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This preview (sans sound) of an upcoming film and performance piece combines images of rivers, graphic novel illustrations, and words of poetry from Carl Jung, Li Po, and Ted Hughes. The film, created by the Cabinet of Living Cinema, premieres at the Bournemouth Arts Festival by the Sea in England on September 27.
This week focus on sound. Not just the background noise of your day-to-day routine, like the ticking of the clock or the drone of the air conditioner, but the sound of the words you hear people speak. Notice the word choice of the news anchors on television, the radio talk show hosts, and the people at your workplace. Deconstruct the common phrases you hear, like “Have a nice day.” When you say this, consider the way your mouth moves to create the shape of the words. Notice the cadence, rhythm, and inflection of your voice. Write a poem to be read aloud—speak it first, then put it on paper.
This trailer for Pity the Animal, a chapbook by Chelsea Hodson that was published in May by Portland, Oregon-based independent press Future Tense Books as part of its Scout Books series, features music by Oingo Boingo, performed by the author.
Submissions are open for the inaugural Gulf Coast Translation Prize. An award of $1,000 and publication in the April 2015 issue of Gulf Coast will be given for a poem or group of poems translated into English. Translator and poet Jen Hofer will judge.
Submit up to five pages of poetry translated into English with the original text with a $17 entry fee by August 31. Preference will be given to translations of work published within the last fifty years. Translators may submit using the online submission system, or by postal mail to Gulf Coast, English Department, University of Houston, Houston, TX 77204. All entries will be considered for publication; two honorable mentions will also be published in the April 2015 issue of Gulf Coast.
Judge Jen Hofer is a poet, translator, educator, bookmaker, and social justice interpreter. She has published three poetry collections, several handmade chapbooks, and four translations of poetry by Mexican women. Her most recent translation, Ivory Black (Les Figues Press, 2011)—a translation from the Spanish of Mexican poet Myriam Moscona’s collection Negro Marfil—won both the 2012 Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from the Academy of American Poets and the 2012 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. Hofer also cofounded the language justice and language experimentation collaborative Antena with John Pluecker.
Gulf Coast is the student-run literature and arts journal of the University of Houston. Established in 1982 by Donald Barthelme and Phillip Lopate, the biannual journal was originally named Domestic Crude. The journal also offers annual prizes in poetry, short fiction, short short fiction, and creative nonfiction.
“The Mike Tyson in me sings like a narwhal / Minus the nasally twang of sleeping in a cold ocean.” Roger Reeves reads a poem from his book, King Me (Copper Canyon Press, 2013), at the Brooklyn Poets Reading Series in April 2014.
"Here you can see that there's no age in poetry, there's no race in poetry, all you have is poetry and words." The annual Spier Poetry Festival invites poets to gather in Cape Town, South Africa, for a week of exploring poetry, drinking wine, and dancing.
"Taking something that's quite mundane, and then making it into something that's quite magical, that's the true art in poetry." Scottish poet Rab Wilson speaks about the influence his homeland has had on his writing and reads his poem "Old Song."
