Maurice Manning answered your questions. Carl Phillips did too. Enjoy!

Poet(s) currently taking questions: None.

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Shara McCallum's book, Madwoman, Longlisted for 2018 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature

Six books by writers from five Caribbean countries have been announced on the longlist for the 2018 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, sponsored by One Caribbean Media. The group ... [ read more ]

Smartish Pace 2017 Pushcart Prize Nominations

Editor Stephen Reichert selected the following poems from Issue 24 (April, 2017):

Safia Elhillo: “Self-Portrait With No Flag”
Nausheen Eusuf: “Allegiance”
Jennifer Koiter: “The Messy Girl Feels at Home ... [ read more ]

Terence Winch, Smartish Pace Reading

Terence Winch reading for Smartish Pace at Artomatic in Washington, DC on June 12, 2009. Intro by Stephen Reichert of Smartish Pace.

Interview with Lynnell Edwards

Rachel Stark: First off, thank you so much for agreeing to this interview.  I'd like to start by talking about your subject matter.  Your most recent collection, The Highwayman's Wife, draws much of its energy from the way you revitalize mythology.  At the same time, you take on the English countryside with both the folklore of the highwayman and your numerous quotations from John Clare's The Shepherd's Calendar.  What is it about these things that are important to you?Lynnell Edwards: Some sort of unrelated things converged in the spring of 2004 that I think prompted the Highwayman series, the first of which was "Sonnet for the Highwayman."  I was tramping around in a very old cemetery in rural Kentucky where some of my Scottish ancestors (the McBrayers) from the 18th century were buried and I was talking with an elderly relative about that, and then an issue of Gourmet magazine arrived which had a feature on the Scottish Highlands, with several spectacular photos.  The photos were gorgeous; I can make only a modest case for Scottish cuisine, however.  After that first poem, I started exploring – in other words, I "Googled" – information about English ballads to see ... [ read more ]

The Lords of Misrule

X.J. Kennedy’s newest book, The Lords of Misrule, begins with a reckoning of the dead — a cousin, his "third-best friend" from grade school, and a "harmless lunatic" who used to wander his streets. It is All Saints Day, and Kennedy is going through the rituals of remembrance before the revels of his “half-crocked lines” are let loose by the Lords of Misrule, as he guides them to do in his “Invocation.” For his cousin ... [ read more ]