Awesome entry point to National Poetry Month with a beautiful piece by Gary Barwin.
Carol has rounded up a bunch of prompts if you want to push yourself to do a poem a day for April.
It’s International Pwoermd Writing Month too.
Here’s an issue on erasure.
An article from early March on Patheos on Muslim women in poetry [web cache link] features two Ottawa poets Hodan Ibrahim and Sarah Musa of Urban Legends. Hodan says
Things changed in 2010 when Urban Legends (UL), a new slam series, was launched. “Its founders are Muslim, Black, minorities, and they presented an alternative,” she says. The most notable feature of UL, which distinguished it from the other leading poetry collective, is that it is not hosted in a bar. Hodan adds that the identity of its founders played a role in creating a welcoming space for Muslims and other marginalized groups.
My photo of Hodan from 2011 runs in the story.
Anastasia Filippova, Hodan Ibrahim and Sarah Musa
agreed that as an under-represented group, it was up to them to create their own spaces. “If there’s anything that I’ve learned,” says Sarah, “it is that that no one will create venues for you. You will have to create them yourself.”
Brenda Schmidt has been interviewed about Flight Calls here. Excerpt:
The epigraphs were a constraint. A foundation of sound. There was no escaping them. With the epigraphs in hand, I came up with ten titles and ten ideas for essays and went from there. Each day before I began work on an essay I’d read the epigraph aloud and that was that.
Can I love CanLitCat more? Apparently. CLC had a paw in creating Writer’s Trust Social Media Award.
Kevin Spenst has a poem for Leaf Press’ Monday poem. Love that penultimate line.
4 aesthetic attitudes in poetry by Christian Bök.
Reduplicatives.
And this amused me: Language register.