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A Self-Respecting Poet Laureate
Congratulations to Carol Ann Duffy on becoming England’s first female poet laureate. The Guardian has an oddly inspiring gallery picturing Duffy and 20 of her predecessors. Given the uneven quality of laureate choices in the past, it needs to be said that this honor is well deserved.Read More
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Suffrage
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Taslima Nasrin takes refuge “somewhere in Europe”
“Bangladeshi writer ‘exiled again’”. Let us all hope Taslima Nasrin at last finds peace and the creative freedom she deserves. Stepping back a bit from Taslima’s travails…: It would be illuminating to see a “diaspora map” showing the flow of intellectual resources—i.e., writers, artists, scientists, academics, etc.—from oppressive parts of the world to relatively free parts of the world. Something like this map tracing the first Jewish diasporas.Read More
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On the Letters of Ted Hughes V
Finishing The Letters of Ted Hughes—which I managed to do while recovering from a nasty bout with the flu—left me with a strange mixture of exaltation and biting sadness: something, I mean, beyond the sadness that books like this (biographies, letters, etc.) inevitably inspire because they end in the grave.Read More
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The Language of Sleaze
At first I thought I’d let the latest right-wing sleazefest slide, but the more I thought about the new anti-Hillary 527 organization founded by Roger Stone—a former Watergate “dirty trickster” and one of the nastiest little creeps on the scene—I realized that it really deserves examination. First you need to read about it here. Then you need to contemplate for a few moments the “art” this stoneless Roger is offering up on T-Shirts, supposedly promoting his organization: If you just don’t “get” this misogynistic humor, consider yourself lucky and simply skip this post.Read More
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Governmental Gutlessness
Here is the latest news in the increasingly absurd failure of “the world’s largest democracy” to protect Taslima Nasrin’s freedom not only to speak and write, but to walk in the open air without fear for her life. Now she is being refused the opportunity to receive a prestigious international award in her own country.Read More
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Congratulations to Taslima Nasreen
I just stumbled across this draft of a post that I failed to actually post back in January…. “Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen has been chosen for the prestigious Simone de Beauvoir feminist award in recognition of her writing on rights for women,” reports Sify News.Read More
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Congratulations to Taslima Nasrin
“Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen has been chosen for the prestigious Simone de Beauvoir feminist award in recognition of her writing on rights for women,” reports Sify News.Read More
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Taslima Nasrin Under House Arrest
The suppression of Talsima Nasrin’s writing has extended to her person. Details here and on her own web site here.Read More
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Pick Up the Phone!
Just finished reading Adrienne Rich’s excellent new collection, Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth (if you know of a better book title from the past year, I’d like to hear about it). Here’s an insightful review that gets to the heart of what makes this book, and Rich’s work overall, continually powerful and refreshing. Her sympathies reach far beyond feminism or politics in the narrow sense, and in the process produce a kind of poetry that seems to move beyond the subjective/objective, interior/exterior dichotomy by bearing witness to our historical/existential moment.Read More
Joseph Hutchison, Colorado Poet Laureate 2014-2019, has published 20 collections of poems and edited or co-edited three poetry anthologies. He currently directs two master’s-level programs for University College at the University of Denver: Professional Creative Writing and Arts & Culture Management. Joe lives with his wife, Melody Madonna, in the mountains southwest of Denver, Colorado, the city where he was born. 
