Your weekly look at poetry and spoken word around the web starting with a story about some great poets in Connecticut that we have had the opportunity to work with and get to know very well in the past year.
Bridgeport Poetry Event Slams Social Injustices
Connecticut Post – Ernel Grant clenched his fists as he stalked the floor. Grant’s angry, searching questions were part of a poem, titled “A Man,” that he wrote about rape and child abuse that happened in his family when he was growing up in Jamaica.
Most of those who performed were members of the Poetz Realm, an organization Grant founded to inspire artists, mainly poets, to get together and share their work. Grant said he used to live in Hartford and was involved in the poetry scene there. “I came to Bridgeport about seven years ago and wanted to keep that good, positive vibe we had going,” he said. Read more.
Why Poetry Makes Sense: An Interview With Stephen Burt
Huffington Post – Poetry can be an excellent teacher. It educates readers on places we know well and those we’ve never been. It honors celebrated people and ordinary ones. Without pretension or over-analysis, poetry teaches the most practical lessons on love, friendship, romance and the loss of all these things. Read more.
Website provides a virtual home for all things poetic in Iowa City
The Gazette – When Lisa Roberts moved to Iowa City in 2011, she couldn’t wait to immerse herself into the rich culture of literature. “What I found was that the poetry news for our area was flung across hundreds of different web sites and Facebook pages. Read more.
Poetic Virtues
New York Times – The audience for poetry is like a vastly reduced version of the audience for college football — superstitious, gossipy and divided into factions no less fervent for having only an occasional idea of what’s going on outside their own campuses. Read more.
Times Op-Ed poetry? Readers say yes — and more, please!
Los Angeles Times – In Sunday’s Op-Ed pages, a selection of Times readers had their literary talents put on display in “Rhyme and reason,” a page-plus of original poetry. Read more.
