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The MFA Reading Series brings renowned authors and poets to the University of Baltimore campus to share words and insights in an intimate setting with Creative Writing & Publishing Arts students. Q&A sessions following each reading allowing students to prod the experts for the information that matters most to them.
Browse the books you love to read at The Book Cellar, an independent bookstore in Chicago’s Lincoln Square that features books by first-time authors, local authors, and more. They also offer wine by the glass, cozy couches, and delicious café fare. The Book Cellar welcomes book clubs and discussion groups.
Terraza 7 is a live music venue and community center: the perfect hub for local art, political expressions and your favorite coffee or mixed drink. Located in the heart of Queens, New York, between Elmhurst and Jackson Heights, two locations containing the most diverse population of immigrants on the planet, is committed to a progressive model of business that grows within its community base on local values.
Nearly two thousand years ago, the Roman poet Ovid wrote a series of letters in elegiac couplets during his exile from Rome called the Tristia. The poems capture Ovid’s final days in Rome, as well as his journey overseas to Tomis on the Romanian coast of the Black Sea, and are addressed to various figures including his wife, loyal and disloyal friends, and he even composes his epitaph. “I who lie here, sweet Ovid, poet of tender passions, / fell victim to my own sharp wit,” writes Ovid, translated by Peter Green in The Poems of Exile: Tristia and the Black Sea Letters (University of California Press, 2005). Inspired by this epic elegy, write a poem from the perspective of someone in exile. What does your speaker long for, and how does exile force them to voice unspoken concerns?
In this 2020 Academy for Teachers craft talk, former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins discusses his theories on how poems find their way to an ending and discusses the works of David Berman, Wisława Szymborska, Tom Wayman, and others.
“Writing can be beautiful, witty, and entertaining but it’s a serious commitment.” In this 2019 Louisiana Literature interview, Anne Waldman shares her advice to aspiring writers with emphasis on the importance of reading widely and respecting the act of writing.
“Much like his life, Neruda’s poems bridged romance and revolution by emphasizing the everyday moments worth fighting for.” Author Ilan Stavans narrates this TED-Ed animated film about the life and poetry of Pablo Neruda, directed by Ivana Bosnjak and Thomas Johnson.
Poet Brian Blanchfield reads Carl Phillips’s poem “Corral” at the Tippet Rise Art Center in Montana in this short film directed by Matthew Thompson as part of the Above Strands of Earth series produced in collaboration with Tippet Rise and the Academy of American Poets, and commissioned by the Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation.
“I think this year I’ll wait for the white lilacs / before I get too sad.” For the Paris Review’s “Poets on Couches” video series, poet Cheswayo Mphanza reads and discusses the late Gerald Stern’s poem “Leaving Another Kingdom.”
In “When I See Stars in the Night Sky,” Joy Priest writes an ode to the late iconic singer Whitney Houston, tethering her memory to the stars in the sky. “It’s 1988 Her head / Thrown back against a black backdrop She is the only thing / glowing So distant from us in the universe,” writes Priest. The poem then moves into the personal connection the speaker has with the singer. “I love myself / because of her,” writes Priest. Inspired by this poem, write an ode to your favorite musician placing them, as Priest does, in a specific moment in time.
