NewPages Blog

Ah, spring has (almost) returned to Michigan. The NewPages CEO and second-in-command have enjoyed our first “porch beer” – albeit wearing layered sweatshirts. Still, the sun is shining, the spring rains and the hurricane winds are reduced to intermittent. Time to get back to postering poetry around the city. A staple gun and a backpack filled with a variety of poems, my dog as cover (just a lady out walking her dog…), I staple up poems to utility poles along my route.

Of course, poems can come from any source, but I try to keep them short enough to be read quickly, one page with large font, or if it’s longer, eye-catching helps (like the Broadsided Press monthly vector poems). I also try to maintain some sensibility for the fact that kids may be reading these, so try to make them “safe” as well as appealing. Can’t hit every audience, but when postering near the schools or parks, I tend more for those kid-friendly poems.

One year, on Memorial Day, I noticed youthful handwriting on a posting and saw that some neighborhood kids had written their own poems honoring local troops and tacked them up where I had been posting poems. Pretty darn cool. Guerrilla poetry works. Try it yourself! Staple gun. Poems. Go!

[Pictured: “The Second Fallacy.” Poem by C. Dale Young; Art by Amy Meissner; Design by Debbie Nadolney. Broadsided April 1, 2014.]

Our buddy M. Scott Douglass at Main Street Rag has an invitational for readers and Harley fans alike. He is a MAJOR collector of Harley-Davidson t-shirts. Apparently, THE t-shirt is a big deal among fans… So, buy Scott a Harley t-shirt from your local Harley shop (around $30), send it to him, and he’ll give you a two-year subscription to Main Street Rag (worth $45).

Specs from Scott: “Must be a short sleeve t-shirt, XL, color… I’m not a brown or pink kinda guy, black is always good, but I have a lot of those already as well as a lot of orange–one of Harley’s other colors. I don’t have any bright yellow or cream–lighter colors like baby blue or light green–but almost any color is cool. Here’s where I get prissy: I prefer only one or two colors on the back. Harley dealerships customize the backs to advertise themselves. A lot of them do a full color display of some unique image–often significant to the region. Full color means a lot of lay down of ink, vinyl screen printing ink, as many as five layers (if you are printing on black). I plan to wear every one of these shirts at some point. Do you know how heavy four layers vinyl color gets when riding in the hot Carolina sun? One color is cooler, easier to read, AND cheaper. And one more thing: My wife would frown on me wearing one with scantily clad women with big boobs, so please avoid those. I’m traditionalist. I like the variety of crests and logos Harley offers, wings and bars and even an occasional skull.”

There you have it: Buy Scott a Harley Davidson dealer t-shirt from your local HD dealership. Mail it to him at Main Street Rag, PO BOX 690100, Charlotte, NC 28227-7001 and earn a 2-year subscription worth $45.

Radio Silence, the somewhat new, print “magazine of literature and rock & roll” (which by the way also raises money to buy books and musical instruments for kids), has released a new monthly digital edition, which started in February. You can read the first issue for free here. And from there you can decide to subscribe for a yearly cost of $29.99 or purchase individual issues for $2.99 each. The issues are available to read on phones, tablets, and desktops.

In March, The Frost Place (a nonprofit arts organization and museum established to honor the legacy of Robert Forst and encourage the creation and appreciate of poems) announced the 2014 Dartmouth Poet in Residence at the Frost Place: Rebecca Foust.

Here’s a description from the press release: “Every year, a poet is selected from a group of applicants based on the quality of her/his work to live and work in the historic house where Robert Frost lived from 1915 – 1920. In 2011, The Frost Place and Dartmouth College honored their shared connections with Robert Frost by renaming the residency program The Dartmouth Poet in Residence at The Frost Place.”

This from Rebecca Foust: “My goal is deep work, the kind a writer can do only in an atmosphere both free of distraction and full with inspiration and hope. The ability to spend such a substantial block of time immersed in reading and writing is, by itself, of great practical value. In the privacy, beauty and inspiration of this unique setting, I plan to re-read Frost’s poems and essays while writing new ones of my own. I also hope to make progress on my next book manuscript. Finally, I am happy for the chance to live, work, and do readings in New England.”

