May 16, 2014 Bill Brown grew up in West Tennessee ten miles from the Mississippi River. He is the author of eight poetry collections and a creative-writing textbook. “The Way” was originally published in Tar River Poetry and will appear in Brown’s forthcoming collection, Elemental, which is due in September. Brown will give a free public reading on May 22, 2014, at 7 p.m. in the Fondren Building at the Scarritt-Bennett Center in Nashville.
May 9, 2014 Poet-photographer Lola White has published poems in a variety of literary magazines since 1977, and her photographs have been shown in a number of galleries. During the 1990s she conducted a poetry program for Nashville’s Talking Library, presenting such diverse writers as Philip Levine, Ann Patchett, Jeff Hardin, and Bill Brown. White has worked as a department-store wrapper, teacher, jewelry maker, folksinger, and bookseller. She lives and works in Nashville, Tennessee.
Jesse Mathison gets his priorities straight with a new book of verse and images
April 30, 2014 Priorities is both a book of poetry accompanied by art and a book of art accompanied by poetry. The text and images contradict, coerce, command, and communicate with each other as the project marks a successful collaboration between Nashville poet Jesse Mathison and a group of visual artists who together form the Creek collective. The group will host an exhibition and book-release party on May 3 at 6 p.m. at the Frothy Monkey in downtown Nashville.
Finding the heart of a poem at the 2014 Tennessee Poetry Out Loud state championship
April 28, 2014 Anita Norman, a junior at Arlington High School near Memphis, walked away the winner of this year’s state Poetry Out Loud competition after reciting “Early Affection” by George Moses Horton. “I never want to overpower the words,” she said. Norman will represent Tennessee in the national Poetry Out Loud semi-finals, which will be held in Washington, D.C., on April 29, 2014.
April 25, 2014 Corey Mesler’s work has been published in many journals and anthologies. In addition to a dozen chapbooks of both poetry and prose, he has also published eight novels, four full-length poetry collections, and three books of short stories. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize numerous times, and two of his poems were chosen for The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor. Mesler lives in Memphis, where he is the co-owner (with his wife, Cheryl Mesler) of Burke’s Book Store. He will read from and sign copies of his newest collection, The Catastrophe of My Personality, at Burke’s on May 1, 2014, at 5:30 p.m.
April 11, 2014 Sarah Arvio’s books include Visits from the Seventh; Sono: cantos; and night thoughts: 70 dream poems & notes from an analysis (all from Alfred A. Knopf). Arvio has won the Rome Prize of the American Academy of Arts & Letters, as well as Guggenheim, Bogliasco, and NEA fellowships. For many years a translator for the United Nations in New York and Switzerland, she now lives in Maryland near the Chesapeake Bay. Arvio will read from night thoughts at Burke’s Book Store in Memphis on April 17, 2014, at 5:30 p.m.
