dumbfoundry

So: anyone got an old Mac they're willing to give us in exchange for lots of free books?

CHICAGO, Feb. 27 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine and one of the largest literary organizations in the world, announced today a news partnership with The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, a co-production of MacNeil Lehrer Productions and WETA, Washington, D.C. The project intends to engage a broader audience with poetry through a series of thoughtful, in-depth reports on contemporary poets and poetry. The series will include the production of short-form profiles on living American poets and long-form segments on current debates in poetry that will air on The NewsHour during calendar year 2006. The pieces will also be available on the Online NewsHour and on http://www.PoetryFoundation.org as streaming audio/video. [...]

As a regular reader of new poetry, by what means do you decide which books you want to buy? And how easily do you find those books?

[...] Paglia has for years defended her belief that the academy, especially the Ivy League, is in great peril. She points to post-structural literary theory as the major problem, calling it an endlessly repetitive, “over-elaborate industrial contraption that is like a giant mousetrap that you put the work in. And it kills the work. It just kills it.” She credits post-structuralism with turning prospective graduate students off of academia: “Anyone with enthusiasm for the works looks like a lunatic.” She predicts that without an infusion of new life, academe will fall to the hands of desiccated drones with no sense of chronology or deep erudition who will slowly kill works with theory.

If the picture she paints seems dismal, it is because she believes there is a revolution at hand, and no one wins a revolution without first inspiring relative discontent in the masses. Paglia’s book—with its pointed omissions of John Ashbery (“unreadable, useless, opaque”) and Seamus Heaney (“a third-rate, derivative Yeats”)—is a call to arms. Paglia’s rabble-rousing is in the service of her passionate desire to see to see poetry brought back from its marginal status, and to see a generation of brilliant young theorists shake up a languishing academia. The message is loud and clear: graduate students of the world, unite!

The National Library of Australia has also posted images of two Malley hoax-related documents: a telegram from the private detective, and a letter from "Ethel Malley."

Ten years of poetry was reduced to ashes when fire destroyed the home of poet Desmond "Storm E" Jones in early January.

Devastated, Jones, 36, has been unable to put pen to paper [...]

Hugo Williams: 'An advance copy of my latest book of poems, Dear Room, has just arrived from the publishers, folded in half by the postman to get it through the letterbox. I tear open the packet to see what colour it is. The publishers weren't able to tell me exactly: something approaching terracotta if I was lucky, tomato if not. In the bright daylight of the front door it is closer to tomato. Looking through it I see that one poem is printed smaller than the others. That's it. I hurl it into a corner of the room and force myself not to pick it up again for an hour, as a punishment for its imperfection, although we both know that I'll be reading it non-stop for the next few days to try and find out what it's like.'

FANS of Dylan Thomas are being invited to spend an afternoon in the company of his daughter Aeronwy.

The occasion will include afternoon tea at the Dylan Thomas Boathouse in Laugharne, as part of the spring events programme at the council-owned boathouse that will also include poetry readings and workshops.

Anthology Title: (tentative) "Look Up In The Sky" a collection of poems about superheroes, villains, characters, etc

Deadline: May 30, 2006

"A man, Sir, should keep his friendship in constant repair,"

... quoth Samuel Johnson (1709­84), English author and lexicographer.

We at Jacket magazine also keep our issues in constant repair. Take Jacket 17, for example, the special Hoax Issue from June 2002:
[http://jacketmagazine.com/17/index.shtml]

Why, only yesterday we added two items [...]

Junior high and high school students from around the Commonwealth are set to compete in the 3rd Annual Valentine Sengebau Poetry Contest to be held at the Multi-Purpose Center on Friday, Feb. 24, from 3:30 to 5pm.

This event, sponsored by the NMI Council for the Humanities, honors the late Valentine Sengebau, a long-time Palauan resident of the Commonwealth and well known poet. It is a part of the Council's efforts to foster local literary capabilities. [...]

...we learn that Sengebau was a Palauan who spent the last twenty or so of his years in Saipan, in the Northern Marianas, dying there in 2000. His work was lost in a house fire so the editors relied on the archives of the two newspapers to collect the poems, forty-one in all. [...]

"In order to help mentor the next generation of Asian-American poets, Kundiman is sponsoring an annual Poetry Retreat at The University of Virginia."

"I know a lot of people who DON'T function like me, aren't so climb-y or self-promoting, and that is totally cool. In some ways I wish I were less like this, less interested in success. It certainly seems more 'artistic' to do it for the sake of the art alone, to spend my life working as a waitress or ditchdigger or middle-management-person, and making poems and stories and magazines, and blogging on the side."

