BOA author Aimee Parkison

So as a BOA intern I spend a lot of my time here surfing some of the stranger corners of the web, but every now and again I’m sent to a website that is genuinely awesome.

The Nervous Breakdown.com is one such site.

TNB, for me at least, just has the perfect balance of intellectualism, youthfulness and that intangible coolness to it.

Anyways, not too long ago TNB had a “Six Question Sex Interview” with BOA poet, Aimee Parkison in light of her recent work in Men Undressed. The new title is a collection of short stories about sex from a male character’s point of view, written entirely by female authors, such as Kristin Thiel, Susan Minot, Elizabeth Benedict, Alicia Erian, Diane William, and of course, Aimee Parkison.

When recollecting her first experience reading of Parkison’s work, TNB interviewer Gina Frangello explains that “[…]the way Parkison wove formal experimentalism with intense characterization and psychology let me know immediately that she was a writer with something new to impart, who could titillate both the brain and the emotions in equal measures.”

Given how interesting the premise for this collection is on its own and the caliber of writers attached to it, it’s hard to imagine that the result is anything less than astounding,  but Parkison makes it clear that there’s always a risk when writing about …gasp… sex.

“It’s a risk because it might seem like the work ‘isn’t right’ for the literary audience.  However, Men Undressed tries to break those boundaries by providing serious fiction about sex and desire – something that might appeal to many different types of readers – the sophisticated literary audience and also readers who like erotica and want to read sex in a new way.” – Parkison

Much like the rest of the website, the interview is fun, intelligent, and easily approached, so give it a read and definitely checkout the rest of the website to see what’s up.

Lastly, Parkison’s next book The Innocent Party will be published by BOA Editions May 15th of this year! Be excited!

Click Here for the Interview

and Here for a copy of Men Undressed

and Here for Parkison’s author page on the BOA website

Oh and Here for more fiction work by BOA authors

BOA poet Barbara Jane Reyes

BOA poet Barbara Jane Reyes was recently interviewed in the third issue of TAYO Literary Magazine

In it, Reyes discusses her thoughts on what it means to be a Filipina American poet, where her inspiration derives, and even gives advice to young writers who may be struggling with the age-old mantra “write about what you know.”

“I write not what I know, but rather what I want to find out. Much of what I write begins with a question, or a problem, or a visual in my mind that I need to unravel, give depth to.” – Reyes

Throughout the interview there’s a genuine sense of awareness Reyes has of herself and her work, which is exceedingly rare and equally thought-provoking. This characteristic of Reyes is most apparent when she discusses her process of learning and maturing as a writer, as she has analyzed exactly what she needed from herself and others to grow into the poet she is today.

“[…] for all of the anger and outrage in my work, specifically in the poems which became Poeta en San Francisco, I needed to move past my own assumptions, to know how to give specific names to that anger and outrage. I needed to know exactly what/who my personae were angry and outraged about, and to whom my personae should direct their outrage. Ultimately, I needed the space to learn the discipline of refining these poems to be artful, to have form and nuance beyond catharsis and rant. The experience of writing Poeta en San Francisco gave me the discipline to write Diwata, to take a very painful history and write it with a certain amount of focus, concentration, distillation of emotion and language.”

Not enough can be said about this interview by TAYO Lit Mag; it’s an insightful piece that any young writer with concerns for their writing future should read, enjoy, and take to heart. So please, give it a gander.

Click Here for the full interview

and Here for a copy of Diwata

The staff of BOA Editions is gearing up for a nice holiday break. From the top to the bottom of our hearts, we thank you for supporting BOA Editions in 2011. We look forward to a 2012 full of more great books and good times. Onward into the New Year! 

Happy Holidays from BOA Editions!

The Jan/Feb issue of Poets & Writers is themed as “The New Year’s Guide to an Inspired Writing Life.” As most writers will tell you, inspiration is a mirage floating in the distance reachable only by years of hard work. However, what artist can deny that there are the occasional “flashes” that may well be described as inspiration?

Whatever your view of “inspiration” we’re pleased to have Janice N. Harrington and Deborah Brown spotlighted in the issue. Both are past winners of BOA’s A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize contest with their books Walking the Dog’s Shadow (Deborah Brown) and Even the Hollow My Body Made Is Gone (Janice N. Harrington). Harrington’s book also went on to win the prestigious Kate Tufts Discovery Award. This year, we published her second full-length collection, The Hands of Strangers: Poems from the Nursing Home. 

Janice N. Harrington

The Hands of Strangers portrays the tensions and moments of grace between aged nursing home residents and their healthcare workers.  The poems show aides as anonymous figures laboring under routines, time clocks, and a distant medical hierarchy.  They tell also tell the stories of how the nursing home industry reshapes lives, bodies, and identities of both aides and the aged. Harrington – who worked in nursing homes during college - explained the ”inspiration” for the book: “Like many of the ‘girls’ I worked with, I was young and inexperienced in a workplace that demanded empathy, skill, and compassion for the needs and stories of the elderly. I worked my way through college as a nurses’ aide.  I wrote The Hands of Strangers because I cannot forget the ‘girls’ I worked with or the ‘residents’ under my care.  I haven’t forgotten what I saw, heard, felt, or learned. Human stories hide behind the walls, the national statistics, and the isolations of institutionalized aging.  I wanted to share some of those stories.”

