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)
Poetry is boring. And difficult. At least that’s what Journie Rodriguez thought at the beginning of the just-completed school year. By the end of the school year, however, the King Elementary fifth-grader had changed her mind. Her English class took part in Poetry Paths, a program that teaches students in the School District of Lancaster…Read more Poetry program helps Lancaster students express themselves (via Lancaster Online)
In half a decade, the number of U.S. adults who are reading poetry has nearly doubled. That's according to the results of a new survey by the National Endowment for the Arts, which announced Thursday that "as a share of the total U.S. adult population, this poetry readership is the highest on record over a…Read more Poetry Is Making A Big Comeback In The U.S., Survey Results Reveal (via NPR)
Full Title: "Celebrating poetry in its mass-market moment ahead of 2018 Griffin Prize gala" “Poets are among the hardest working writers,” says Kevin Williams, who would know first-hand: As the publisher of Talonbooks, he’s worked with 2017 Griffin Poetry Prize-winner Jordan Abel and 2018 nominee Donato Mancini and is familiar with the challenges faced by…Read more Celebrating poetry ahead of 2018 Griffin Prize gala (via Globe and Mail)
Acclaimed memoirist Mary Karr has just published "Tropic of Squalor," a new collection of poetry. Included in the collection are poems about her family, her relationship with God and David Foster Wallace, with whom she had an abusive relationship. Interview Highlights On her volatile relationship with David Foster Wallace "I had a relationship, he had the volatile…Read more Memoirist Mary Karr On God, Poetry And Her Own #MeToo Moments (via WBUR)
