dumbfoundry

...But his popularity with college students remains steady. Ironically, in the 1990s, young aspiring poets would purposely hang out in Seoul theatres at night, hoping to absorb inspiration to write like their idol, unaware of the meaning of "theatre" as understood by the gay community.

"So with what heartsinkingness did we awake to the news on May 21st that there is a new spot of bother down the PoSoc; that its director had resigned in what sounded like a pretty spectacular scene in leafy Betterton Street, though we were not to be told precisely how it went. The rumour mill was up to full capacity in no time, churning out details ever more alarming, whether true or untrue.

"It was the stuff of situation comedy, or else a reality TV show. The director was followed in short succession by the financial officer, the education officer and the Society’s president, Jo Shapcott. The remaining staff are not permitted to say anything about what is happening; anecdotal reports that leak out come muffled in anonymity and provisos, and sound very unhappy, not least because the remaining inmates of the PoSoc are being functionally cut off from their peer group."

...a generous NEW £10,000 Fellowship has been established at the University of East Anglia for South Asian creative writers (novelists/poets) in English who are LIVING IN South Asia.

I think students are hungry for poetry but sometimes that hunger has been suppressed for so long, they just about forgot it entirely. But all of us can remember the joy we had when we were first reading rhymes and metaphor and filling in pictures in our minds for the parts that weren't illustrated in children's books. I love getting my students to that moment where they unplug, step away from the computer, and read because they WANT to. Because they are hungry for it. One of my greatest privileges as a professor--and I do consider it a privilege, really--is introducing them to new poets of all colors and backgrounds that they wouldn't normally find on their own, and helping them join the poetry conversation mid-dinner party, so to speak.

The focus on craft is such a good reminder to me as a poet. Craft isn't sexy because at its most accomplished, it becomes invisible. We strive to keep our seams from showing, to keep our reader from stepping out of the movement of the poem (at least on a first read) and down into the nuts and bolts of its language and structure.

[Herman Van Rompuy, president of the European Council] ... is fond of writing haiku, a form of Japanese poetry, and he ended his post-summit statement with one that referred to the earthquake, the tsunami and the nuclear disaster.

As for Casey’s surname, I have been told that there is only one Han family line whereas there may be many branches of Kim, Lee or Cho. For example, my father who is from the North tells me that our surname is not a Korean Lee, but rather a Chinese Lee—descending from a Manchurian warrior who settled in the northern part of Korea several hundred years back. So, I may in very small measure be ethnically Chinese but largely Korean. The word han can be loosely translated as a uniquely Korean sentiment of lament—an inexpressible anguish or suffering of a people from a nation that has been divided and whose national history bears humiliation and loss. The meaning of han is attributed by some to be a national cultural trait reflecting historical oppression and isolation. That a young woman growing up in America with such enormous freedom and advantages could somehow carry with her this unconscious sense of historical suffering was something I considered throughout the writing of this book.

Luisa Igloria: "...I try to respond immediately, without premeditation, composing as I go. I try not to belabor what I find in the starting “trigger”-- because I don’t see myself obligated to respond via a form of poetic reportage. What happens instead is that the bit of image or language that first catches my eye or ear, meets what I bring to that moment (a combination of many things- what I may have been reading or remembering recently, what kinds of questions I might be asking that particular day). Finally, I try to do all of this in thirty minutes, forty max; I feel that if I go over this time limit I set for myself, I will be belaboring the whole enterprise too much."

Sometimes writers of color have to go to great lengths to achieve success in this poetry world. We have to work twice as hard to find publishers, readers, audiences and to receive awards, prizes, and jobs.