In Poets & Writers online feature on inspiration she begins, “Inspiration? A sleepless night helps, when my mind has nothing to do but wander. I’m also inspired by…” 

Read the rest of Janice’s inspirations here [Janice N. Harrington on Inspiration] 

Deborah Brown

Deborah Brown is profiled in the Inspiration issue’s feature “Our Seventh Annual Look at Debut Poets” in celebration of her debut collection, Walking the Dog’s Shadow. The book was selected by Tony Hoagland as winner of BOA’s 2010 Poulin Prize. Hoagland also wrote a Foreword for the collection.

In the Poets & Writers feature Brown describes how her book began to take shape. “The book evolved over years. It’s at least my third complete manuscript, and it doesn’t resemble the first or even the second very much at all. Writing the book was a matter of working on individual poems and, as my writing developed, seeing how they fit together.”

The feature goes on to talk about the writers who inspire her, the amount of time it took to write the book (”Twenty years, give or take, depending on which manuscript you count”) and other interesting tidbits about the debut author who gives her age as, “I am a member of the AARP.”

Congratulations to Deborah Brown and Janice N. Harrington for being poets who “inspire” us all!

On December 2nd, BOA author Naomi Shihab Nye was in Buffalo, New York to read from her most recent collection, Transfer, as part of the Babel international author series, offered since 2007 by the Just Buffalo Literary Center. Just Buffalo also selected Transfer for “If All of Buffalo Read the Same Book,” a community-wide reading program that encourages everyone to read and discuss the same title at the same time.

Before Naomi read, Mike Kelleher—poet and artistic director at Just Buffalo—gave a wonderful introduction that considered the many meanings of the word “transfer” in the collection. Below are some photographs from the event and a transcript of Mike’s remarks.

All photographs by Bruce Jackson (http://babelphotos.us)

Introduction for Naomi Shihab Nye

Welcome to the second installment of our Babel season. We’re very excited to present Naomi Shihab Nye this evening. For “If All of Buffalo Read the Same Book,” we chose her new collection of poems, Transfer, which she’ll be reading from and discussing tonight. Transfer, I should note, was published by our friends at BOA Editions in Rochester. It’s nice, for once, to be able to showcase a book that was not published by Random House. It’s doubly nice to able to showcase a book published outside of Manhattan. Our friends from BOA are here tonight, so let’s give them a hand.

At our Babel book discussion at Betty’s on Monday night, Professor Jim Holstun’s opening question to the group was about the title. He asked the group: What are some of the different meanings the title takes on as you read through the book? I am not sure it was a question many had thought about for too long, but one by one the hands began to go up, each one finding new significance in this simple, two-syllable word.

In the poem from which the book takes its title, “Scared, Scarred, Sacred,” Nye tells the story of accompanying her father to a movie theatre to see “The Wizard of Oz.” On the bus ride home, the young Naomi notices a ticket in her father’s hand. She asks him what it is for. He tells her it’s a transfer for another bus, when we get off this one. In the next section of the poem, she recalls her father’s love of travel, and how he used to save all the pink transfer tags he’d pulled off his suitcases.

As in much of Naomi Shihab Nye’s work, it is the experience of the quotidian that leads her, and us, into a more profound understanding of the world. Her father’s transfers are literal, utilitarian objects in the real world: one gets you on the next bus, the other, hopefully, gets your luggage onto the next plane, and so on. However, as we move through the book with these tickets and tags in our minds, we see that the word “transfer” begins to mean much more.

One of the hands that rose in our book discussion brought up the fact that a “transfer” is also a movement from one place to another, how this could describe Naomi’s father, a Palestinian by birth, being transferred from his ancestral homeland to the U.S. after the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948.

Another hand rose to suggest that “transfer” also meant the conveyance of property from one party to another, and how one of the poems deals with this very question when Naomi’s father returns to Palestine, having inherited his mother’s land, and must decide whether to hold on or sell it, aware always that the transfer of that property has serious consequences depending on whether he sells it to a Palestinian or an Israeli.

Still another hand rose, talking about the way “transfer” works in the relationship between father and daughter. How the father’s death was a kind of transfer from one state of being to another. How Naomi’s book was a transfer of the hopes and griefs and fears and joys of the father to his daughter, the poet, who hoped to transfer these ideas to the page, where they could then be transferred to the reader.

In short, we could have gone on all night. I did not raise my hand during this part of the discussion, but it stayed with me after I went home. I thought I remembered that “transfer” was a root meaning of the word “metaphor.” But then I questioned myself, because I also seemed to remember that it was a root meaning of the word “translation.” I got out my dictionary to happily discover that “transfer” is a root meaning of both “metaphor” and “translation.”

