Poetry blog

We keep you updated on the world of poetry with our news roundups.

Recent posts

Resource of the Week: PENNsound

 

Last week"s announcement that a UK site called iPoetry was going to make poetry mp3"s available to iPod listeners for 50p a poem created a very small media buzz - that is to say, it hardly got a comment from the blogosphere. What little comment did get made was along the lines of this single sentence on the unsalability of poetry. Apparently, the ...

Growing Up Girl Released by Girlchild Press

 

Lauren K. Alleyne hails from the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. She is agraduate of the MFA program at Cornell University, where she currently teaches Creative Writing and Freshman writing seminars. Her work has appeared in Black Arts Quarterly, The Caribbean Writer, Sexing the Political, and The Hampden-Sydney Review. She is a Cave Canem fellow. Anonymous grew up laughing in the sun, playing in the ...

The Fifteen Minute Muse

 

What can you write in fifteen minutes? Or perhaps more pertinentily, do you keep your muse on tap? A new site on the cyberhorizon is pitting famous poets against each other in timed fifteen minute bouts. Quickmuse is the brainchild of Ken Gordon of Newton, Mass, who believes that improvisation keeps poetry fresh. "It doesn"t give poets a chance to be careful. It offers them ...

Larkin manuscript goes on sale

 

What"s a lost book of poems worth these days? If it"s your own poetry, the answer is probably "priceless", even if it wouldn"t fetch a dime at auction. The poems in this notebook were penned by the famed British poet Philip Larkin, though, and it"s expected to fetch $20,000 when the bookseller to whom it belongs puts it up for sale this week. According to ...

Thursday Resource: How to Find Any Poem

 

If you"ve ever got a line of poetry stuck in your head, or found yourself betting with a friend about who it was that penned the lines "Tyger Tyger burning bright", this week"s resources are just what you need. These three online poetry databases include searchable indexes of hundreds of thousands of poems by title, poet and text. Two will require that you have a ...

Celebrate Walt Whitman’s Birthday

 

Yes, it is - Walt Whitman was born on this day in 1819. Whitman is widely considered to be one of the most influential American poets of all time. Other poets, from Emerson to Ginsberg, reference his work and claim his influence. Whitman"s most famous works were Leaves of Grass (in several editions over his lifetime) and Drum Taps (eventually incorporated into Leaves ...

Poets Making a Difference Part II

 

Last month, we wrote about the Boston HipHop community pulling together to help bring peace and bring about social change. In the wake of four shooting deaths, the local poets and hip hop artists called upon the mayor of Boston to meet with them and help them help the city. It"s not unusual for poets to step up to the plate when there"s a ...

Solstice Summer Writers’ Conference

 

The Solstice Summer Writers" Conference will take place at Pine Manor College in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts June 16-24. Applications received by May 29 will receive priority consideration. The Solstice Writers Conference features daily lectures, workshops in poetry, fiction and creative non-fiction and nightly readings by noted writers and poets. This year"s poetry workshops will be led by Pulitzer-prize winning poet ...

Monday: The Poet’s Bookshelf

 

This week's bookshelf features two older favorites that are timeless in their artistry and information. Published in 1982 and 1968, Deutsch"s Poetry Handbook and Turco"s The Book of Forms offer enduring value to generation after generation of poet. There is a general belief that poets who embrace free verse scorn form and tradition, but nothing could be further from the truth. To examine the works of any contemporary poet is ...

New T.S. Eliot Letters to Be Published

 

AN ACADEMIC from York University is helping to unveil one of the 20th century"s most important literary archives, the bulk of which has been under wraps for more than 50 years, to the public. T. S. Eliot, the iconic contemporary poet, was a man intensely protective of his image, privacy and reputation. protective to the point that he openly asked friends and correspondents to burn his letters. For over two ...