Read Olivia Maciel’s article entitled “A Brief Homage to Octavio Paz” from the Chicago Tribune:
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1998-04-26/news/9804260203_1_octavio-paz-li-young-lee-poetry
Watch Olivia Maciel read and translate some of her poetry from The Guild Lit Channel:
Palabra Pura, Olivia Maciel, January 15, 2014
One Poet, One Poem ! This annual event celebrates the past and future curators of Palabra Pura. What a talented line up!
Listen to Sheila Donohue read her poem, “Ice Skating: Age 9” from poetrypoetry.com:
Find out about Sheila Donohue’s salon for art and activism, Center Portion:
Center Portion: real people in a real place, experiencing writers, speakers, musicians and educators – live.
Sheila Donohue and Greg Scott believe so strongly in the power of art (and its ability to effect change) that they carved out a space in their home to support it. Center Portion is a salon, whose donations are used for direct support of the people who present their ideas.
It is the law:
seasons, best selling books and empires
come and go.
Babies are born to die,
bridges are built to one day fall
and shoes wear out.
– Kent Foreman, “It is the Law”
Broadside of “It is the Law” by Kent Foreman.
Buy this broadside in the Mixed Bag series⇒
Bring with you your anger on Saturday Nights
And your beautiful children,
their great eyes full of wonder
that hunger for your learning
I understand, young man, with your outraged confusion
that smolders upon corners.
– Kent Foreman, “Para Los Latinos (and Frederico Garcia Lorca)”
Watch Kent Foreman discuss and read his poem, “Epiphany:”
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…Aw, baby, look!
This life is not no legend, David.
Underdogs is buried everyday.
Only fairy tales are filled with giant killers.
Man, let Goliath sleep. Or there’ll be hell to pay.
– Kent Foreman, “From Jonathan to David”
He fell from her knees like a ball of yarn.
He unwound in a hurry and ran blindly away.
She held the beginning of life. She would wind it
on her finger like a ring, she wanted to preserve him.
– Zbigniew Herbert, “Mother” (translated by John & Bogdana Carpenter)
Read this interview between Zbigniew Herbert and John & Bogdana Carpenter from The Manhattan Review:
http://www.themanhattanreview.com/archive/3-2_conversation.html
At dawn you leave. The river wears its skin of light.
And I trace love’s loss to the origin of light.
“I swallow down the goodbyes I won’t get to use.”
At grief’s speed she waves from a palanquin of light.
– Agha Shahid Ali, “Of Light”
Read this interview with Agha Shahid Ali from Poets&Writers:
An Interview With Poet Agha Shahid Ali
On December 8, 2001, Kashmiri-American poet Agha Shahid Ali died of brain cancer at the age of 52. Ali taught creative writing at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst for seven years, and published eight books of poetry, including Rooms Are Never Finished (Norton, 2001), which was a finalist for the National Book Award.
We shall meet again, in Srinagar,
by the gates of the Villa of Peace,
our hands blossoming into fists
till the soldiers return the keys
and disappear. Again we’ll enter
our last world, the first that vanished.
– Agha Shahid Ali, “A Pastoral”
Watch this interview with Agha Shahid Ali and his brother for NPR:
Izhar Patkin: Agha Shahid Ali on All Things Considered
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Agha Shahid Ali was born in New Delhi, India in 1949. He arrived in the United States in 1975 and was the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards, and was also a finalist for the National Book Award. His poetry reflects his Hindu, Muslim, and Western heritages, often blending forms and cultures. Ali was also a translator, translating most notably the work of Urdu poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz into English. He died in December 2001 at the age of 52.
Afterwards, we would remember the sudden appearance
of the two-headed yellow snake crawling from the trees
to the edge of the gate the moment I poured the water.
We would remember how the snake drank thirstily,
and did not try to cross over.
– M. Eliza Hamilton Abegunde, “Visitation”
Read this interview with M. Eliza Hamilton Abegunde:
Margin: Exploring Modern Magical Realism/M. ELIZA HAMILTON ABEGUNDE: AN INTERVIEW
Sometimes, the line between a writer’s mundane, everyday world and her creative, imaginative landscape can blur, even resist separation. This might describe the life of healing facilitator M. Eliza Hamilton Abgnd, whose novel-in-progress, The Arian’s Last Life, has been, thus far, a 20-year commute between past, present and future.
Do not let the smell of your own feces distract you.
Roll the toilet paper tightly after each use and discard
in the thin blue bags Dete changes every Monday.
Roll your tampons and sanitaries into the black bags
you have brought – so afraid someone will find them,
and pick the dried blood into a stew.
– M. Eliza Hamilton Abegunde, “Prime Directive #1”
More info on M. Eliza Hamilton Abegunde⇒
M. Eliza Hamilton Abegunde is a poet, teacher, birth doula, and an ancestral priest in the Yoruba Orisa tradition. Her poems have been anthologized in Gathering Ground, Beyond the Frontier: African American Poetry for the 21st Century, Knowing Stones: Poems of Exotic Places, and rhino. She is also the author of three poetry chapbooks and various collaborative projects and is a Cave Canem Fellow.
If it be warfare, let it be mistress
and midnight up that slope,
not reticent in a weather
of withdrawal, its salmon-roe tint,
the shabby grass it grazes
– Andrew Zawacki, “Any Other Eviction, Than The Frequent”
Read this interview with Andrew Zawacki from Cordite Poetry Review:
Michael Farrell Interviews Andrew Zawacki
In April this year, Michael Farrell and US poet Andrew Zawacki travelled to the Queenscliffe Festival of Words, catching a dose of cabin fever on the way – //0. Do you think Australian poets …
Begins in interruption:
an ambulance bell at the center
of sleep, the room tilts
sideways, furniture slides,
an octet of amber blue
verres à liqueur, one with a cut
– Andrew Zawacki, “[Begins in interruption…]”
Watch Andrew Zawacki read his work at the University of Richmond Writers’ Series:
Writers’ Series: Andrew Zawacki
American poet Andrew Zawacki reads from his third book, “Petals of Zero Petals of One. Zawacki’s work as a poet, editor and critic has been translated and published around the world. His first book, “By Reason of Breakings,” won the 2001 University of Georgia Contemporary Poetry Series, and work from his second collection, “Anabranch,” received the 2002 Cecil Hemley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America.
Listen to Patricia McMillen read her poem, “Fill ‘Er Up” on GLT’s Poetry Radio:
Listen to Duriel Harris’ poems here:
Four Poems by Duriel E. Harris
“Harris’s liberatory poetics move between text on the page, visual meanings, and sound meanings. It is in the last category where the poems chosen this month live, where they vibrate into the throat of what cannot otherwise be spoken.”
Read Duriel Harris’ article on poetics from The Volta:
http://www.thevolta.org/ewc55-dharris-p1.html
Watch Duriel Harris’ Thingification video from the Fresh Fruit Festival in New York City, 2013:
Duriel E. Harris’s Thingification Fresh Fruit Festival NYC July 2013 (Wild Project)–Mammy & Sarah
This is “Duriel E. Harris’s Thingification Fresh Fruit Festival NYC July 2013 (Wild Project)–Mammy & Sarah” by Duriel E Harris on Vimeo, the…
I come
from a family
that twice names
its own.
One name
for the world.
– Traci Dant, “A Twice Named Family”
Read this post about Traci Dant on The Brown Bookshelf:
Day 20: Traci Dant
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