BOA Blog

Matt Donovan is the author of The Dug-Up Gun Museum, which was published by BOA Editions on November 8, 2022. Donovan's documentary poems examine the paradox of a country plagued by gun violence yet consumed with protecting the right to bear arms. Read on to learn more about Matt and his new poetry collection through this self-interview!   What inspired you to write a book focused on guns in America? Simply put, the earliest iterations of this project grew out of a deep concern about gun violence in America. I wanted to try to understand our ongoing obsession with firearms, as well as...

Craig Morgan Teicher is the editor of Little Mr. Prose Poem: Selected Poems of Russell Edson, as well as the author of several poetry collections, most recently, Welcome to Sonnetville, New Jersey. This survey of Edson's work was published by BOA Editions on October 25, 2022. Craig Morgan Teicher calls us to witness Edson’s obsessions with the curious, the absurd, and the peculiar, and the ways in which they can haunt our daily lives. The prose poems in this collection mold our everyday into something extraordinary and unsettling. Edson is a vital and ever-contemporary poet with a unique moral and comedic vision, whose literary career...

Cynthia Dewi Oka is the author of A Tinderbox in Three Acts, which was published by BOA Editions on October 11, 2022 as a Blessing the Boats Selection, chosen by Aracelis Girmay. In her fourth poetry collection, Oka performs a lyric accounting of the anti-Communist genocide of 1965, which, led by the Indonesian military and with American assistance, erased and devastated millions of lives in Indonesia. Learn more about Cynthia's new book through this interview with BOA Fall '22 intern, Briar-Rose. Briar Rose: A Tinderbox in Three Acts contains poems, notes, interviews, "textual samplings'' from archival collections, and even drawings. What inspired you to...

Luther Hughes is the author of A Shiver in the Leaves, which was published by BOA Editions on September 27, 2022. A Shiver in the Leaves explores the interior and exterior symbiosis of a gay Black man finding refuge from the threat of depression and death through love and desire. Learn more about Luther and his work through this exclusive self-interview! A Shiver in the Leaves wrestles with a lot of different obsessions like Blackness, depression, Seattle, trees—to name a few. Of these obsessions, crows seem to be the staple of the book, insomuch the opening poem is about a painting of crows by Jean-Michel Basquiat. Where did this obsession with...

Chen Chen is the author of Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency, which was published by BOA Editions on September 13, 2022. In his highly anticipated second collection, Chen continues his investigation of family, both blood and chosen, examining what one inherits and what one invents, as a queer Asian American living through an era of Trump, mass shootings, and the COVID-19 pandemic.  Read on to learn more about Chen and his new poetry collection in this exclusive self-interview!   This is your second book. What makes it different from your first? I think it’s at once more mature and sillier—there’s more grief and rage...