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“uneasiness wills its way around my / swollen tongue // the extract / i make my language out of / so i might speak to you,” reads fahima ife from their poem “anamnesis, amanuensis,” included in their debut collection, Maroon Choreography, in this Duke University Press video. The collection is featured in Page One in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
“You, a wild orchid and me, a rice picker. I pluck you as if you were a food to eat.” In this 2018 Button Poetry Live performance, Melania Luisa Marte reads her poem “Adam Be a Migrant Farmer.”
A garden-path sentence is a grammatically correct sentence that can appear nonsensical because of its syntax and the way it forces the reader to discern its meaning. In essence, the reader is led down the garden path by the sentence. Examples include “The horse raced past the barn fell,” “The man who hunts ducks out on weekends,” and “The raft floated down the river sank.” Write a poem using a garden-path sentence. What grammatical trick will you use for an unexpected portrayal? Try using the title to your advantage.
Submissions are open for this year’s Juniper Prizes. Five prizes are awarded annually for a debut poetry collection, a poetry collection by an author who has published previously, a short story collection, a novel, and a book of creative nonfiction. Each prize offers a cash award of $1,000 and publication by the University of Massachusetts Press.
Using only the online submission system, submit a poetry manuscript of 50 to 70 pages, a story collection or novel of 150 to 350 pages, or a memoir, biography, essay collection, or book of narrative nonfiction of 150 to 300 pages with a $30 entry fee by September 30. The creative writing faculty at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst will judge. The winners will be announced in April of next year. Visit the website for complete guidelines.
Inspired by Fort Juniper, the name of the house that poet Robert Francis built by hand in the woods of Amherst, and in honor of Francis’s written work, the Juniper Prize for Poetry began in 1975. In 2004 the Jupiter Prize for Fiction was added to the award lineup, and in 2018 the prize for creative nonfiction was included. Previous winners of the Juniper Prizes include poets Lucille Clifton, Richard Jackson, and Susan Leslie Moore; fiction writers Wayne Karlin and Lynn Lurie; and nonfiction writer Jennifer De Leon. The 2022 winners will be published in the spring of 2023.
“It’s a book about trying to figure out how to live while around you people are dying. How do you learn to live with tremendous loss?” says Mark Wunderlich about his latest poetry collection, God of Nothingness (Graywolf Press, 2021), in this video for the James Merrill House’s virtual series Studio 107, which interviews former writers in residency about their writing process.
“Human creativity is nature manifest in us.” In this TED Talk video, actor and author Ethan Hawke speaks about the importance of creativity, the necessity of taking leaps to express yourself, and how we turn to poetry for sustenance.
As the days get shorter and colder in mid-September, the autumnal equinox and the official end of summer approach. Many poets find inspiration in this in-between zone when seasonal plants transition and the duties of a school year begin again. “Three Songs at the End of Summer” by Jane Kenyon, “Blackberry-Picking” by Seamus Heaney, and “Vespers” by Louise Glück are examples of poems that speak to late summer. Write a poem that celebrates this fleeting, yet evocative moment between seasons.
“There was so much shame in this project for me to dispel and bury.” —Mahogany L. Browne, author of I Remember Death by Its Proximity to What I Love
In this virtual event from the 2020 Cúirt International Festival of Literature, Kei Miller and Carolyn Forché read their poems and discuss the exploration of place, hope, and community in their work with poet Jess Traynor. Miller’s second essay collection, Things I Have Withheld (Grove Press, 2021), is featured in Page One in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
