BOA Blog

Here's the next installment by our guest blogger Keetje Kuipers! Keetje's Poulin Prize-winning book, Beautiful in the Mouth, was just published by BOA and Keetje has agreed to share her experiences as a first-time author. Enjoy! [caption id="attachment_761" align="aligncenter" width="200" caption="Beautiful in the Mouth by Keetje Kuipers"][/caption] My dad has a joke which, like all his signature witticisms, he likes to repeat whenever he has an opportunity to squeeze it into conversation. Someone I’d never even met once repeated this joke to me in a letter—that is, after he’d been seated next to my dad on a plane for three...

Keetje Kuipers' new book, Beautiful in the Mouth, is officially published by BOA this month! Her manuscript was selected by final judge Thomas Lux as winner of the 2009 A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize. Lux said of the book, “I was immediately struck by the boldness of imagination, the strange cadences, and wild music of these poems. We should be glad that young poets like Keetje Kuipers are making their voices heard not by tearing up the old language but by making the old language new.” In honor of the publication, we've asked Keetje to be BOA guest blogger for...

[caption id="attachment_639" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Intern Liz Mullins and Peter Conners"][/caption] Last Friday, I attended Traditions and Translations: A Celebration of Japanese Culture at the Memorial Art Gallery as part of BOA Editions. That's me (Intern Liz Mullins) sitting next to Peter Conners, editor. We sat in the foyer of the gallery amidst others selling pertinent wares-- traditional Japanese paintings, kimonos and sake, of course-- as event participants browsed. It was my first outing as a BOA intern and it didn't disappoint. We were there from 2-5PM with several books of poetry by asian artists or in translation, as well as...

[caption id="attachment_599" align="alignleft" width="107" caption="Michael Blumenthal. BOA poet."][/caption] Poet David Kirby has been teaching Michael Blumenthal's new book AND to his students at Florida State University - and the students have been eating it up. (What smart students!) In the process of teaching, David has been asking Michael, via email, to discuss some of his writing process on the book. I was fortunate enough to catch the tail end of that discussion and asked Michael to put together a concise paragraph that I could share on the BOA blog. Thanks to Michael for sharing these words on AND, which Publishers...

[caption id="attachment_428" align="alignleft" width="200" caption="Matthew Shenoda. BOA poet."][/caption] BOA poet Matthew Shenoda (Seasons of Lotus, Seasons of Bone) also serves as CalArts' first Assistant Provost for Equity and Diversity. A major position with a big mission. To kick off Black History Month, Matthew wrote a blog for CalArts and based it around BOA poet (and newest Frost Medal Award winner) Lucille Clifton and her poem "jasper texas 1998" which appeared in Lucille's National Book Award winning collection, Blessing the Boats. Read Matthew's entry here [What Black History Month Means to me]