Bettering American Poetry – Volume 3
If you are interested in adopting Bettering American Poetry - Volume 3, email us at BetterAmericanPoetry@gmail.com to request your sampler!
Diversity and Pay Equity in Publishing: The Importance of Industry Surveys and Activism
Developing the conversation on issues of diversity and pay equity is crucial today, especially in the publishing industry, which employs a large number of women and publishes books and articles for broad and diverse audiences. Four influential voices within the literary world will discuss the necessity of analyzing and documenting the make-up of the workforce,…
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108 Beads per Rosary + 108 Poets per REVOLUTIONESQUE
Harriet @ Poetry Foundation remarks, “you’ve got to check out Esque Mag Issue 3 … It’s beautiful.” Announcing Esque (click!) For the third issue of esque, REVOLUTIONESQUE, we asked you to tell us about the revolution. We didn’t define what we mean by that. Whether it lives in your home, in the financial district, or the district…
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Poetry & Race Roundtable
The new issue of Evening Will Come is up: A roundtable on poetry and race, featuring Francisco Aragón, Jaswinder Bolina, Veronica Golos, Amy King, J. Michael Martinez, Farid Matuk, Evie Shockley, Juliana Spahr, Orlando White, and Timothy Yu. Here: http://www.eveningwillcome.com/issue10-raceroundtable-p1.html “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” –Alice Walker
AWP Panel Proposal Rejected – Let’s Get Technical
While people like Cate Marvin, Susan Schultz, & Craig Santos Perez have queried similarly in the past, speculating on a variety of causes for rejection, proposal applicants are still left wondering at the end of the process each year, where we went wrong. Did bias play a role? Are the panelists and I not noteworthy…
Major Linkage
“Fuck the Corporate Media” – Students *Love* Discussing This Analysis ~~ Alanis Morissette Honors Her Feminist Foremothers “I wouldn’t even tell people I was black in Mississippi!” ‘Boobquake’ Spurs Feminist Infighting Sometimes people think I’m Gertrude Stein [GRT! Video] Gender, fucked Reclaiming the ‘B-Word’ In the Name of Feminism “Click”: The feminist eureka moment The…
“…damned mob of scribbling women” – Nathaniel Hawthorne
THOSE BADASS ♀ ARE AT IT AGAIN Judith Butler: As a Jew, I was taught it was ethically imperative to speak up ~~ “I call myself a feminist.”–Dalai Lama ~~ Film explores the life of China’s first feminist ~~ Sarkozy’s depiction of pregnant, ‘virgin’ Marianne sparks feminist … ~~ Forty years of women’s liberation ~~ The Revolution Won’t…
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The What Else of Queer Poetry
WHETTING EXCERPTS: …In queer poetry, desire blooms, and yes, I may just marry my dog— …Beyond that debate, we remain, in all our queerness, anomalies writing aloud the unimagined territories that language spearheads and explores. They may fear adventure in my world, but I inhabit theirs in multiple ways—and am them. …Queer poets especially locate…
Marriage Is a Metaphor
…an infinite series of possible encounters… The marriage equality issue isn’t ultimately about marriage, at least, not for me. Simply and quickly put, the entire debate is yet another public opportunity to voice who deserves rights, discrimination, bastardizing, and acceptance, no hate or holds barred. Of course, technically (& on the surface of all this),…
Fear or Disinterest? The powers that be…
Ever Hear of “The Family”? Get Ready… Fear or disinterest? The powers that be don’t care why we don’t discuss how our oppressions work together to isolate us while sustaining their power and positions, so long as we don’t turn our attentions to them and their puppetry. Why should you get mixed up in the…
Gay May Not Be the “New” Black, but…
Like it or not, parallels exist between the two separate-but-similar battles for civil rights. I received some flack the other day for posting the title statement on my Facebook page (“Gay is the new black.”), and in turn, learned there is some resistance against aligning the two movements for civil rights primarily because of fear…
Michelle Obama – The Next Hottentot Venus?
What will they say about her ascension as the First Lady? My first impulse is fearful. Ms. Obama smartly has not let on just how smart she is. But while we wait for her next move (will she avoid Senator Clinton’s grave error and bake the damn cookies?), how will they/we speak about her? Already,…
Gross.
