Write on the Dot awarded

Congratulations to Aaron Devine and the Write on the DOT team for winning the UMass Boston Program of the Year award at last night's Student Leadership Awards.

From an interview with Tom Yuill

I compose all the time, always have a pen and scrap of paper in my pocket or by the bed, so sudden inspiration must certainly be part of what I’m doing. But I work on the lines, the stanzas, the poems, all of it, over and over. I have spent years listening to a poem over and over, trying to make sure the rhythms I have on the page are right for the poem itself. I take great swaths of lines, pull three of seven out and fuse them with one or twelve more I wrote at another time. No rules, really, except that I want to the poem to be itself, to be a realized, complete work of art. And, sure, for me part of that is giving it the right lines, not the flashiest lines, not the strangest lines, not the most formally strict lines, none of that. If the lines are memorable I give credit to the poem, that is to say, I said it aloud so many times it must have wrung from itself whatever wasn’t ringing true. As Shakespeare, Lowell, Sidney, Villon, Fulke Greville and Frost teach us, what rings true artistically IS often memorable.

-- Boston-based poet Tom Yuill, responding to interviewer Louis Mayeux's comment and question: "Like Lowell, you have a gift for memorable, striking individual lines that click into the mind like gold coins. Do you work and rework these lines, or are they products of sudden inspiration?"

From the MadHat/P&A AWP off-site reading: Ben Mazer

Jonathan Pelton of Unlikely Stories writes:

On Thursday, March 7, I was fortunate enough to participate in the joint MadHat / Pen & Anvil Press off-site read for the 2013 Conference of the Association of Writers' Programs in Boston. We read in the Sherril Library at Lesley University in Cambridge. 

I knew we had a solid line-up, but I had no idea that the event would be as magical as it was. It was truly one of the best readings I've ever attended, and I am overjoyed to have participated. 

It's six weeks later, and I'm still sitting on the footage. I still have a great deal I need to do, projects more pressing than uploading these videos to YouTube, but I really couldn't wait any more -- I had to share at least one reading from that delightfully powerful and bizarre night -- Ben Mazer, of Zachary Bos's Pen and Anvil Press.

Spoken word featured in Dig Boston

From "Performing Arts: Lost Voices of Boston" by Sarah Flynn:

Rise up from the smoky basements of black turtlenecks and snaps: this is not your average underground spoken poetry jam. Matt Ganem is bringing lyrical verse street-level at Lost Voices of Boston this week at the Middle East... 

Ganem, the event’s host, has come a long way from a past of addiction, and is now channeling his energies into revitalizing the poetry scene in Boston. “My first book, published by JRock Publishing, The Shadow of an Addict, centers around my drug addiction, providing the best life possible for my son, my inspiration,” said Ganem. “But I mainly write about the ugly truth of a heroin addict... 

After a wildly successful show at the Corner Pub in Back Bay with the poetry group Writer’s Block, he decided to start the Lost Voices of Boston monthly open mic night, exposing Boston’s poetry scene to a larger demographic.

[Dig Boston, 2/2/13]

Call for Submissions: Mount Hope

Mount Hope Magazine, a publication of the creative writing department at Roger Williams University, is 

1. nationally distributed;
2. designed by students at the Massachusetts College of Art; and 
3. now reviewing submissions.

The new editors are taking their cue from the make-it-new aesthetic of McSweeney's, and are trying to do something innovative with format in each issue. If you have work burning a hole on your desktop, by all means send them an email and let them consider your stuff for publication. They welcome prose and poetry, fiction and nonfiction, and literary commentary and journalism. Work which blend text and graphics are especially welcome. Send submissions to Mount.Hope.Magazine@gmail.com. More instructions can be found at http://www.mounthopemagazine.com/Submissions.html.

"Cambridge woman drops poems around the MBTA"

From the 1/23/13 issue of Metro Boston:

After the Sandy Hook shootings, Cambridge Resident Jen Bonardi was inspired by a national campaign that called for "26 acts of kindness," but she couldn't figure out how to go about doing it.  

She handed out $26 worth of Dunkin' Donuts gift cards to strangers, but when that didn't hit the spot, she came up with the idea for "26 Acts of Poetry." 

Last week Bonardi threw 26 folded poems on trains throughout the MBTA. 

"I hope I didn't freak anybody out" she said. 

The poems are written by 26 different poets, including Boston slam poet Erich Haygun, and each was dedicated to a Sandy Hook child or teacher who died. 

Bonardi's blog asks those who find poems to reach out and share their feelings. So far, she has heard from two T riders, but she hopes more messages will come. 

"Sometimes you don't believe you've touched someone until you've heard from them," she said."

Monty Python's Poet Sketches

Tip of the hat to the inimitable Ernest Hilbert for posting these at the wonderful E-Verse Radio blog.