Ted Kooser, the nation's poet laureate, has been traveling around the country talking to librarians, school children and other groups about poetry. One of his stops was in Kansas City, Mo., where he led a workshop with some of Hallmark's greeting card writers. [...]

Devkota was a great poet, a prolific writer of undisputed classics, and so were other giants of Nepali poetry like Siddhicharan Shrestha, Gopal Prasad Rimal, and Bhupi Sherchan. But none were as big a poetry patriot as Lekhanth Poudyal (1885-1966). [...]

Poudyal was reportedly the first poet ever to be given a civic reception and a chariot ride to treasure his literary achievements. Observers say that such an instance has not been found in other countries in the history of world literature.

Poudyal was given a grand public felicitation on his 70th birthday. He was taken around the city in a special chariot amidst a grand ceremony as a mark of honor for his contribution to the Nepalese literature.

The government announced a half-day holiday at government offices to allow everyone to participate in the holiday. The then Prime Minister Matrika Prasad Koirala, government ministers, eminent litterateurs and a large number of citizens and well wishers participated in towing the chariot. [...]

On February 21, after an enduring illness people’s poet of Chuvashia Gennady Aigi died in hospital, the poet’s relatives informed a REGNUM correspondent.

Gennady Aigi was born on August 21, 1934 in Shaimurzino village of Batyrev district in Chuvashia. In 1953-1958, he was a student of Gorky Literature Institute in Moscow (expelled for “writing a book of hostile poems, destroying fundamentals of socialistic realism’s method”), being a friend of Boris Pasternak. 1961-1971, Aigi is an employee of Mayakovsky museum. In the USSR, his books had not been published till 1987. By that time, his poems were already translated into many European languages and they were widely recognized.

Being people’s poet of Chuvachia, Knight of Legion d’Honneur, Andrey Bely Price Laureate in 1987, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize.

MOSCOW (AP) - Russian poet Gennady Aigi, who was often considered a contender for the Nobel Prize in literature, has died at age 71, news agencies reported Friday.

Aigi died Tuesday in Moscow of an unspecified illness and on Friday was buried in his native village of Shaimurzino, in the Volga River area about 650 kilometres east of Moscow, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.

His poems, written in the indigenous language of the Chuvashia region, were translated into scores of other languages and Aigi himself was a noted translator into Chuvash of poets of other countries. [...]

In an interview published by Russia's New Times this month, Aigi said he had little interest in the post-modern poetry of recent years. He also lamented that poets were abandoning the aim of writing with moral authority, saying "(now) we have swagger, a rope to pull, and ambition to pursue. I still remember the cynical joke: a poet is no different from other dogs, except that he is a talking dog." [...]

I believe in poetry as a way of surviving the emotional chaos, spiritual confusions and traumatic events that come with being alive.

When I was 12 years old, I was responsible for the death of my younger brother in a hunting accident. [...]

The despotic president of Turkmenistan, known as Turkmenbashi, has celebrated his 66th birthday by creating a new set of gold and silver coins in honour of poetry he has written.

Last year, to celebrate his 65th birthday, Saparmurat Niyazov issued coins featuring his family tree. This year, it was the turn of four collections of poetry and two volumes of his Book of the Soul, known as the Rukhnama. [...]

Penned by Mr Niyazov in 2001, the Rukhnama gives spiritual guidance to Turkmen citizens, of whom he sees himself as the figurative father, the literal translation of "Turkmenbashi". The book, which is studied in schools and to which convicts must swear their allegiance upon release from jail, provides moral guidance, including respecting your elders, and giving lots of jewellery to women. Last year, a copy was blasted into space on a Russian rocket, inside a container bedecked with the national flag. It is hoped that it will return to earth in 150 years. [...]

"Anthology project seeks poems

We are seeking lively and high quality poetry for a new anthology tentatively called Collections, Fetishes, & Obsessions: A Serial Killer's Guide to Poetry. We want work by poets, both established and emerging, who often return to the same themes, images, or subject matter over and over again in their poetry writing. Do you always, for example, write poems about Betty Boop? Waterford crystal? Shoes? Wine? Precious Moments figurines? Star Trek? Summertime in Venice? We aim to present a wide range of collections, fetishes, and obsessions, and, in doing so, examine whether they augment and liberate a poet's voice or force a poet to confront the futility of resisting such fascinations."

"Three important Australian works of poetry will soon be launched for Friendly Street Poets at the Adelaide Festival:

'THIRTY' ,

NEW POETS 11

& 'WOMEN WITH THEIR FACES ON FIRE'

at the West Tent, Pioneer Women's Memorial Gardens (behind Government House), ADELAIDE, 5:45pm Sunday March 5th, (day 1 of Adelaide Writers' Week 2006.)

