Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

We are so excited to share that Naomi Shihab Nye was featured on PBS NewsHour’s occasional series on poets and poetry yesterday,  speaking on teaching, storytelling, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and her latest collection Transfer, which BOA published last fall. You can watch the feature here.

Nye travels all around the country giving readings and lessons to young poets, readers, and even audiences without any particular interest in the form. Check out the extended interview here to hear about a provocative session with a ladies’ luncheon group that demonstrates Nye’s ability to turn our attentions to places we’ve never seen.

“McOmber’s stories are tinged with the bizarre,” says Jessica Brockmole. In the HNR Issue BOA’s publicaton, This New and Poisononous Air by Adam McOmber, is reviewed by Brockmole. She commends the multilayered charcters within the collection’s ten stories.

McOmber has been linked to the grim and dark writtings of Poe and Dinesen. Although the comparisions have been made, the review emphasizes that the stories themselves are not dark, “beneath each runs a subtext that darkness resides in us all.”

The review can be read here.

Adam McOmber is the author of This New and Poisonous Air, his debut collection of short stories. The Assistant Director of Creative Nonfiction at Columbia College Chicago, where he teaches both creative nonfiction and mythology, he is also the associate editor of the literary magazine Hotel Amerika. Purchase This New and Poisonous Air in BOA’s bookstore.

Do you like YouTube videos? Poetry, too? Want to see a video of Craig Morgan Teicher playing with cats? So do we!  Head over to the BOA Editions channel on YouTube for some newly added readings by Naomi Shihab Nye, Sean Thomas Dougherty, and Kazim Ali. No tumbling or botched back-flips, but these recitations will have you flipping over to the BOA Bookstore to read more from these fine poets. Any suggestions? Throw them up on our Facebook page! We’d love to hear from you.

To add to the list of reasons why we love New York City, the MTA has brought back its Poetry in Motion, an initiative to plaster lines of verse across the subway car walls. Alice Quinn, former New Yorker poetry editor and current executive director of the Poetry Society of America, sat down with the Poetry Foundation to discuss the project and its featured poets, including BOA pillar Lucille Clifton! For more information on Poetry in Motion and the Arts in Transit project, check out its page on the MTA website.

Ever wonder what went through an artist’s head while you’re viewing their work? The insights could be revelatory; they might confirm your hunches or completely turn your impressions for a loop. Either way, getting poets to talk about their craft and how they arrived at the final versions of their poems can be a noble, if not valuable enterprise as we encounter their work or polish off our own. To listen in on a truly compelling conversation about the making of a poem between two poets, check out Fleda Brown’s interview on Brian Brodeur’s blog How a Poem Happens. In it, Brown discusses the development of her poem “Translation,” how the process began, valuable techniques, and whether or not inspiration actually moves us to make poetry.

Hey, Rochester! In addition to celebrating an early spring this April, it’s National Poetry Month! BOA Editions has partnered up with Rochester public radio WXXI for a recurring program, Poetry Moments. These potent jabs of poesy will include selections from BOA authors such as Tony Leuzzi, Barton Sutter, Aracelis Girmay, Lucille Clifton, and will be broadcast daily. For a full schedule of poetic moments, check out WXXI’s Poetry Moments page.

The April 2012 issue of Gently Read Literature features two of BOA’s poets, Michael Waters and Carsten Rene Nielsen. Mike Walker reviewed Nielsen’s poetry collection, House Inspections, translated by David Keplinger. Walker believes Nielsen has a distinct voice and gives praise to the translation that replicates the tone and feel of the original Danish version. Walker says, “Nielsen creates sketches of place and typical actions of the day as if his words slipped off a journal’s page.”

Gerry LaFemina reviewed Michael Water’s poetry collection, Gospel Night. After re-reading Gospel Night, LaFemina says it is like “taking a poetic journey in both time and space.” LaFemina also says, “Waters is a poet of the eye and ear, a poet of the world in all its sublime and profane beauty.” The review highlights Water’s playful lines and sense of rhyme.

Read the two engaging reviews here.

The collections are must-reads, and can be purchased in BOA’s Bookstore by clicking on the title, House Inspections and Gospel Night.

In case you haven’t checked out literary blog The Rumpus in the past week, we are proud to inform you that Aimee Parkison’s short story “Theater of Cruelty” from her latest collection The Innocent Party was selected for their Sunday Fiction series! Hop over to the Sunday Fiction page to give it a read. If you are unfamiliar with Aimee’s work, now’s your chance to get yourself acquainted; this atmospheric piece will have you pinned until the end.

Aimee’s amazing new collection The Innocent Party will be officially published in May. BUT, it can be purchased directly through BOA’s secure web-store and shipped to you today!

Purchase the book here:  The Innocent Party,

With generous help from the Lannan Foundation, BOA Editions will be publishing Lucille Clifton’s collected works in a volume featuring a foreword by Nobel Prize winning author Toni Morrison, afterword by noted poet Kevin Young, and statements of support from former Poet-Laureate  W.S. Merwin, Nikki Giovanni, and Maya Angelou. This monumental collection will include all of Clifton’s published poems as well as previously uncollected, unpublished early, middle and later poems. For more about the Lannan Foundation and the BOA Editions Challenge Grant,  jump over to the Lannan Foundation’s website.

In the review written by John Bradley for the new issue of Rain Taxi, Bradley highlights Nielsen’s prose and how the poems in House Inspections take us into a dream world where everyday objects take on a new meaning. Bradley emphasizes how Nielsen’s tone is objective and leaves the reader in a state of awe. Bradley says, “The prose poem’s affinity for the surreal, however, should be celebrated, as should Nielsen’s skill at plumbing the strangeness of the human psyche. House Inspections offers tantalizing mysteries for a world all too often gnawing on its own cynicism.”

Born in 1966, Carsten René Nielsen is the author of nine books of poetry. His poetry has been featured in magazines in Italy, Germany, Canada and the US. His most recent translated collection, House Inspections, is published by BOA. Nielsen lives in Aarhus, in Denmark.

The BOA publication, House Inspections, can be purchased here. And if you would like to suscribe or check out Rain Taxi click here.