BOA Blog

[caption id="attachment_369" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Naomi Shihab Nye. BOA Poet."][/caption] The "Poetry Everywhere" series features short poetry films of poets reading their own work, animated interpretations of much-loved poems, and celebrities reading personal favorites. The videos are produced by WGBH and David Grubin Productions, filmmaker Leita Luchetti, and student filmmakers at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's docUWM media center. They are housed online at the Poetry Foundation's website: www.poetryfoundation.org Here's a wonderful short film featuring BOA poet Naomi Shihab Nye and highlighting her poem "One Boy Told Me". Watch the film here: [Naomi Shihab Nye Video]

[caption id="attachment_433" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Approx likeness of BOA copier. "][/caption] Like most organizations we at BOA rely heavily on our photocopier for our day-to-day operations. We love our photocopier and treat it with the utmost respect and reverence it deserves. We are constantly stroking its ego, telling it how much it means to us and that we could not possibly survive without it. We thought we had a “mutual understanding” that we were in an exclusive relationship. Our copier, it turns out, has other ideas. For reasons unbeknownst to us, it wants out. It has shut down and refuses to...

[caption id="attachment_428" align="alignleft" width="200" caption="Matthew Shenoda. BOA poet."][/caption] BOA poet Matthew Shenoda (Seasons of Lotus, Seasons of Bone) also serves as CalArts' first Assistant Provost for Equity and Diversity. A major position with a big mission. To kick off Black History Month, Matthew wrote a blog for CalArts and based it around BOA poet (and newest Frost Medal Award winner) Lucille Clifton and her poem "jasper texas 1998" which appeared in Lucille's National Book Award winning collection, Blessing the Boats. Read Matthew's entry here [What Black History Month Means to me]

[caption id="attachment_424" align="alignleft" width="194" caption="Peter Makuck. BOA Poet."][/caption] We always knew that BOA poet Peter Makuck was a major outdoorsman. His forthcoming collection, Long Lens: New & Selected Poems, includes poems about scuba diving, skiing, fishing, jogging... all sorts of good, healthy, outdoorsy activities. But muskrat trapping? That was a new one to us! Read the fascinating interview with Peter Makuck posted at the Sewanee website and find out why Peter's son called him a "psycho" and why Ted Kooser told Peter he was lucky to have grown up when he did. And, of course, get the lowdown on the...

[caption id="attachment_418" align="alignleft" width="199" caption="Christopher Kennedy. BOA poet."][/caption] BOA's own poetry warrior Christopher Kennedy (Encouragement for a Man Falling to His Death) was just featured - and singled out for high praise - in a New Yorker article about Opium magazine's tongue-in-cheek "Literary Death Match." Christopher brought his A-game to a recent Death Match event at the Bowery Poetry Club as Meredith Blake notes in her article: "My personal favorite was the extremely droll Kennedy, who shared from his collection of morbidly witty poems, Encouragement for a Man Falling to his Death. In one, a man coats his head in...