Boo!

Read To — — –. Ulalume: A Ballad by Edgar Allan Poe

MOOC your winter

The International Writing Program of the University of Iowa has just announced a new Massive Open Online Course (MOOC): “Stories of Place: Writing and the Natural World.”

Participants will work with some of the many possible types of creative non-fiction, including essays, science journalism, travel narratives, and speculative portrayals of the natural future. (Poetry isn’t mentioned in the description, but why not?) Writers will work with “ways to portray truth and fact, whether it involves telling stories about the local, the global, the invisible, the beautiful, or the uncertain.”

The instructor-led course begins November 15, 2018, and continues through December 31, 2018. After that, it will remain open online through March 15, 2019, for self-paced learning. The course is free and registration is now open.

your next chapbook

November, which is right around the corner, is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). Some poets apply NaNoWriMo discipline to their poetry and crank out 50,000 words in 30 days.

If you’d like another option, Writer’s Digest is again offering their annual November PAD (Poem A Day) Chapbook Challenge. Robert Lee Brewer posts a prompt on his Poetic Asides blog. Write a poem each day using the prompts and then, in the month of December, pare your poems down to a manuscript of 10-20 pages in length with no more than one poem per page and submit the chapbook to Brewer for an opportunity to win fame if not fortune. At the very least you’ll have a chapbook to submit somewhere else. You don’t have to register and you don’t have to submit your poems day by day.

Read the guidelines and get ready to write.

Oranges are Orange*

2018 Merit Award
By Grace Moore, grade 1

Oranges are orange
Blue jeans are blue
Colors are brighter
When I’m with you

. . . . .
*Copyright 2018 by Grace Moore. Broadside illustrated by Kim Wulfestieg.

poetry = history + technology

We love this new poetry device that’s part of San Antonio’s Luminaria Contemporary Arts Festival. Word Salsa is a kiosk that was created by Rick Stemm and Stevan Živadinovic, who fed 110,000 words of poetry by San Antonio poets throughout the ages (nearly half from an enthusiastic Naomi Shihab Nye) into their magic machine, then taught it how to compose lines similar to those of real San Antonio poets. At the press of a button, Word Salsa produces a brand new, unique poem, reads it out loud and prints it on a numbered card. Read more about Word Salsa in the San Antonio Express-News.

set your alarm for this one

The 116th Annual Conference of the Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association (PAMLA) will be held at Western Washington University (WWU) in Bellingham November 9-11, 2018. This year’s theme is “Acting, Roles, Stages.”

The Friday morning General Session will feature a Creative Writers Spotlight with poets Rae Armantrout, Juan Delgado, Kristiana Kahakauwila, and Jane Wong. The session begins at 9:15am at the Performing Arts Center on the WWU campus.

Although current PAMLA 2018 membership and registration is required for all other conference sessions, this event is free and open to the public.

. . . . .
Thanks to Nancy Pagh and Lysa Rivera for the info.

tonight in Seattle

Hugo House has a terrific lineup for this evening’s BOA Editions Showcase: Bruce Beasley, Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, Keetje Kuipers, and Laura Read.

Bruce Beasley is author of eight collections of poetry and a professor of English at Western Washington University; Keetje Kuipers is a Hugo House instructor whose third collection, All Its Charms, is forthcoming in 2019; and former Spokane Poet Laureate Laura Read is author of the newly released Dresses from the Old Country. Also joining the lineup is visiting poet, essayist, and translator Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, author of Cenzontle. More about BOA Editions here.

The reading is free and begins at 7:00pm, with book sales and signing to follow. This is a great opportunity to see the newly reopened Hugo House for yourself.

(In a related note, Bruce Beasley will be teaching one of two poetry workshops on November 17, 2018, in Bellingham. Details here.)

on poetry

“Truth, acceptance of the truth, is a shattering experience. It shatters the binding shroud of culture trance. It rips apart smugness, arrogance, superiority, and self-importance. It requires acknowledgment of responsibility for the nature and quality of each of our own lives, our own inner lives as well as the life of the world. Truth, inwardly accepted, humbling truth, makes one vulnerable. You can’t be right, self-righteous, and truthful at the same time.”
Paula Gunn Allen
(October 24, 1939 – May 29, 2008)

. . . . .
photo

are you listening?

Every couple of months, editors from Poets & Writers Magazine offer a behind-the-scenes preview of the latest issue, talk with contributors and authors featured in the magazine, and discuss the lighter side of writing, publishing, and the literary arts in a podcast called AMPERSAND. The latest edition, Episode 22, features “superstar nonfiction writer Susan Orlean, best-selling novelists Barbara Kingsolver and Richard Powers, and Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Natasha Trethewey.” In Episode 21, Kevin Larimer and Melissa Faliveno discuss the work of Ada Limón and Rebecca Solnit. Find other episodes on Soundcloud. Listen!

(re)new(ed) interview series

The Library of Congress Poetry and Literature Center has relaunched its poetry interview series with Anastasia Nikolis as interviewer. Previous interviewees in the series include Aracelis Girmay, Paisley Rekdal, Terrance Hayes, and Karen An-hwei Lee, among others. The first interview in the relaunched series features Joan Naviyuk Kane.

You can find links to each of the interviews on the LOC Interview Series page and you can read an editorial by Anastasia Nikolis explaining her intent for the renewed poetry series.

(You may also note that the Library of Congress has a new logo, above. Read about the Pentagram design.)