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Burning is a mystery thriller about a lonely aspiring writer whose life changes suddenly when he bumps into a childhood acquaintance and she introduces a suave stranger into their lives. Adapted from the short story “Barn Burning” by Haruki Murakami, the film is directed by South Korean filmmaker Lee Chang-dong and stars Yoo Ah-in, Jeon Jong-seo, and Steven Yeun.
Rich Soos is the editor of Cholla Needles, which publishes a monthly literary magazine and poetry collections by local authors of the Joshua Tree community in California’s San Bernardino County. The Cholla Needles Arts & Literary Library aims to keep people excited about poetry through writing workshops and a monthly reading series. Soos is the author of over twenty poetry collections and was the editor for Seven Stars Poetry from 1973 to 1998.
The name of the magazine, Cholla Needles, came from a poem I wrote after I fell on a cholla cactus and its needles stuck in my hand and foot. When I made the decision to start a new magazine, I used that poem to inspire my mission statement—asking writers to submit poems that would “stick with you” and make the magazine memorable.
Each monthly issue of Cholla Needles is celebrated with an open reading and a featured poet. The readings take place outdoors in the beautiful desert of Joshua Tree, California, on the second Sunday of each month.
The audience of forty to fifty neighbors is often joined by visitors from around the world, there to explore Joshua Tree National Park. Readers have come from many countries including Ireland, India, Britain, Italy, Germany, and Brazil. Hardcore locals arrive each month too, no matter what the heat (even at 110 degrees in summer), because it’s simply a joy to celebrate poetry together.
In October, our reading began with a dance performed by youngsters from the community to a new poem by Kim Martin. The party continued with twenty-one other readers, and then the featured reader Juan Delgado, who shared poems from each of his fine collections.
Juan traveled “up the hill” from his home several hours away to delight the audience with early poems that celebrate the joy of youthful discovery, and poems from his newer collections, which celebrate how the passing of old friends enhances our deep understanding of life.
Our featured readers are supported in part by a grant from Poets & Writers’ Readings & Workshops program. This support allows us to have poets visit from outside the area and keep our monthly parties fresh and exciting. There is tremendous appreciation from featured readers and audiences for Poets & Writers’ support. It provides a sense of pride knowing that someone from outside the area cares enough to help out in this way.
The time and location for our monthly readings are announced on our website. Visitors to the area are always welcome to bring their own work to share with us during the open reading portion of the party.
Support for Readings & Workshops in California is provided by the California Arts Council, a state agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency. Additional support comes from the Friends of Poets & Writers.
Photo: Featured reader Juan Delgado at Cholla Needles (Credit: Bob DeLoyd).A Discovery of Witches (Viking, 2011), the first novel in Deborah Harkness’s All Souls historical fantasy trilogy, has been adapted into a television miniseries. The eight-part series stars Edward Bluemel, Gregg Chillin, Matthew Goode, Teresa Palmer, and follows the story of a history scholar witch, a geneticist vampire, and a long-lost alchemical manuscript.
“I was a happy young woman and I just happened to write poetry…” Ntozake Shange speaks about her surprise at the impact of her poetry and the film adaptation of her choreopoem “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf” in this interview with Reelblack at the Art Sanctuary of Philadelphia in 2010. The poet, novelist, and playwright died on October 27, 2018 at the age of seventy.
“It was in the autumn—it felt like the perfect time to do this ritual, when everything’s changing to go to sleep for the winter....” In this interview at the 2018 Louisiana Literature festival in Denmark, CAConrad talks about how performing rituals after their boyfriend’s death gave rise to the poetry in their collection While Standing in Line for Death (Wave Books, 2017), which won the 2018 Lambda Literary Award in Gay Poetry.
The Hate U Give (Balzer + Bray, 2017), the best-selling debut novel by Angie Thomas about a Black high school student who witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood friend by a police officer and is subsequently drawn into activism, has been adapted into a feature film. Directed by George Tillman Jr., the film stars Regina Hall, Russell Hornsby, Issa Rae, and Amandla Stenberg.
“Maybe every talk about poetry is a defense of poetry,” says Tony Hoagland in this 2011 Chicago Ideas Week talk at the Poetry Foundation on the mind of a poet and how poets explain the world. Hoagland, the author of eight books of poetry and a recipient of the Jackson Poetry Prize, died on October 23 at the age of sixty-four.
“It’s the way we have to connect not only the intellect, but also the heart, to engage the whole body with breath, with rhythm.” Natasha Trethewey, recipient of the 22nd Heinz Award for the Arts and Humanities, talks about the immense value of poetry. Trethewey’s fifth poetry collection, Monument: Poems New and Selected (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018), is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
“The extraordinary story of a bloodstained, diminutive crumb of a servant girl who went on to become the world’s most famous wax sculptor,” is how the book trailer describes Edward Carey’s sixth novel, Little (Riverhead Books, 2018), which is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
In this 2002 interview, Guadeloupean novelist Maryse Condé talks with Ann Armstrong Scarboro, who wrote the afterword to Condé’s novel I, Tituba: Black Witch of Salem (University of Virginia Press, 2009), translated from the French by Richard Philcox, about uncovering truth in her writing. Condé is the winner of the inaugural New Academy Prize in Literature, which was established this year as an alternative to the Nobel Prize in Literature.
![The Hate U Give | Official Trailer [HD] | 20th Century FOX](https://www.pw.org/files/styles/video_thumb_medium/public/media-oembed/i.ytimg.com/vi/3MM8OkVT0hw/hqdefault.jpg?itok=n0FMT2_V)
