BOA Blog

This week's poem is "Drying Apples" from Janice N. Harrington's Poulin Prize-winning collection Even the Hollow My Body Made Is Gone. The poem harkens back to the rural South shortly before the Civil Rights Era as an unnamed black woman labors to preserve the autumn harvest for her family.

Library Journal recently published a refreshingly candid Q&A with BOA poet Devin Becker, author of the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize-winning collection Shame | Shame. The piece touches on a bit of everything, from inspiration to the MFA experience, to the nitty-gritty details of publishing a book. When asked what inspired his debut collection, which humorously focuses on the everyday sort of shame born of small, socially clumsy moments in life, Becker says, "A lot of the things are mundane. Me and my coworkers sitting outside of a building having coffee, or my wife and I at a smoothie joint in a nearby...