What makes Naomi Shihab Nye’s work so exciting, I think, is that her grasp of the everyday opens up the mundane to reveal the world. This is, ultimately, an act of translation. That a bus transfer ticket can become a metaphor for both the conundrum of Middle Eastern geopolitics and the mourning of a daughter for her dead father, is an insight we are all fortunate enough to have Naomi Shihab Nye here to share with us.

Please join me in welcoming her to Buffalo.

–Mike Kelleher

TODAY is the DAY to

FOR BOA

 ROCtheDay is a 24 hour online giving event

(like a telethon without the phones)

until midnight tonight

 click the link below to donate, and help BOA publish

The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton

Yes, I want to ROC the Day for BOA!

Two international BOA authors have recently received recognition on the world stage!

Francisca Aguirre – author of Ithaca which was translated by Ana Valverde Osan and published by BOA in 2004 – was just awarded the prestigious Spanish poetry award, Premio Nacional de Poesia. This is the most recent award for Ms. Aguirre who earned the Leopoldo Panero Poetry award when Ithaca was originally published in Spain in 1971. Ithaca is a 50-page poem that reworks the Greek myth of Odysseus, but with one important alteration: The story is told from Penelope’s perspective. Ithaca was – and remains – a landmark publication and BOA is proud to be its U.S. publisher. We congratulate Francisca Aguirre on her most recent recognition.

Ithaca by Francisca Aguirre

Macedonian poet Nikola Madzirov just received a rare – and rave – review in the German magazine Der Spiegel for his poetry. BOA published Mr. Madzirov’s U.S. debut Remnants of Another Age - which was translated by Peggy and Graham W. Reid, Magdalena Horvat, and Adam Reed – just this year. The book carries an Introduction by Carolyn Forche and was endorsed by Adam Zagajewski, Tomaz Salamun, and BOA’s own Li-Young Lee who wrote, “Nikola Madzirov’s poems move mysteriously by means of a profound inner concentration, giving expression to the deepest laws of the mind. Their linguistic ’making’ is informed by a vivid evidence of serious self-making, soul-making, and heart-making. We are lucky to have these English incarnations of Nikola Madzirov.”

Remnants of Another Age by Nikola Madzirov

The review in Der Spiegel reads, in part, “The awarding of the Nobel Prize to Tomas Transtromer has recently put the literary spotlight on poetry; this type of silent communication mysteriously asserts itself next to the prose Blockbusters. Now the first book of a poet from Macedonia has been translated into German, which is similar in quality to the poems of the aged Swede. The poems of Nikola Madzirov, 38, are genuine and frank; they put up no barriers whatsoever, except for empathy and concentration.”

Here at BOA, we continue to take pride in all our international authors and their peerless translators. We also give thanks to the Lannan Foundation of Santa Fe, New Mexico – the namesake of our Lannan Translations Selection Series and the angels who provide funding for the continuation of the series.

We hope you will take the time to discover the world through our international poetry series!

Cornelius Eady.

Wednesday will be the last day that you will be able to submit your manuscript for this year’s A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize. Named after BOA Editions Founder Al Poulin, Jr. who championed the under-appreciated voices in poetry, the winner of the Poetry Prize will receive a $1,500 honorarium and be published as part of our A. Poulin, Jr. New Poets of America Series in Spring 2013.

Recent winners of the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize include Deborah Brown, Keetje  Kuipers, Jennifer Kronovet, Dan Albergotti and Janice N. Harrington. Recipients of the prize have gone on to receive such awards as the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and, most recently, the New Hampshire Literary Award for “Outstanding Book of Poetry.”

This year we are thrilled to have Cornelius Eady as our final judge. Born in Rochester, NY Cornelius Eady has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, and co-founded with Toi Derricote the important Cave Canem.  He is the author of eight books:   Hardheaded Weather (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2008); Brutal Imagination (2001), a finalist for the 2001 National Book Award in Poetry; the autobiography of a jukebox (1997); You Don’t Miss Your Water (1995); The Gathering of My Name (1991), nominated for the Pulitzer Prize; BOOM BOOM BOOM (1988); Victims of the Latest Dance Craze (1985),  selected by The Academy of American Poets for the Lamont Poetry Selection; and Kartunes (1980).  You can read more about Cornelius Eady here.

Don’t wait or you will miss your chance to enter!

For more information and a copy of our submission form, please read our Guidelines.

Good Luck!

BOA staff members Albert Abonado, Melissa Hall and Peter Conners

On behalf of the staff and board of BOA Editions, we are thankful for all our authors, readers, and supporters!

In a recent Poetry Foundation podcast, BOA author Aleš Šteger discusses his most recent work, The Book of Things, as well as his creative process.

For those of you not in the know, with his first book of poems, Chessboards of Hours, published in 1995 when he was 22 years old, Aleš Šteger established himself as one of Slovenia’s most promising poets. In the decade and a half since, Šteger has more than lived up to that promise, releasing three additional books of poetry.

He’s a phenomenal poet making this podcast a real treat, so give it a listen!

Click here for the podcast

and here if you’re looking to pick up a copy of Šteger’s The Book of Things.