BOA Blog

[caption id="attachment_1036" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Matthew Shenoda. BOA Poet "][/caption] Adrian Matejka recently interviewed Matthew Shenoda, author of Seasons of Louts, Seasons of Bone for the Ploughshares blog, noting that it is "[t]hrough Matthew's work, we learn poetry is both about speaking up and about surviving and as long as we do these things, 'they just cannot touch us.'" In the thought-provoking interview, Matthew's discussion with Adrian Matejka centers on the political dimensions of Matthew's writing, asking for Matthew's thoughts on the recent turmoil in Libya and Egypt as well as how the worlds of art and politics intersect.  For Matthew,...

The Black Warrior Review recently interviewed author G. C. Waldrep who responded openly and insightfully to prompts about his life and work.  In the interview, Waldrep discussed the effort and energy that went into his forthcoming collaboration with John Gallaher (Your Father on the Train of Ghosts) and also the difficulty of tandemly revising these poems. Waldrep also addresses his spirituality and his time spent living in the Amish community in an in-depth and reflective way.  As he says, "since [he] had devoted so much of [his] life at that point spiritually and temporally to community--not having a community, it was like...

Oxford Brookes Poetry Centre,  part of the English Department at Oxford Brookes University, will tell you it has four main objectives. These include promoting contemporary poetry locally and to assist in the connection and correspondence between poets. The Centre's website and newsletter chooses a poem/poet every week to praise and "publish." This week, they made a great decision in sharing with the reading community the poem "Big Band Theory" by Sharon Bryan. Bryan's book Sharp Stars, published by BOA Editions, won the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award in 2009.

This week, to celebrate National Poetry Month, G.C. Waldrep and John Gallaher will be releasing one post a day discussing their collaborative effort in Your Father on the Train of Ghosts.  Just like their poetry collection came to life through an email exchange, so does this discussion, which artfully discusses the question, "Can reading and writing be public/collective/collaborative acts?"  The "fantasy" of originality and the "Romantic I" is also contended, after which Gallaher leaves us with the statement that "all writing is collaborative.  One collaborates with the world. The whole article can be read here.

In a thoughtful and probing interview, Rachel Cole Dalamangas asks Joanna Howard, author of On the Winding Stair, a broad range of questions that cover the details of her work, her writing process, and the inspiration that fuels her wild imagination: In addition to the beauty of ruin and decadence, I can't ignore the possibility of a social commentary that particularly reminds me of Virginia Woolf's association in A Room of One's Own with poverty and nourishment to the imagination (or lack thereof).  In a world and an economy where most of us have to spend most of our time...