Over at The Best American Poetry blog, Nin Andrew writes about optimism and the poetry of Shara McCallum (quoting Madwoman, specifically). The interview also includes a number of Shara's poems.
In her intriguing opening, Nin writes,
Jonathan Cohen and Donald Walsh's translation of Pedro Mir's Countersong to Walt Whitman and Other Poems has been long-listed for the National Translation Award in Poetry given by the American Literary Translators Association.
2019 marks the twenty-first year for the NTA, and the fifth year to award separate prizes in poetry and prose. The NTA, which is administered by ALTA, is the only national award for translated fiction, poetry, and literary nonfiction that includes a rigorous examination of both the source text and its relation to the finished English work.
In her review of a crime writers event at Edinburgh International Book Festival, Lisa Williams writes,
Ross began his writing career with several collections of short stories, and began to move across to novel writing with his 2008 novel Pynter Bender, about a blind, mystical young boy growing up in Grenada during the oppressive regime of Grenada’s first Prime Minister Eric Gairy.
Loretta Collins Klobah shared the release of this excellent bilingual poetry anthology with us, Puerto Rico en mi corazón. The anthology includes the title poem from her collection, Ricantations.
The English Association has announced the longlist of the 2019 Michael Murphy Memorial Prize, which includes Kingdom of Gravity by Nick Makoha.
This year marks the fifth biennial prize of £1000 for a distinctive first volume of poetry in English published in Britain or Ireland, between 1 January 2017 and 31 December 2018.
Leone Ross' gorgeous collection of short stories, Come Let Us Sing Anyway, has made the North of England Top 20 bestsellers chart, published by The Bookseller. The book comes in at number 11.
Telling Waterstones about three of his favourite books, Simon Armitage puts our Shivanee alongside Ted Hughes and Homer. That's a ringing endorsement from the Poet Laureate.
'I don't remember being as sort of excited and shocked on occasions by a book of poems for quite a long time,' Simon says.
The Inaugural Kamau Brathwaite Poetry Festival was scheduled to take place during May 2019 in Barbados. It was timed to celebrate Kamau's world-changing, world-making art and thought as well as his 89th Birthday (11 May 2019).
Unfortunately, funding issues led to the festival being cancelled. But the passion of readers and writers, spearheaded by Christian Campbell, has ensured a second life for the festival online.
Two Peepal Tree Press writers have been elected new Royal Society of Literature Fellows for 2019: Vahni Capildeo and Dorothea Smartt.
The Publishers Association (PA) recently presented its 2019 Summer Recess Reading List for Parliamentarians, which includes Anthony Joseph's novel Kitch. The list includes titles nominated by a selection of PA members, including big and small publishing houses across the country, as their recommended reading for the coming months.
