Lawrence Ferlinghetti
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In this clip Daniel Pogue adds stop-motion sewing animation to section 22 of Lawrence Ferlinghetti's "A Coney Island of the Mind." Ferlinghetti turned ninety-two on Thursday.
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Genre: Poetry
Charles Simic and Dinaw Mengestu Win Prize for Foreign-Born Writers
The Vilcek Foundation has selected poet Charles Simic and fiction writer Dinaw Mengestu as recipients of the sixth annual Vilcek Prizes honoring foreign-born writers, artists, and scientists now living in the United States. Former U.S. poet laureate and recent Robert Frost Medal–winner Simic, born in the former Yugoslavia, received the one-hundred-thousand-dollar prize for lifetime achievement, and Mengestu, born in Ethiopia, won the twenty-five-thousand-dollar prize for creative promise.
Author of twenty poetry collections, Simic's most recent work is Master of Disguises (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010). Mengestu is the author of the novels How to Read the Air (Riverhead Books, 2010) and the widely praised The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears (Riverhead Books, 2007), which won the Guardian First Book Award.
The finalists for the prize for emerging writers, each receiving five thousand dollars, are poet Ilya Kaminsky (born in the former Soviet Union) and fiction writers Simon Van Booy (born in England), Téa Obreht (born in Croatia), and Vu Tran (born in Vietnam).
The literature honorees will participate in a panel, The New Vernacular: Immigrant Authors in American Literature, at New York City's Housing Works Bookstore Café on April 5. The event is free and open to the public, but RSVPs are appreciated.
In the video below, Mengestu discusses his latest novel.
Poetry on the Streets of Kosovo
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Last December Ivan Tresoldi, a street poetry artist from Milano, Italy, led a workshop for young Kosovo Serbian poets and artists sponsored by forumZFD, a bipartisan organization with a mission to push for "the realization of the idea of a Civilian Peace Service." The aim of the workshop was to help participants deal with the past and create poetry and art along the topic of memories and identities. For more information about Kosovo, visit the State Department's Web site.
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American Poet's Debut Wins German Award
Kansas-born poet Ben Lerner, author of Mean Free Path (2010), Angle of Yaw (2006), and The Lichtenberg Figures (2004), has become the first American poet to win the Preis für International Poesie der Stadt Münster, a poetry translation award given biennially by the city of Münster, Germany. Lerner, whose books are all published by Copper Canyon Press, won for his debut collection, translated into German by Steffen Popp as Die Lichtenbergfiguren and published by Germany’s Luxbooks.
Past winners of the prize, given since 1993, include Tomaž Šalamun, Hugo Claus, Zbigniew Herbert, and Inger Christensen. Lerner was selected for the tenth award by judges Urs Allemann, Michael Braun, Cornelia Jentzsch, Johan P. Tammen, Wendela Beate Vilhjalmsson, and Norbert Wehr.
In the video below, Lerner reads from The Lichtenberg Figures at the College of New Jersey.
March 21
Write a poem on a page of today's newspaper, allowing your eye to wander slightly and take in the language on the page, and for your text to overlay the text on the page. If you fix your eye on a specific word or phrase, incorporate it into the composition.
The Anne Sexton—Peter Gabriel Connection
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Linda Gray Sexton's memoir Searching for Mercy Street: My Journey Back to My Mother, Anne Sexton, originally published in 1994 by Little, Brown, was just rereleased in paperback by Counterpoint Press. Anne Sexton herself wrote a play titled Mercy Street, and a posthumous book of poetry, 45 Mercy Street, was published in 1976, two years after she committed suicide. In 1986, Peter Gabriel released his fifth album, So, which includes the song "Mercy Street," dedicated to the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet.
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Lammy Longlist Culled From Record-Breaking Entry Pool
Yesterday the Lambda Literary Foundation announced the finalists for its twenty-third annual "Lammy" literary awards. Books are considered on the basis of their being authored by lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender writers or depicting LGBT characters.
