BOA Blog

[caption id="attachment_679" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Keetje Kuipers. Photo by: Betsy Dougherty"][/caption] The seminal, twice annual Poetry magazine Tar River Poetry had a lot of wonderful things to say about the winner of Boa's 2009 A. Poulin Jr. Poetry Award, Keetje Kuipers, in their most recent issue. Keetje Kuipers' poetry "throbs with keen desire, restless loneliness, frustration and, occasionally, striking recklessness." Her poetry is placed "within a poetic register that is more tangible, emotionally sincere, linguistically straightforward and sensuous than that of the experimental lyric; it is also, while not at all reticent, acutely aware of the limits of language and of...

Beautiful in the Mouth by Keetje Kuipers was recently reviewed online at CutBank Literary Magazine.  The review highlights the many strengths of Kuipers' work, which include her connection with the wilderness and the "American West": " Kuipers . . . has always used her geographic identity as a powerful internal compass for her life and writing. In fact, this book was completed while she was the Margery Davis Boyden Wilderness Writing Resident, another nod towards Kuipers’ ties to the land. While not all of Kuipers poems presented here are directly concerning the wilderness, she is never far from the landscape...

In his blog A Burning Patience, Lyle Daggett writes about Barbara Jane Reyes' newest book Diwata, a collection he calls "profoundly moving."  Citing various poems as "pure incantation," Daggett reflects on Reyes' abilty to connect mythology and reality with history and culture.  He states, "Running through the varying times and places in the poems, and the subtly shifting voices and perspectives, I feel a consistent essential thread of storytelling, bringing knowledge to light, knowledge often obscured by the fogs of long colonization (both beyond and within the borders of the empire) but not entirely lost."      Read the full post here A Burning Patience [caption id="attachment_977"...

In their Feb 21st issue, Publishers Weekly gives early attention to two forthcoming spring 2011 BOA poetry titles: Ennui Prophet, poems by Christopher Kennedy (published June 2011) “Hip and inviting, Kennedy’s short prose poems rarely fail to entertain: ‘I’ll buy you a reason to live if you promise to share,’ one says, while another visits the ‘Museum of Wrong Turns,’ finding ‘something for everyone: cowboy boots worn by former presidents,’ for example…Kennedy runs the graduate program in creative writing at Syracuse: this third book of prose poems (his fourth overall) shows his clear mastery of several prose-poem forms, with lyricism, jokiness,...

Photograph by Betsy Dougherty Keetje Kuipers, winner of the 2009 A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Award, discusses the origins of her poem “4th of July,” which appeared in her book Beautiful in the Mouth, for Brian Brodeur’s blog How a Poem Happens. In the interview, Keetje not only shares with readers the inspiration behind the poem but also insights into her own writing process: “Because I often write in my head as I'm driving or hiking, sound and musicality are very present and motivating factors as I compose. Because I also consider almost all of my work as coming out of the...