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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 ]

Phillis Levin, Smartish Pace Reading

Phillis Levin reading for Smartish Pace at The Walters Art Musuem in Baltimore, MD on September 19, 2009. Intro by Stephen Reichert of Smartish Pace. Music by Christopher Dunn.

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 ]

A Saturday Night at the Flying Dog

A Saturday at the Flying Dog, winner of the1998 Field Poetry Prize, is a quantum leap into a universe not found in Southwick's first two books, The Night Won't Save Us and Why the River Disappears. The poems in this new book do not begin and end with straightforward narratives or hinge on the turn of a brilliant image. They do not gather their energy solely from the author and her personal reflections. These poems ... [ read more ]