Below are the contenders for prizes in poetry, fiction, and debut fiction, selected from a record pool of entries: 520 titles submitted by 230 publishers. The full lists of finalists in the additional Lammy categories, including biography, anthology, and erotica, are available on the Lambda Literary Foundation Web site.
Gay Poetry
darkacre by Greg Hewett (Coffee House Press)
then, we were still living by Michael Klein (GenPop Books)
Other Flowers: Uncollected Poems by James Schuyler (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Pleasure by Brian Teare (Ahsahta Press)
The Salt Ecstasies: Poems by James L. White (Graywolf Press)
Lesbian Poetry
Money for Sunsets by Elizabeth J. Colen (Steel Toe Books)
The Inquisition Yours by Jen Currin (Coach House Books)
The Sensual World Re-emerges by Eleanor Lerman (Sarabande Books)
White Shirt by Laurie MacFayden (Frontenac House)
The Nights Also by Anna Swanson (Tightrope Books)
Gay Debut Fiction
XOXO Hayden by Chris Corkum (P. D. Publishing)
Probation by Tom Mendicino (Kensington Publishing)
Bob the Book by David Pratt (Chelsea Station Editions)
The Palisades by Tom Schabarum (Cascadia Publishing)
Passes Through by Rob Stephenson (University of Alabama Press)
Lesbian Debut Fiction
Alcestis by Katharine Beutner (Soho Press)
Sub Rosa by Amber Dawn (Arsenal Pulp Press)
Fall Asleep Forgetting by Georgeann Packard (The Permanent Press)
The More I Owe You by Michael Sledge (Counterpoint Press)
One More Stop by Lois Walden (Arcadia Books)
Bisexual Fiction
Fall Asleep Forgetting by Georgeann Packard (The Permanent Press)
If You Follow Me by Malena Watrous (Harper Perennial)
Krakow Melt by Daniel Allen Cox (Arsenal Pulp Press)
The Lunatic, the Lover, and the Poet by Myrlin A. Hermes (Harper Perennial)
Pride/Prejudice: A Novel of Mr. Darcy, Elizabeth Bennet, and Their Forbidden Lovers by Ann Herendeen (Harper Paperbacks)
Gay Fiction
By Nightfall by Michael Cunningham (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Children of the Sun by Max Schaefer (Soft Skull)
Consolation by Jonathan Strong (Pressed Wafer)
The Silver Hearted by David McConnell (Alyson Books)
Union Atlantic by Adam Haslett (Doubleday)
Lesbian Fiction
Big Bang Symphony by Lucy Jane Bledsoe (University of Wisconsin Press)
Fifth Born II: The Hundredth Turtle by Zelda Lockhart (LaVenson Press)
Holding Still for as Long as Possible by Zoe Whittall (House of Anansi), also a finalist in the transgender fiction category
Homeschooling by Carol Guess (PS Publishing)
Inferno by Eileen Myles (OR Books)
The winners will be honored at a gala held at the School of Visual Arts in New York City on May 26.
In the video below, Lesbian Fiction finalist Eileen Myles discusses her nominated book.
Rosanna Warren’s “Aftermath”
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The author of five poetry collections, including Ghost in a Red Hat, which was just published by W. W. Norton, Rosanna Warren reads “Aftermath,” one in a series of elegies she wrote the for poet Deborah Tall, who died of breast cancer in 2006. This reading took place on March 7, 2011 at Nyack College.
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Behind Those Books: Urban Lit
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The documentary Behind Those Books, written by Kaven Brown, directed by Mills Miller, and featuring interviews with Terry McMillan, Cornel West, Michael Eric Dyson, and Kevin Powell, is billed as "the first and only comprehensive documentation, on film, of the urban literature genre, giving viewers a raw and uncut look inside the emerging industry." It will premiere May 28 at Tribeca Cinemas in New York City.
Nick Demske's Wisconsin
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In this rather raw clip, Nick Demske responds to the political situation in Wisconsin, where tens of thousands of protesters—some of them on tractors—descended on the state Capitol over the weekend, with a poem.
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