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.

12/15 Brockton Poetry Series: Gibson and Pawlak

Saturday, December 15, 2012
The Brockton Poetry Series at the Fuller Craft Museum
455 Oak Street, Brockton, MA (For directions see fullercraft.org)

About the readers:

Reggie O’Hare Gibson is a poet, writer, performer, musician, lecturer and educator. In 1998 Gibson won the National Slam Competition. It only takes a few moments of listening to him perform to understand exactly why he has garnered awards and accolades for his work. His performances are mesmerizing. He has worked with numerous well-known individuals including Kurt Vonnegut. In 1999, Gibson performed at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre, adapting the work of Vonnegut for performance. Mr. Vonnegut, who was in the audience for the performance, had this to say about Reggie O’Hare Gibson’s performance: “When you perform you are supersonic and in the stratosphere where you can see the Earth really as a ball, moist, blue-green. You sing and chant for all of us. Nobody gets left out.”

In 2001 Gibson released his first full-length book of poetry, Storms Beneath the Skin, which received the Golden Pen Award. He describes the poems as chants and canticles for they are both rhythmic and songlike. Reviews of Storms Beneath the Skin are, not-surprisingly, five-star. The book opens with a poem entitled “Alchemy,” where Gibson takes on reductionist academicians who view language simply as grammar, ignoring the way language can awaken us through utilizing new combinations. For the last several years, O’Hare Gibson has turned to the visual arts for inspiration. He feels that visual arts have given him a new way to enter a poem and allows him to see things from different perspectives.

Gibson has recently completed a stint as Artist-in-Residence at Berklee College of Music in Boston. He received his MFA from New England College and has performed widely in the U.S., Cuba, and Europe. In 2008 he represented the U.S., competed for and won the Absolute Poetry Award in Monfalcone, Italy. In addition to his live on-stage performances, he has been featured on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam and on various NPR programs. He is a recipient of the Walker scholarship for poetry from the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center and a YMCA Writer’s fellowship. In 2010 Gibson received a Massachusetts Cultural Council Award for Poetry and the 2010-11 Lexington Education Foundation Program grant. In addition to his poetic performances, he is on-stage regularly with Atlas Soul, a world music ensemble that combines North African grooves with American Jazz, Rock and Funk.

Mark Pawlak is the author of seven poetry collections and the editor of six anthologies. His latest books are Go to the Pine: Quoddy Journals 2005-2010 (Plein Air Editions/Bootstrap Press, 2012) and Jefferson’s New Image Salon :Mashups and Matchups (Cervena Barva Press, 2010). His work has been translated into German, Polish, and Spanish, and has appeared widely in English in anthologies such as The Best American Poetry, Blood to Remember: American Poets on the Holocaust, For the Time Being: The Bootstrap Anthology of Poetic Journals and in the literary magazines New American Writing, Mother Jones, Poetry South, The Saint Ann’s Review, and The World, among many others. For more than 30 years Pawlak has been an editor of the Brooklyn-based Hanging Loose, one of the oldest independent literary journals and presses in the country. He supports his poetry habit by teaching mathematics at U Mass Boston, where he is Director of Academic Support Programs. He lives in Cambridge.

We meet downstairs in the Fuller Café.

Schedule:
12:00 - 2:00 Poetry Workshop (offered at no charge to the public)
1:30 - 2:00 Sign up for Open-Mic Reading
2:15 - 3:15 Open-Mic Reading
3:30 - 4:30 Feature Poets

Poetry Features for Saturday January 19 are Lloyd Schwartz and Renee Summers.

See our new website: brocktonarts.org and click on “Brockton Poetry” to see our current poets of the month and upcoming features.

12/18: Aguero, Blake, and Hoffman at the Armory

THE FIRST AND LAST WORD POETRY SERIES
Hosted by Harris Gardner and Gloria Mindock

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2012
7:00 PM/ADMISSION: $4.00

About the readers:

Kathleen Aguero's poetry collections include Investigations: The Mystery of the Girl Sleuth, Daughter Of, The Real Weather and Thirsty Day. She has also co-edited three volumes of multi-cultural literature for the University of Georgia Press and is a poetry editor of Solstice Literary Magazine. She teaches at Pine Manor College in both the undergraduate and low-residency M.F.A. programs.

Michelle Blake has published poetry and essays in Ploughshares, Southern Review, Seneca Review, More, The New York Times and a number of other publications. She is also the author of three novels-The Tentmaker, Earth Has No Sorrow and The Book of Light. Blake has taught writing at Tufts University, Stanford University, Warren Wilson College and Goddard College. She received a MTS from Harvard Divinity School and a MFA from Goddard.

