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 ]

Stephen Reichert Lecture on Publishing Poetry

"Publishing and Technology: The Evolution of a 21st Century Poetry Magazine" by Smartish Pace Editor Stephen Reichert @ Western Illinois University, November 10, 2011

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 ]

The Wave-Maker

In an interview published earlier this year, Elizabeth Spires was asked how her work has matured since the publication of her first book of poetry in 1981. She replied: “A friend of mine, the poet Michael Waters, joked, saying you’ve written about birth, and you’ve written about death, what’s left? I don’t know.” If Spires doesn’t know, it’s not because she hasn’t been asking herself the question.Indeed, in The Wave-Maker, her sixth book ... [ read more ]