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

Poet(s) currently taking questions: None.

Archives:

Thea Brown Reading!

Watch the debut reading in our new series! February 10, 2019. The HOT L Open is a reading series held on the second Sunday of the month at Bird in ... [ read more ]

The HOT L Open - monthly poetry reading series!

Smartish Pace is excited to announce that we're co-hosting a monthly poetry reading series with Baltimore Poets Theater! Readings will happen every 2nd Sunday at Bird in Hand in Charles Villiage, ... [ read more ]

Aaron Belz, Smartish Pace Reading

Aaron Belz reading for Smartish Pace at the Contemporary Art Museum Raleigh on November 16, 2012.

Interview with Natasha Trethewey

February 16, 2012Interview conducted in August 2011

Beyond Katrina blends personal and collective memories of an event that is not too long gone from the public eye, and is still current for those living on the Gulf Coast. What are the challenges of writing about something topical, even if it has personal resonance for you the writer?Natasha Trethewey: I think the biggest challenge that I faced with writing Beyond Katrina and that particular topic was that, as you said, it is in many ways ongoing for the people who are there, and it is also a thing of contested memory. Contested memory is the hardest part of it, because I found that I was dealing with people who wanted not only to be remembered, but people on the Mississippi Gulf Coast who felt like their story was being forgotten or being subjugated beneath the other story of New Orleans and the levee break. But I was also dealing with narratives from folks who wanted to remember the aftermath in different ways, I think, for political purposes. And so there was often a narrative of Mississippi as ... [ read more ]

One with Others by C.D. Wright

February was Black History Month, a fact that seemed to go largely unnoticed by folks in the news media who I thought might care a little more. A little later, I picked up C.D. Wright’s One with Others, an obvious National Book Award Finalist if nothing else for the promise of greatness based on its author’s resume, a promise solidified by the book itself. I experienced One with Others in the context of two other ... [ read more ]