Richard Hoffman is author of the poetry collections, Without Paradise, Gold Star Road, winner of the 2006 Barrow Street Press Poetry Prize and the 2008 Sheila Motton Award from the New England Poetry Club, and Emblem. He is also author of the memoir Half the House, and the short story collection, Interference and Other Stories.

An open mic will follow the reading.

The Center for the Arts is located between Davis Square and Union Square at 191 Highland Avenue. Parking is located behind the armory at the rear of the building. Arts at the Armory is approximately a 15 minute walk from Davis Square which is on the MTBA Red Line. You can also find us by using either the MBTA RT 88 and RT 90 bus that can be caught either at Lechmere (Green Line) or Davis Square (Red Line). Get off at the Highland Avenue and Lowell Street stop. You can also get to us from Sullivan Square (Orange Line) by using the MBTA RT 90 bus. Get off at the Highland Avenue and Benton Road stop.

Lorem Ipsum on the shoals

From BoingBoing:

Lorem Ipsum books, a bookstore in Cambridge, Mass, is up for sale. Cambridge is one of the great bookselling towns of the world, and Lorem Ipsum was founded as a project by an MIT Media Lab grad named Matt Mankins, to explore sustainable business-models for brick-and-mortar bookselling. Now Mankins has moved to NYC to be CTO of a big magazine publisher, and he's taken to Hacker News to solicit buyers and ideas for the store (which is losing money).

BoingBoing readers -- those happy mutants -- are book readers; accordingly the comments thread at the BoingBoing post contains many suggestions and observations for the new or current owners of this or any other independent bookstore:

• put in a bistro and salad bar, coffee or tea shop
• sell books for delivery on multimedia devices and CD
• RENT books for delivery on multimedia devices and CD, with limited duration and expiry
• install a 3D printing station or otherwise invest in attracting the hackerspace crowd
• "some of the best book stores I've been in -- and return to -- are small, enclosed, and meandering. It's like there's a secret waiting around the next corner and usually, there is a great book I've never read around that corner. Cozy chairs are a must too." [A nod here to the cozy -- alright, chaotic -- Diskovery Books]
• allow for increased inventory turnover without incurring additional stocking and warehousing costs, by moving stock at professional, academic, and hobbyist conventions 
• convert the store into a pay-toilet location, and offer books for sale to those who need something to read whilst using the facilities
• raise prices ("You're not running a table on a street corner, don't stock or price like you are. There's no reason to be selling used books for less than half their retail price.")
• lower prices ("Raggedy old paperbacks should be cheap, like $4 or less.")
• do not let your enthusiasm for retail innovation blind you to the barriers you are erecting between customers and a sale -- such as when you cease in marking books with prices, and instead expect the customer to calculate the price as some multiple of the cost of a locally-sold sandwich (!) or to speak with the counter staff to get a sale price
• engage with local bloggers and content providers, and rent them shelf or counter space to market custom branded products and promotional items
• rent the space for events every night of the week, at $100 a pop (staffed by a local university student doing their retail or book industry internship)
• take a fee for recommending book services freelancers to customers looking to have design, editing, production, or writing work done
• become a specialty procurer rather than vendor of mass product

That last hits home for me especially. As a book buyer I rarely had a reason to stop by Lorem Ipsum -- their inventory was too run-of-the-mill to attract devotees of the odd; too low-market for antiquarians and bibliophiles; and too static, with insufficient turn-over, to attract someone like me who has specific literary and scholarly interests, and who will be looking for titles related to particular topics. The staff, on the few occasions I spoke with them early in the store's history (and before they moved shop to their present location), were not themselves book people, and didn't command the same kind of knowledge of books and their inventory that would have made me a more committed customer. For which expertise I mourn the closing of Avenue Victor Hugo...

Job listing: Mass College of Liberal Arts

(Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education)

FACULTY POSITIONS AVAILABLE SEPTEMBER 1, 2013 FULL-TIME - TENURE TRACK - WITH BENEFITS

Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts (MCLA) is the dynamic and vibrant public liberal arts college of the Massachusetts State University System located in the beautiful Berkshire Hills in Western Massachusetts. MCLA is also a part of a nationally recognized cohort of public colleges and universities (COPLAC) that blend a liberal arts education with hands-on experience and professional programs across a range of disciplines. The College is surrounded by natural beauty and world-class cultural attractions and serves as an important educational resource for the region. With an enrollment of 2,000, MCLA attracts students from across Massachusetts and the New England and New York regions. Opportunities for active learning and engagement with a dedicated faculty include undergraduate research, service learning, internships, independent study, and study away/study abroad. Come be a part of our team.

