In a (historically) bookish state like Iowa, the title of Student Poet Ambassador is perhaps the biggest award to which a young writer can aspire. This year, the recipient was Lola Nakashima-Brooke. The Davenport Central High student is the third […]
Posthumously published from his MFA thesis, Jason Bradford’s Stellaphasia (North American Review, 2023) chronicles life inside a disabled body. It’s unfair to say that this collection is about being disabled or having a disability, though. This is a book of […]
An elaborate persona collection for American feminism, What Woman That Was: Poems for Mary Dyer (Final Thursday Press) by Anne Myles explores the foundations of a culture that would both vilify and glamorize actions of rebellion. This poetry collection is […]
Reading Camonghne Felix’s 2023 memoir Dyscalculia: A Love Story of Epic Miscalculation is a gut punch over and over and over again. It’s one of those books I had to put down every couple of pages to catch my breath. […]
Emily Kingery’s Invasives (Finishing Line Press) opens in a garden and closes in a garden, repeatedly returning to Eden and tearing it down with one consistent throughline: that which is invasive. The opening poem, “Musk Thistle,” weaves together two concepts […]
What’s Left (Finishing Line Press) builds its atmosphere immediately — the cover and epigraph synching an ambiance by opening with a formally stylized Nirvana quote followed by a transcription of a sparse voice message from the author’s father (the cover […]
Things not to do: read Mark Levine’s Sound Fury while battling a nasty rhinovirus. Here’s why: Levine (deftly) uses so many literary devices simultaneously that one really needs the full use of their faculties to experience Sound Fury (University of […]
Founded in 1979, the Midwest Writing Center (MWC) was created to provide a “permanent home” for writers in the Quad Cities. MWC, the only literary arts nonprofit in the Quad Cities, boasts a long tradition of uplifting local writers through […]
The Grammy Award for spoken word recordings has existed, in some form or other, since 1959. But it hasn’t always, or even often, gone to what 21st century listeners would consider spoken word. Seriously. Jimmy Carter (#NotAPoet) has won this […]
In April, in the month of poetry A theater raises praises to a bard The offering a simple symmetry Disarming to the ardent avant-garde Since 1996, the U.S. has recognized April as National Poetry Month, a celebration organized by the […]
Historia del “mojado El hombre llegó desorientado ¿Preguntándose que es todo esto? ¿A dónde fue? Que es todo esto que está escrito Un idioma no conocido El hombre llega con miedo Pero los recuerdos de su esposa Su familia, y […]
The announcement on Thursday morning that Louise Glück had won this year’s Nobel Prize for Literature must have come as a big surprise to British bookies, who famously produce lists of likely winners every year for people to bet on. […]
Little Village Issue 321
Little Village Issue 320
Little Village Issue 319
Rec'd 2023
Central Iowa Issue 014
Eastern Iowa Issue 318
