BOA Blog

Many thanks to Rebbeca Rafferty and City Newspaper for this wonderful piece on BOA's 40th anniversary!BOA EDITIONS CELEBRATES 40 YEARSCity Newspaper | February 24, 2016BOA Editions' story began much like that of other creative endeavors: When an intrepid individual identified a lack of opportunity, he went out and created it himself. One of the longest-running independent presses in the nation, BOA was founded on July 4, 1976, by A. Poulin, Jr., who was a Brockport professor at the time as well as a poet and translator. BOA began small, and at 40 years, it remains a tiny operation. But the...

As we celebrate Black History Month, we remember and honor monumental contributions made throughout our nation's tumultuous history—but it is almost impossible to do so without thinking of Lucille Clifton and the light she brought to the world. Nearly four years after releasing The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965-2010, BOA is proud to announce that the complete collection—magnificent in every sense of the word—is now available electronically, making it accessible to more people and in more ways.This volume—which includes all of the poems Lucille Clifton published in book form during her lifetime, as well as groupings of previously uncollected...

BOA Editions is thrilled to announce that, in honor of our 40th anniversary, we will be releasing The Word from His Song, a limited edition chapbook of new poems by Li-Young Lee!The chapbook is the eleventh installment in the BOA Pamphlet Series, which began in 1978 and has seen the publication of such poets as Donald Hall, Robert Bly, David Ignatow, Louis Simpson, W.D. Snodgrass, and Lucille Clifton. The Word from His Song features eight new poems by Li-Young Lee, bound together with a beautifully designed letterpress cover.Publisher Peter Conners says, "Since the publication of his debut collection, Rose (BOA Editions,...

 Barbara Jane Reyes' collection Diwata was recently reviewed by North American Review, which called the book an "amazing feminist tour-de-force."According to the review, “Diwata by Barbara Jane Reyes reclaims the feminine in Filipino culture and myth from Spanish colonial appropriation and Catholic missionary theocracy.”The collection focuses on Filipino life, and the mythology that surrounds diwata, the spirits that guard nature. “Reyes movingly humanizes the diwata, telling stories of when they take on human form.”In her quest to feature Filipina voices, Reyes has created a narrative that explores the ignored and sidelined: “Diwata features many female voices, not just spirits but...

G.C. Waldrep's book-length poem, Testament, was recently praised in a new Ploughshares review, which calls the book "excellent."The review says: "Waldrep writes for the ear as well as the eye, embracing musicality more freely than many current poets," and that the influencers of this poem, Lisa Robertson, Carla Harryman, and Alice Noley, are of the same vein, though not in the same manner. "In Waldrep’s poem, although references to gender, capitalism, and race are frequent (likewise for history, faith, and the Trillingesque "moral imagination"), questions outnumber answers.”On the complexity of Waldrep’s style and scope, the review says: "The scope of...