The anthology THIRTY, edited by local poets rob walker and Louise Nicholas, contains the 100 best poems read at Friendly Street (Australia's longest-running continuous community poetry reading) throughout 2005."

[...] Yet, Sonnets from the Portuguese were the lighter side of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poetry. Her more serious work was very serious indeed. Every three or four years, I determine to write her biography. So every three or four years I read Aurora Leigh, according to its author a "novel in verse". Its 1,100 lines explore the position of women - thinking women such as Elizabeth - in Victorian society. It could not have been written by a woman who had grown up as one of nature's willing victims, waiting on her chaise longue to be rescued from her tyrannical father by the poet as hero. In fact, malicious rivals whispered that Robert Browning only cultivated Elizabeth Barrett because, thanks to her superior reputation as a poet, she provided him with an easy entree into literary society. It was Elizabeth, not Robert, who - according to the gossip - was considered for nomination as poet laureate. [...]

It is a passion for Urdu that propels India-born poetess Rookeya Saloojee here to compose lyrics dedicated to South Africa's anti-apartheid movement and its heroes like Nelson Mandela and Yusuf Dadoo.

The soft-spoken Saloojee, who looks every inch the doting grandmother she is, says her Urdu poems were recited at meetings during the apartheid era but escaped being banned as few understood them. [...]

Two publishers are considering legal action against the poet who has accused Antjie Krog of plagiarism and the award-winning poet and writer is to seek a right to reply in a coming edition of the journal that carried the claims.

In a scathing article in the latest issue of a local literary journal, New Contrast, Stephen Watson, head of Cape Town University's English department, accused Krog of "lifting the entire conception" of her 2004 book on Bushmen poetry, published by Kwela, from an anthology he published in 1991. [...]

Acclaimed South African writer Antjie Krog was embroiled in a plagiarism row on Monday after a leading academic accused her of stealing concepts and translations from other authors.

Krog, the author of Country of My Skull, said the allegations that she lifted material from a range of writers, including the late British poet laureate Ted Hughes and two 19th-century European linguists, are an attempt to destroy her. [...]

[...] Over the next 20 years I met him about a dozen times, in some very obscure circumstances and peculiar company. On the last occasion, I listened as he made his last recorded reading, the poems from Tales from Ovid that were taped at his home and broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Hughes lowered his head to the microphone, and like the storyteller he truly was, told the whole story, beginning to end, with barely a fluff. Those cassettes are now available to all, but for all their slick packaging and promotion, they have for me the quality of a rare bootleg. Anyone listening carefully will be able to hear not just Hughes's voice at its ghostly, intimate best, but also the sounds of the Devon landscape going on around him. At one point there's a tractor. A little later, church bells. And eventually, right on cue, a crow comes winging its way through the stereo, in one ear and out through the other. It's a compelling testament to the work of a poet whose great exploit was to bring the inner workings of the human brain out into the wide world, and at the same time draw the outside world into the mind.

It's a low and almost dull reading, done in a Yorkshire garage and only just avoiding a monotone, but it has excited poetry enthusiasts as a rare voice from the past. Twenty-one years after his death, the poet Philip Larkin has spoken again in a set of tapes stashed in an attic along with hundreds of local history interviews recorded in the town of Hornsea. [...]

Larkin made the tapes with a colleague, John Weeks, who managed the sound department at Hull University when the poet was the chief librarian there. The two occasionally had a drink in the staff bar and Weeks persuaded Larkin to visit his home-made recording studio in Hornsea. [...]

Haki Madhubuti is a poet and director of the MFA program in creative writing at Chicago State University, the founder and publisher of Third World Press and the co-founder of four schools in Chicago. He is the author of 27 books, most recently "Yellow Black: The First Twenty-One Years of a Poet's Life: A Memoir," about his growing up in Detroit's Black Bottom and Chicago's West Side, and has just published "The Covenant With Black America," a project with broadcaster Tavis Smiley. [...]

Popular poet Noriko Ibaragi died at her home in Tokyo on Sunday afternoon, informed sources said Monday. She was 79. She is believed to have died of natural causes. [...]

She expressed her determination to live independently, saying, "I do not want to lean over on ready-made ideas anymore," in her 1999 anthology "Yorikakarazu," which became a bestseller.

[...] It is not for nothing that UNESCO has declared Scotland's capital the world's first City of Literature. [...]

