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Women & Children First is one of the largest feminist bookstores in the country, stocking more than thirty thousand books by and about women, children’s books for all ages, and the best of lesbian and gay fiction and nonfiction. The bookstore hosts book launches, talks, and readings across multiple genres.
The City of Books, as the four-story flagship store in Portland, Oregon, is known, occupies an entire city block, and carries more than one million books. Each month, the Basil Hallward Gallery (located upstairs in the Pearl Room) hosts a new art exhibit, as well as dozens of author events featuring acclaimed writers, artists, and thinkers.
The arts collective Responsible Fishing UK took over a lecture hall at the Barnsley Library in South Yorkshire, England, last March to attempt a world-record "Domino Topple" using discarded hardcover library books.
The late poet laureate Philip Levine spoke in early 2012 about his plans for the position and the range of influences on his work through the years.
Some details of the legacy late Polish poet Wisława Szymborska hoped to leave writers of the future were revealed yesterday at the opening of her will in Krakow. According to Michal Rusinek, Szymborska's personal secretary, the Nobel Prize-winning poet had called for the establishment of a foundation, among the tasks of which would be to facilitate the creation of a new literary prize.
The nature of the prize was not illustrated in Szymborska's will. The foundation, which will assume care of Szymborska's papers and possessions, will be responsible for determining the type of prize and to whom it might be given.
Szymborska, whose last collection, Here (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), was published in the United States in 2010, died on the first of this month at the age of eighty-eight.
The video below is an animated adaptation of Szymborska's poem "Advertisement," translated by Stanisław Barańczak and Clare Cavanaugh.
This animated film for Betsy Wheeler's poetry collection Loud Dreaming in a Quiet Room (National Poetry Review Press, 2012) features art and animation by Luca Depierro and music by Stephen Barnard.
Oh, look: Poet, novelist, nonfiction writer, and editor Ander Monson appears to be reading "For Orts," a poem from The Available World (Sarabande Books, 2010), in a refrigerator. In a tiger costume.
Channel a person you've lost in your life. Find a photograph or reflect on a mental image of a friend or relative who is no longer part of your everyday life (because of death, estrangement, physical distance) and reenter the moment of that image, examining the clothing, the facial expression, the nuances of the scene in which the subject is situated. Then go deeper, into the scents, the temperature of the air, the physical and emotional sensations related to this particular scene from a past life. Now write down any words evoked by this reflection, whether they form a narrative or are entirely associative, whether they come from the point of view of an observer or the person herself. Use this material you've created to write a poem (you might try writing it in the form of a letter to your loved one, or from her to you).
Fun for the whole family, the game includes "a timer filled with muted black sand and pencils crafted from the ragged bones of dead horses" in this hilarious video from the Upright Citizens Brigaide, written by Achilles Stamatelaky and directed by Jennifer Treuting.
Longtime P&W-supported poet and author of the collections Raw Air, Night When Moon Follows and Convincing the Body Cheryl Boyce Taylor blogs about the late P&W-supported poet Rodlyn Douglas.
In 2004, I took a leave of absence from the P&W-sponsored Lincoln Square Neighborhood Center's senior writing workshop. I sought out Rodlyn Douglas, a warm and talented poet/performer from Trinidad, to be my replacement. Rodlyn could break into laughter one minute and prayer the next. She knew how to pull work out of people and enjoyed working with seniors.
Each week the group read poems by poets they had never heard of before. Whenever participants asked about her life or her work, Rodlyn never hesitated to share her personal stories.
Rodlyn charged the group with exploring their silences, to look within and be honest. Rodlyn encouraged them to leave a legacy of truth and dignity.
When the group had difficulty opening up, she would say, "Memories and Stories: Once Upon A Time!" This phrase opened doors to hidden places in their lives and enabled them to write from experience and memory. The phrase also became the title of their anthology, edited and published by Rodlyn in 2009.
It is important for me to note that Rodlyn completed this anthology during a period when she was seriously ill. Throughout it all, Rodlyn always expressed to me how proud and happy she was to be able to teach poetry, the work she loved so much.
Photo: Cheryl Boyce Taylor and Rodlyn Douglas. Credit: Desciana Swinger.
Support for Readings/Workshops in New York City is provided, in part, by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, and the Department of Cultural Affairs, with additional support from the Louis & Anne Abrons Foundation, the Axe-Houghton Foundation, the A.K. Starr Charitable Trust, and Friends of Poets & Writers.
