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McWhirter Wins the 2024 Griffin Poetry Prize
In the wake of my earlier post regarding my mentor George McWhirter’s arrival on the 2024 Griffin Poetry Prize short list, there is this extraordinarily wonderful news from last night’s event in Toronto: George McWhirter wins $78,000 for the international prize for his translation of Self-Portrait in the Zone of Silence, written in Spanish by Mexican poet Homero Aridjis (New Directions Publishing).Read More
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My Poetic Mentor Makes the Griffin Prize Shortlist. Huzzah!
Vancouver poet and translator George McWhirter makes shortlist for $130K Griffin Poetry Prize CBC Books · Posted: Apr 17, 2024 8:47 AM MDT | Last Updated: April 18 Canadian translator George McWhirter is on the shortlist for the 2024 Griffin Poetry Prize. (Mark Van Mannen) Canadian translator George McWhirter has made the shortlist for the Griffin Poetry Prize. He is recognized for Self-Portrait in the Zone of Silence, which was translated from Spanish and written by the great Mexican poet Homero Aridjis. The $130,000 prize is the world’s largest prize for a single book of poetry written in or translated into English. Read the full story here.Read More
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“Thirteen Maqams” from Fady Joudah (a Palestinian lament)
I’m linking to this extraordinary rage-meditation before it gets taken down for whatever “national security” reason: A Palestinian Meditation in a Time of Annihilation: Thirteen Maqams for an Afterlife, by the magnificent Palestinian-American poet/translator and physician Fady Joudah. Thanks to LitHub for making it available, and thanks to Louise Glück, wherever she’s traveling these days, for choosing Joudah’s first book for the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition in 2007. For anyone interested in the title of Joudah’s lament, here’s a good place to start exploring maqam.Read More
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Exciting News about Under Sleep’s New Moon
Thanks to the judges at the Colorado Authors League for choosing Under Sleep’s New Moon for the 2022 Book Award for poetry. Very exciting! And more than a little surprising, given the puzzlement some folks have registered upon reading the title. More than one person has asked me a simple question: “What does it mean?”—my somewhat mysterious title. I get it.Read More
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Nikky Finney’s National Book Award Acceptance Speech (2011)
A colleague shared the video below with me many moons ago, thinking (rightly) that I might appreciate it. I decided to post it but apparently got interrupted, and lingered in my “drafts” folder until today. I remembered it today when I ran across a video of a reporter at an NRA rally in the South interviewing a gray-haired old fellow wearing a confederate flag tee shirt. The reporter remarked that some people viewed that flag as a racist symbol.Read More