Right now, Scottish poets are scooping up every award available. Edwin Morgan, the Scottish Makar, an irrepressibly playful intellect of profound internationalism; Don Paterson, Kathleen Jamie, John Burnside, Carol Ann Duffy - they are all exceptional, and they are ours. [...]

[...] What is the difference, when it comes to arcane pursuits that require years of study, between saying "I am a chemist" and "I am a poet?"

Money, you will say. And you, sir, have hit the villanelle on the head. [...]

But you know what? Last week I had a revelation in the form of a book in the mail: Poetry is the best. I ought to read poetry more often. You ought to read poetry way more often.

And this book, by Lucia Perillo, who gave it the swell title of "Luck is Luck," is not only fun to read, funny and wildly well written - it has the astounding good fortune to combine poetry with money.

That's because a panel put together at the Claremont Graduate University just gave it the 2006 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. It's the best award an American poet can get: $100,000. [...]

Tune in this Sunday from 4-6pm PST to My Vocabulary on UCSD's KSDT Radio to hear my very special guest DJ SugaBeat get her groove on.

There will be poetry as well. I will be reading from my own work this week.

So tune in and have some fun why don't you? You know you want to. That's what I heard.

And check the archives soon for more shows, including a reading from Sally Ball. It will all be up before you know it!

Matt

The postmark deadline for the 2007 Fence Modern Poets Series is February 28th. Please visit the Fence Books website (http://www.fencebooks.com) for guidelines and entry forms.

Two persons, Miss Esther Alabo and Mr. Emmanuel Seyi Alfred have emerged as winners in the 2006 poetry competition organised in Port Harcourt by Voices of the Pen, a literary organisation.

Miss Alabo won the first prize, followed by Mr. Alfred, while Mr Osuobeni Ebipade came third in the poetry competition titled “In my country Nigeria” held at the British Council Olu Obasanjo road, Port Harcourt.

According to Mr. Scion Oeuvre, one of the organisers, the aim of the competition was to encourage poets to find joy and reward in the creative world of art. It was equally aimed at encouraging writers in general to showcase their creative skills by providing incentives and a platform for contemporary authors to come to limelight, he added.

He pointed out that to win in the competition, the contestants were required to write a poem entitled “In my country Nigeria”.

The criteria for winning the poem included that the poem must reflect at least 80 per cent of what is happening in the country Nigeria; it must employ poetry structures in thought representation; be cynical yet hopeful, as well as making the grammatical sequence appeal to the literary class.

The contestants read out their poems to the hearing of a four-man panel of judges, at the end of which the best three poems were choosen. To encourage the poets, a cash award of 10,000 [78 US dollars - eek.], N8,000 and N5,000 were given to the first, second and third prize winners with other gift items like Indomie noodles and Indomie T Shirts presented by the De United Foods Industry Limited.

The winners of the poetry competition expressed gratitude to the organisers and declared their willingness to participate in further competitions.

Cordite Poetry Review seeks submissions of poetry for its 24th issue, on the theme of COMMON WEALTH. [...]

SUBMISSIONS FOR THIS ISSUE CLOSE ON MAY 31 2006. [...]

Thanks to the funding of the Australia Council for the Arts, we are able to offer the following rates of payment for Australian contributors [...]

Apple included a secret poem in OS X 10.4.4 for hackers to find...

Some Ideas from Jeffrey Levine, Publisher & Editor-in-Chief, Tupelo Press

Mark McGuinness: 'I wasn’t joking when I said I read a lot of poems - over the last few months I’ve read literally thousands of them, as the editor of Issue 34 of Magma poetry magazine. This is my first time as an editor, and it’s very interesting to be on the other side of the fence for a change. Having submitted lots of poems to magazines, like most poets I’ve received more rejections than acceptances. So it’s been a slightly surreal experience to be the person opening the letters and e-mails and making the judgements myself.'

Elizabeth and her sister Arabella, who did the illustrations, crafted the card to send to their 11-year-old cousin Georgiana. Elizabeth was 38. She was introduced to Robert in 1845, and they quickly embarked on one of the most passionate affairs in literary history.

Competitions close on 15th February.

WHAT if the 1786 Kilmarnock edition of Robert Burns' poems had been a failure, and he had gone ahead with his planned emigration to Jamaica? Would his verse be remembered today as anything more than a curiosity? How would the story of Scottish literature have unfolded? And how would the egalitarian bard have reacted to the horrors of slavery in the West Indies?

