BOA Blog

Chen Chen's A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize-winning collection, When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities, was included on NPR Books's list of "Poetry To Pay Attention To: A Preview Of 2017's Best Verse."According to poet and reviewer Craig Morgan Teicher, "America's greatest triumph is its diversity: the multiplicity of peoples, identities, and voices all gathered and vitally alive in one country. Nothing attests to this diversity more profoundly than American poetry, which elevates those voices to song. At its best, our poetry refutes hate, represents and finds harmony in difference, counters generality with nuance, and...

The Academy of American Poets recently put together a reading list for Black History Month, after asking a group of contemporary black poets to share poems they think are essential reading for the month. Lucille Clifton's "won't you celebrate with me," from The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965-2010 made the list of 12 poems, and is in truly incredible company. We love the list so much, we want to share the picks with you. Visit Poets.org to read more about them.“We Real Cool” by Gwendolyn Brooks“won’t you celebrate with me” by Lucille Clifton“Heartbeats” by Melvin Dixon“American History” by Michael S. Harper“Hurricane” by Yona Harvey“Middle Passage”...

Nguyen Phan Que Mai's The Secret of Hoa Sen (2014), translated from the Vietnamese by the author and by poet Bruce Weigl, was recently featured on Melodically Challenged, a weekly radio broadcast on Georgia State University’s radio station.Commemorating Vietnam’s 15th Poetry Day, which falls on the 15th day of the first month of the Vietnamese Lunar New Year (February 11 on the Gregorian calendar), the show featured Que Mai as she read her poems in Vietnamese, followed by English translations read by K. B. Kincer."Vietnamese folksongs, songs, and music performed by Ngo Hong Quang, including 'Biển,' a composition from Mai’s poetry, were...

In a glowing new review from Up the Staircase Quarterly, reviewer Travis Chi Wing Lau discusses the "active, restless, ferocious love" found in Chen Chen's A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize-winning When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities.Admitting that he came to the collection looking for "answers," Chi Wing Lau says, "I, like many other queer people of color, are left full of questions, fearful and tearful questions. And in our singular and collective askings, we struggle to grapple with traumas, old and new. But Chen forgoes the pleasure of any easy answers."Instead, readers find that "identity is not neatly sorted...

In a new piece from the Harvard Review, poet and reviewer William Doreski assembles a list of eleven new poets that "all deserve serious consideration and a readership beyond a few friends." Included on this list is Derrick Austin's recent A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize-winning collection, Trouble the Water."The intelligence and accomplishment of each year’s crop of debut poetry collections always astonishes me. Poetry is one of our most widely practiced arts, but it receives too little attention in the press. Still, poets continue to offer their wares."Austin is in good company, being reviewed alongside such other poets as Eleanor Chai, Leora Fridman, Lynn Pedersen, Kimberly...