BOA Blog

One week, 204 poets, over 50 languages, and 100,000 poems flurrying to the ground from above. No, this is not a scene from an ancient Greek epic... But that is the idea of this year's Poetry Parnassus, a massive poetry celebration established as part of the 2012 Cultural Olympiad in London, which is being called the biggest gathering of poets in world history. From more than 6,000 recommended poets, 204 have been chosen to represent their nations at Southbank Centre in London from Tuesday, June 26th-- Sunday, July 1st, in an event to re-establish the poetic heritage of the ancient...

This Sunday, June 24th, BOA authors Michael Waters and Aracelis Girmay will read their poetry as part of Drew University's MFA Poetry Reading Series! The series (June 21-27) will feature performances from 14 award-winning poets from around the nation and is free and open to the public-- an opportunity you won't want to miss! Waters and Girmay will read at 7:30 in Mead Hall at Drew University (NJ), along with poet Alicia Ostriker. Waters, author of ten collections of poetry and professor at Monmouth University, is the co-editor of Contemporary American Poetry and has appeared in numerous literary journals. He...

Polish writer Jacek Gutorow's most recent collection, The Folding Star and Other Poems (BOA, 2012) has been saluted by Hey, Small Press! as one of the top reads on this month's book list. A poet, translator, and literary critic, Gutorow has published five books of poems and five collections of critical essays, and has received some of the most significant literary awards in Poland. According to Hey, Small Press!, Gutorow's The Folding Star and Other Poems is "meditative and beautiful, his diction fragile and clear- thanks in no small part to the wonderful work of translator Piotr Florczyk." Gutorow's work...

Over the course of a year, acclaimed poets G.C. Waldrep and John Gallaher wrote poems back and forth to one another on an almost daily basis. From this communication emerged the collection Your Father on the Train of Ghosts (BOA, 2011). The title poem of the collection is this week's featured poem by the Oxford Brookes University Poetry Center. The poem is described by the OBU Poetry Center as a  "user-friendly self-help manual for the end of time. " It explores not only the voices of the two artists, but a subtle third 'voice' that emerges along their journey. John...

Dorianne Laux, renowned poet and judge of this year’s A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Contest, is being featured today by American Life in Poetry! Every week, American Life in Poetry provides a free column featuring contemporary American poetry online and to newspapers around the world. The star poem of this week’s column is “Family Stories,” from Smoke (BOA Editions 2000)! The organization’s current online/newspaper readership stretches to about 3 million each week, in addition to the several thousand email subscribers from countries around the world: Nepal, Australia, New Zealand, Peru, Indonesia, Uganda, Bangladesh, Egypt, the Netherlands, Poland, Germany, Italy, France, Canada,...