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In this virtual reading and conversation for the City Lights Live series, Douglas Kearney reads a series of poems in response to Fred Moten’s essay “Knowledge of Freedom” before introducing the poet who reads from his latest collection, Perennial Fashion Presence Falling (Wave Books, 2023).
In this event recorded at the Brooklyn Heights Public Library and hosted by Books Are Magic, Terrance Hayes discusses his new poetry collection, So to Speak (Penguin Books, 2023), and his new essay collection, Watch Your Language: Visual and Literary Reflections on a Century of American Poetry (Penguin Books, 2023), with poet and memoirist Mary Karr.
In “Tenants,” the opening poem of Hannah Sullivan’s hybrid collection Was It for This (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023), the British poet contends with nursing a new baby a mile away from the Grenfell Tower in West London, a high-rise public housing building that tragically caught fire. The poem combines various viewpoints to address how local, public tragedies can affect private lives, such as accounts from firefighters, research from news reports, and descriptions of the building’s “crinkled, corrugated, lacy” façade. This week, research the local news of your city and write a poem centered around a recent headline. How does this news story affect your personal life? Does this exercise help you feel more connected to your community?
“Just keep listening to the work, one poem at a time.” —Heather Lanier, author of Psalms of Unknowing
“Is it any wonder our lips feel so lonesome these long evenings?” Phil Kaye reads his poem “Summer / New York City,” which appears in his collection Date & Time (Button Poetry, 2018), in this 2021 event with accompaniment by The Westerlies at Little Island in New York City.
“Poetry is the tempo of one’s temperament.” In this 2015 event for the House of SpeakEasy’s “Seriously Entertaining” series, Rowan Ricardo Phillips talks to a live audience about the nature of poetry and his memories of the 1980 film Altered States. Phillips discusses his role as editor of the Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets in a Q&A in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
“Everybody looks at him playing / the machine hour after hour, / but he hardly raises his gold lashes,” writes Thom Gunn in his poem “Bally Power Play,” which appears in his collection The Passages of Joy (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1982). In the poem, an unnamed speaker describes the movements of a pinball player in a bar with a sense of close watchfulness and adoration. “He is / the cool source of all that hurry / and desperate activity, in control, / legs apart, braced arms apart, / seeming alive only at the ends,” writes Gunn. This week, write a poem that captures a scene in which your speaker is observing someone closely. Consider, as in Gunn’s poem, how descriptive language can create and match the rhythm of a subject’s movements. For more inspiration, read C. K. Williams’s poem “From My Window.”
“When you think you’re getting good, be humble. There’s no end to the learning.” In this video, Arthur Sze visits his high school, the Lawrenceville School in New Jersey, and offers advice from his years of experience as a poet. Sze is the recipient of the 2013 Jackson Poetry Prize and won the 2019 National Book Award in poetry for his collection Sight Lines (Copper Canyon Press, 2019).
Are you an established writer developing a major creative project? Or perhaps an emerging or debut poet seeking to place your chapbook or full-length collection? Read on to learn about two prestigious fellowships and three poetry contests with application deadlines between September 14 and September 19. Both fellowships are open to poets, fiction writers, and nonfiction writers and offer $50,000 or more with no entry fee. All prizes awarded for poetry collections offer publication and $1,000 or more. We hope you share your work!
Harvard University
Radcliffe Institute Fellowships
Fellowships of $78,000 each, office space at the Radcliffe Institute, and access to the libraries at Harvard University are given annually to poets, fiction writers, and creative nonfiction writers to allow them to pursue creative projects. Fellows, who are expected to reside in Boston during the fellowship period, which lasts from September through May, also receive $5,000 to cover project expenses. Poets who have published a full-length collection or at least 20 poems in magazines or anthologies in the last five years and who are in the process of completing a manuscript are eligible. Fiction and creative nonfiction writers who have published one or more books, who have a book-length manuscript under contract for publication, or who have published at least three shorter works are eligible. Writers who are graduate students at the time of application are not eligible. Deadline: September 14. Entry fee: None.
Lightscatter Press
Poetry Prize
A prize of $1,000, 25 author copies, and multimodal publication by Lightscatter Press is given annually for a poetry collection written by an emerging writer. Hybrid works and multilingual texts that combine English with another language are eligible. Eduardo C. Corral will judge. Deadline: September 15. Entry fee: $30.
Finishing Line Press
New Women’s Voices Chapbook Competition
A prize of $1,500 and publication by Finishing Line Press is given annually for a poetry chapbook by a writer who identifies as a woman and has not yet published a full-length collection. English translations of poems originally written in another language are accepted. Leah Huete de Maines will judge. Deadline: September 15. Entry fee: $20.
University of Wisconsin Press
Brittingham and Felix Pollak Prizes
Two prizes of $1,500 each and publication by University of Wisconsin Press are given annually for poetry collections. Additional finalists will be published in the press’s Wisconsin Poetry series. Deadline: September 15. Entry fee: $28.
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
Writing Fellowships
Fellowships of approximately $50,000 each are awarded annually to poets, fiction writers, and creative nonfiction writers on the basis of “exceptional creative ability.” Citizens and permanent residents of the United States and Canada with a “significant and appropriate record” of publication are eligible. Deadline: September 19. Entry fee: None.
Visit the contest websites for complete guidelines, and check out the Grants & Awards database and Submission Calendar for more contests in poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and translation.
Author, lyricist, and former New York City youth poet laureate Ramya Ramana discusses and reads a piece about forgiveness in this video for PBS Newshour’s “Brief But Spectacular” series. “Forgiveness is a doorway. A garden of curses spill from her lips and the city inside me crumbles. I tell myself, all poison has once been poisoned too,” reads Ramana.
