Good grief: All-male shortlist for UK’s £10,000 Forward Poetry Prize July 15, 2011: The Guardian asks: "Who got rid of the women?" It's a pertinent question for the judging panel behind the Forward Prize, which awards £10,000 to a single poet for Best Collection and is considered the UK's most valuable annual poetry competition. The 2011 shortlist was just announced, and it's all men: Geoffrey Hill, Michael Longley, David [...] by Harriet Staff

Professor or pinhead? knick-knack or knockout? Stephen Burt on Anne Carson July 14, 2011: Is Anne Carson's Nox a knick-knack or a knockout? Maybe something in between? In the London Review of Books, Stephen Burt reviews not only Nox, but also the volume's ecstatic reception: A memorial to Carson’s late brother, Michael, Nox has found as much attention, and as much praise, as any book by any poet in the past couple of years. The [...] by Harriet Staff

The Tale of David Buuck and the Crystal Nexus July 14, 2011: We're plenty sure that you're familiar with CAConrad by now, and most significantly, with his (Soma)tic Poetry Exercises, which have produced some great results from poets all over the yard—but this one takes the cake. Conrad created #54, "Crystal Nexus," just for our favorite Oakland-based performance radical, David Buuck, "who eats the dirt." [...] by Harriet Staff

Louis Zukofsky and New Directions July 14, 2011: Happy 75th anniversary to New Directions! To celebrate, the avant-garde publication house will be merrymaking down by the river on Thursday, July 21, at Poets House in New York City (hopefully no one puts a drink on that E.E. Cummings desk). Featuring poetic acrobatics by Mónica de la Torre, Eliot Weinberger, Susan Bernofsky, Forrest Gander, [...] by Harriet Staff

English is a shameless whore July 14, 2011: Sitting at the New Yorker's Book Bench this week is a paean to English, in all its sloppy glory: "English is an extraordinary bastard of a language," the post begins. Citing the history of warfare and nation-building that leaves us contending with this bastard on a daily basis (as if the mailman weren't enough), the blogger praises the flexibility [...] by Harriet Staff

Interview with Matthew Henriksen July 14, 2011: Poet Matthew Henriksen took part in an interview with The Fayetteville Flyer to discuss, primarily, his work editing a feature on Frank Stanford in Fulcrum#7, which we reported on a few weeks back. A bit on Stanford, and Henriksen's own poems, from the interview: RB: Do you think Frank Stanford will always be a cult poet? Do you think [...] by Harriet Staff

At the bottom of the pond at the elephant fountain: poems at the New Orleans zoo July 13, 2011: From the zoo's entrance all the way to the Louisiana Swamp! Poems! Yes, one more reason to visit: New Orleans' famous Audubon Zoo has a new installation project, as part of the Language of Conservation initiative, which was funded by the Institute for Museum and Library Services and led by Poets House in partnership with the New Orleans Public [...] by Harriet Staff

Poets, artists, and strange attractors! July 13, 2011: In the works from Encyclopedia Destructica and the The Institute of Extraterrestrial Sexuality—two of the best organizations you've never heard of—is a 300-page, full-color book and DVD called Strange Attractors: Investigations in Non-Humanoid Extraterrestrial Sexualities, featuring art and writing by 69 poets, writers, and artists like [...] by Harriet Staff

Percy Shelley and the Arab Spring July 13, 2011: A recent essay at Big Think looks at the political might of a poem, showing how radical Romantic Percy Shelley's "The Masque of Anarchy" might have inspired—through a series of other texts that include Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience," Tolstoy's The Kingdom of God Is Within You, and Ghandi's recitations—current political change. Recalling [...] by Harriet Staff

Rare Seamus Heaney collection helps charity shop July 13, 2011: According to this article from the Derry Journal, Seamus Heaney's first published manuscript, along with a collection by fellow Irish poet Michael Longley, has broken a fundraising record for an English charity shop. Some of the poems in the Heaney manuscript, Eleven Poems, first appeared in POETRY. From the article: The pamphlet, [...] by Harriet Staff