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. Felix’s innate ability to create empathy in her readers is unparalleled. I want to emphasize […]
Poetry
Posted inBook Reviews
Book Review: ‘Invasives’ by Emily Kingery
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 such that they are inextricable. It talks about pulling weeds and ponders the difference between […]
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Book Review: ‘What’s Left’ by Tate Lewis-Carroll
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 is a cardboard box with the top folded shut, it’s labeled in permanent marker with […]
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Book Review: ‘Sound Fury’ by Mark Levine
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 Iowa Press). In my first round of reading, while sick, I thought I’d be compelled […]
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Press Profile: Midwest Writing Center Press, directed by Ryan Collins
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 resources, including space for book signings, events and most recently, the addition of its very […]
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Iowa poet joins the drive to ‘take back’ the spoken word Grammy (ft. track premiere: Kelsey Bigelow, ‘Poetic Trigger Warning’)
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 Grammy Award three times. That’s as often as Maya Angelou. (With nine nominations to her […]
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Riverside Theatre dives into Shakespeare’s sonnets (all 154 of them) for National Poetry Month
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 Academy of American Poets. Here in the first U.S. UNESCO City of Literature, that certainly […]
Posted inCommunity/News
En Español: The “Wetback’s” Story
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 de sus hijos que llevan su sangre lo guían entre lo desconocido. El hombre trabaja […]
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Louise Glück awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature
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. Glück wasn’t on those lists. But this honor for Glück made sense in Iowa City, […]
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The world’s in crisis, but poetry is more accessible than ever in Iowa City
“Poetry is somewhere between jazz and bird call and computer code and ornate lacquer box and hot wrought iron and prayer and primal scream,” said Lisa Roberts, founding director of Iowa City Poetry. For seven years, Roberts has collaborated with artists around one of the most prestigious (and arguably elitist) writing capitals in the world […]
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Interview: Poet Ali Habash explores rifts caused by war and distance.
“Love and war never meet except in poetry, people who lived the war can agree to that.” These words, penned by Iraq-born poet and journalist Ali Habash, capture the essence of his latest poetry volume Another Life. I spoke during National Poetry Month to the intrepid poet and one of his translators about his first book published in English.
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International Writing Program participating in Worldwide Reading for Ashraf Fayadh
Reading for Ashraf Fayadh Shambaugh House — Thursday, January 14 at Noon As part of an initiative sponsored by the International Literature Festival Berlin, the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program (IWP) will be hosting a reading in support of Palestinian poet Ashraf Fayadh, who is currently in prison and under threat of death penalty […]
