.23.16

If you’re having trouble starting a poem, begin at the end. Take a single collection of poems and make a list of the last two words from each poem. Then write your own poem using only these words. Be vigilant at first utilizing just the vocabulary from the list. After a couple of drafts, stray from the limited words to help bring the poem to its full realization. 

Christopher Salerno Wins Inaugural Georgia Poetry Prize

G&A: The Contest Blog
2.19.16

The University of Georgia Press has announced that poet Christopher Salerno of Caldwell, New Jersey, has won the inaugural Georgia Poetry Prize for his collection Sun & Urn. Salerno will receive a cash award of $1,000 and publication by the University of Georgia Press in February 2017. He will also be invited to read his work at the prize’s sponsoring institutions—the University of Georgia, Georgia Tech, and Georgia State University—and will receive an additional $1,000, as well as travel expenses, for each reading.
Christopher Salerno is the author of three previous poetry collections: Whirligig (Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2006); Minimum Heroic (Mississippi Review Press, 2010), which won the 2011 Mississippi Review Award; and ATM (Georgetown Review Press, 2014), which was selected by poet D. A. Powell for the 2014 Georgetown Review Poetry Prize. Salerno currently serves as associate professor in the creative writing and MFA programs at William Paterson University in New Jersey.

Thomas Lux, the final judge of this year’s award, said of Salerno’s manuscript, “Christopher Salerno’s Sun & Urn is a highly accomplished (he has learned his trade!), a madly imaginative, and, ultimately, a brilliant and deeply human book. Read it, please, thrice!”

The Georgia Poetry Prize is a national competition established in 2015 to celebrate poetic excellence. The prize is to be administered annually; submissions for next year’s prize will be accepted from October 1 to November 30. Visit the website for submission guidelines and more information.

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