Greg Perry: 'I started writing The Daily Poetry Show for personal reasons two weeks ago and thought now might be a good time to keep myself honest on that point. I chose three daily poetry sites that would reveal a goodly spectrum of contemporary verse. I wanted to look at these poems closely for two reasons. First, I wanted to see some different successful ways that a poet makes a poem work. (Regardless of the genre, style, school, or planet the poet lives on.) And maybe steal a few. Second, I wanted to see the various ways a poet fails, and try to avoid those in the future.

But truth be told, I’ve been finding more of the latter than the former. It doesn’t shock me, but I am a little surprised.'

David Prater: "I ended with a reading of 'Mokochukcha', featuring a guest appearance from a bottle of soju I'd bought from the Korean grocer in Brunswick Street. I took a swig from the bottle every time I said the word 'mokochukcha' (Korean for 'drink and die') - as this word occurs nine times in the poem, I was fairly tipsy by the end."

'I got my valentine from Ted Kooser. Each year he sends women a Valentine. Last summer I gave him my address at a reading he gave here after he suggested that anyone who wanted to do so could. I did.'

The ancient watering hole, complete with open fire and 1930s architecture, was a favourite haunt of poet Dylan Thomas.

The London home of Verlaine and Rimbaud, the enfants terribles of French poetry, is up for sale.

The mission of the Poetry Super Highway is to expose as many people to as many other people's poetry as possible.

What?
In February 2006, the Poetry Super Highway will coordinate a great free exchange of poetry publications amongst poets worldwide.

It's not a contest. There are no judges, entry fees, winners, or losers.

Last year, 117 poets participated both sending their book and receiving another poet's book from a randomly selected other participant

By agreeing to participate, someone will be exposed to your poetry, and you will be exposed to someone elses poetry.

How?
To participate you must volunteer to mail one copy of one poetry book that you have written to one other person participating. Just one book. In exchange, you will receive in the mail one copy of one poetry book written by another participating poet.

Mark Thwaite: Tell us a little more about what lay behind your other long poem in the collection, the travelogue piece China.

Sinéad Morrissey: The British Council sent me on a train journey across China in November 2003. The journey lasted 21 days and took in six major Chinese cities. China is a document of that journey - nine windows on it if you like. And it was important to me that each window should be written in a different form. It was exhilerating to visit such an extraordinary country, and I responded to the place very strongly. Trying to pin the experience down in language afterwards was almost as exciting as the journey itself. Windows feature heavily - by necessity I think, as it was through windows that I experienced most of the country - and they are simultaneously windows, walls, and mirrors. I was being denied far more than I was being granted, but the glimpses were tantalising.

"Some of the concerns which had led us to initiate the Alt-Gen promotion were echoed in our postbag, with a number of editors referring to the financial commitment required by the Next Gen promotion. Tony Frazer, at Shearsman Books, wrote: “one of the reasons why no small presses were involved in NextGen, despite their being invited, was that they would have had to contribute £600 per poet promoted, with a slight discount for 3 authors at £1,500. In my case I would have had to generate 150-170 extra book sales just to pay for this, something which I suspect would not have happened”. Andrea Brady, at barque press, referred to the: “outrageous reading fees charged by the PBS committee” and Mary Michaels, from the single-author imprint, Sea Cow, wrote: “one reality of poetry publishing is that only the commercial houses who do it as a sideline or independent presses in receipt of good grants from public funds can commit themselves to expenditure of this kind, (risible though such sums of money may be for Cape and Picador).” Even Janet Fisher, at Smith/Doorstop (who nominated one of the selected collections, Catherine Smith’s The Butcher’s Hands) referred to the financial commitment required: “Maybe few small presses submitted in the first place because we had to commit to paying £600 for the promotion! I sort of assumed we wouldn’t be chosen, so submitted quite happily. What a shock. We won’t recover £600 in sales.” There was concern, too, about the demand for 7 copies of each title, and for the paperwork involved in nominating collections: Peter Lewis, at Flambard, commented: “the amount of information required by the PBS represented no problem to large publishers with big publicity departments but for small publishers it was a daunting obstacle”."

"Minimum length for entries is 200 lines and the maximum is 900. Book-length poems cannot be considered. There are no limitations on form or theme."

Thank you for the invitation to participate in the International Poetry Festival in Jerusalem, 2006, and for the details. I ask that you remove my name from the list of participants. I read nowadays of the barbarism of the Qalandiah check-point. I object to an international poets festival in a city where the Arab inhabitants are systematically and brutally oppressed [...]

The Irish Writers’ Centre would like to invite you to an evening of words and music in order to mark International Day Against Racism & World Poetry Day on 21 March 2006.

The event will include readings and performances from established authors who have written about or have been the victims of racism.