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“I think that literature is really needed, and art in general. It’s saying something that cannot be said in any other way, and that’s why you do it.” In this interview, Norwegian author Jon Fosse, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2023, talks about how music inspired him to write at a young age, and how pauses and silences are used to generate rhythm in his work.
“The sun had just gone out / and I was walking three miles to get home. / I wanted to die. / I couldn’t think of words and I had no future / and I was coming down hard on everything.” In Linda Gregg’s poem “New York Address,” which appears in her retrospective collection, All of It Singing: New and Selected Poems (Graywolf Press, 2008), the speaker recounts bleak existential angst. Despite the pain and darkness, there are glimmers of light. In the second half of the poem, questions are stubbornly answered with snappy, tidy pacing: “Yes I hate dark. No I love light. Yes I won’t speak. / No I will write.” Write a poem that goes all in on angst, channeling a time that felt overwhelmingly uncertain and full of trepidation. How can you experiment with sound and diction to gently steer the dramatic toward the life-affirming?
Taleamor Park offers two- to four-week residencies from April to September to poets, fiction writers, and creative nonfiction writers on a working grain farm and nature preserve with walking paths in northwestern Indiana between the towns of La Porte and Rolling Prairie, near Lake Michigan and Chicago. Residents are provided with a private room in a restored 1854 brick Italianate house, work space, and a shared kitchen and bathroom. Residents have access to Taleamor’s library and the La Porte County Public Library.
Taleamor Park, P.O. Box 456, LaPorte, IN 46352. Clifford Peterson and Lisa Lee Peterson, Codirectors.
The Celia and Wally Gilbert Artist-in-Residence Program offers residencies of one to three weeks year-round to poets, fiction writers, and creative nonfiction writers looking to “explore the scientific process and interact with international scientific staff and visitors” at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) on the wooded north shore of Long Island, New York. Residents are provided with a dorm room, a private bathroom, all meals, and a $1,000 to $1,500 stipend, depending on availability and the length of the stay.
Celia and Wally Gilbert Artist-in-Residence Program, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Library and Archives, 1 Bungtown Road, Cold Spring Harbor, NY 11724. Tricia Loria, Fellowship Coordinator.
“On the wall of the room there was a mirror / reflecting back a comical skull that was laughing at itself.” In this bilingual poetry reading, “Self-Portrait in the Zone of Silence” is read in the original Spanish by Homero Aridjis and the English translation is read by George McWhirter. Aridjis and McWhirter won the 2024 Griffin Poetry Prize for the collection of the same name, published by New Directions.
The Guanajuato Writing Retreat was held from September 22 to September 29 at the Florecer Casitas in Guanajuato, the hilly capital city of Guanajuato state, in Mexico’s high plateau region. The theme for the 2024 retreat was “Renewing Ourselves.” Programming (limited to eight writers) included workshops, a reading with local writers, guided exploratory writing sessions led by poet Bonnie Wolkenstein, local excursions to destinations including La Cañada de la Virgen, and independent time to write for poets, fiction writers, creative nonfiction writers, and translators.
Guanajuato Writing Retreat, 7511 Greenwood Avenue North, #321, Seattle, WA 98103. (206) 914-1444. Bonnie Wolkenstein, Workshop Leader.
The 2024 Willamette Writers Conference was held online and in person at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Downtown Portland from July 31 to August 4. The conference featured workshops, keynotes, panels, pitch sessions, and critiques for poets, fiction writers, and creative nonfiction writers. The faculty included poet Christopher Luna; fiction writers Emmeline Duncan, Molly Gloss, and Sonja Thomas; and fiction and nonfiction writers Ted Chiang and Miriam Gershow. Fiction writer Jess Walter and publishing professional and nonfiction writer Jane Friedman delivered the keynote addresses.
Willamette Writers Conference, 5331 South Macadam Avenue, Suite 258, PMB 215, Portland, OR 97239.
“All too often, on a ‘poetry scene,’ people prioritise ‘subject matter,’” says John Burnside in a 2023 interview about his writing process by Jesse Nathan published on McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. “I am sure that, as I am working, environmental concerns insinuate their way into the content of a poem organically, as other concerns will—but I would never start from there.” Inspired by the late Scottish poet, who died at the age of sixty-nine on May 29, write a poem that springs not from a predetermined topic or subject matter, but instead allows you to “trust in the sounds, the rhythms that come out of the day-to-day, the sheer immediacy and truth of the quotidian…and the images that lead, sometimes via fairly roundabout paths, to metaphor.” Later, as you reread and revise, what do you discover is the subject of your poem? What might have organically insinuated itself into your poem?
In this virtual reading hosted by the Oak Spring Garden Foundation and Furious Flower Poetry Center, Lauren K. Alleyne introduces Ashia Ajani, who reads from their debut collection, Heirloom (Write Bloody Publishing, 2023), and Ariana Benson, who reads from their debut collection, Black Pastoral (University of Georgia Press, 2023), winner of the 2022 Cave Canem Poetry Prize.
