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Margaret Atwood accepts Nashville Public Library’s Literary Award

Title: Margaret Atwood accepts Nashville Public Library’s Literary Award

Location: Nashville, Tennessee, US
Description: With all the ongoing controversy over “legitimate rape” and the legislation of women’s bodies by lawmakers who clearly don’t understand them, many online commenters have invoked the dystopian landscape of Margaret Atwood’s classic speculative (or so we hope) novel The Handmaid’s Tale. That makes the choice of Atwood as the recipient of the 2012 Nashville Public Library Literary Award unusually timely.

Learn more here.

See also: Nashville Reads – The Handmaid’s Tale

Start Date: October 26, 2012
End Date: October 27, 2012

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Louise Gluck Poetry Reading

Title: Louise Gluck Poetry Reading

Location: Williamstown, Massachusetts, US
Description: Louise Glück will give a poetry reading at Williams College on Wednesday, Sept. 26, at 8 p.m. in the Paresky Center Auditorium. This event is free and open to the public. Glück was appointed the U.S. Poet Laureate from 2003–2004, succeeding Billy Collins.

Learn more here.

Date: September 26, 2012

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The Inkspots

Gerald Stern

copyright ©Gerald Stern, 2002



The thing about the dove was how he cried in
my pocket and stuck his nose out just enough to
breathe some air and get some snow in his eye and
he would have snuggled in but I was afraid
and brought him into the house so he could shit on
the New York Times, still I had to kiss him
after a minute, I put my lips to his beak
and he knew what he was doing, he stretched his neck
and touched me with his open mouth, lifting
his wings a little and readjusting his legs,
loving his own prettiness, and I just
sang from one of my stupid songs from one of my
vile decades, the way I do, I have to
admit it was something from trains. I knew he’d like that,
resting in the coal car, slightly dusted with
mountain snow, somewhere near Altoona,
the horseshoe curve he knew so well, his own
moan matching the train’s, a radio
playing the Inkspots, the engineer roaring.

Notes on the Poem

Sometimes, a poem can just be about the simple pleasures, can't it? Those pleasures abound in Gerald Stern's "The Inkspots."

"The thing about" is one of those cozy verbal tics that you hear a friend use when he is picking up the running conversation of your friendship where it last left off. It's storytelling connective tissue that demarcates the start of a new tale without really meaning anything else. Stern immediately and intimately draws you into the story of this poem from the first words.

That tone of intimacy and warmth continues with Stern's choice of words - casual, even unassumingly and guiltlessly incorrect. Think about it: a bird doesn't have a nose, but Stern strikes such a comfortable rapport with us that he doesn't even correct the imprecise reference. Maybe he means to be a bit comical, which he'd only do with friends who aren't going to correct his terminology. It's kind of sweet, actually.

Would you admit to just anyone that you'd kissed a little bird, then sang to it "from one of my stupid songs"? Would you use the word "shit" with just anyone? Again, Stern speaks to us as friends ... friends who would also know just how he feels about, say, the editorial stance of the New York Times.

Stern makes passing reference to his "vile decades" and seems to know that we're still here, not judging. We either don't mind or don't really think he was ever vile, because he rambles from the story about the dove to reminiscences about music as a soundtrack to how he enjoyed train travel at one or maybe many times.

Not only can a poem be simply about the simple pleasures - helping a wild creature, reveling in its tiny beauty, sharing the story with a friend, seguing into other memories - but it can be a simple pleasure unto itself.
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Poetry and Dance: Word Outleaps the World: Readings and Dance

Title: Poetry and Dance: Word Outleaps the World: Readings and Dance

Location: Chicago, Illnois, US
Description: In a salute to the Art Institute of Chicago’s new galleries of ancient art, well-known local actors read passages from such authors as Homer, Plotinus, Sophocles, Seneca, and Virgil, while Hubbard Street dancers interpret images and ideas to measure the impact of this great literature in our own time.

Learn more here.

Date: December 13, 2012

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Poetry Business Book & Pamphlet Competition submission deadline

Title: Poetry Business Book & Pamphlet Competition submission deadline

Location: United Kingdom
Description: The Book & Pamphlet Competition invites entrants to submit a collection of 20-24 pages of poems for the chance to win a cash prize and publication by Smith/Doorstop Books.

Four first stage winners are selected and given the opportunity to submit a full-length manuscript to the second round of the competition, in which one of them can win book publication. The three first-stage winners receive pamphlet publication.

This year’s judges are Simon Armitage and Ann and Peter Sansom.

Learn more here.

Date: November 29, 2012

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Simon Armitage: Walking Home at the Birmingham Book Festival

Title: Simon Armitage: Walking Home at the Birmingham Book Festival

Location: Birmingham, UK
Description: The Birmingham Book Festival is a collection of events and activities celebrating literature via thought, reading and discussion, in Birmingham, UK.

In summer 2010 poet and writer Simon Armitage decided to walk the Pennine Way. The challenging 256-mile route is usually approached from south to north, from Edale in the Peak District to Kirk Yetholm, the other side of the Scottish border. He resolved to tackle it the other way round: through beautiful and bleak terrain, across lonely fells and into the howling wind, he would be walking home, towards the Yorkshire village where he was born.

Walking Home is the story of that journey, about facing emotional and physical challenges, and sometimes overcoming them. It’s nature writing, but with people at its heart. Contemplative, moving and droll, it is a unique narrative from one of our most beloved writers.

Learn more here.
Date: October 5, 2012

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Birmingham Book Festival

Title: Birmingham Book Festival

Location: Birmingham, UK
Description: The Birmingham Book Festival is a collection of events and activities celebrating literature via thought, reading and discussion, in Birmingham, UK.

In the 14th year of the Festival, events range from the delights of acclaimed writers Liz Lochhead, Jackie Kay, Simon Armitage, Patrick Gale, David Edgar, Femi Oyebode, Tiffany Murray, Peter F Hamilton, Caitlin Moran and Stuart Maconie to the beauty of dramatic poetry performance Being Human and the quiet strangeness of night at the sixth all night writing workshop, at The Locksmith’s House in Willenhall (part of the Black Country Living Museum).

Learn more here.

Start Date: October 4, 2012
End Date: October 13, 2012