Kat Magill, founder and executive director of the organization Say Word, stumbled upon spoken word poetry at the age of 17. She said she was shaking while reading from the paper in her hands in front of a paltry group of ten people. But those ten people introduced her to something she had never experienced … Continue reading Youth Find Healing and Support in Spoken Word Poetry (via Epoch Times)
Cave Canem, a nonprofit group founded to nurture the work of African American poets, has won the National Book Foundation’s Literarian Award for service to the American literary community. This is the first time that the $10,000 prize has been awarded to an organization instead of an individual. Previous winners include Maya Angelou, Dave Eggers, Lawrence Ferlinghetti … Continue reading National Book Foundation honors group that supports African American poetry (via Washington Post)
I (and a few uncertain but optimistic friends) hopped on the D train and headed downtown for a night of poetry at the Sheen Center on Sept. 10. To some, this may sound strange, or even dreadful, but unlike the poetry one might read in his or her Texts and Contexts class, spoken word poetry … Continue reading A Night. Of Spoken Word. And Originality. (via The Fordham Ram)
On a particularly hot day this August, Tommy Pico explained his approach to the work of poetry. A book-length poem he wrote, “IRL,” will come out in September, and he had been giving readings and planning events. Pico grew up on the Viejas Reservation, near San Diego. His dad was a chairman of the reservation … Continue reading The Anger and Joy of a Native-American Poet in Brooklyn (via The New Yorker)
Within the pages of Frank Ocean’s new magazine Boys Don’t Cry lies a poem named “The MacDonald’s Man,” written by none other than Kanye West. Presented through a series of photographs in which the poem appears on retrofitted MacDonald’s drive-thru screens, “The MacDonald’s Man” is a typical Kanye West performance. It resists interpretations while, at the same … Continue reading What Kanye West Means for Poetry (via The Cornell Daily Sun)
When spoken word poet Asia Rainey came to Tupelo during her two-year artist residency through the Link Centre, she taught her workshops to teens in the Tupelo Police Athletic League. Now, she’s a full-time Tupelo resident and will continue spreading her knowledge of spoken word and creative writing to male and female PAL teens, ages … Continue reading Rainey, PAL partner for spoken word, writing workshops (via Daily Journal)
One of the country’s leading poets, Pulitzer Prize winner Sharon Olds, has won a $100,000 lifetime achievement award. The Academy of American Poets told The Associated Press on Wednesday that Olds had been given the Wallace Stevens Award for “proven mastery in the art of poetry.” Olds, 73, won the Pulitzer in 2013 for “Stag’s Leap.”She … Continue reading Sharon Olds wins $100,000 poetry prize (via Washington Post)
Julieta Corpus doesn’t consider herself a speaker. “I call myself a poet,” she said. As a confessional poet, she incorporates her personal stories into her poetry. At the young age of 10, she immigrated to the states. But before that Corpus, a Harlingen elementary school teacher, spent what she calls her formative years in Rio … Continue reading School teacher incorporates her life into poetry (via Valley Morning Star)
Watch the poem here! An eight-year veteran of Da Poetry Lounge (DPL), the mecca of L.A. slam poetry and spoken word, Yesika Salgado regularly performs her work in front of packed audiences, followers and die-hard fans taking in the artist’s carefully crafted, often bilingual, words, humor, and unfuckwittable self-expression. In addition to being a wordsmith, … Continue reading Fat, Fly, Salvadoran Poet Brings Body Positivity And Brown Girl Love To The Stage (via VIBE)
The great poet W.H. Auden famously — or infamously — observed, “poetry makes nothing happen.” Allen Ginsberg’s poetry, and his life, turn that tired truism neatly on its head. And if the poems didn’t quite make everything happen, they reflected the breadth of Ginsberg’s political sympathies. As Eliot Katz neatly summarizes in the preface to … Continue reading Summer Reading 2016: Poetry–When the Personal is Political (via NJ Spotlight)
