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Uncensoring From Here to Eternity; hot manuscripts for sale at the London Book Fair; Kate Bush gets permission to sing Ulysses after twenty years; digital piracy and the publishing industry; and other news.
Last month poet Kevin Young read from his most recent collection, Ardency: A Chronicle of the Amistad Rebels (Random House, 2011), at the Greenlight Bookstore in Brooklyn, New York.
Just before National Poetry Month kicked off last week, word began to spread about a major new poetry prize out of Canada. The fifty-thousand-dollar Montreal International Poetry Prize, funded by an anonymous donor, isn't honoring a poet's lifetime achievement or a major new book, but a single poem.
The prize purse is highly unusual for a single-poem competition—similar contests tend to offer a few thousand dollars, at most. (The winning poem and forty-nine finalists will also be published in a "global anthology" by Véhicule Press in the fall, and an e-book featuring one hundred additional poems is planned, as well.) We asked prize director Len Epp how he might respond to writers skeptical of the magnitude of this new contest, which Epp hopes will be able to offer the same amount annually.
"I would tell them that single works of art are often given a much greater value than fifty thousand dollars," Epp wrote in an e-mail, "and that we're trying to tell the world that a poet who can produce an excellent poem deserves an excellent reward as much as any other artist. To doubt this is to undervalue poetry in a very unfortunate way."
He added that the prize organization has "done a lot of work to establish our credentials, and we are proud of our advisory and editorial boards," which include international poets Valerie Bloom, Stephanie Bolster, Frank M. Chipasula, Fred D'Aguiar, Michael Harris, John Kinsella, Sinéad Morrissey, Odia Ofeimun, Eric Ormsby, Don Paterson, and Anand Thakore, and fiction writer Ben Okri. Former U.K. poet laureate Andrew Motion will judge.
The contest, looking to cull entries from international poets writing in "the various Englishes of the world," will charge an entry fee based on a sliding scale (writers in designated developing countries may pay a lower rate) ranging from fifteen to twenty-five dollars. When asked why the competition is charging a fee, Epp responded, "While we are actively seeking traditional forms of support through big sponsors and patrons, we are also committed to a self-sustaining community funding model, which would maximize our independence. As with all other poetry competitions that charge fees, entry fees go towards covering our costs, improving the prize, and guaranteeing its future."
In addition to awarding the prize, the organization has long term ambitions to provide direct funding to poets and establish a global poetry center.
More information about the Montreal International Poetry Prize and details on how to enter are available on the prize Web site. The deadline is July 8, and a discounted entry fee is available for poems submitted by April 22.
In the video below, Motion reads two poems at the 2006 Dodge Poetry Festival.
Busboys and Poets launches a publishing imprint; J. K. Rowling considers e-books and $130 million; Rutgers pays Snooki more than Toni Morrison to speak at the university; the one hundredth anniversary of the New York Public Library; and other news.
Take a cue from Raymond Queneau's Exercises in Style, which tells a single narrative in ninety-nine ways, and write a poem based on what happened just after you got up this morning. Then use one or more of these filters to revise the poem: onomatopoeia (integrating the sounds of your morning into the language of its telling), litotes (a supremely understated start to the day), overstatement (embellishing every detail), olfactory (emphasizing the morning's smells), tactile (emphasizing the morning's physical feel), gustatory (emphasizing the morning's particular taste).
This brief interview with Amy Hempel, which includes excerpts from her short story "The Harvest," was produced by United States Artists. The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel was published by Scribner in 2006.
The best literary hoaxes of all time; another Chinese writer is sentenced to prison for "inciting subversion of state power"; Afghani woman's rights activist Malalai Joya is finally granted a visa for a U.S. book tour; increased funding for literature in England; and other news.
Last week the National Book Foundation presented the panel discussion "Lineage: American Poetry Since 1950," moderated by Katie Peterson and featuring Elizabeth Alexander, Stephen Burt, Tony Hoagland, James Longenbach, Maureen McLane, and Susan Stewart. The aim of the discussion was "to use the National Book Awards as a point of departure to assess post-War poetry trends and achievements."
A bookless library is considered in Newport Beach, California; how not to react to a negative book review; the O, Miami festival seeks to reach more than two million people with poetry; the role of poet laureates in politics; and other news.
Take a book off the shelf and write down the opening line. Then substitute as many words as possible with your own words, keeping the syntax and parts of speech intact. Then keep writing. Performing this kind of literary "Mad Lib" often creates a useful starting place for a story, especially when the sentence contains an intersection of character, setting, and situation. Or try using these opening lines, from Faulkner, García Márquez, and Plath, respectively:
Through the [concrete noun], between the [adjective] [concrete noun], I could see them [verb ending in "ing"].
It was inevitable: the scent of [adjective] [plural noun] always reminded him of the [noun] of [adjective] [noun].
It was a [adjective], [adjective] [season], the [same season] they [transitive verb, past tense] the [family name, plural], and I didn't know what I was doing in [city].
This week's fiction prompt comes from fiction writer Eleanor Henderson, whose first novel, Ten Thousand Saints, will be published by Ecco in June.
