Q&A: U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón
The accomplished poet shares her thoughts on her new role and plans to raise awareness and appreciation of poetry at a national level.
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Genre: Poetry
5 Over 50: 2022 Virtual Reading
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In this virtual reading, Poets & Writers editor in chief Kevin Larimer introduces the 2022 cohort of “5 Over 50” debut authors, Sari Botton, author of And You May Find Yourself: Confessions of a Late-Blooming Gen-X Weirdo (Heliotrope Books, 2022); Shareen K. Murayama, author of Housebreak (Bad Betty Press, 2022); Madhushree Ghosh, author of Khabaar: An Immigrant Journey of Food, Memory, and Family (University of Iowa Press, 2022); David Santos Donaldson, author of Greenland (Amistad, 2022); and Jane Campbell, author of Cat Brushing (Grove Atlantic, 2022).
Wrongness
“I first started writing poetry (and still write it) because the world, its people, and their ideas are wrong, insane, immoral, flawed, or unimaginably terrible. I write because I feel wrong, sad, crazy, disappointed, disappointing, and unimaginably terrible,” writes Rachel Zucker in “The Poetics of Wrongness, an Unapologia,” the first in a series of lectures delivered for the Bagley Wright Lecture Series in 2016 and collected in The Poetics of Wrongness, forthcoming in February from Wave Books. In the form of an unapologia, a reversal of the traditional apologia form that typically consists of a defense of one’s own opinions and actions, Zucker posits that “wrongness” is intrinsic to writing poetry and that poetry asserts “with its most defining formal device—the line break—that the margins of prose are wrong, or—with its attention to diction—that the ways in which we’ve come to understand and use words [is] wrong.” Write a poem in the form of an unapologia. Identify when you have been wrong in the past, and try not to defend yourself. Instead, speak through your feelings of wrongness.
Henri Cole Reads at the Hammer Museum
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“Staggering out of a black-red peony, / where you have been hiding all morning / from the frigid air, you regard me smearing / jam on dark toast.” Henri Cole reads his poem “Face of the Bee” and other selections from his latest poetry collection, Blizzard (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020), in this recent reading at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.
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Submissions Open for the Black Caucus of the American Library Association Literary Awards
The submission deadline for the annual Black Caucus of the American Library Association (BCALA) Literary Awards is coming up! Given for a poetry collection, a first novel, a book of fiction, and a book of nonfiction (including creative nonfiction) by African American writers published in the United States in the current year, these awards honor literary works that depict the “cultural, historical, or sociopolitical aspects of the Black Diaspora.” Winners in the four categories will each receive $1,000. Books published by small, large, and specialty presses are eligible.
Publishers may nominate books published in 2022 by sending one copy of each title to be considered to members of the awards committee by December 31. There is no entry fee. Visit the website for complete guidelines and a list of jurors to whom books should be sent.
Now in its fifty-second year running, BCALA is devoted to advocating for the “development, promotion, and improvement of library services and resources” for the African American community at large and provides professional development for Black librarians. The association’s literary awards, which were first presented in 1994 at the second National Conference of African American Librarians, acknowledge books that “portray some aspect of the African American experience” whether it be from the past, present, or future. Decisions for this year’s awards will be made in January 2023, and the winners will be presented at the American Library Association’s conference in June. Now in its fifty-second year running, BCALA is devoted to advocating for the “development, promotion, and improvement of library services and resources” for the African American community at large and provides professional development for Black librarians. The association’s literary awards, which were first presented in 1994 at the second National Conference of African American Librarians, acknowledge books that “portray some aspect of the African American experience” whether it be from the past, present, or future. Decisions for this year’s awards will be made in January 2023, and the winners will be presented at the American Library Association’s conference in June.
The Rebuttal by John Lee Clark
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In this video, DeafBlind poet John Lee Clark, author of How to Communicate (Norton, 2022), performs a Protactile poem called “The Rebuttal” with Jelica Nuccio and Heather Holmes, and voiced by Halene Anderson. For more on Clark, read his installment of our Ten Questions series.
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Quincy Troupe at the Schomburg Center
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This Schomburg Center event celebrates a half century of poetry by Quincy Troupe, who reads from his collection Duende: Poems, 1966–Now (Seven Stories Press, 2022) with the accompaniment of musicians Kelvyn Bell and Lonnie Plaxico, along with an introduction by poets Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Rashidah Ismaili, and Mervyn Taylor.
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Exodus 20:12 KJV by Steven Willis
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“We could no longer be threatened into submission or be stared into repentance. Their hope was that as we feared them less, we would fear God more.” Steven Willis reads his poem “Exodus 20:12 KJV” included in his collection, A Peculiar People (Button Poetry, 2022), in this video from the Button Studio in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
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Age Appropriate
“It was all so different than he expected,” writes Henri Cole in his poem “At Sixty-Five,” published in the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day series. Written on Cole’s birthday, the third-person perspective of the poem offers a distance from the poet and his life. The details in the series of observations create a portrait of a fully lived life with accomplishments and opinions: “Yes, he wore his pants looser. / No, he didn’t do crosswords in bed. / No, he didn’t file for Social Security,” writes Cole. Write a poem that focuses on what your age means to you. What details will you include to make this self-reflection unique?
Ten Questions for John Lee Clark
“Isn’t poetry supposed to be a spiritual practice?” —John Lee Clark, author of How to Communicate
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