Jump to navigation Skip to content
Two British poets conduct a "bin investigation" to gather data on the traces people leave behind every day, and create a poetry generator that uses this data to compose poems reflecting the personal context of used and discarded items.
A collection of sonnets written by New Zealand–born actor and playwright Taofia Pelesasa—and performed here by Nastassia Wolfgramm, Taofia Pelesasa, and Maile Finau—Spoken Sonnetry speaks to the "mutiny of [the poet's] mental state."
"And each morning I am left with the furious kindling of birds." Roberto Montes reads from his first collection of poetry, I Don't Know Do You (Ampersand Books, 2014), at the Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, a cultural center and bookstore in New York City.
"When you're faced with such hopeless situations / It's time to move on and leave." This film by Lee Hang Gab, with music by Ólafur Arnalds, is inspired by Korean author Lee Byung Ryul and chronicles the filmmaker's travels in Japan.
The Rutgers-New Brunswick Writers’ Conference was held from June 2 to June 3 at the Rutgers University Continuing Education Center in Somerset, New Jersey. The conference featured workshops in poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction, as well as craft classes, presentations, readings, and opportunities to meet with agents and editors. The faculty included poets Pablo Medina, Patricia Spears Jones, and B. J.
Rutgers-Camden Summer Writers’ Conference, Rutgers University, Armitage Hall, 311 North 5th Street, Camden, NY 08102.
Anne Carson's poem "God's Work" opens with the line: "Moonlight in the kitchen is a sign of God." Have you ever experienced a moment like this? This week, write a poem about noticing tiny glimpses of the workings of some higher power. Are these signs comforting or reassuring? Are they motivating, as they are in Carson's poem? If you are not a spiritual person, write about the signs that remind you how much work needs to be done to make our world a better place.
The Poetry Foundation announced yesterday that Nathaniel Mackey has won the 2014 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. The annual $100,000 prize honors a living U.S. poet for outstanding lifetime achievement.
Mackey, sixty-six, is the author of over a dozen poetry collections, most recently Nod House (New Directions, 2011) and Splay Anthem (New Directions, 2006), which won the National Book Award. Often known for his experimental work, Mackey has published four installments of his ongoing serial novel, From a Broken Bottle Traces of Perfume Still Emanate. He teaches at Duke University.
Don Share, editor of Poetry magazine, which is published by the Poetry Foundation, praised Mackey’s work. “The poetry of Nathaniel Mackey continues an American bardic line that unfolds from Whitman’s Leaves of Grass to H. D.’s Trilogy to Olson’s Maximus poems, winds through the whole of Robert Duncan’s work and extends beyond all of these,” he said. “In his poems, but also in his genre-defying serial novel (which has no beginning or end) and in his multifaceted critical writing, Mackey’s words always go where music goes: a brilliant and major accomplishment.”
Recent winners of the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize include Marie Ponsot and W. S. Di Piero. The prize was established by Ruth Lilly in 1986, and has honored poets such as Adrienne Rich, Philip Levine, John Ashbery, W. S. Merwin, Yusef Komunyakaa, Kay Ryan, C. K. Williams, and Lucille Clifton.
University of California Press received the Poetry Foundation's inaugural Pegasus Award for Poetry Criticism for two of its books, both published in 2014, on the poet Robert Duncan: Robert Duncan: The Collected Later Poems and Plays, edited by Peter Quartermain, and Robert Duncan: Collected Essays and Other Prose, edited by James Maynard. The $7,500 annual award honors the best book-length works of criticism, including biographies, essay collections, or critical editions, that focus on poetry.
Mackey and University of California Press will be honored at a ceremony in Chicago on June 9.
Visit the Poetry Foundation website for an extended interview with Nathaniel Mackey. In the video below, Mackey gives a reading at the University of California in Santa Cruz in 2008.
JP HOWARD, aka Juliet P. Howard, is a poet, a Cave Canem fellow, a member of the Hot Poets Collective, and a native New Yorker. She curates and nurtures Women Writers in Bloom Poetry Salon (WWBPS) and blog. WWBPS hosts monthly literary Salons in New York, and the blog accepts submissions of poetry from women. JP has been selected as a 2014 VONA/Voices Poetry Fellow, a 2012 and 2011 Lambda Literary Foundation Emerging LGBT Voices Fellow, and a 2011 Cave Canem Fellow in Residence at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She was a finalist for Astraea’s Lesbian Writers Fund for Poetry and the recipient of a Soul Mountain Retreat writing residency. Her poems have been published in Adrienne: A Poetry Journal of Queer Women, the Best American Poetry Blog, MiPOesias iPad Companion, African Voices Magazine, Kweli Journal, the Mom Egg, “Of Fire, Of Iron,” Talking Writing, Muzzle Magazine, Connotation Press, TORCH, Cave Canem Anthology XII: Poems 2008-2009, Cave Canem XI 2007 Anthology, and Promethean Literary Journal. She was awarded an MFA in creative writing from the City College of New York in 2009, holds a BA from Barnard College, and a JD from Brooklyn Law School.
Women Writers in Bloom Poetry Salon (WWBPS) is a dream come true! After receiving my MFA from the City College of New York in 2009, I wanted to continue to be a part of a community of poets and decided sometimes we have to create the community we desire. WWBPS is a Literary Salon Series, modeled after traveling salons that were popular during the Harlem Renaissance. Our first Salon was held during National Poetry Month in April 2011 and was created with the goal of establishing a venue where women writers could come together in a supportive, creative, and nurturing space. The Salon is also open to men. As curator and nurturer of WWBPS, I host monthly literary salons and writing workshops throughout New York. Poets & Writers has generously funded WWBPS since 2012.
