Ava Leavell Haymon has written three poetry collections — Why the House Is Made of Gingerbread, Kitchen Heat and The Strict Economy of Fire, and published five chapbooks from small presses. She’s also written seven plays for children. She teaches poetry writing in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and directs a writers’ retreat center in the mountains […]
National Poetry Month: Andrei Codrescu
The first time I heard of Andrei Codrescu, he was speaking on National Public Radio. And he was speaking about my hometown, New Orleans. And he was speaking like he knew what he was talking about, which he did, and with an Eastern European accent. Who was this guy? Codrescu was born in Romania. He […]
National Poetry Month: Nikki Giovanni
Nikki Giovanni is a University Distinguished Professor at Virginia Tech University, where she teaches writing and literature. A poet, activist and educator, Giovanni is the author of more than 30 books, has received 19 honorary doctorates and numerous awards, and has even been nominated for a Grammy Award. Born in Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1943, she […]
National Poetry Month: Scott Cairns
Scott Cairns, professor of English and Director of Creativity Writing at the University of Missouri-Columbia, is the author of six collections of poetry, the memoir Short Trip to the Edge, the non-fiction work The End of Suffering, and numerous articles, essays and even a libretto for an oratorio. I had the distinct pleasure of taking […]
National Poetry Month: Luci Shaw
Luci Shaw is a poet, essayist, retreat leader and teacher. She’s published eight books of poetry, and her poems have appeared in publications ranging from Books & Culture and The Christian Century to The Southern Review. She is currently Writer in Residence for Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia. Shaw was born in England in […]
It’s National Poetry Month
There must be something one can say about National Poetry Month starting on April Fool’s Day. But I can’t, or won’t. For National Poetry Month 2011, TweetSpeak Poetry will be featuring a series of posts on poets living and dead, published and unpublished, and including links to sites that we’ve found on the internet that […]
“Neruda’s Memoirs: Poems” by Maureen Doallas
You know how it can be with expectations. You wait and wait and wait for something, and then when it comes, you feel slightly deflated, because the expectation was bigger than the reality. That didn’t happen with Neruda’s Memoirs: Poems by Maureen Doallas. In fact, just the opposite happened. The reality exceeded my expectations, and […]
Of Parasols and Scorpions 3
Below are the next six poems from our recent Twitter poetry party.
Diane Walker Reads Title Poem “Neruda’s memoirs”
Diane Walker, a friend of poet Maureen Doallas, reads the title poem from Maureen’s recently published Neruda’s Memoirs: Poems. (Diane created the video, too.)
Of Parasols and Scorpions 2
Here is the next group of six poems taken from our recent Twitter poetry party. Somehow the contributions moved from love to an apocalypse of weather to the planets and then to Hamlet’s voicemail
Poet Elizabeth Bishop
Today, the Wall Street Journal has an in-depth review of The Poems of Elizabeth Bishop, published Feb. 1 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Written by Dana Gioia, former chair of the National Endowment of the Arts and recently appointed professor and public culture at the University of Southern California, the article goes far beyond a simple […]
Of Parasols and Scorpions
Last week, seven of us (and a few lost souls who wandered in and promptly left, determined to stay lost) joined together for our Twitter poetry party.
Ah, A Literary Controversy
We noted a few days ago that Marcus Goodyear had posted an article on TweetSpeak Poetry in Books & Culture, published by Christianity Today. Micah Mattix, who authors the First Thoughts blog for First Things, took exception to something Marcus said, or thought he said, and posted an article about the Books & Culture article. […]
Article on Poet Joseph Brodsky
Today the Wall Street Journal published a fine article on poet Joseph Brodsky, who received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1987 and served as U.S. Poet Laureate in 1991 and 1992. The article, by Len Aron, is a review of “Josephy Brodsky: A Literary Life” by Lev Loseff, but also serves as a wonderful […]
TweetSpeak Poetry Gets Famous
Marcus Goodyear has written an article for Christianity Today’s Books & Culture on TweetSpeak Poetry – how it started, what it evolved into, and where it may be headed. Key events in the creation: Bradley Moore (aka Shrinking Camel) didn’t understand hashtags, and L.L. Barkat and Glynn Young had begun to rediscover poetry via Twitter. […]
Neruda’s Memoirs, Sneak Preview
We’ve got a cover for Maureen E. Doallas’s upcoming poetry collection, Neruda’s Memoirs. And here’s an excerpt of the title poem (Neruda’s Memoirs 🙂 ) … 2 Neruda said the closest thing to poetry is a loaf of bread or a ceramic dish or a piece of wood lovingly carved. So he poured his words […]
Delicate Machinery Cover Question
Tell us… which do you like better? The one to the left, or the one below? You can click on the covers to see larger versions. A description of Anne and a link to her poetry is here.
Barbies at Communion named ERB Honor Book
A Leopard’s Smile 2
Below are four additional poems from Tuesday’s Twitter poetry party. The prompts for the jam all came from the play Richard II, by Wiliam Shakespeare.
A Leopard’s Smile
It was a small but wildly enthusiastic group that met Tuesday night for the Twitter poetry party.