Creepy Valentine
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Where's Barbie when you need her? "Sweet Talkin' Ken" takes Amy King's poem "Men by the Lips of Women" to creepy extremes in this special Valentine's Day installment of Clips.
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Genre: Poetry
Alan Shapiro
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At a November 2011 performance on the Murphey School Radio Show, a cross between the Grand Ole Opry and A Prairie Home Companion in Orange County, North Carolina, poet Alan Shapiro read the poem "Sick Bed." Shapiro's latest book is Night of the Republic, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt last month.
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Cheryl Boyce Taylor's Calypso Muses
Poet and presenter of literary events Cheryl Boyce Taylor, blogs about the P&W-supported Calypso Muse Reading Series in New York City.
In the summer of 1994, I founded the Calypso Muse Reading Series. I wanted to create a place where Caribbean poets could nuture their work and native dialect. First, I called some of my favorite poets to tell them about the series. They were thrilled and jumped at the opportunity to share their work. Next, I contacted P&W to inquire about its Readings/Workshops program. My next call was to my friend Sigrid, who owned a small cafe in SoHo.
We opened that September to a full house! Rodlyn Douglas, Suheir Hammad, and Hal Sirowitz were my first features, along with a stirring open mic. The series boasted a bevy of poets from diverse backgrounds, some of the poets included: Sekou Sundiata, Jewelle Gomez, Elena Georgiou, and Cheryl Clarke.
Poets from Calypso Muse past have parlayed their voices into writing careers! Hal Sirowitz was awarded an NEA, Suheir Hammad won the Audre Lorde Writing Award, and Rodlyn Douglas was the P&W-supported writer at Lincoln Square Neighborhood Center's senior writing program.
P&W gave Calypso Muse its first grants of twenty five dollars per reader! The support we received helped to nuture our stories. The series' poets reminded audiences that every voice is authentic and deserves celebration.
Since 1994, I have received P&W funding for a number of programs, including: Trini Girls Take Brooklyn, The Womens Reading Series at McNally Jackson Books, and the Calypso Muse House Reading Series. With P&W support, I've become a force in the literary community!
Photo: Cheryl Boyce Taylo. Credit: Artis Q. Wright.
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 Department of Cultural Affairs, with additional support from the Louis & Anne Abrons Foundation, the Axe-Houghton Foundation, the A.K. Starr Charitable Trust, and Friends of Poets & Writers.
A Little Literary Love
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Valentine's Day isn't until next Tuesday, but some particularly amorous books (and booksellers) at Skylight Books in Los Angeles are already in the mood. Enjoy!
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Pushcart's Winningest Magazines
The Pushcart Prizes, given annually since 1976 for poems, stories, and essays published by literary magazines and indie outfits, purport to highlight the "best of the small presses" in a yearly anthology.
Looking to apply some objective analysis to the results (and determine, by Pushcart standards, where his own fiction might be in the most distinguished company), one writer has taken to tracking winning venues over the years.
Since 2008 Clifford Garstang, author of the story collection In an Uncharted Country (Press 53, 2009) and editor of Prime Number Magazine, has looked back at the past ten years of Pushcart anthologies and calculated the most-honored magazines, using a system that awards points for Pushcart wins and honorable mentions. The results for 2012, broken out by genre, were reported last week his Perpetual Folly blog.
This year's tally saw Georgia Review, Ploughshares, and Southern Review taking top slots across all three genres, with Conjunctions ranking in the top five in both fiction and nonfiction. Poetry was the front-runner in its genre of specialization. Big movers in fiction, in relation to Garstang's 2011 rankings, were A Public Space and One Story. In nonfiction, Harvard Review and n+1 made jumps this year, tied for thirty-second place. (Small presses make a lesser showing, though BOA Editions holds the fifteenth spot in poetry.)
Garstang admits that ten-year retrospective he takes naturally favors older journals, as well as magazines that appear in print (only one online journal was highlighted in the 2012 award anthology). "Pushcart has for several years been criticized for discriminating against online magazines," Garstang writes on his blog. "Online magazines have made some inroads in the annual volume. I expect this will accelerate and the problem will correct itself. We shall see. In the meantime, for those of us who submit work to online journals—some of which are excellent—we have to look elsewhere for measures of quality."
For more information about the 2012 Pushcart Prize anthology, visit the prize website.
Digital Pop-Up Book
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Amaranth Borsuk's Between Page and Screen, forthcoming from Siglio Press, is an "augmented-reality" book of poems. Think of it as a digital pop-up book: Get a copy of the book (or print out a preview and try it for free at betweenpageandscreen.com), turn on your computer's webcam, and the animations will appear on your screen.
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The Loft Literary Center
Incorporated in 1975, the Loft Literary Center offers creative writing courses and hosts readings and other literary events, as well as sponsors a series of awards for writers. Writers may also rent studios at Open Book, where the Loft is housed along with Milkweed Editions and Minnesota Center for Book Arts, where the Loft is housed.
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Woodland Pattern Book Center
Founded in 1979, Woodland Pattern Book Center is a nonprofit organization and writing center that also houses a bookstore with over twenty-five thousand small press titles, including a selection of poetry, chapbooks, broadsides, and multicultural literature. The center includes an art gallery where it hosts exhibitions, artist talks, readings, experimental films, concerts and writing workshops for adults and children.
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Letterpress Printing
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"Then a Ploughman said / Speak to us of Work." This video showing the process of printing a short excerpt from Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet may be a wee bit slow at times, but what did you expect? It's letterpress!
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Pick a Slogan
Record the advertising slogans and advertising copy that you encounter throughout the day. Pick one slogan/catchphrase or a brief selection of advertising copy and incorporate it into a poem, without mentioning the object or service being marketed.
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