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A WORLD’S WORTH OF READING IN POETRY
Poetry 360º: March 2016
February 29, 2016
2. The first Women of the World Poetry Slam will take place 9-12 March at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. American poet Mahogany L. Browne, who is the event’s coordinator, was featured recently on the PBS News Hour for their #BriefButSpectacular segment.
3. Poetry as code? ‘Poem Viewer is a web-based tool for visualizing poems in support of close reading . . . You can either start creating your own visualization for your chosen poem or have a look at a collection of sample visualizations that we have created’.
4. Or code as poetry? ‘Apple says it will not help the FBI unlock an iPhone used by one of the terrorists who killed 14 people in San Bernardino in December . . . One leg of Apple’s argument is that the computer code it writes to run iPhones is a kind of speech, which should be protected under the First Amendment. In a filing linked to Apple’s motion, the company’s manager of user privacy even likened it to poetry’.
5. ‘I can’t speak for the motivations of any of these literary renegades, but as a writer-translator myself, I’ve found that translation begins with the prefix “trans” for a reason. Like transcendence and transformation, it requires an acceptance of progressing with uncertainty . . . To turn to one’s own writing after translating is to cross there with one’s mind already in motion, and emboldened from the verbal leaps and linguistic freefall that translation demands’. At the LitHub, an essay on writing while translating by Idra Novey, American poet and Portuguese-English translator.
6. In China, several annual reports on poetry were published in February. In summary, the reports present 2015 as the year of poetry for peasants and the working class. 2015 publications also included President Xi Jinping’s speech from the 2014 National Forum of the Literature and Arts, which re-asserted the principle of a ‘literature for the people’, as well as the party’s push for greater control of literature. Additionally, there were two large-scale ‘poetry concerts’ in Beijing this past month, both featuring bright red on the stage, the color of the Communist party.
7. At the Paris Review, Daniel Johnson describes Mexican author Homero Aridjis’ newly published book, Child Poet, as ‘something of a dream memoir, composed of vignettes that Aridjis re-experienced as vivid memories in 1971, when his wife was pregnant with his daughter, Chloe. The childhood years chronicled in the book were lost to him at age eleven, when he accidentally shot himself with a shotgun his brothers had left in his bedroom – an experience that inspired him to write poems’. (Aridjis has been a guest at the Poetry International Festival five times, between 1973 and 1996.)
8. Sudanese-American poet Safia Elhillo won the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets, for her manuscript Asmarani; the manuscript will be published next year from the University of Nebraska Press. The judges for the Sillerman Prize include Chris Abani, Bernardine Evaristo, Matthew Shenoda, Gabeba Baderoon, John Keene and Kwame Dawes.
9. A beautiful essay on the ‘27th letter’, the ampersand, by Mairead Small Staid, presented by our USA partner, the Poetry Foundation. This essay features the poetry of Larry Levis, whose profile was published last year on our website.
10. Ta-Nehisi Coates, author of Between the world and me, began writing through poetry: ‘That is all my training as a poet in that book, right there. The kind of lyricism I was trying to evoke. The repetition of the body. The repetition of the people who think they're white. All of that comes out of my poetic training’. Read the full interview here.
At the beginning of each month, Poetry International – guided by its various national editors – brings its readers the most noteworthy, informative and conversation-sparking content we’ve encountered on the web, all related to poetry around the world. Consider this your passport to what’s happening in international poetry today.
1. Egyptian poet – and 2007 Poetry International Festival guest – Fatima Naoot has received a three-year prison sentence for a Facebook post criticizing the Eid Al-Adha’s tradition of slaughtering sheep, which has been deemed blasphemous. Read more about her trial here, and you can find a petition for her release here.2. The first Women of the World Poetry Slam will take place 9-12 March at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. American poet Mahogany L. Browne, who is the event’s coordinator, was featured recently on the PBS News Hour for their #BriefButSpectacular segment.
3. Poetry as code? ‘Poem Viewer is a web-based tool for visualizing poems in support of close reading . . . You can either start creating your own visualization for your chosen poem or have a look at a collection of sample visualizations that we have created’.
4. Or code as poetry? ‘Apple says it will not help the FBI unlock an iPhone used by one of the terrorists who killed 14 people in San Bernardino in December . . . One leg of Apple’s argument is that the computer code it writes to run iPhones is a kind of speech, which should be protected under the First Amendment. In a filing linked to Apple’s motion, the company’s manager of user privacy even likened it to poetry’.
5. ‘I can’t speak for the motivations of any of these literary renegades, but as a writer-translator myself, I’ve found that translation begins with the prefix “trans” for a reason. Like transcendence and transformation, it requires an acceptance of progressing with uncertainty . . . To turn to one’s own writing after translating is to cross there with one’s mind already in motion, and emboldened from the verbal leaps and linguistic freefall that translation demands’. At the LitHub, an essay on writing while translating by Idra Novey, American poet and Portuguese-English translator.
6. In China, several annual reports on poetry were published in February. In summary, the reports present 2015 as the year of poetry for peasants and the working class. 2015 publications also included President Xi Jinping’s speech from the 2014 National Forum of the Literature and Arts, which re-asserted the principle of a ‘literature for the people’, as well as the party’s push for greater control of literature. Additionally, there were two large-scale ‘poetry concerts’ in Beijing this past month, both featuring bright red on the stage, the color of the Communist party.
7. At the Paris Review, Daniel Johnson describes Mexican author Homero Aridjis’ newly published book, Child Poet, as ‘something of a dream memoir, composed of vignettes that Aridjis re-experienced as vivid memories in 1971, when his wife was pregnant with his daughter, Chloe. The childhood years chronicled in the book were lost to him at age eleven, when he accidentally shot himself with a shotgun his brothers had left in his bedroom – an experience that inspired him to write poems’. (Aridjis has been a guest at the Poetry International Festival five times, between 1973 and 1996.)
8. Sudanese-American poet Safia Elhillo won the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets, for her manuscript Asmarani; the manuscript will be published next year from the University of Nebraska Press. The judges for the Sillerman Prize include Chris Abani, Bernardine Evaristo, Matthew Shenoda, Gabeba Baderoon, John Keene and Kwame Dawes.
9. A beautiful essay on the ‘27th letter’, the ampersand, by Mairead Small Staid, presented by our USA partner, the Poetry Foundation. This essay features the poetry of Larry Levis, whose profile was published last year on our website.
10. Ta-Nehisi Coates, author of Between the world and me, began writing through poetry: ‘That is all my training as a poet in that book, right there. The kind of lyricism I was trying to evoke. The repetition of the body. The repetition of the people who think they're white. All of that comes out of my poetic training’. Read the full interview here.
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