Carl Phillips has brilliantly answered all of your questions! Rae Armantrout & Mark Doty recently answered questions too. New PQA Poet soon...

Poet(s) currently taking questions: None.

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Adrienne Rich Dies

 
Baltimore native Adrienne Rich, an award-winning poet whose socially conscious work influenced a generation of feminist, gay rights and anti-war activists, has died at 82. She died Tuesday at her ... [ read more ]

Herrera Appointed California Poet Laureate

Juan Felipe Herrera was appointed California Poet Laureate by Gov. Jerry Brown on Wednesday. Herrera, 63 and son of Mexican migrant workers, will be the first Hispanic writer to serve in the post. ... [ read more ]

Murray Shugars Smartish Pace Reading

Smartish Pace Reading Series at Speckled Bird Cafe, Cincinnati, OH. November 21, 2008 with Evan Commander. Mr. Shugars has a poem forthcoming in Smartish Pace Issue 16.

Interview with Patrick Ryan Frank

Originally from Michigan, Patrick Ryan Frank has his master’s degree in poetry from Boston University and studied theater and creative writing as an undergraduate at Northwestern. Since then, he has received fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and the Massachusetts Arts Council, and now holds a James A. Michener Fellowship at the University of Texas at Austin. In August of 2010, How the Losers Love What’s Lost won the Four Way Books Intro prize judged by Alan Shapiro. He was interviewed over email by Julia Leverone of Smartish Pace in October, 2010.JL: Could you give an idea as to your background, and especially what your influences are?PRF: I grew up in rural Michigan, on what had once been a farm but is now just a wide swath of weeds and derelict barns.  I hated it at the time, and I’ve lived in big cities ever since (with the exception of a couple of stints at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown). While I always wanted to be an urban—and urbane—poet, I can’t quite pull myself completely from the fields.My influences are pretty varied, sometimes embarrassingly so.  I bought a shiny ... [ read more ]

Every Riven Thing

Many readers may see Christian Wiman’s new poems only through the lens of death and dying once they know of Wiman’s medical condition: he has a serious blood disease (and he was raised in West Texas, another mortal wound).   Certainly, part of my own reaction (mostly delight) to Wiman’s West Texas poems is affected by having lived nearby the poet’s early stomping grounds. The mesquite, the cotton, the pumpjacks, the open fields and open sky, the dust devils—these are all ... [ read more ]