Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

Poet as Alchemist

Chapter 16 talks to Blas Falconer about his new guide for aspiring poets

September 15, 2010 Mentor and Muse: Essays from Poets to Poets brings together a group of accomplished writers to discuss the mysterious craft of writing poetry. Poet and Austin Peay professor Blas Falconer, one of the book’s editors, speaks to Chapter 16 about the collection, and about his own creative process.

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"Look Away, Look Away"

September 10, 2010 Susan O’Dell Underwood is the director of creative writing at Carson-Newman College in Jefferson City, Tennessee, where she has taught Appalachian literature, modern poetry, and writing for than twenty years. She earned an MFA in creative writing from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and the PhD in English from Florida State University. In 2004, her novel-in-progress, Genesis Road, won the Tennessee Arts Commission grant for writing. Her first chapbook, From, about family and cultural influence in the mountain South, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. Underwood is originally from Bristol, Tennessee.

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"Duskdawn"

September 3, 2010 Clay Matthews has published work in The American Poetry Review, Spinning Jenny, Willow Springs, The JournalMuffler (H_NGM_N B_ _KS) and Western Reruns (available for free download online from End & Shelf Books). His first full-length collection, Superfecta, was released by Ghost Road Press in 2008, and a second, Runoff, was recently released from BlazeVOX Books. He teaches at Tusculum College in Greeneville, Tennessee, and edits poetry for The Tusculum Review.

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The Bard of Hume-Fogg

Poet and educator Bill Brown talks about his writing and his approach to teaching

August 26, 2010 Bill Brown has combined a lifelong vocation as a poet with a distinguished teaching career, including twenty years at Nashville’s Hume-Fogg Academic Magnet high school. He recently published his fourth collection of poems, The News Inside. He answered questions about his earliest efforts as a poet, his philosophy of teaching, and the future of poetry in the Internet age.

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In Shape

A new gallery show at the Nashville Public Library puts poetry on display

August 11, 2010 People apparently started writing shaped poetry—in which words are arranged to create a picture—as soon as they began writing verse. An exhibit at the main Nashville Public Library includes examples of the practice dating from ancient times to the present. Boasting thirty prints of poems by E.E. Cummings, Lewis Carroll, Guillaume Apollinaire, Andre Breton, Gertrude Stein, and others, it’s a compelling collection of work that occupies a space where poetry and painting overlap.

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A Special Relationship

Writer and translator Adria Bernardi discusses her work and her unique linguistic heritage

August 3, 2010 Adria Bernardi grew up in an Italian-American family, surrounded by a community that spoke a rich mix of English, Italian, and regional dialects. She has put that unique heritage to work in both her writing and her work as a translator. In a far-ranging interview with Chapter 16, she discusses her multi-faceted relationship with language.

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