Title: Shelagh Rogers interviews Walrus Poetry Prize winner Meira Cook
Location: Canada
Description: Shelagh Rogers interviews Walrus Poetry Prize winner Meira Cook on CBC Radio’s The Next Chapter.
The Banff Centre Writing Studio application deadline
Title: The Banff Centre Writing Studio application deadline
Location: Banff, Alberta, Canada
Description: The Writing Studio is a five-week program offering poets and writers of fiction and other narrative prose the time, space, and support they need to pursue a writing project, with the benefit of editorial consultation. Greg Hollingshead, Karen Solie and Dionne Brand head the faculty for this session, which runs April 29 – June 1, 2013.
Learn more here.
Date: November 15, 2012
Alice Notley and Amy Hollowell read at Poets Live
Title: Alice Notley and Amy Hollowell read at Poets Live
Location: Paris, France
Description: Poets Live is delighted to announce that Alice Notley, Amy Hollowell, and A.N. Other, will read at Le Bal Cafe.
Learn more here.
Date: November 6, 2012
Words Aloud Festival
Title: Words Aloud Festival
Location: Durham, Ontario, Canada
Description: The Words Aloud Festival, celebrating its ninth season, has earned a reputation for presenting the best in spoken word from across Canada and beyond. With nine main stage performances, it’s a magical alchemy of spoken word’s full range.
Learn more here.
Start Date: November 2, 2012
End Date: November 4, 2012
Carl Phillips reads at the University of Arizona Poetry Center
Title: Carl Phillips reads at the University of Arizona Poetry Center
Location: Tucson, Arizona, US
Description: The University of Arizona Poetry Center welcomes Carl Phillips, author of twelve books of poems, most recently Double Shadow, winner of the 2011 Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and Silverchest, forthcoming in 2013. He has also written a book of prose, Coin of the Realm.
Learn more here.
Date: November 1, 2012
September 1913, a poem by W.B. Yeats
Title: September 1913, a poem by W.B. Yeats
Description: This is the best day on the calendar to consider W.B. Yeats’ poem “September 1913”. Read it here.
Date: September 2, 2013
Scottish Poetry Library presents Nothing But the Poem Redux: Robin Robertson
Title: Scottish Poetry Library presents Nothing But the Poem Redux: Robin Robertson
Location: Edinburgh, Scotland
Description: The Scottish Poetry Library’s reading group where they read and explore poems by a well-known poet – no previous knowledge or experience necessary! And this year they’ve added a twist: at each meeting, they’ll also introduce participants to an ‘if you liked this, you might like’ poet whose poems might tickle one’s fancy. This session is devoted to Robin Robertson.
Learn more here.
Date: November 17, 2012
Scottish Poetry Library presents Nothing But the Poem Redux: Robin Robertson
Title: Scottish Poetry Library presents Nothing But the Poem Redux: Robin Robertson
Location: Edinburgh, Scotland
Description: The Scottish Poetry Library’s reading group where they read and explore poems by a well-known poet – no previous knowledge or experience necessary! And this year they’ve added a twist: at each meeting, they’ll also introduce participants to an ‘if you liked this, you might like’ poet whose poems might tickle one’s fancy. This session is devoted to Robin Robertson.
Learn more here.
Date: November 15, 2012
Scottish Poetry Library presents What I Love – What I Hate About Poetry Debate
Title: Scottish Poetry Library presents What I Love – What I Hate About Poetry Debate
Location: Edinburgh, Scotland
Description: The Scottish Poetry Library is hosting a no–holds–barred debate chaired by Robyn Marsack, SPL’s Director, in which playwright David Greig, poet and editor Gerry Cambridge, journalist Alan Taylor and poets Stav Poleg and Liz Lochhead battle it out with you, the audience, to decide – how do we really feel about poetry?
Learn more here.
Date: November 8, 2012
America
Elizabeth Winslow, translated from the Arabic written by Dunya Mikhail
copyright ©1993, 1997, 2000, 2005 by Dunya Mikhail / translation copyright 2005 by Elizabeth Winslow
Please don’t ask me, America.
I don’t remember
on which street,
with whom,
or under which star.
Don’t ask me …
I don’t remember
the colors of the people
or their signatures.
I don’t remember if they had
our faces
and our dreams,
if they were singing
or not,
writing from the left
or the right
or not writing at all,
sleeping in houses
on sidewalks
or in airports,
making love or not making love.
Please don’t ask me, America.
I don’t remember their names
or their birthplaces.
People are grass –
they grow everywhere, America.
Don’t ask me …
I don’t remember
what time it was,
what the weather was like,
which language,
or which flag.
Don’t ask me …
I don’t remember
how long they walked under the sun
or how many died.
I don’t remember
the shapes of the boats
or the number of stops …
How many suitcases they carried
or left behind,
if they came complaining
or without complaint.
Stop your questioning, America,
and offer your hand
to the tired
on the other shore.
Notes on the Poem
Poet Dunya Mikhail fled to the US from her native Iraq in the late 1990s, but continued to not only monitor and stay connected to the turmoil in her homeland, but to reflect it fiercely in her poetry. Translator Elizabeth Winslow has been acclaimed and lauded for, as the Griffin Poetry Prize judges' citation termed them, "perfect translations" into English of Mikhail's work in Arabic. When you cannot read poetry in its language of origin to compare and authenticate it for yourself, you must then trust that translations are sound and in the spirit and intent of the original, and combine that trust with evaluating the translations on their own merits as poetic works. Taking in this excerpt from "America", from the collection "The War Works Hard", consider how Mikhail and Winslow combine to convey the exasperation, weariness and deep despair of people hardened and rendered almost catatonic by ongoing war and strife. To start, the short lines convey both impatience and no energy to wax more eloquent. The repetition - "don't ask me", "I don't remember" - suggests that the speaker has run out of unique responses to what is being incessantly asked of her. The speaker tersely addresses an entity named "America" - undefined, faceless, monolithic, drained of specific human aspects, clearly not responding. Not too long into the poem, the one remaining convention suggesting a modicum of civility, however undeserved - "please" - disappears. Do you see how this slender, stripped-down poem starkly depicts the state of a profoundly demoralized mind, people and nation? More importantly, do you feel it?