Popping on briefly with my hair on fire to say Hurray for World Poetry Review! The new issue has twelve poems from Yari Bernasconi's La Casa Vuota that I had the pleasure of translating from Italian earlier this year.
worldpoetryreview.org
#yaribernasconi
#poetsofinstagram
#worldpoetryreview
Waywiser Books, the 501(3)(c) US-based successor to the UK's venerable Waywiser Press, is now running the 21st Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize, to be judged by A.E. Stallings. Deadline December 1, 2025. We want to read your poems!
www.waywiserbooks.org/the-anthony-...
It was a pleasure to talk with the delightful Gregory Dowling for the Italian journal Oltreoceano on themes of exile in my new book, A Gaze Hound That Hunteth By The Eye. (English version here, and you can click for the Italian PDF if you wish.)
riviste.lineaedizioni.it/index.php/ol...
University presses! We love them! It was a pleasure to talk to LitHub about some of the reasons why university presses are crucial for poetry...
lithub.com/art-liberty-...
A smorgasboard of poets to kick off the the cruelest month ...
ridgefieldlibrary.librarymarket.com/event/poems-...
Tonight! There's also a livestream option for those who can't join in person in DC...
www.folger.edu/whats-on/202...
Tomorrow night! DC area poetry fans! Come on down! I'm kvelling for Julia Thacker's fantastic TO WILDNESS, hot off the press from The Waywiser Press!
www.folger.edu/whats-on/202...
For International Women's Day, a poem from a while back. I keep hoping this one will become a historical curiosity, but alas.
www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazi...
Lovely! No grammar police needed, only ancient stars.
I got laid off today, with the rest of 18F.
18F was an elite federal software shop. We made gov't websites work better, more efficiently for the American people. We saved taxpayers from getting screwed over by contractors. And were fired for it.
We made this website to tell our story:
18f.org
In the midst of madness, how good to have the happier bafflement of poems to translate! I'm working on Yari Bernasconi's La Casa Vuota these days, and here's a flashback to a few from his terrific Nuovi Giorni di Polvere.
#yaribernasconi
www.asymptotejournal.com/poetry/new-d...
Ah! How nice to log on -- amid the burning of Rome aka in Washington, D.C.-- and find this new heartening venture afoot. Save my soul once again, poems!
Know any emerging French translators? Two Lines Press has partnered with Peirene Press in the UK to award the Stevns Translation Prize. Check out the details here (which includes a retreat in the French Pyrenees mountains!). Tell all your Francophone friends www.stevnstranslationprize.com/2025-prize
Translators! A grant for early career folks from Words Without Borders:
wordswithoutborders.org/read/article...
I was asked to pass this on to POETS...please share.
covidmemorialmonument.org/poem-sub/
dear god, thank you.
You have questions. Mostly of the "What Can I Do to Resist This Coup?" variety. Choose Democracy has answers. Here's a really handy guide to the how/what/why of organizing... Share widely. Link here: choosedemocracy.us/what-can-i-do/
Insect appreciation post! 1) Past: With Daniel Kobamelo and termite mound in Botswana c 2013 on an Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Scholarship. 2) Present: CT nature friends, a house bill on pesticides that needs written testimony by 2/19--easy to do w/ this link.
ctpesticidereform.org/so/3aPJtrkur...
On January 20, the White House issued an executive order stating that the United States government will only recognize two sexes, male and female, as defined “at conception.” The ripple effect of this order will undoubtedly affect public schools, public libraries, and the literature that is shelved in both. Among the many harms it causes, the order targeting transgender, intersex, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming Americans threatens unconstitutional censorship that could have a grave impact on literature for years to come. In dismissing trans, intersex, and nonbinary identities, the order blacklists LGBTQIA+ literature and invites the government to dictate the perspectives, beliefs, and identities that can exist in public forums receiving federal funding, amounting to financial coercion through the arbitrary withholding of funds. This censorship may begin with LGBTQIA+ perspectives, but it will not end there: allowing the government to censor one group erodes the First Amendment rights of all Americans, creating a precedent for silencing dissenting voices.
