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.
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.
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.
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.
August 2, 2010 Marilyn Kallet’s poem “Firelies” is this week’s offering from American Life in Poetry. About it former Poet Laureate Ted Kooser writes, “Over the years I have read many poems about fireflies, but of all of them hers seems to offer the most and dearest peace.”
July 22, 2010 Former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Hass has been lauded for his work for more than three decades. The Apple Trees at Olema brings together selected poems from each of his five award-winning collections, as well as new work, and gives readers a glimpse into the evolution of one of our greatest living poets. Robert Hass will give a public reading at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference on July 23 at 11 a.m.
