Additional Info: Kito Fortune, performing "Black Love". About Button: Button Poetry is committed to developing a coherent and effective system of production, distribution, promotion and fundraising for spoken word and performance poetry. Information courtesy, YouTube
A bedrock principle of the prison abolitionist movement is that you don’t ask an incarcerated person what they’re in for. It’s more than etiquette. To eschew the identity that the punitive state assigns — which could be false — is to see someone whole. “Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done,” … Continue reading Is Poetry magazine “platforming toxicity” or promoting the “practice of freedom”? (via The Intercept)
Additional Info: Rola Alasmar, performing at Icehouse in Minneapolis, MN. About Button: Button Poetry is committed to developing a coherent and effective system of production, distribution, promotion and fundraising for spoken word and performance poetry. Information courtesy, YouTube
The title of Erin Belieu’s new book of poems, “Come-Hither Honeycomb” (Copper Canyon), is a compact gadget of a phrase that embodies her tinkerer’s style of found puns, verbal doodles, and word games. “Come-hither” is both invitation and command, an adjective that evolved from, but clings to, the imperative. It modifies the word it mirrors, … Continue reading Big Laughs and Hard Silences in Erin Belieu’s Poetry (via The New Yorker)
Additional Info: George The Poet reflects on the Power of Collaboration during the time of #Covid19 and recorded this poem for this years' virtual Skoll World Forum for Social Entrepreneurship. George "The Poet" Mpanga is a London-born spoken word performer of Ugandan heritage. His innovative brand of musical poetry has won him critical acclaim both … Continue reading (Video) George the Poet | The Power of Collaboration
Mark Lanegan will release a new book of 76 poems, Leaving California, this spring. His publisher, Heartworm Press, is likening the book to a sequel to 2020 memoir Sing Backwards and Weep, the brooding singer-songwriter’s gritty elegy for the grunge era in Seattle, where he was once the frontman for Screaming Trees. The book will … Continue reading Mark Lanegan’s New Poetry Book ‘Leaving California’ to Follow Up Grunge Memoir (via Rolling Stone)
Additional Info: About Button: Button Poetry is committed to developing a coherent and effective system of production, distribution, promotion and fundraising for spoken word and performance poetry. Information courtesy, YouTube
Bhanu Kapil has won the most valuable award in British poetry, the TS Eliot prize, for her “radical and arresting” collection How to Wash a Heart, in which she depicts the uncomfortable dynamics between an immigrant and her white, middle-class host. In the collection, Kapil’s immigrant guest addresses her liberal host, exploring how “it’s exhausting … Continue reading Bhanu Kapil wins TS Eliot poetry prize for ‘radical’ How to Wash a Heart (via Guardian)
Additional Info: Sarah Kay performs "Table Games" Information courtesy, YouTube
Click here to view the video for Amanda Gorman's "The Hill We Climb." President Joe Biden and VP Kamala Harris ostensibly were the main attractions on Inauguration Day. But Amanda Gorman stole the show with her reading of uplifting poem “The Hill We Climb,” becoming an overnight media and internet star. The work by Gorman, 22, the youngest poet to … Continue reading Poet Amanda Gorman Goes From Inauguration Star to Internet Sensation (via Variety)
