In Self-Portrait As Othello, Allen-Paisant draws a connection between Shakespeare’s Othello, a Moorish general who is often treated as an outsider in Venice, and the experiences of Black immigrants today. His poems move between Jamaica, Prague, Paris and Oxford among other places, and he weaves in lines of French, Jamaican patois, Italian and German. Read more
Category: Poetry
Nikki Giovanni Documentary Released
Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project, an HBO Original Documentary featuring the voice of Taraji P. Henson, follows the legendary poet, activist, and educator’s ascendance and impact on American culture. Watch trailer
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How Cave Canem Has Nurtured Generations of Black Poets
The poets’ fellowship, which was founded in 1996, has worked with poets who have gone on to win many of the genre’s most important accolades. Read more
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As Divisions Deepen in India, a 15th-Century Poet Inspires Hope
As hostility toward minorities rises, Kabir’s work highlights the subcontinent’s rich history of religious coexistence, and many academics, artists, and activists are using his words to express pride in India’s multicultural community. Read more
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Kimiko Hahn Wins $100,000 Award from Poetry Foundation
Cornelius Eady, Toi Derricotte and Kimiko Hahn are among this year’s winners of awards from the Poetry Foundation, which announced some of the poetry world’s most lucrative prizes. Hahn, a faculty member of Queens College in New York City whose books include “The Unbearable Heart” and “Earshot,” won the $100,000 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize for lifetime achievement. Read more
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Let Us Now Praise Poetry
There’s strength in poetry — in seeking and establishing meaning in our world. Read more
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Gerald Stern in The New Yorker
Gerald Stern’s generous, practical, and fanciful poems, which The New Yorker began publishing in 1976, are both rhapsodic and earthbound. Read more
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Lee Herrick, a Writer-Professor from Fresno, is Chosen as California Poet Laureate
Herrick, 52, was born in Daejeon, South Korea, and adopted when he was 10 months old by parents from Northern California. Formerly Fresno’s poet laureate, he teaches at Fresno City College and in the MFA program at the University of Nevada, Reno at Lake Tahoe. Read more
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Can This Quirky Naval Poetry Tradition Make a Comeback?
On every Naval watch shift, an officer records the workaday vital signs of the ship, which might include a chronology of the ship’s movements or particulars of its anchorage, the status of its power systems, vessels spotted nearby, and absentees or injuries onboard. For many ships, logs are held by the Navy for 30 years before moving to the National Archives. It’s generally a dry administrative document. But a long-standing Navy tradition holds that the first deck-log entry of the new year may be written in verse. It’s unclear when or why this tradition began; the earliest mentions date to 1926, according to the Navy, and seem to indicate the tradition was already established. The practice continued during subsequent decades: The New Year’s verse was once a popular enough element of Navy life that the official All Hands magazine and the independent Navy Times held annual contests to decide the best poems, and a Navy-trained astronaut even carried it to the International Space Station’s ship log in the first hours of 2001. Read more
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Irish Stars Unite to Celebrate Overlooked Poet Patrick Kavanagh
Celebrities including Bono and Liam Neeson hope to bring their homeland’s bard to a global audience with an album of read poems. Read more
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