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In this Books Are Magic event, Miller Oberman reads from his latest poetry collection, Impossible Things (Duke University Press, 2024), and is joined by poets Jason B. Crawford, Joan Kwon Glass, and I. S. Jones for a reading and Q&A. For more from Oberman, read his installation of our Ten Questions series.
“Your mind wants to move, and the best thing a work of art can do is take your mind with it, moving somewhere you never expected to move.” Anne Carson talks about the artists and philosophers who inspire her to create and think, and how boxing has helped her in the wake of her recent diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease in a conversation with Norwegian author Linn Ullmann for this Louisiana Channel event.
In early September, mysterious white blobs began washing ashore on the beaches of Newfoundland in Canada, described as sticky, spongy, and doughy. Beachcombers and scientists alike were confounded—were the blobs of animal or plant origins? Were they toxic or innocuous, or created from industrial waste? As scientists continue to collect samples and run tests on these mysterious blobs, take this period of uncertainty to write a poem about a blob: these beach blobs, a blob inspired by science fiction, an explicitly frightening or comedic blob, or perhaps an experience that simply feels blob-like. How does the slipperiness of this concept lend itself to metaphors in your poem? Consider experimenting with the shape of your text, creating a concrete, yet blobby, poem.
“When we die, our souls leave our bodies, / take with them everything they loved.... In Gaza, our bodies and rooms get crushed. / Nothing remains for the soul.” In this Busboys and Poets event, Mosab Abu Toha reads from his collection Forest of Noise (Knopf, 2024), and discusses his recent experiences in Gaza in a conversation with Isra Chaker. An interview with Abu Toha by Destiny O. Birdsong appears in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
In this video for the Poetry Society of America’s Storefront Poems series, Kimiko Hahn reads her poem “Ode to the Mud in Corona Park,” which appears in her collection The Ghost Forest: New and Selected Poems (Norton, 2024). For more from Hahn, read her installation of our Ten Questions series.
In Rae Armantrout’s poem “Unbidden,” which appears in her collection Versed (Wesleyan University Press, 2009), the poet’s use of short lines in conjunction with enjambment contribute to a sense of disjointedness. “The ghosts swarm. / They speak as one / person. Each / loves you. Each / has left something / undone,” writes Armantrout. This week compose a poem that revolves around a feeling of inconclusiveness. For your subject matter, consider a situation or relationship from your past that feels unfinished, one that continues to haunt you with questions. Deploy enjambment strategically—splitting up specific phrases and ending lines with significantly weighted words—to create a sense of discontinuity and unknowability.
“[T]herapeutic modes can enhance artistic work enormously, because they give us access to our inner workings in fresh, sometimes even revelatory ways. ” —Miller Oberman, author of Impossible Things
While scientists have long known that spiders can fly across entire oceans on their silk threads by ballooning through strong wind currents, it’s only more recently that research has demonstrated their ability to travel on Earth’s electric field. Unlike humans, spiders can detect the naturally-occurring global electric field known as the ionosphere with the tiny sensory hairs on their bodies and prepare to lift off and take flight. Write a poem that focuses on modes of movement, perhaps imagining the ways in which humans have moved through space and how this has changed over time with new inventions and technology. What might be possible in the future? Try experimenting with rhythm and spacing, and explore what type of diction feels most reflective of the pacing you seek.
“You can go with intention, or you can explore where the poem leads you. Where your unconscious leads you.” —Kimiko Hahn, author of The Ghost Forest: New and Selected Poems
In this Institute of Politics Policy and History video, A. B. Spellman joins a panel of poets, historians, and critics for a discussion of his contributions to literature, music, and the Black Arts Movement, and then reads a selection of poems from his new collection, Between the Night and Its Music: New and Selected Poems (Wesleyan University Press, 2024), which is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
