Consider those sophisticated people in your life for whom purchasing a gift is always a source of anxiety. The art-lover with a keen and discerning eye; the fashion enthusiast with idiosyncratic style; the bookworm who, it seems, has read absolutely everything. What if there was one thoughtful and unique gift you could present to them…Read more 8 Reasons To Give The Gift Of Poetry This Season (via Bustle)
Natasha Trethewey turned to poetry to make sense of what happened after her mother was kidnapped and murdered more than three decades ago. In 1985, Trethewey’s stepfather pleaded guilty to the crime in DeKalb County and was sentenced to two consecutive life terms behind bars. Trethewey has said her first attempts at writing poetry about her…Read more Trethewey’s poetry retrospective digs deep, unearths truths (via Atlanta Journal Constitution)
Arizona State University Associate Professor Natalie Diaz has been named the Maxine and Jonathan Marshall Chair in Modern and Contemporary Poetry at Arizona State University. The endowed chair provides funds for an ASU professor in the Department of English who is “a major poet and rising star in the field of American poetry” to use for research,…Read more Natalie Diaz appointed Marshall endowed chair in poetry at ASU (via ASU)
Stepping up to a microphone to share poetry you’ve written can be terrifying. Kendra Steel can sympathize. She admits she once had to rely on liquid courage to do it. But now the 24-year-old poet from Everett has come to enjoy taking the mic. Steel attends Everett Poetry Night at Cafe Zippy on Thursdays. After…Read more Poetry helped her through tough time (via Herald Net)
The end of Tracy K. Smith’s reading in the Father Andrew P. Kashevaroff building sounded more like the wrap up of a comedy set than the conclusion of a visit from the U.S. poet laureate. For most of Wednesday evening’s event, as Smith read poems from her book, “Wade in the Water,” the audience was…Read more U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith brings poetry to the people (via Juneau Empire)
“What one cannot compute, one must poetize,” concludes a new interdisciplinary study of poetry, “Poetry and Mind: Tractatus Poetico-Philosophicus,” by Laurent Dubreuil, professor of comparative literature and Romance studies, and a member of the cognitive science program. While not a direct sequel to Dubreuil’s previous book, “The Intellective Space,” his new work shows how we…Read more New book analyzes poetry across the world (via Cornell Chronicle)
Click here to watch the video for Hummingbirds in the Trenches. Society begs us to pull up our bootstraps and fly to Venus / But when you keep us padlocked to trenches / It ain’t easy to show our genius. That’s Kondwani Fidel, a celebrated spoken-word poet from Baltimore, rapping about his experience growing up…Read more The Poetry of America’s Most Dangerous City (via The Atlantic)
