Book Fresheners
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This ad campaign, developed by the Voskhod ad agency for the bookstore 100,000 Books in Yekaterinburg, Russia, recently won an award at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity .
Genre: Poetry
Poets Read Craigslist
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To promote her new book of essays, You Must Go and Win, published by Faber and Faber this month, Ukrainian-born musician Alina Simone asked a few poets, including James Copeland, Anna Moschovakis, Matvei Yankelevich, Brett Flecher Lauer, Tao Lin, Claire Donato, and Jeff T. Johnson, to read some Craigslist posts.
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Kelly Norman Ellis' Chisme Box
Poet Kelly Norman Ellis, author of Tougaloo Blues and longtime P&W-supported writer and presenter of literary events, spotlights Chicago's Proyecto Latina and its famed Chisme Box.
One of the blessings of living and working in Chicago is the great ethnic and racial diversity. I am often humbled at the hard work of community arts organizations in my city and their commitment to representing this great diversity. These organizations bring quality art to the people for little or no charge and are essential relationships in building a literary community outside the boundaries of college classrooms and MFA programs. Because CSU is a university serving mostly black and brown people, the importance of coalition building is critical to exposing these people to the work of writers who live and work in these communities of color. One such organization is Proyecto Latina.
Proyecto Latina is a multimedia project that amplifies the success and impact of Latinas by sponsoring a reading series and a website that allows women to create a culture of self-empowerment, spotlight emerging and established Latina talent, create safe spaces in underserved communities, provide a virtual platform to chronicle stories, share resources, and start dialogue.
The third Monday of every month Proyecto celebrates the creativity of a Latina artist. The roster of writers is very impressive. Writers such as Xanath Caraza, Yolanda Nieves, Awilda Lupe Gonzalez have all graced the Proyecto Latina mike. The website includes advice for emerging writers, interviews with established writers, and information about the work of Latina writers in the Chicago community and abroad.
Also on the Proyecto Latina website is a photograph of the Chisme Box (Chisme means "gossip" in Spanish). It’s described as “a regular at our monthly readings and she loves to interact with everyone. She loves the buzz of a crowded room and has the bad habit of eavesdropping on everyone, but rest assured she can keep a secret. Despite her name she prefers funny confessionals to mean-spirited gossip and is unapologetic about spitting out deposits that don’t sit well with her." The Chisme Box is a way to share stories, information, wisdom, truth. As our writing program grows at CSU, I will be reminded of the Proyecto Latina’s Chisme Box and the ways artist make worlds whereever we go.
Support for Readings/Workshops events in Chicago is provided by an endowment established with generous contributions from Poets & Writers Board of Directors and others. Additional support comes from the Friends of Poets & Writers.
June 20
Choose a poem—one of your favorites or one chosen randomly from a book. Scan its meter, marking the stressed and unstressed syllables of each word. (Read a definition of scansion from the Poetry Foundation). Write a poem, using the same meter and number of lines.
Poetry Will Find You
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In this silent film by Richard Grunn, a common man discovers "the mysterious power of poetry."
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Kelle Groom
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Poet Kelle Groom's memoir, I Wore the Ocean in the Shape of a Girl, about her recovery from alcoholism following the death of her fourteen-month-old son, is published this month by Free Press. Check out this and other new and noteworthy books in the July/August issue's Page One section.
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Claudia Rankine Wins Busboys and Poets Prize
Virginia's Fall for the Book Festival, sponsors of three annual awards for prose, and its partner the Washington, D.C., poetry haven Busboys and Poets have announced the festival's inaugural poetry award. Yesterday Claudia Rankine, author of Don't Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric (Graywolf Press, 2004) and three other collections, was announced winner of the honor, which is accompanied by a five-thousand-dollar prize.
Rankine joins novelists Amy Tan, who is this year's Fairfax Prize winner, and Stephen King, who received the Mason Prize, as a 2011 Fall for the Book honoree. A fourth prize for nonfiction will be announced in the coming weeks. The authors will appear at the festival, which takes place from September 18 to 23, to accept their prizes.
In the video below, Rankine discusses the lure of unknown, but recognizable, worlds in poems, and the hallmark of bad verse.
June 13
Set a timer for five minutes and freewrite, putting pen to paper and transcribing everything that comes to mind without stopping until the timer goes off. Review what you’ve written and circle any phrases, images, words that appeal to you. Using those fragments, freewrite again for five minutes. Again, circle anything that appeals to you, and use those fragments as the starting point of a poem.
Sign Poetry
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Kabir Kapoor performed his poem "Evolution," which takes us through the planet's evolution, from dark nothingness to the modern computer, at the second annual Bristol Sign Poetry Festival at the University of Bristol in England in February.
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Wichita Vortex Sutra
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In 1966 Allen Ginsberg wrote the anti-war poem "Wichita Vortex Sutra" (composing it as he spoke into a recorder while travelling across the Midwest.) Twenty-two years later the poet met composer Philip Glass in a bookstore in New York City's East Village, a chance encounter that eventually led to a collaboration that yielded this piece, which is featured on Glass's 1990 album, Hydrogen Jukebox.
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