GalleyCrush: Fugitive Atlas
Khaled Mattawa’s Fugitive Atlas, forthcoming from Graywolf Press on October 20, 2020.
Genre: Poetry
Linton Kwesi Johnson
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“This is a poem I wrote nearly fifty years ago in response to the war that the Metropolitan Police force had declared against the Black youth of my generation,” says Linton Kwesi Johnson in this video for the Geraldine Connor Foundation’s Generations Dreaming online event last month. The recent PEN Pinter Prize–winner reads his poems “All Wi Doin is Defendin,” “It Dread inna Inglan (for George Lindo),” “Mekin Histri,” and “License fi Kill.”
Genre:
The Girl Dream
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“My mother carries three girls and a boy, like the tethered, like a reckoning.” In this Write About Now Poetry video, D. Colin reads her poem “The Girl Dream” at the unofficial Women of the World Poetry Slam cypher in Dallas.
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Different Choices
In “The Untranslatable” published on the Paris Review website, the translators of poems featured in the magazine’s summer issue write short essays about their processes. Patricio Ferrari and Susan Margaret Brown, who translated António Osório’s poems from the Portuguese, write about choosing between words in the English language that have Latin versus Germanic origins: “Most words representing abstract ideas stem from the Latin while the majority of words exemplifying concrete ideas come from the Saxon. In a newspaper article, the choice may be irrelevant; in a poem, the choice matters.” Rewrite or draft a new version of a poem you’ve written in the past, switching out some of the Latinate words for those with Germanic roots, and vice versa. How does this change the sound, tone, and other nuances of your poem?
Craft Capsule: The Authority of Black Childhood
The author of Horsepower suggests putting aside knowledge and focusing on unlearning.
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GalleyCrush: Cardinal
Tyree Daye’s Cardinal, forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press on October 6, 2020.
Bellevue Literary Review Prizes Open for Submissions
Submissions are open for the Bellevue Literary Review Prizes in Poetry and Prose. The annual contest seeks submissions from poets, fiction writers, and creative nonfiction writers whose work addresses “themes of health, healing, illness, the mind, and the body.” One winner in each genre will receive $1,000 and publication in the Bellevue Literary Review.
Using only the online submission system, submit up to three poems totaling no more than five pages or up to 5,000 words of prose with a $20 entry fee by July 15. Jen Bervin will judge in poetry, Dan Chaon will judge in fiction, and Kay Redfield Jamison will judge in creative nonfiction. All entries are considered for publication. Visit the website for complete guidelines.
Founded by a group of physician-writers in 2000, the Bellevue Literary Review seeks to explore “human existence through the prism of health and healing, illness and disease.” Published by the New York University Langone Medical Center, the publication’s offices are located in New York City’s Bellevue Hospital, the oldest public hospital in the country. Previous contributors to the magazine include Leslie Jamison, Celeste Ng, and Rick Moody.
Douglas Manuel
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“Wouldn’t care how they dressed me as long as I was cleaned and touched with love before I was put away to rot.” Douglas Manuel reads “Knee Deep” and “Bad Son” from his debut poetry collection, Testify (Red Hen Press, 2017), and discusses his work with Poetry.LA host Lisa Grove.
Genre:
You Lose Something Every Day
Caption:
“It was Dre who once said, / You lose something every day / Your mind on the way to the store / The floor on the way to your mind…” In this Ours Poetica video, Jacqueline Woodson reads “You Lose Something Every Day,” a poem from Willie Perdomo’s collection The Crazy Bunch (Penguin Books, 2019).
Genre:
Hot Hot Hot
In response to the increasingly searing and muggy days, a recent Bustle article detailed the effects of humidity on the body. “You may feel more uncomfortable on a humid day because your body is not as easily able to evaporate the sweat on your skin, due to the moisture in the air,” says physician assistant Christina L. Belitsky, adding that “evaporation of sweat on our skin is our body’s way of naturally cooling us down in warm temperatures.” Write a poem in which you discuss an aspect of how the body—internal organs, skin, or your own joints—functions in such sticky heat. What images and vocabulary enable you to perfectly encapsulate the physical effects of a sweltering summer day?
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