“We deserve to be on the big stages the way stand-up comedians are,” said Des Moines poet Kelsey Bigelow. “We’re using our stories and our voices. It’s just in a different format.” Iowa, home of the celebrated Writers’ Workshop and the UNESCO City of Literature, is embracing a new generation of poetic voices, from Caleb […]
Poetry
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Plain Spoken: Listening to ‘God’s Trombones’ (1927), a tribute to Black preaching with Midwest origins
Today’s readers tend to associate poetry with the intense evocation of an individual speaker’s thoughts and feelings. Poems are short, usually no more than a few pages. They entail the cultivation of a distinct poetic “voice.” They put language to the otherwise private domain of the poet’s mental life. In doing so, they forge a personal connection between poet and reader.
Posted inBook Reviews
Book Review: ‘Brazos’ by Justin Carter
This January, while visiting Tulsa with a friend, I made an effort to reconnect with my redneck roots. We went firing at an indoor gun range. Across the street was a church with a sign announcing the coming of its gun sale. Later, at the tattoo parlor, as his own gun pierced me with a […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Swallowing a tooth, and other ways local poets ‘harness a feeling’ in short films at Refocus
“It is October. Everything is overturning,” writes Hannah Bonner in her debut book of poetry, Another Woman. “I pack a suitcase to get through October and drive to the shore with a video camera,” begins the poem “Video Footage” in Julia Anna Morrison’s Long Exposure, her first book of poems. It is October. And with […]
Posted inBook Reviews
Fully Booked: Get well-versed this National Poetry Month
Originally launched in April 1996, National Poetry Month celebrates the contributions of poets and their art. Poetry can be especially meaningful for youth as a tool of self-expression, of making sense of new things. Great poetry offers multiple ways to think about subjects using an toolkit of poetic devices. Though obviously longer in form, novels […]
Posted inBook Reviews
Book Review: ‘Be Not Afraid of My Body’ by Darius Stewart
Again and again in his new memoir Be Not Afraid of My Body (Belt Publishing, February 2024), Darius Stewart manipulates language, takes topics that are otherwise coated with stigma and hushed tones and makes them plain, reinvents form and expectations and insists that poets are taking over prose. Somehow, without maintaining any strict chronology or […]
Posted inAlbum Reviews
Book Review: ‘For a Second, In the Dark’ by Alec Hershman
For a Second, In the Dark is a distinct collection of poems in which Alec Hershman takes us on a daunting yet humorous journey through reality. Released in October 2023 by MWC Press, For a Second, in the Dark marks Hershman’s third publication. It was published as the 2021 Foster-Stahl Chapbook Series Editor’s Choice Selection […]
Posted inCommunity/News
Red earth, Ray Young Bear and the UFO
This all ends with myself, hallowedly stoned and hearing an endless note in the wind, and Ray Young Bear, one of our greatest poets, singing bird songs on the bank of the Iowa River. We’re at the spot where, in 1980, a UFO attempted to abduct Ray and his wife, Stella Lasley-Young Bear. Ray had […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Book Review: ‘Sundog’ by Melissa Conway
“At the end of January 2018 I sat in a coffee shop sipping a tea I couldn’t afford and reflected on the last month I barely survived. This exercise became a monthly meditation on time passing, what it’s like to live in a body, as a self, something holy, a wrong turn.” This introduction to […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Meet Iowa’s 2023 Student Poet Ambassador, Lola Nakashima-Brooke
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 to hold the ISPA honor — after Iowa City West High’s Shreya Khullar in 2021 […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment, Book Reviews, Statewide
Book Review: ‘Stellaphasia’ by Jason Bradford
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 emotional observations, connection and communion. Bradford — a University of Northern Iowa alum — has […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Book Review — ‘What Woman That Was: Poems for Mary Dyer’ by Anne Myles
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 an incredible homage to “the courageous and troublesome women throughout history whose stories have been […]
