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Poetry and Media #017

Aeon Ginsberg's Greyhound is out this month from Noemi Press. Chen Chen calls it "a book of winds and departures, tattoos and returns; a beautiful book that recognizes how '[e]veryone is trying so hard to figure out / why we are alive.'" "I started writing this book in 2016 because I was travelling a lot, I was taking a lot of Greyhound buses to perform poetry in different places, to convene with writers, or just general degenerates I tend to cavort with," Ginsberg said in a recent episode of Mobtown Live.

Poetry and Media #016

Carlos Cumpían, a poet and high school teacher currently working in Chicago, wrote this in his introduction to the 1989 chapbook-length anthology Emergency Tacos: "Today you hear a lot about emergencies; emergency shelters, emergency medicine, emergency maneuvers, emergency pantries. Now, emergency tacos... simón que sí, emergency tacos are what we ordered.

When each fall comes, I fall in lines

Presenting our Fall 2020 Issue

When each fall comes, I fall in lines
across the field. Crows pick me out
of food for weeks. Photographs
of then are lost (I tell myself
they're lost). Bare, at the mirror,
I still don't see a man, I see
what could still be lost, what kept.
Owls cry, leave darkness on my tongue.

—excerpt from "Confessions of a Former Scarecrow," by José Angel Araguz, Prairie Schooner, Vol. 94, Issue 3, Fall 2020

Poetry and Media #014

Savannah Sipho's voice opens a recent episode of the Decolonization in Action podcast. Sipho is reading (in German) Maya Ayim's poem "Blues in Black and White" (“blues in Schwarzweiß”). The reading took place during a recent critical walking tour ("Dekoloniales Flanieren") organized to mobilize demands to change a racist street name in the Berlin's Mitte district. While the opening poem is in German, the ensuing interview with Sipho is in English. The interview covers a lot of ground, but here's a few things Sipho touches on: bringing her private writings into public spaces, her experience being Afrodeutsche in Berlin, and why she felt it was important to share the poem "Blues in Black and White" during the anticolonial walking tour event.

"Monsters are replaced by monitors": an interview with Jaylan Salah

by Carol Smallwood

Award-winning writer Jaylan Salah is a poet, translator, content expert, and film critic.Workstation Bluesis a collection from the cubicle for white-collar workers worldwide passing the time between meetings and computer screens. The poems blur: monsters are replaced by monitors, flame-throwers by LED lights, and swords by client comments. Cristina Deptula, executive editor of Synchronized Chaos Magazine,http://synchchaos.comcommented: “With energy and spunk, Jaylan Salah celebrates imagination, beauty, and most of all, freedom through her poetry and prose.” 

Smallwood: What is your educational, literary background and when did you begin to write prose and poetry?

Black Lives Matter

This statement was originally published in the June 5th edition of the Prairie Schooner newsletter.

"So You Wanna Win A Book Prize" w/ Gbenga Adeoba

by Jamaica Baldwin

Our final "So You Wanna Win A Book Prize" interview of the season is with poet 'Gbenga Adeoba, the 2019 Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets Winner. This is the last of a series of illuminating conversations between PS Book Prize Coordinator Jamaica Baldwin and writers who have played the book prize game and won! There are only 2 days left to submit to the Raz-Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book PrizeClick here for full details. Read on for Baldwin's conversation with 'Gbenga Adeoba. Click here to buy Adeoba's Prize-winning collection Exodus.

Walk It Like You Talk It: #fivewordfridays

a series of vocabulary-based prompts

by Ashley Strosnider

Tackled the exercise below? Come up with something brilliant or hilarious? Tweet us a favorite line or phrase @theSchooner!

My mom describes horrible things as “dreadful.” One of my friends calls excellent things “dynamite.” Neither of these feels quite right in my mouth, but I’m still charmed when they say them. Many of my favorite people to talk to have their own go-to vocabularies, their own distinctive ways of talking. (Of course, it’s entirely possible that everyone does, and I just don’t talk to everyone, so I wouldn’t know.) But it’s true on the page, too. Good writing, as the saying goes, just hits different. Some poems simply sound like “oh, of course she wrote this.” And when some characters open their mouths, I wouldn’t mind if the dialogue went on for pages and pages.

Sorry to Miss Y'all at #AWP20

but you can still get some great deals at bookfair prices

Prairie Schooner and the APBF will have a significantly reduced presence at this year’s AWP Conference in San Antonio, as most of our staff will not be traveling.

"So You Wanna Win A Book Prize" w/ Tjawangwa Dema

by Jamaica Baldwin

For the next several weeks, visit the blog for illuminating conversations between PS Book Prize Coordinator Jamaica Baldwin and writers who have played the book prize game and won! We're currently seeking submissions for the Raz-Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize. Click here for full details. Read on for Baldwin's conversation with Tjawangwa Dema. Click here to buy Dema's Sillerman Prize-winning collection The Careless Seamstress.

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