Last Day of National Poetry Month

Robert Hass' "A Story About the Body" and "Churchyard"

Greetings fellow literary travelers,

This week’s post is going out one day early in order to make it over the transom while it’s still officially National Poetry Month.

This spring, I’m teaching a poetry for prose writers course, and this week’s topic is prose poetry. Two of the prose poems I assigned, “A Story About the Body” and “Churchyard,” are by the great Robert Hass, a former U.S. poet laureate, from his collection Human Wishes, which I’ve pasted after some literary news and submissions information.

Image credit: Rock Valley College

📙 Congratulations to Mark Turcotte, author of the excellent poetry collections Exploding Chippewas and The Feathered Heart, who was just named Illinois’ new poet laureate. You can read more about Mark in an article by Rick Kogan published yesterday in the Chicago Tribune.

📕 Steve Almond is teaching a three-part course for Lit Camp: A No-Nonsense Survival Guide for Writers, that begins on May 5. You can sign up for all 3 sections or for one:

Participants can sign up for all three 2-hour sessions or an individual session:

1. How to Build a Sustainable Writing Practice, May 5, 6 PM PDT

2. How to Handle Submissions, Rejection, Delays, May 12, 6 PM PDT

3. How to Create Your Own Best Publishing Experience, May 19, 6 PM PDT

📘 The Hollis Summers Poetry Prize at Ohio University Press for book-length collections (60-95 pp) is now open for submissions—more information here.

📒 A recent Bookish interview with Los Angeles-based poet Vandana Khanna can be accessed here.

📗 Bookish subscriptions are currently 25% off. May’s agent list will be next week’s post. A preview of April’s can be viewed here.

🍷 A place has opened in the "Lightning on the Page" retreat I’m leading for Foreword Retreats in Bordeaux, France, May 18-24. More information here.

Thank you for being here, and now…

From the New York Times

From Human Wishes, Ecco Press, 1989

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Postscript: ❤️