Read more about it here.

To celebrate the 50th year anniversary of the MFA program for Poets & Writers at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, The Massachusetts Review released a special issue featuring some of the “remarkable writers who have graduated from the program,” which include Mira Bartok, Valerie Martin, Domenic Stansberry, Gillian Conoley, Matthew Zaprunder, James Haug, Ellen Dore Watson, and more.

In an introduction to the issue Editor John Emil Vincent writes, “We ourselves have attempted a little revisiting of our usual format—we actively sought and happily found longer poems, two lovelies from Gillian Conoley and Brian Baldi in particular—but also generally solicited works in clusters. The hope is to create a novel texture for our special issue, one up to exploring the pleasures and peculiarities of duration.

Story magazine, like a story passed on over time, has evolved. It started in 1931, lasting until 1964, as “the most important literary short fiction publication, founding editors Martha Foley and Whit Burnett discovering and publishing … storytelling greats,” write Vito Grippi and Travis Kurowski. Then it was revived by Lois Rosenthal, running from 1989 to 2000. Now, it’s in the hands of Kurowski and Grippi: “As great as the original Story was, we don’t want to recreate that magazine; though short fiction holds a singular place in contemporary letters, our net is wider. We hope for a diversity of narrative mirroring our contemporary, transnational lives: memoirs, interviews, superhero poetry, sci-fi, case studies, maps, machines.”

The first issue under their reign is double-sided, with two different covers and two different sets of writing. Side A features work from Andrew Malan Milward, Mary Miller, K. Silem Mohammad, Tao Lin, and Marinaomi, and Side B’s cover boasts “Hand Models Run Amok!” and “Family Caught Hiding Dreamers!” and “New Gadgets to Hook up? Jim Shepard Tells All!” It’s hard to believe it’s only 8 bucks. And if you scan the QR code inside, you’ll be taken to a page where you can download a digital copy for free.

Chicago School of Poetics is offering a one-day online class with with Pierre Joris. “Writing translation / translating writing” inverts the traditional relationship of original text and translated copy and reinscribes the activity of translation as core process of the act of writing. Students will be simultaneously involved with writing and with translation from a language of their choice into English in a range of forms proposed by their own practice and culture. The class runs for three hours and will be held  online, in a video-conferenced classroom, so you can attend from your own home, from anywhere in the world. Class size is limited to 10 students.

Date: April 26th, 2014
Time: 1-4 p.m. Central Time
Tuition: $250

“Inaugurated by the Academy of American Poets in 1996, National Poetry Month is now held every April, when schools, publishers, libraries, booksellers, and poets throughout the United States band together to celebrate poetry and its vital place in American culture. Thousands of organizations participate through readings, festivals, book displays, workshops, and other events.”

Visit POETS.ORG for posters, poems, ideas on how to celebrate, poem-a-day, and – my personal favorite – POEM IN YOUR POCKET DAY! April 24 is Poem in Your Pocket Day – carry a poem with you, as you meet with friends, sit next to a stranger on the tram, hanging out in the grocery store line, simply pull the poem out and read it to others – Happy Poetry Month! (Seriously, I haven’t been arrested for it yet.) Poets.org provides a variety of pocket-sized poems to share.

Wilkes University has launched a new option for an MFA program, in screenwriting and playwriting, located in Meza, Arizona. It will be a hybrid program involving both online classes and weekend classes, and the first program starts in August 2014.

“We believe there is sufficient interest in these two areas to open this new way of delivering the program on the ground in Arizona,” says Bonnie Culver, co-founder and director of the Wilkes graduate creative writing program. “We have several Los Angeles-based faculty and producers who are eager to work with us to deliver these degrees in Mesa.”

Read more about the program and upcoming workshops here.

The online Hamilton Arts & Letters magazine has just started a new chapbook series in which over the next two years they hope to publish one chapbook a year, expanding to more after that. Just released is their first chapbook: Nelson Ball’s A Rattle of Spring Frogs.

Here’s the description from HA&L: “Noted for poems described as ‘compressed meditations,’ Nelson is also admired here as a leader in the small press revolution that took place during the 1960s.” Accompanied with the chapbook is a contextualized essay and a reading. See more and read here.