recent interviews, news, and poetry

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I gave an interview yesterday with The Nebraska Girls Lit Hour. It was such fun! I’ve been listening to the interviews Wyatt Underwood and Melissa Alvarado post for some time and have enjoyed listening to them speak with Molly Peacock, Eloise Klein Healy, and many other fabulous poets and writers others. In my interview, I spoke about the letterpress books Farm Hands (2:10-7:50) and Unclose the Door (7:56-46:00), the full-length book Sprung, (58:58-60:52) and the anthology I edited Women Write Resistance: Poets Resist Gender Violence (46:04-56:28). (I’m including the times, in case you want to zip to a particular book in the interview.) Thanks Melissa and Wyatt!

 

I was also included in a feature by Shelby Fleig “Spring Stanzas: Professors Pick Poetry Month Favorites” in the Daily Nebraskan with Ted Kooser, Grace Bauer, and Stacey Waite. We discussed our favorite poem. Here’s the picks: “The Listeners” by Walter de la Mare, “Musée des Beaux Arts” by W.H. Auden. “Poem For People That Are Understandably Too Busy To Read Poetry” by Stephen Dunn, and “Her Kind” by Anne Sexton.

 

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Finally, in poetry related news, a feature by Shelby Fleig “UNL lecturer Laura Wiseman curates collection of women’s ‘resistance’ poetry” that runs in the Daily Nebraskan today includes interviews with WWR poets Deborah McGinn, Lucy Adkins, and Marjorie Saiser. Here’s Deborah :

“It was not the appeal of gathering tragedies, but gathering truth, restoration, healing and moving on when possible,” McGinn said. “Nothing is hidden in shame.”

Marge:

“The message we get from our culture is that poems about violence toward women should not be published,” Saiser said. “Keep still and write about something nice. Violence against women: don’t talk about it.”

Lucy:

“This collection deals courageously with difficult and dangerous subjects in a way I have not encountered before,” Adkins said. “The different voices, coming one after another, after another have a cumulative power that I believe will endure for a long, long time.”

Wow. I am endlessly amazed by the fine poets in this anthology. They truly astonish me and I am grateful for their work.

call for poems on gender violence

Here’s the CFP for anyone who has poems about gender violence and violence against women:

WOMEN WRITE RESISTANCE: POETS RESIST GENDER VIOLENCE (Blue Light Press, 2013), a new anthology of American poets, seeks poetry submissions to round out the collection. The poets in this anthology intervene in the ways violence against women is perceived in American culture by deploying techniques to challenge those narratives and make alternatives visible. See description below. More information: https://www.facebook.com/WomenWriteResistancePoetsResistGenderViolence or https://www.facebook.com/events/338957122853722/

There are two ways to submit:

Submit 1-3 unpublished poems in the body of the email or as a doc to <womenwriteresistance(at)gmail.com> (replace (at) with @ in sending e-mail). This is the preferred submission.

Or: Submit 1-3 previously published poems in the body of the email or as a doc to <womenwriteresistance(at)gmail.com> (replace (at) with @ in sending e-mail). For this submission, please also include the following: 1) the title of your poem; 2) the name of the book, journal, or anthology where it originally appeared; 3) the name of the press or journal who published it; 4) the year or issue it was published. Please double check to make sure that you as the author retain the rights to this poem(s) or that it can be reprinted at no cost other than acknowledgement to the original source.

Please also include in your submission a bio (50-100 words) and a mailing address. Deadline for submissions is September 30, 2012.

Contributors include Kristin Abraham, Lucy Adkins, Lana Hetchman Ayers, Wendy Barker, Ellen Bass, Grace Bauer, Kimberly L. Becker, Laure-Anne Bosselaar, Shevaun Brannigan, Kristy Bowen, Susana H. Case, Joy Castro, Allison Hedge Coke, Sandi Day, Jehanne Dubrow, Rain C. Goméz, Megan Gannon, Judy Grahn, Nicole Hospital-Medina, Judy Juanita, Julie Kane, Susan Kelly-Dewitt, Paula Kolek, Alexis Krasilovsky, Marianne Kunkel, Lisa Lewis, Lyn Lifshin, Frannie Lindsay, Ellaraine Lockie, Alison Luterman, Marie-Elizabeth Mali, Leslie Adrienne Miller, Deborah A. Miranda, Linda McCarriston, Dawn McGuire, Sara Luise Newman, Claire Ortalda, Cati Porter, Laura Van Prooyen, Natanya Ann Pulley, Carol Quinn, Hilda Raz, Kimberly Roppolo, Lucinda Roy, Carly Sachs, Marjorie Saiser, Maureen Seaton, B. T. Shaw, Kathleen Tyler, Judith Vollmer, Davi Walders, Tana Jean Welch, Judy Wells, Rosemary Winslow, Karenne Wood, Andrena Zawinski, and many, many others.

WOMEN WRITE RESISTANCE: POETS RESIST GENDER VIOLENCE (Blue Light Press, 2013) views poetry as a transformative art. By deploying techniques to challenge narratives about violence against women and making alternatives to that violence visible, the American poets in WOMEN WRITE RESISTANCE intervene in the ways gender violence is perceived in American culture. A poem from a victim’s perspective, for example, might use explicit imagery but also show the emotional consequences often obscured when newspapers, video games, films, and television programs depict violence in superficial or sexualized ways. A poet might also critique dominant narratives, such as calling into question the perception that certain women deserved to be raped.

The introduction, which draws on the work of Tami Spry, Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, and Chela Sandoval, frames the intellectual work behind the building of the anthology by describing how poets break silence, disrupt narratives, and use strategic anger to fight for change. Poetry of resistance distinguishes itself by a persuasive rhetoric that asks readers to act. The anthology’s stance believes poetry can compel action using both rhetoric and poetic techniques to motivate readers. In their deployment of these techniques, poets of resistance claim the power to name and talk about gender violence in and on their own terms. Indeed, these poets fight for change by revising justice and framing poetry as action.