Our monthly Salons have grown and can now accommodate between twenty-five to thirty participants. We have served over six hundred participants in the past three years and continue to expand opportunities for Salon members. This year I started a Spring Reading Series “Celebrating a Sacred Space for Women’s Voices: Women Writers in Bloom” at the Bowery Poetry Club, featuring dynamic and diverse Salon poets. This new Series, also funded by Poets & Writers, has its next installment on May 18, 2014, at 1 PM. We had our first out-of-state Seattle-based Salon during AWP at an off-site venue this year. I was recently awarded my very first Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC) Community Arts Fund Grant on behalf of the Salon. This grant allowed me to rent the gorgeous DUMBO Sky venue for our April celebration. Last month WWBPS was one of four literary organizations whose members were invited to participate in Poets & Writers' fifth annual Connecting Cultures Reading, which was a true honor for the Salon and our members.
It has been an amazing feeling to watch the Salon blossom in both membership and outpouring of support. Our three-year anniversary celebration on Saturday, April 26, at DUMBO Sky was one of our largest, most successful events to date! We had nearly seventy guests in attendance. It was wonderful to have the support of Poets & Writers for this anniversary celebration. Our featured poet, phenomenal performer Mahogany L. Browne, performed an excerpt of her manuscript turned multi-media poetry production, #redbone, along with musical accompaniment by Mel Hsu. The performance was inspirational and mesmerizing. Since a large goal of the Salon is to support and nurture women writers, I also honored two long-time Salon members: dynamic poets Cheryl Boyce-Taylor, curator of the Calypso Muse Reading Series and the Glitter Pomegranate Performance Series, as well as Lorraine Currelley, founder and director of Poets Network and Exchange, were presented with certificates of appreciation in recognition of their outstanding dedication to our writing community. This event was spectacular! Salon members and volunteers donated tons of food, wine, beverages and gave freely and generously of their time. This was an event created for our community and was truly a success because of our community!
Photo: (Top) JP Howard, (Middle) JP Howard, Cheryl Boyce Taylor, Mahogany Browne. (Bottom) JP Howard, Lorraine Currelley. Photo Credit: Akinfe Fatou.
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 from the Louis & Anne Abrons Foundation, the Axe-Houghton Foundation, the A.K. Starr Charitable Trust, and the Friends of Poets & Writers.
For the fourth installment of our ongoing Winners on Winning series, we spoke with poet Christopher Salerno, who was chosen by D. A. Powell as the winner of the 2013 Georgetown Review Poetry Contest for his collection ATM. He received $1,000, and his book was published in March by Georgetown Review Press. His previous collections include Minimum Heroic, which won the Mississippi Review Poetry Prize in 2010, and Whirligig, which was published by Spuyten Duyvil in 2006. He is an assistant professor of English at William Paterson University in New Jersey.
What kind of impact has winning the Georgetown Review Poetry Prize had on your career?
I’m actually up for tenure this year at the university where I teach, and so clearly a prize of any kind is useful for that business. But more important, in terms of my writing, the prize has afforded me the time and perspective to clear the deck, and to be patient and thoughtful about what comes next. I realize that I don’t need to be pushing out books on any kind of set schedule. If it happens, great. Also, I’m sending myself on a modest reading tour this spring, which will allow me to connect with other writers and audiences who may not know about my work.
Has winning this award, or previous awards, changed the way you approach your work?
Absolutely. Winning this award for ATM, and winning an award for my previous book, Minimum Heroic, has given me insight into my revision process, and what it means to “finish” a manuscript. It’s also made me think about the notion of a “project” or themed book, such as ATM. Some presses responded more strongly to the cohesive nature of this manuscript, as opposed to my previous, loosely-knit collections.
Have you ever entered a contest that you didn't win?
Yes. I’ve entered more contests over the years that I can remember. But fewer and fewer as my career has moved along. To some degree I’ve used rejection to push me back into the manuscript and think more about it. I’ve also developed more awareness and respect for what certain presses do and what kind of work they publish, and so if my book doesn’t make the cut I am more inclined to wonder why. I’m rarely satisfied with my work anyway, and I find great enjoyment in pushing the manuscript around to see what other potential is there.
What advice would you offer to writers thinking of submitting to writing contests?
There are two things I’ve learned. First, you must familiarize yourself with the judge’s work and the work published by the press or publisher holding the contest. You’d be crazy to throw your $20 at a press just because you think it’s grand. How do you see your work fitting there? My advice would be to send, but only if you think it’s a good fit. Secondly, it’s wise to keep in mind that, after winning a prize, it is unlikely that the press will publish that winner’s follow-up book. Some presses are loyal to authors, and others seek the freshness of new contest books.
For more Winners on Winning, read the current issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, and check back here every Wednesday for the next six weeks for a new installment.
Maya Angelou once said, "To describe my mother would be to write about a hurricane in its perfect power." This week, write a poem describing your mother. What immediately comes to mind when you think about her? What everyday things remind you of her? If you feel like you don't know her very well, describe what you imagine she's like. If you want to make your mom feel extra special, try to find a way to share your poem with her this Sunday.
