“The great thing about being a poet is that you can think about poetry at all times” September 14, 2011: Cari Wade Gervin, from Knoxville's Metro Pulse conducted an interview with Terrance Hayes. Here Hayes talks about form, most notably the ol' pecha kucha: You’ve gotten a lot of attention for the “pecha kucha” format you use in Lighthead. What prompted you to turn the slideshow presentation into stanzas? [A pecha kucha is a [...] by Harriet Staff

Mina Loy, Canopy Canopy Canopy, and The Sacred Prostitute September 14, 2011: The ever-popular and always-terrific Triple Canopy has a new issue out, and in addition to it being their "literary" issue (or their "not not literary issue"), it includes The Sacred Prostitute! That's a play by Mina Loy, silly. As part of their Immaterial Literature series, TC has reprinted the piece from Stories and Essays of Mina Loy, [...] by Harriet Staff

Honey, I shrunk the library! September 14, 2011: For all you naysayers out there who thought a mislaid British telephone box couldn’t double as a book exchange, meet Book Booth. The brainchild of Clinton Corners, NY natives Claudia Cooley and Terry Sennet, Book Booth will feature a range of titles and will function as a satellite of the city’s public library. The Huffington Post talked with [...] by Harriet Staff

Jackie O was not catty about poetry September 14, 2011: Caroline Kennedy, as you might have heard, is releasing the transcribed interviews between her mother, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. today. Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy contains over eight hours of conversation that took place starting only six months after JFK's [...] by Harriet Staff

Poetry competition to help mark Al Jazeera’s 15th anniversary September 14, 2011: According to the Gulf Times, Al Jazeera will hold an Arabic poetry contest as part of the festivities celebrating Al Jazeera's 15th anniversary in October and November: “Poetry is considered the most preferred medium to express feelings and aspirations. Hence the committee saw that it is most suitable for the current circumstances to give [...] by Harriet Staff

Enter the Bill Murray Poetry Contest! September 14, 2011: As we've learned by now, Bill Murray is quite the poetry fan. So, repay that love and write a poem in his honor. You might even win some money. This post at videogum clues us in to the Bill Murray Poetry Contest: I’m pretty sure Bill Murray is a person that we all love, as much as we can love a person we will never know. Right? I don’t [...] by Harriet Staff

Poetry, not speeches, for the NYC remembrance of 9/11 September 14, 2011: This little post from the New York Observerhighlighted the fact that, at Mayor Bloomberg's request for no speeches, the elected officials responsible for speaking at the six moments of silence at Ground Zero turned, mostly, to verse. President Obama and Mayor Guliani read verses from the Bible, while Governors Christie and Pataki read from two [...] by Harriet Staff

Poets & Writers responds to disgruntled professors September 14, 2011: The folks at Poets & Writers have responded to the open letter disparaging their 2012 MFA rankings. An excerpt: Our ethical obligation is to be transparent to our readers about the source of the rankings and how they were derived, which we have done consistently and without reservation. We lay out our methodology explicitly in a four-page [...] by Harriet Staff

Egypt’s writers at forefront of a new cultural republic “of sorts” September 13, 2011: We're pretty fascinated with this "Letter from Cairo," which Ron Silliman also pointed to today. In a piece called "What Do Egypt's Writers Do Now?" Negar Azimi parallels Egypt's current post-revolution identity crisis to a 1952 coming-of-age novel by Waguih Ghali’s called Beer in the Snooker Club, noting that it's quite like Salinger's The [...] by Harriet Staff

A “fun size” interview with Stephen Dobyns September 13, 2011: Reading Kenton Robinson's five-question short-and-sweet interview with American poet and novelist Stephen Dobyns: the easiest literary street cred you will earn all day. A sample: After two years of being a general assignment reporter for the Detroit News, you decided that journalism "left too much out." Granted, newspaper writing is reductive, [...] by Harriet Staff