The College invites applications for the following tenure-track assistant professorships beginning September, 2013. All positions entail teaching up to 12 credits per semester as well as continuing scholarship, academic advising and college service. All positions are contingent on final budgetary approval.

ENGLISH/COMMUNICATIONS - CREATIVE WRITING AND LITERATURE

The successful candidate will teach a wide range of creative writing and literature courses, develop upper level courses in her or his areas of expertise, and offer courses in the general education program, including composition. The position requires a demonstrated commitment to excellent teaching and to working effectively with students in creative writing workshops.

Additional responsibilities will include recruiting, advising and mentoring students; engaging students in undergraduate research, study away/study abroad, and related opportunities; participating in departmental and committee work; and maintaining a professional scholarly agenda.

QUALIFICATIONS: Candidates must hold an earned Ph.D., or the M.F.A. with at least sixty (60) hours of graduate credit, with strong preparation in creative writing and literature. Candidates who are ABD with a firm date of completion for the degree will be considered.
Preference will be given to candidates with at least three years of successful teaching experience at the college level; interest in ongoing professional development; and experience with instructional technology.

TO APPLY: Submit a cover letter, vita, a statement of teaching philosophy and three letters of reference with application, electronically, to:http://mcla.interviewexchange.com/candapply.jsp?JOBID=35875

Confidential letters of reference from references should be sent to: hr@mcla.edu.

Preliminary interviews will be conducted at the MLA Conference in Boston in January 2013. For best consideration please submit all materials by December 15, 2012.

Review of applications will begin immediately and continue until position is filled.

For additional information on the position, the Department goals and aspirations, and the College, please go tohttp://www.mcla.edu/Undergraduate/majors/englishcommunications/

ENGLISH/COMMUNICATIONS - GLOBAL ANGLOPHONE LITERATURE AND ENGLISH LITERATURE STUDIES

The successful candidate will develop upper level courses in her or his areas of expertrise and will regularly teach history and structure of the English language, literary survey courses, introductory literature and general education courses, and composition. Preference will be given to candidates who have background in cultural studies and literary theory.

Additional responsibilities will include recruiting, advising and mentoring students; engaging students in undergraduate research, study away/study abroad, and related opportunities; participating in departmental and committee work; and maintaining a professional scholarly agenda. This position is contingent on final budgetary approval.

QUALIFICATIONS: Candidates must hold an earned Ph.D. in literary studies with strong preparation in global Anglophone language and literature from the Caribbean, Africa, or the Asian subcontinent and in English language studies. Knowledge of African American literature is a plus. A demonstrated strong commitment to excellent teaching is a must. Candidates who are ABD with a firm date of completion for the degree will be considered.
Preference will be given to candidates with at least three years of successful teaching experience at the college level; interest in ongoing professional development; and experience with instructional technology.

TO APPLY: Submit a cover letter, vita, a statement of teaching philosophy and three letters of reference with application, electronically, to:http://mcla.interviewexchange.com/candapply.jsp?JOBID=36181

Confidential letters of reference from references should be sent to: hr@mcla.edu.

Preliminary interviews will be conducted at the MLA Conference in Boston in January 2013. For best consideration please submit all materials by December 15, 2012.

For additional information on the position, the Department goals and aspirations, and the College, please go tohttp://www.mcla.edu/Undergraduate/majors/englishcommunications/

Review of applications will begin immediately and continue until position is filled.

Solstice MFA 2013 Fiction & Poetry Awards

SOLSTICE MFA IN CREATIVE WRITING PROGRAM
AWARDS 2013 FICTION AND POETRY FELLOWSHIPS

Chestnut Hill, MA - The Solstice Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing Program of Pine Manor College is pleased to announce its Fellowship winners for the 2013 winter/spring semester: Kim Suhr has been awarded the Dennis Lehane Fellowship for Fiction, and Jenifer DeBellis has been awarded the Sharon Olds Fellowship for Poetry. Both fellowships are offered once annually to a promising writer starting the program during the winter/spring semester. Fellowship recipients each receive a $1,000 award toward their first semester’s tuition. For more information about Solstice MFA Program Fellowships, go to: http://www.pmc.edu/mfa-financial-aid.

