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In this World Poetry Salon series event presented by Limelight Poetry and the New York Public Library, Victoria Chang reads a selection of poems from her books, including Obit (Copper Canyon Press, 2020) and With My Back to the World (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024), with musical accompaniment by yuniya edi kwon, and discusses the power of collaboration across form and genre in a conversation with Patricio Ferrari.
Sparrows have appeared in poetry throughout time—from Catullus writing about Lesbia’s pet sparrow to works by Sappho, Emily Dickinson, William Butler Yeats, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and Charles Bukowski. In Susan Howe’s Penitential Cries, forthcoming in September from New Directions, the concluding poem, “Chipping Sparrow,” with its clipped pacing and sound, as if to mimic a sparrow’s, illuminates a clear-eyed but lyrical notion of time as well as the physicality of life as experienced from the eighty-eight-year-old poet’s perspective. “Left the body // Drowsd a little / Done with soul / – // What to think / Dusting up crown // Garment mirror / Pull me close / – // Quietness and calm / Rest and rejoice // No more doubt / Astonishing!” Spend some time browsing through poems that mention this ubiquitous bird and note the range of symbolism: eros, love, humility, fragility. Then write your own sparrow poem that commemorates where you are in your life.
The author of Indigo (Copper Canyon Press, 2020) recommends writers use coding when trying to describe loss.
With Regaining Unconsciousness, her first poetry collection in twelve years, Harryette Mullen sounds an alarm for our uncertain future with a poetics both urgent and playful.
Write a sparrow poem, a story about the loss of self during a period of social upheaval, or a series of vignettes that look back on several past jobs you’ve had.
The first lines of a dozen noteworthy books, including Pick a Color by Souvankham Thammavongsa and Articulate: A Deaf Memoir of Voice by Rachel Kolb.
The new editor in chief of Ploughshares discusses her vision for expanding the journal’s digital format and its community.
In her elegiac poem “the rites for Cousin Vit,” Gwendolyn Brooks captures the aliveness of a loved one as she lays in her casket. Brooks writes: “Even now she does the snake-hips with a hiss, / Slops the bad wine across her shantung, talks / Of pregnancy, guitars and bridgework, walks.” Write a poem that captures the vibrant, unmistakable presence of someone you remember vividly, whether they are near or far, alive or gone. Focus on the small, lively details that make them unique: their gestures, their voice, the habits that linger in your memory. Consider how these fragments—imperfect, intimate, and raw—keep that person alive in your mind.
The author of Indigo (Copper Canyon Press, 2020) reflects on how writers can turn grief into literature.
The REC.ON Ecovillage Artist & Writing Residency offers two- to four-week residencies year-round to poets, fiction writers, creative nonfiction writers, and translators in the picturesque village of La Mata de Bolaimí near the Sierra María–Los Vélez mountains in Andalucía, Spain. Residents are provided with a private single- or double-occupancy room in a restored rural house and have shared access to a kitchen, a living room, a permaculture garden, and outdoor writing spaces. Residents can also work in the REC.ON gallery, a coworking and exhibition space for focused writing.
REC.ON Ecovillage Artist & Writing Residency, Paraje Bolaimí s/n 04820 Vélez Rubio, Almería, Spain. Paulina Bielecka, Owner.
