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A world’s worth of reading in poetry
Poetry 360º: February 2016
February 02, 2016
2. The T. S. Eliot Prize row: ‘is the winner too young, beautiful – and Chinese?’ asks regular Poetry International contributor (via our partner, the Poetry Society), Katy Evans-Bush. Evans-Bush critiques the storm surrounding Sarah Howe’s win for her debut collection Loop of Jade, which displays the ‘male-centric media’s’ discomfort with a 30-something woman winning a major book award. The silver lining: it also produced the remarkable hashtag #derangedpoetess.
3. ‘Writing in the Korea Times shortly after 2015’s prize announcements were made, the former California congressman Jay Kim, who was born in South Korea, lamented his motherland’s failure, once again, to produce a Nobel laureate in any category. “It is rather an embarrassing lack of achievement for this economic powerhouse,” he wrote’. Well, that’s one way to look at it. The New Yorker asks, ‘Can a Big Government Push Bring the Nobel Prize in Literature to South Korea?’, with a spotlight on poet Ko Un.
4. 2015 was the year ‘the white room’ of American poetry fell apart. Alexis Clements at Hyperallergic on last year’s Kenneth Goldsmith/Vanessa Place/‘Yi-Fen Chou’ controversies and how to move from the room you’re in to the room where you want to be.
5. Critic and Harvard University professor Stephen Burt remembers the great American poet C. D Wright at the LA Times: ‘Wright was our most democratic, most trustworthy major poet in 50, if not 100, years. I wish more writers – more people – could be more like her’.
6. Kobus Moolman wins the Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry for his collection, A Book of Rooms. Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer wins the VSB Poetry Prize, for best Dutch-language collection, for Idyllen (Idylls). The finalists of the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and the National Book Critics Circle award are announced.
At the beginning of each month, Poetry International – guided by its various national editors – will bring its readers the most noteworthy, informative and conversation-sparking content we’ve encountered on the internet, all related to poetry around the world. Consider this your passport to what’s happening in international poetry today.
1. On 14 January, readings were organized around the world to show solidarity with Palestinian poet and artist Ashraf Fayadh, who was sentenced to death by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (this subsequently has been changed to 8 years imprisonment and 800 lashes). For the occasion, ArabLit.org collected translations of Fayadh’s poetry – in English, Turkish, French and more – which can be read here. 2. The T. S. Eliot Prize row: ‘is the winner too young, beautiful – and Chinese?’ asks regular Poetry International contributor (via our partner, the Poetry Society), Katy Evans-Bush. Evans-Bush critiques the storm surrounding Sarah Howe’s win for her debut collection Loop of Jade, which displays the ‘male-centric media’s’ discomfort with a 30-something woman winning a major book award. The silver lining: it also produced the remarkable hashtag #derangedpoetess.
3. ‘Writing in the Korea Times shortly after 2015’s prize announcements were made, the former California congressman Jay Kim, who was born in South Korea, lamented his motherland’s failure, once again, to produce a Nobel laureate in any category. “It is rather an embarrassing lack of achievement for this economic powerhouse,” he wrote’. Well, that’s one way to look at it. The New Yorker asks, ‘Can a Big Government Push Bring the Nobel Prize in Literature to South Korea?’, with a spotlight on poet Ko Un.
4. 2015 was the year ‘the white room’ of American poetry fell apart. Alexis Clements at Hyperallergic on last year’s Kenneth Goldsmith/Vanessa Place/‘Yi-Fen Chou’ controversies and how to move from the room you’re in to the room where you want to be.
5. Critic and Harvard University professor Stephen Burt remembers the great American poet C. D Wright at the LA Times: ‘Wright was our most democratic, most trustworthy major poet in 50, if not 100, years. I wish more writers – more people – could be more like her’.
6. Kobus Moolman wins the Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry for his collection, A Book of Rooms. Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer wins the VSB Poetry Prize, for best Dutch-language collection, for Idyllen (Idylls). The finalists of the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and the National Book Critics Circle award are announced.
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