2013 Dennis Lehane Fellowship for Fiction winner Kim Suhr is the director of two organizations in southeastern Wisconsin that support writers young and old through  critique groups, workshops  and readings. Her work has appeared at Grey Sparrow Journal, Full of Crow, Staccato Fiction, and the 2011 Wisconsin Poets’ Calendar; she has earned awards from the Wisconsin Writers’ Association’s Jade Ring and Lindemann Humor Contests. A contributor to Lake Effect, a program produced by NPR’s affiliate in Milwaukee, Kim holds degrees in English and Education from the University of Wisconsin.

2013 Sharon Olds Fellowship for Poetry winner Jenifer DeBellis is a 2012 Meadow Brook Writing Project Writer-in-Residence and Co-Editor-in-Chief of Pink Panther Magazine, an international feminist publication. Her work has appeared in BAC Street Journal, Oakland Journal, and Swallow the Moon. When she is not mentoring and encouraging other writers or nurturing her own craft, she seeks solace amongst family and friends, or sneaks in a run along the back roads of her small town.

ABOUT SOLSTICE & PINE MANOR COLLEGE

As an undergraduate institution consistently ranked among the most diverse in the country, Pine Manor College emphasizes an inclusive, community-building approach to liberal arts education. The Solstice MFA in Creative Writing reflects the College’s overall mission by creating a supportive, welcoming environment in which writers of all backgrounds are encouraged to take creative risks. We strive to instill in our students an appreciation for the value of community-building and community service, and see engagement with the literary arts not only as a means to personal fulfillment but also as an instrument for real cultural change.

www.pmc.edu/mfa

Sexton on Lowell in the classroom

The class met at Boston University on Tuesdays from two to four in a dismal room the shape of a shoe box. It was a bleak spot, as if it had been forgotten for years, like the spinning room in Sleeping Beauty’s castle. We were not allowed to smoke, but everyone smoked anyhow, using their shoes as ashtrays. Unused to classes of any kind, it seemed slow and uninspired to me. But I had come in through the back door and was no real judge. […]  

 In November I gave him a manuscript to see if he thought “it was a book.” He was enthusiastic on the whole, but suggested that I throw out half of it and write another fifteen or so poems that were better. He pointed out the weak ones and I nodded and I took them out. It sounds simple to say that I merely, as he once said, jumped the hurdles that he had put up. But it makes a difference who puts up those hurdles. He defined the goal and acted as though, good race horse that I was, I’d just naturally run the course. […]  

The last time I saw Mr. Lowell was over a year ago before he left for New York. I miss him as all apprentices miss their first real master. He is a modest man and an incisive critic. He helped me to distrust the easy musical phrase and to look for the frankness of ordinary speech. If you have enough natural energy he can show you how to chain it in. He didn't teach me what to put into a poem, but what to leave out. What he taught me was taste. Perhaps that’s the only thing a poet can be taught. 

-- from the recollection of Anne Sexton, published under the title "Classroom at Boston University" in Robert Lowell: Interviews and Memoirs, edited by Jeffrey Meyers (University of Michigan Press, 1988); cross-posed to the BU Graduate Program in Creative Writing blog

Beck Tuch on how lit mags matter

I’ll tell you, there is an essay from Granta that I read years ago and which I still think about every single day. There is a discussion forum in Boston Review from which I still quote in conversation. There is one poem that I read in Beecher’s many months ago, which flits through my mind constantly.

-- Becky Tuch, founding editor of The Review Review, responding in the Ploughshares blog to certain persistent myths about literary magazines

Kalogeris at the Grolier, September 2012

George Kalogeris reads from his new collection, Dialogos (Antilever Press), at the Grolier Poetry Book Shop, on September 13, 2012. Video by Mark Schorr.

Class Act Poets, a reading at the Armory

7 PM, Tuesday, September 25, 2012
The Center for the Arts at the Armory
191 Highland Avenue, Somerville, MA

Reading on this occasion will be: Betty Barrer; Denise Provost; Anthony Majahad; Nellie Goodwin; Adnan Adam Onart; Audrey Henderson; Mary Buchinger; and Bob Brooks.

About the group
Class Act is a group of poets who are students in classes conducted by poet Susan Donnelly, author of “Eve Names the Animals,” “Transit” and “Capture the Flag.” Class Act poets have published books and chapbooks, won awards from The New England Poetry Club and elsewhere, are published in many journals, and are active in groups such as the Jamaica Pond Poets, Bagel Bards, C.R.E.W., and the Boston Poetry Union. Admission is free. For more information and samples of Class Act work visit their website at https://sites.google.com/site/classactpoets.