BLACKS LOVE WHITES? AMERICAN CITIZENS LOVE IMMIGRANTS? WHITES LOVE PAKISTANIS? WOMEN LOVE WOMEN? BLACKS LOVE LATINAS? WHITES LOVE BLACKS? OLD LOVES YOUNG? FAMOUS LOVES UNKNOWN? MAN LOVES MAN? HAPPY LOVES DEPRESSIVE? ~~~~~ CIVIL RIGHTS DON’T BELONG TO EVERYONE! JOIN ME IN APPLAUDING PROP 8! [THIS POST IS SARCASTIC FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO DON’T “GET…
Race and Poetry [preview]
Part 1 of 3 Stay tuned for the *complete* audio of the Race and Poetry panel @ PennSound [http://www.writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/King.html or on a “bigger” page, waiting to hear]. In the meantime, *incomplete* video @ Blip.TV [http://amyking.blip.tv/ – better quality & only 3 long parts] or YouTube [http://www.youtube.com/user/amyhappens] with 7 shorter videos. The Wilders have also put…
What To Do, What To Do?
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SUN, SEPT. 21st @ 3:00 p.m.- Race and Poetry: Integrating the Experimental
Next month, from Thurs. Sept. 18-Sun. Sept. 21, we’ll be putting on the second annual Welcome to Boog City poetry and music festival. It will feature performances from 49 poets, 13 musical acts, and one theater company over the four days. Among the highlights are: —a night devoted to Durham, N.C. small press minor/american; —a…
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Civil Rights, Who Gets Them and How Often
Remember anti miscegenation? “Anti-miscegenation laws, also known as miscegenation laws, were laws that banned interracial marriage and sometimes interracial sex between whites and members of other races. In the United States, interracial marriage, cohabitation and sex have since 1863 been termed “miscegenation.” Contemporary usage of the term “miscegenation” is less frequent. In North America, laws…
Not One, But a Lovely Two!
Brandi Homan reviews I’M THE MAN WHO LOVES YOU in The Cutbank Review today (an excerpt): Even though King does something that there should be more of in contemporary poetry—addresses the sociopolitical aspects of life in the 21st century head on—I’m The Man Who Loves You accomplishes much more. It is disjointed, beautifully grotesque, and…
Aimé Césaire, Martinique poet, has died
The Associated Press – Thursday, April 17, 2008 PARIS: The esteemed Martinique poet and politician Aimé Césaire, a leading figure in the movement for black consciousness, died Thursday, the French president’s office and a hospital said. He was 94. Césaire was involved in the fight for French West Indian rights, and he also served as…
Dim Sum: Tonya Foster & Evie Shockley
DELIRIOUS HEM The following excerpts are taken from “Dim Sum: Tonya Foster & Evie Shockley — Braiding: ConVERSations: To, Against, For” It would be one thing if poetry were made of words alone, but it is not–no more than words themselves are. –Paolo Friere via James Scully (Linebreak 133) …If essentialism means being able…
How to Hate Hillary
“You can … discuss this avalanche of misogyny without endorsing her campaign …” –Bill Moyers in conversation with Kathleen Hall Jamieson ~~ Select excerpts from Robin Morgan’s “Goodbye To All That (#2)“: —When a sexist idiot screamed “Iron my shirt!” at HRC, it was considered amusing; if a racist idiot shouted “Shine my shoes!” at…
Let’s Go Out Past the Party Lights
If I had a woman, I’d play this Tom Waits’ re-make for her. If I had to live in the suburbs, I’d pick North Massapequa, former home of Christine Jorgensen, who was the world’s first publicized sex change star. If I had to live in North Massapequa, originally settled by the Native Americans of the…
“Why Poetry?”
An excerpt from James Baldwin’s essay, “If Black English Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?” (1979): People evolve a language in order to describe and thus control their circumstances, or in order not to be submerged by a reality that they cannot articulate. … What joins all languages, and all men, is the…
Analysis 101
Many of my students are required to watch the above youtube video, “A Girl Like Me”, among numerous others, as part of their supplemental assignments in my courses. Basically, I try to get them to begin analyzing by using the mediums they are most accustomed to, which include youtube and showing dvds of popular media…
AMY KING 