Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

A Griffin for Mattawa?

Khaled Mattawa makes the Griffin Prize shortlist

April 5, 2011 Khaled Mattawa is an international finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize, the Griffin Trust For Excellence In Poetry announced today. The other three international finalists are Seamus Heaney, Philip Mosley, and Gjertrud Schnackenberg. The Griffin Prize is one of the most lucrative awards in poetry: each of the finalists will receive an honorarium of 10,000 dollars; the winner, who will be announced on June 1 in Toronto, will receive 65,000 dollars.

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The Literary Majesty of the King James

Bobby C. Rogers talks about learning to be a poet while wearing a clip-on tie

March 30, 2011 Bobby Rogers’s debut collection of poems harnesses much of its power through the contraries it explores: realism and idealism, bitterness and hope, knowledge and mystery. Articulate, precise, and intense, Paper Anniversary delivers poem after poem that, in the words of the author, provide “a certain kind of attention and a desire to make sense of what it reveals.” Bobby C. Rogers will read from Paper Anniversary on April 4 at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.

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"Jungle Appetites"

March 23, 2011 Gaylord Brewer is a professor at Middle Tennessee State University, where he founded and edits the literary journal Poems & Plays. His most recent books are a collection of poetry, Give Over, Graymalkin (2011), and the comic novella, Octavius the 1st (2008), both from Red Hen Press. He has published more than 800 poems in journals and anthologies, including Best American Poetry and The Bedford Introduction to Literature. Brewer has taught in the Czech Republic, England, Kenya, and Russia. In June 2011 he will be in residence at the Arteles Creative Center in Finland. He is a native of Louisville and earned a Ph.D. at Ohio State University. In 2009, he was awarded an Individual Artist Fellowship by the Tennessee Arts Commission.

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Relinquishing the Flimsy Protection of Shelter

Gaylord Brewer discusses his eighth collection of poems, Give Over, Graymalkin

March 23, 2011 Gaylord Brewer recently published his eighth collection of poems titled Give Over, Graymalkin. He has published over 800 poems in journals and anthologies such as Best American Poetry and The Bedford Introduction to Literature. Brewer is also a playwright, and his plays have been staged in New York, Chicago, Nashville, and many other cities. A native of Louisville, Kentucky, Brewer is currently a professor at Middle Tennessee State University and the editor of the journal Poems & Plays. In 2009, he received the Individual Artist Fellowship in Poetry from the Tennessee Arts Commission. He recently spoke with Chapter 16 about the challenge of writing in a foreign country, his advice for young poets, and the pleasure of writing rude poems.

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The Poet's Almanac

Garrison Keillor highlights the work of Nashville poet Mark Jarman

March 17, 2011 Today Garrison Keillor’s daily NPR feature, The Writer’s Almanac, will highlight a poem from Mark Jarman’s new collection, Bone Fires. “A Prayer for Our Daughters” begins with these lovely lines:

     May they never be lonely at parties
     Or wait for mail from people they haven’t written
     Or still in middle age ask God for favors
     Or forbid their children things they were never forbidden.

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As Dusk Comes Down

Charles Wright tells PBS viewers where the poems come from

March 3, 2011 The British critic William Empson believed that the heart of poetry is ambiguity, and his theory may explain why poets are so often loath to “explain” their own poems. Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Charles Wright is a master of the deliberate use of ambiguous language, but in a profile this week on PBS’s NewsHour, he offered a revealing look at his own poetic method:

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