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)
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)
Bernal Heights resident Tongo Eisen-Martin has become San Francisco’s eighth poet laureate. Mayor London Breed and City Librarian Michael Lambert announced the selection Friday. He will succeed poet Kim Shuck in the role. “I’ve had the pleasure of working with Tongo when he was teaching artist at the African American Arts and Culture complex, and … Continue reading Tongo Eisen-Martin becomes San Francisco’s eighth poet laureate (San Francisco Examiner)
Full Title: "New Deep Vellum poetry editor found community among Dallas writers. Now, he’s helping lead it (via Dallas Morning News)" Anyone paying close attention to Dallas culture will remember 2014 as the year a literary scene began to emerge. It was the year the city’s first independent bookstore, The Wild Detectives, opened; the year … Continue reading New Deep Vellum poetry editor leads community of Dallas writers (via Dallas Morning News)
Over the past few months, Joy Harjo, the nation's poet laureate and the first Indigenous person in US history to hold the title, has been receiving a lot more emails and handwritten letters. She says many people have been writing to thank her for her poetry, share their own, or ask for verses to help them … Continue reading Meet Joy Harjo, the country’s first Indigenous poet laureate (via Business Insider)
While the pandemic might have stopped poets gathering physically, poetry itself is in good health. [In 2020] books of urgency and contemplation have jostled for attention, and striking new voices have emerged. Prime among these has been Will Harris, whose RENDANG (Granta) won the Forward prize for first collection. Harris writes with a piercing clarity and … Continue reading Best poetry books of 2020 (via Guardian)
In her stirring essay “The Difficult Miracle of Black Poetry in America,” June Jordan recalled serving as the final judge for a poetry prize in the mid-1980s. As she sifted through the last round of manuscripts, she began to jot down recurring nouns: moon, elms, lilac, gulley, tundra. “Sixteen different manuscripts of poetry written in 1985 and not one of them uses … Continue reading A Monumental and Rapturous New Anthology of Black American Poetry (via NY Times)
Diane di Prima, the most prominent woman among the male-dominated Beat poets, who after being immersed in the bohemian swirl of Greenwich Village in the 1950s moved to the West Coast and continued to publish prolifically in a wide range of forms, died on Sunday in San Francisco. She was 86. Her husband, Sheppard Powell, … Continue reading Diane di Prima, Poet of the Beat Era and Beyond, Dies at 86 (via NY Times)
The 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded to the US poet Louise Glück "for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal." She is the first American to win the prestigious award since Bob Dylan was honored in 2016. Toni Morrison was the last American to receive the prize … Continue reading Nobel Prize in Literature awarded to American poet Louise Glück (via CNN)
"The Age of Phillis,” a poetry collection by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, reimagines the life of Phillis Wheatley, a Black poet who achieved literary stardom as an enslaved young woman in colonial Boston. Though Wheatley, who died in 1784, left behind a sizable body of work, much of her biography has been recovered from the memoir … Continue reading The 2020 National Book Awards Longlist: Poetry (via The New Yorker)
