Getting to Know Anne Whitehouse & Her New Book, Outside From the Inside
Getting To Know Anne Whitehouse & Her New Book, Outside From The Inside
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Meet Karen Skolfield, Northampton’s Poet Laureate
Poets Laureate Across Massachusetts A note from the interviewer, Alice Kociemba Poetry has become an integral part of the social fabric of Northampton and its surrounding towns. I had heard about Northampton’s local-poem-in-every-menu during restaurant week before...
Quintin Collins’s “The Dandelion Speaks of Survival” & Martha McCollough’s “Spring Moon” (Lily Poetry Review)
The Dandelion Speaks of Survival Quintin Collins When they see me rise, a nebula of coronas, sun-burst spires strewn among their bluegrass lawns,they will come for me. When my roots fan a mazearound their chrysanthemums, interlace a cagearound their petunias, grab the...
Tamara Fricke’s “Hope” & Marian Kent’s “Progression” (Meat for Tea)
Hope by Tamara Fricke these are dismal times;the rent is late, bills go unpaid, bleakness swaddles apathy like a new born and nurses overwhelming fear. tenderness, so easily forgotten,gets lost in the empty refrigerator or tossed out with the spoilt milk. it’s easy to...
Getting To Know Kirun Kapur & Her New Book, Women In The Waiting Room
When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover that you wanted to write poems? I was lucky to grow up in a house where poetry and storytelling were loved. My father knew lots of poems by heart and lines of poetry, in both Urdu and Persian, were frequently...
Meet Juan Matos, Worcester’s Poet Laureate
Poets Laureate Across Massachusetts Meet Juan Matos, Worcester’s Poet Laureate When did your city or town decide to establish a poet laureate position? Is there a length of time the poet laureate serves?Distinguish poet, Gertrude Halstead, was Worcester’s first Poet...
Cynthia Manick’s “There Are No Unsacred Spaces” & Sasha West’s “The Long Emergency” (AGNI)
There Are No Unsacred Spaces by Cynthia Manick I’m trying to tell you that the world is beautiful. All thehellos we say in a week, or month, the way the groovesof the grin know what to do. Think about the first timeman went from four legs, hairy knuckles folded over,...
Amy Dryansky’s “Because the world has its own version of solace” & Jane Wong “A Cosmology”(The Massachusetts Review)
Because the world has its own version of solace by Amy Dryansky in a field of decapitated corn stalkson the corner of Reed’s Bridge and Elma flock of wild turkeys scratchedas if something nourishing remainedbetween the rows of dry stubble.They interrupted a...
Michael Angel Martín’s “Retreat to Saint Leo Abbey” & Jonathan Blake’s “Prayer” (The Worcester Review)
Retreat to Saint Leo Abbey by Michael Angel Martín When a long-loosened windshield Wiper snaps off the bumperless Mazda And gets snatched up into a night-storm Erupting on the drive’s final stretch,I don’t think I’ll make it. But I do, Even if hours past compline....
Meet Stephan Delbos, Plymouth’s Poet Laureate
Poets Laureate Across Massachusetts A note from the interviewer, Alice Kociemba I remember the surveys the Mass Poetry Festival team would send out to gauge the impact the festival had on Salem’s economy (Did you stay in a hotel? Did you eat in a restaurant? Did you...
Getting To Know Jeffrey Harrison & His New Book, Between Lakes
When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover that you wanted to write poems? My first encounter must have been with nursery rhymes, but my earliest recollection of poetry is of my mother reciting A.A Milne’s “Disobedience,” a poem that begins, “James...
Ada Limón’s “Abecedarian for the Future” & Joe Pan’s “Tomorrow” (jubilat)
Abecedarian for the Future by Ada Limón All the old gray gods have fallenback to their static realms of mythcleared from the benches, thrones,dragged kicking to their stone tombs,each one grizzled by their swift exilefrayed, bedraggled, forced to kneel,give up their...
Anne Whitehouse’s “Signs” & Yi-Wen Huang’s “Quarantine Time” (Oddball Magazine)
Signs by Anne Whitehouse A brief April snow disrupted our spring.Amid clumps of snow, daffodilsnodded in the icy breeze. A glaze of snowflakes sugared the hyacinths. I worried for them and the tender lettuces,red and green, I’d only just planted.But the sun came out;...
Getting To Know Amarylis Douglas & Her New Book, The Fellowship Of The Rain
When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover that you wanted to write poems? In the early 1970’s, while home from college for the summer, I took a summer writing class at Berkshire Community College, with Ron Atkinson (author of Looking for My Name). He...
Meet Magdalena Gómez, Springfield’s Poet Laureate
Poets Laureate Across Massachusetts A note from the interviewer, Alice Kociemba Poetry has a natural kinship with music, story telling, and theater, as Magdalena Gómez, Poet Laureate of Springfield keenly appreciates. In this second spotlight on the Commonwealth’s...
Julia Story’s “Barely There” & Beth Suter’s “Portmanteau Prayer for Moms” (Salamander Magazine)
Barely There by Julia Story I had touched the weepingbirch in the cemetery so manytimes that there was a smallmark, a grease mark or wornplace where my hand hadrested, trying to feel thespinning that connected itto some invisible undergroundpathway. The cranial...
Meet Lloyd Schwartz, Somerville’s Poet Laureate
Poets Laureate Across Massachusetts A note from the interviewer, Alice Kociemba Many years ago now, I attended a panel discussion at a Mass Poetry Festival in Salem by New England poets laureate from Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Rhode Island and Connecticut. Sadly,...
Traci Brimhall’s “Contender” & Malachi Black’s “Indirect Light” (Ploughshares)
Contender by Traci Brimhall It’s alright to overdress for the riot. Your rage is stunning.It’s alright to pursue the wrong pleasures and the right suffering.Here’s my permission. Take it. It’s alright to replace a siren with a bell. Let the emergency make some music....
Getting To Know Lindsay Illich & Her New Book, Fingerspell
When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover that you wanted to write poems? Ok, so I need to tell you that a month ago, our house was destroyed in a fire. In my head, I say it like I would as a kid--our house burned down. I needed to start with saying...
Kiese Laymon’s “And Blue” (Boston Review)
And Blue by Kiese Laymon All our irony and stretch marks and knowing nods and creations and trifling ways and imagination and sight beyond sight and dignity in the face of murder and lies that sound truthful and the truth that sound lied up and porches and...
Carole A. Stasiowski’s “Horseshoe Crabs off Loop Beach, Cape Cod, Mid-September” & Kate Rushin’s “Black Memorabilia: Indian Blood” (Cape Cod Poetry Review)
Horseshoe Crabs off Loop Beach, Cape Cod, Mid-September by Carole A. Stasiowski I don’t expect this extravagance of death, a thousand and more ...