If allowed to stand, the order will create new funding requirements imposed not only on federal entities, but private citizens and institutions who contract with them. Those requirements can and will be manipulated to dictate speech. The broader chilling effect on literature could be even harder to undo. Writers rely on funding from sources like the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, as well as the state-level institutions they fund. Trans, nonbinary, and intersex experience is vastly underrepresented in literature but disproportionately targeted by bans. During the 2022-2023 school year, 30% of books banned included LGBTQIA+ characters or themes. Such censorship robs us of perspectives that enrich the American story. Though the executive order in question tries to paint LGBTQIA+ people and allies as bullies enforcing their perspective on others through “legal and other socially coercive means,” that’s exactly what the order itself does, just as book-banning pressure groups have done since 2020 in school boards and libraries around the country. The fate of trans, intersex, and nonbinary people is not a political ideology, it’s a matter of human rights, civil rights, and freedom of expression. Government erosion of those rights should concern all Americans, regardless of their investment in LGBTQIA+ literature specifically.
This executive order is censorship, pure and simple, and it has no place in a free society. It must be rescinded or stayed as soon as possible, and at the latest, before the earliest implementation deadline, February 19, 2025. Financially blacklisting trans, intersex, and non-binary perspectives will rob us of a vital literature yet to be written while insulting the dignity of LGBTQIA+ people everywhere. This return to McCarthyism by other means is a leap backwards to a grim chapter of American history. Sincerely, the undersigned, American Booksellers Association American Booksellers for Free Expression Andrews McMeel Annie's Foundation Audio Publishers Association Authors Against Book Bans Berry Powell Press Cardinal Rule Press Charlesbridge Publishing Chestnut Publishing House Comic Book Legal Defense Fund Deborah Sloan and Company and Kidsbuzz Developmental Texts Empowering Latino Futures EveryLibrary Firewater Media Group Florida Freedom to Read Project Foreword Reviews Freedom to Read Project Gryphon Publishing Consulting, LLC Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA) IngramSpark Judging by the Cover: A Bookstore Lafayette Citizens Against Censorship Lambda Literary Latino 247 Media Group Lee Wind, author Levine Querido Library Futures Livingston Parish Library Alliance Louisiana Citizens Against Censorship Macmillan Children's Publishing Group The National Book Critics Circle National Coalition Against Censorship NorthSouth Books Nosy Crow Patagonia Publishers and Writers of San Diego and Orange County PEN America PFLAG Fresno PubWest Rattling Good Yarns Press Read Freely Alabama Red Comet Press LLC Rutherford County Library Alliance Sara Paretsky, Writer SCBWI SEAT SparkPoint Studio St Tammany Library Alliance Stone Bridge Press Texas Freedom to Read Project Walker Books Group for Candlewick Press, Holiday House Books, and Peachtree Publishing We Need Diverse Books
Logos of the organizations that have signed the statement.
Statement on the Trump Administration’s January 20, 2025
Executive Order Targeting Transgender, Intersex, Nonbinary, and Gender-Nonconforming Americans:
One thing I love about teaching environmental writing (alongside getting to take students on the campus tree walk🌲) is sharing all sorts of new writing with them, like this latest from @poetjs.bsky.social at the always exciting @ecotonemagazine.bsky.social ...
Yay! More books, more poems, more novels, more cnf, more love for all lives.
Sanity!
(Don't trust any flower-lovers who think it's okay to defund botanists and the EPA.)🌷
They are altogether elsewhere--although there is no elsewhere for all this fallout to fall...
Poetry hero heart heart heart
Weenie bit of bright news.
CT pharmacists can now prescribe birth control; Plan B in vending machine at UConn www.courant.com/2025/02/04/c...
Wonderful! (And serenaded by the Hellenic Air Force Band--love it!)
Hello, hello... hello? This is not good.
Elon Musk’s Team Now Has Access to Treasury’s Payments System www.nytimes.com/2025/02/01/u...
I wish this were just a creative writing exercise.
www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/musk-s-jun...
