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I watched the plumber reach down
through the dark water
with his head turned sideways,
feeling for my wife’s lost ring,
the index finger of his other hand
admonishing me to wait. I studied his face,
the face of a listening poet, as his other hand
shifted into a mudra—two fingers and thumb,
something like holding a teacup—
that could stand for “confident quiet waiting.”

From “Husband” by Richard Hoffman

There’s more to the mill than the engine, the saw and the
wooden carriage. “Tell Jon he can have the saw teeth,” my
mother says. “And the cant hooks. Anything that goes with the
mill.” So now I will have to do what I’ve been avoiding since we
buried my father four years ago: spend time in this barn-like
mill building where his spirit still lives.

From “The Accounting” by Betty J. Cotter

A Reading at AWP, Friday, Mar. 8

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We’re gearing up for AWP and getting excited about a reading we’re hosting, on Friday, March 8, at the Hynes Convention Center. Will you be at AWP? Stop by and listen to some beautiful poetry & prose, and have a drink on us. The event is cohosted with Barrow Street Press. Readers will include Sally Ball, Frank Montesonti, Amina Gautier, Mairead Byrne, and Tiphanie Yanique. And….more! Here’s where you can find us:

Hynes Convention Center, March 8, 2013, 7pm to 8:15

Room 204, Level 2

Barrow Street Poets will also be signing books at the Barrow Street bookfair table (M26) from 2:00–4:00 p.m. on Friday. Stop by and say hello.

We’ll see you soon!

Richard Blanco, Amity Gaige, and Ayad Akhtar at 2013 Conference!

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The Ocean State Summer Writers Conference has announced our keynote speakers for this year! A very exciting line-up — http://www.uri.edu/summerwriting/2013/index.html

Keynote Speakers

Ayad Akhtar is a novelist, playwright, screenwriter, and actor. His play Disgraced, which received the Jeff Equity Award for Best New Play in 2012, examines identity and religion in the contemporary world. It premiered at the American Theatre Company in Chicago, opened the 2012-2013 Lincoln Center’s LCT2 Theater season this past fall, and is scheduled to premier at the Bush Theater in London in May. His novel American Dervish (2012), named a Best Book of the Year by Kirkus Reviews and Toronto’s The Globe and Mail, depicts a Pakistani-American boy’s coming of age in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the town where Akhtar grew up. Akhtar starred in and co-wrote the screenplay for The War Within, nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for Best Screenplay and an International Press Academy Satellite Award. He has been heralded as a “significant and formidable dramatic writer” (Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune).
Richard Blanco was selected by President Obama to be the 2013 inaugural poet, joining the ranks of Robert Frost and Maya Angelou. His acclaimed first book of poetry, City of a Hundred Fires (1998), explores the yearnings and negotiation of cultural identity as a Cuban-American, and received the Agnes Starrett Poetry Prize from the University of Pittsburgh Press. His second book, Directions to The Beach of the Dead (2005), won the Beyond Margins Award from the PEN American Center for its continued exploration of the universal themes of cultural identity and homecoming. Looking for The Gulf Motel, (University of Pittsburgh Press (2012), examines the blurred lines of gender, the frailty of his father-son relationship, and the intersection of his cultural and sexual identities as a Cuban-American gay man living in rural Maine. Jim Elledge writes, “Every poem in Looking for The Gulf Motel packs an emotional wallop and an intellectual caress. A virtuoso of art and craft who juggles the subjective and the objective beautifully, Blanco is at the height of his creative prowess and one of the best of the best poets writing today.”
Amity Gaige is the author of the novels O My Darling (2005), The Folded World (2007) named ForeWord Book of the Year and one of the best books of 2007 by the Chicago Tribune, and Schroder (2013). Schroder, “ a radiant meditation on identity, memory and familial love” (Publisher’s Weekly) and an “offbeat, exquisitely written novel” (Jennifer Egan), has been translated into 14 languages. Gaige’s honors include a Fulbright Fellowship, a Baltic Writers Residency, and fellowships at The MacDowell Colony and Yaddo. In 2006 she was named one of the “5 under 35” outstanding emerging writers by the National Book Foundation. Gaige’s short stories, reviews and essays have appeared in The New York Times, O Magazine, One Story, The Yale Review and other venues. She is a founding Ocean State Summer Writing Conference workshop leader and is Visiting Writer at Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts.  

A reading and Q&A with Martha Rhodes

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Martha Rhodes read from her new book, The Beds, last night at URI.  Highlight of the evening? Peter Covino asks: “The music of your poems is singular. I feel like I can tell a Martha Rhodes poem just by its music. What do you hear in your poems?” Martha Rhodes responds: “The music of the mind in action.”