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On the fifth day of protests at the Wisconsin state capital in Madison, poet Kai Carlson-Wee, a student in the MFA program at the University of Wisconsin, participated in the public filibuster opposing legislation introduced by the state's governor, Scott Walker, that could strip public workers of their collective bargaining rights. On Friday the state Assembly passed the controversial bill; it still has to pass the state Senate.
The Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice will once again award ten-thousand-dollar grants to a poet and a fiction writer, but with a deadline falling a few months earlier than last year's. Entries for the 2011 awards, given to lesbian writers for work with lesbian content, will be due by the end of the business day on March 22.
Two finalists in each genre will receive one thousand dollars each and six honorable mentions will be awarded one hundred dollars each, with at least one of the grants given to a writer west of the Mississippi. A panel of distinguished lesbian writers, which has in the past been populated by writers such as Sharon Bridgforth, Staceyanne Chin, Kristen Hogan, Achy Obejas, and Pamela Sneed, will select the grantees.
For guidelines on what to submit and access to Astraea's online submission system (their preferred mode of entry), visit the foundation's Web site.
In the video below, 2010 poetry winner Lenelle Moïse reads a poem inspired by Jean-Michel Basquiat over a montage of his paintings.
Lloyd Cole, the former lead singer of Lloyd Cole and the Commotions, recently released the music video for his song "Writers Retreat!" from last year's solo album "Broken Record." Listen as Cole croons the following lyrics: "Who did you meet at the writers retreat? / Where did you sleep at the writers retreat? / What did you write at the writers retreat?"
This clip is the prologue of an original Web series, produced by Awkward Moment Productions, about Richard Scribe, the CEO of an insurance company who reads poetry on the streets of Vancouver's financial district. The mockumentary is written and directed by Michael Grand and stars David Lewis, John Shaw, and Leo Wilson.
Write a sonnet, a fourteen-line poem made up, typically, of three stanzas of four lines, and a fourth of two lines, or a couplet. Use the following rhyme scheme: In each of the first three stanzas, rhyme the first and third lines and the second and fourth lines (a, b, a, b, c, d, c, d, e, f, e, f); and rhyme the lines of the couplet (g, g). For a traditional example, see Shakespeare's "From you have I been absent in the spring...." For a contemporary example, see Denis Johnson's "Heat."
The National Book Foundation (NBF) has begun to roll out its series of conversations about the poetry volumes that have won the National Book Award in the genre over the past sixty-one years. Fifty-one books (the prize was not awarded from 1984 to 1990, which accounts for the discrepancy), from William Carlos Williams's Paterson: Book Three and Selected Poems (New Directions, 1950) to Terrance Hayes's Lighthead (Penguin, 2010), will be covered in short essays by contemporary emerging poets such as Ross Gay, John Murillo, and Evie Shockley.
The project is part of the NBF's Lineage program, celebrating the poetry prize's all-stars since 1950 (two years ago, the NBF published a similar series of essays highlighting its fiction winners). The retrospective, says NBF director of programs Leslie Shipman, is designed "to generate a discussion [about] how American poetry has evolved over the past sixty years and it's current vitality in the cultural landscape."
The foundation is also holding a related panel and poetry reading next Thursday and Friday in New York City. Later this spring the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis will host a Lineage presentation, and one additional event in another city is also in the works.
To read the daily poetry book posts, which include biographical information, excerpts of poems, links, and contextual nuggets, visit the NBF's Web site.
In the video below, Kathy Bates reads 1952 winner Marianne Moore's "Poetry." The NBF essay on Moore's Collected Poems was written by poet Lee Felice Pinkas.
Poet Nikky Finney, who is profiled in the current issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, reads "Penguin, Mullet, Bread" from her collection Head Off & Split, published this month by TriQuarterly Books/Northwestern University Press.
In this Oscar-worthy performance, an inspired poet takes a moment to digest the news that his rather uninspired poem has not been accepted for publication.
Poet Evelyn Posamentier and painter Elizabeth Jameson, whose own brain scans are prominently featured in her work, use their respective art forms to interpret their experiences with multiple sclerosis.
For one week, collect words and phrases you encounter throughout the day from signs, advertisements, menus, overheard conversations, radio programs, headlines, television, etc. At the end of the week, write a found poem, using these snippets.
![LLOYD COLE - Writers Retreat! [OFFICIAL]](https://www.pw.org/files/styles/video_thumb_medium/public/media-oembed/i.ytimg.com/vi/yyWPpToywbg/hqdefault.jpg?itok=gKEEPplB)
