BOA Blog

Calling all poets: it's time to tweet all about it! The New York Public Library is holding its first-ever National Poetry Contest on Twitter from March 1 - March 10, in celebration of National Poetry Month. The NYPL is encouraging all Twitter users 13-and-older to register for the contest and post at least three poems on Twitter using the @NYPL handle. "The poems can cover any topic of the entrant’s choice, but at least one of the three poems needs to be about libraries, books, reading, or New York City." Once the contest has closed, a panel of judges including...

The 2013 AWP Conference and Bookfair is less than one week away, and BOA is so excited to be there, again. During this year's conference, we are honored to be celebrating the legacy of Lucille Clifton with our Saturday panel “Come Celebrate with Us: The Multiple Legacies of Lucille Clifton,” and hope that you can join us for this wonderful tribute. Also taking place will be BOA author signings at the BOA tables (i21, i22, and i23) with Douglas Watson (The Era of Not Quite), Hugh Martin (The Stick Soldiers), Lucille Clifton's daughters (The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965-2010),...

[caption id="attachment_2162" align="alignleft" width="200"] Photo by Rachel Eliza Griffiths[/caption] One of the amazing parts of publishing The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965-2010 has been seeing how many lives she touched – deeply, indelibly – throughout her career. In many ways, Lucille was the rarest of poetry birds: a poet respected by her peers, but also beloved by readers across the world. Ever since word got out about the publication of her Collected, people have reached out to BOA to share their enthusiasm for her poetry and their stories (often as humorous as they are touching) about encounters with Lucille....

Over the years, Naomi Shihab Nye has never failed to surprise and delight me. Most recently, she reached out after hearing that BOA was set to publish Light and Heavy Things by the late Pakistani poet Zeeshan Sahil this spring. It turns out that Naomi was friends with Sahil and she was thrilled to hear that BOA would be publishing the first U.S. edition of his work. I asked Naomi if she would be willing to share some thoughts on Sahil and the publication of Light and Heavy Things with our blog readers. Despite her busy schedule, Naomi immediately agreed...

Lake Superior Magazine commends Barton Sutter's The Reindeer Camps for being "an excellent collection and a philosophy tinged with humor and insight." Praising the first and final sections of the book, the review describes the opening of The Reindeer Camps an "examin[ation of] the darker sides of people" and "the conditions that challenge our sense of living." While this opening section is one highly complimented for its ability to "observe nature and its celebration of diversity," the closing of the collection is truly something to marvel. "The final section is one epic poem - 'Reindeer Camps' - that takes us...