Katia Kapovich reads her English poems in Hamilton

Russian-born Katia Kapovich will be reading her English language poems on September 21st at Christ Church, 149 Asbury Street in South Hamilton, Mass. Come, bring flowers, wreathes, money to buy books. (RSVP here)

Kapovich has published nine volumes of poetry in English and Russian. Her latest is Cossacks and Bandits (Salt Publishing, 2007). She was a co-founder of Fulcrum ("an annual of poetry and aesthetics"), which was during the period of its publication one of the most esteemed magazines of its kind in the English-language poetry world.

For more information, you can go ogle her using the usual search engines, or visit http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/katia-kapovich.

Naked Girls Reading: They Might Be Giants

I've been asked to share news of this literary event, billed as "the biggest Naked Girls Reading ever!" Information from the Coolidge website:

Well, the tallest, anyway. We've got over thirty linear feet of Naked Girls reading some of the best flash fiction ever written. Every performer is at least 5'10" tall in her bare feet! Featuring: Betty Blaize, a Boston Babydoll, known as "six feet of fun"; Karina Valkyrie from Hudson, MA, a first-time Naked Girl who stands 6’1”; Legs Malone from New York City, who at 5’11” is billed as ‘The Girl with the Thirty-Four-and-a-Half Inch Inseam’; Lizzie Havoc, a local writer and bartender who at 6’3” is the tallest of the readers; and ‘Vita Lightly’, the alter-ego of former Boston Babydoll and professional model, Sarah Hartshorne, who is 5’10”." Tickets: $20 advance / $30 day-of-show.

Hartshorne, pictured above, also blogs at Erratic in Heels. You may have seen here on a previous season of America's Next Top Model, or at Trident Cafe on one of those afternoons a few years ago when she'd meet with certain editors of certain local literary magazines to read recent issues of literary magazines and comb through slush pile submissions.

The reading is happening on Saturday, September 22, 2012, 11:59 at the Coolidge Corner Theater,  290 Harvard St, Brookline, MA.

David Ferry to read at Boston University

The estimable poet and translator David Ferry will be launching the Fall 2012 Poetry Reading Series at Boston University, on Monday, September 24th at 6 PM. This free and public reading will take place in the Katzenberg Center, 3rd Floor, 871 Commonwealth Avenue (BU West T-stop on the Green Line). (RSVP here)

Ferry is the author of Of No Country I Know: New and Selected Poems and Translations, winner of the 2000 Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry and the Academy of American Poets' Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. He is the translator of Gilgamesh (1992), The Odes of Horace (1998), The Eclogues of Virgil (1999), The Epistles of Horace (2001), winner of the Landon Translation Prize, and The Georgics of Virgil (2005), all published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Ferry's other awards include the Sixtieth Fellowship of The Academy of American Poets, the Teasdale Prize for Poetry, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, the Ingram Merrill Award, and the William Arrowsmith Translation Prize from AGNI magazine.

His new book, Bewilderment, was released this year by the University of Chicago Press.

Books will be available for sale. Please contact Meg Tyler at (617) 358-4199 or mtyler@bu.edu with any questions. This event co-sponsored by the Center for the Humanities at Boston University and the College of General Studies.

Beyond Baroque Poetry Contest

The Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center ("dedicated to the possibilities of language") invites submissions to its third annual poetry contest, judged this year by Suzanne Lummis, poet, teacher, and director of the Los Angeles Poetry Festival.

Prizes of $1000, $500, and $250, for first, second and third place, respectively; five honorable mentions will also be given.

INSTRUCTIONS: Up to three unpublished poems may be submitted by poets resident in the United States, accompanied by an entry fee for $15, and a cover letter with the author’s contact information and the titles of the poems being submitted. Each poem should begin on a new sheet; multiple-page poems should have numbered pages, with the title on each page. No identifying information other than the title should be on the poems. Receipt confirmation will only be sent via email.

ENTRY DEADLINE: September 1, 2012. Mail to: Beyond Baroque Poetry Contest, 681 Venice Boulevard, Venice, CA 90291. For more information, contact info@beyondbaroque.org.

Winners will be invited to read at Beyond Baroque on Sunday, October 21, 2012, at 2 PM. Participants in the reading are responsible for their travel and lodging. Attendance by winners is not required at the reading.