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“We hid in the trees and when we ran out of trees we hid in houses made out of trees and / when we / ran out of houses we hid in skyscrapers made out of steel and concrete...” This Motionpoems short film, featuring Jackson Holbert’s poem “Fable,” is directed by Žanete Skarule and stars Emma Bobrova Lourié.
News of the World is a film adaptation of Paulette Jiles’s 2016 novel of the same name, which was a National Book Award finalist. Tom Hanks plays Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd, a war veteran, widower, and newsreader in the 1870s who travels from town to town reading the news to locals and comes across a young orphaned girl played by Helena Zengel.
“For people who have so little…it’s so deeply appreciated that it’s almost life-changing.” In this 2010 video, Gary Fine speaks about the Prisoner Express program, which sends packages of books along with a personalized, handwritten note to participants who are incarcerated. For more on the growth of the program, read “Books Offer Lifeline in Incarceration” by Alissa Greenberg in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
In “The World of Wrestling,” an essay published in Mythologies by Roland Barthes, he examines the allure and extravagant nature of wrestling, writing that “wrestling is not a sport, it is a spectacle, and it is no more ignoble to attend a wrestled performance of Suffering than a performance of the sorrows of Arnolphe or Andromaque.” Throughout the essay, Barthes constructs a philosophical argument that underpins the theatrical pathos behind the staged sport, elevating something that may be seen as common with an artistic analysis. Choose a form of entertainment that is often considered ordinary and write an essay arguing that there is more than meets the eye.
Douglas A. Martin’s Branwell: A Novel of the Brontë Brother, reissued last year by Soft Skull Press, explores the life of the only son in the Brontë family and the brother of Charlotte, Emily, and Anne, who wrote the literary classics Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and Agnes Grey. Eclipsed by his early death from alcohol and opium abuse, the genre-bending novel uncovers Branwell’s failed relationships, talent, and possible homosexuality, as well as conjures the moody landscape and milieu of the era through arresting language. Write a story that steps into the life of an overlooked character from fiction or literary history. What do you imagine as their true personality? Does it differ from what has been previously known?
Happy 2021! Yes, despite the pandemic and political unrest in our country— I still believe happiness is possible.
In these times, our arts communities can provide shelter from some of the anxiety we may feel when we follow the news on our televisions and smart phones. Art can provide a sense of support and inspiration. That’s why taking part in the United States of Writing initiative has been so rewarding. Writing can unite us wherever we live.
Part of my duties as a literary outreach coordinator has been to help support writers in New Orleans. This includes encouraging writers to apply for funding for their virtual events through the Readings & Workshops program’s mini-grants. Last year, the program funded writers in selected states and cities including New Orleans and its surrounding parishes as well as Detroit and Houston, where my fellow literary outreach coordinators Justin Rogers and Lupe Mendez are working to support their communities. We are proud to report that in 2020, the Readings & Workshops program distributed $2,450 in New Orleans, $3,250 in Houston, and $6,750 in Detroit.
I encourage writers and event organizers living in New Orleans, as well as other R&W–supported cities, to apply for a mini-grant. Currently, due to COVID-19 restrictions on public gatherings, these grants are only supporting virtual events, which include readings, writing workshops, poetry slams, and panels. The aim is to support writers, and foster and sustain writing communities during these trying times.
Learn more about how to apply for Readings & Workshops mini-grants and feel free to reach out to me at [email protected].
Kelly Harris is the literary outreach coordinator for Poets & Writers in New Orleans. Contact her at [email protected] or on Twitter, @NOLApworg.“Everyone can do a paragraph.” Emily Rapp Black speaks about working with a writing partner during the pandemic in this video for the Throw Us a Line series hosted by Lighthouse Writers Workshop program director Andrea Dupree. Black’s new memoir, Sanctuary (Random House, 2021), is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
“A title has the capacity to do an immense amount of heavy lifting,” writes torrin a. greathouse in the January/February 2021 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine. “It is what calls a reader into the work; it can construct an entire world before they enter it and is the first frame of reference for it once they have left it.” This week, choose an abandoned draft of a poem and revise it by changing its title. How is the tension raised by creating a new way for the reader to enter the poem? How has the poem stopped being stagnant and lifted off?
Directed by Academy Award winner Martin Scorsese, Pretend It’s a City features the return of sardonic writer and public speaker Fran Lebowitz in conversation with the director as she shares anecdotes about her early life and career in New York City in the 1970s. The Netflix series continues the partnership of the longtime friends, who worked together on the 2010 HBO documentary Public Speaking.
“How do you take the nightmares and dreams and put them onto paper?” asks Julie Taymor in this trailer for the second season of Poetry in America featuring interviews with Marilyn Chin, Katie Couric, Elena Kagan, John Kerry, Maxine Hong Kingston, and others. Created and directed by Harvard professor Elisa New, each episode explores and interprets a single American poem.
