MASTER OF FINE ARTS - CREATIVE WRITING PROGRAMS

Are you in over your head, gone too far to turn back now, and you are thinking of applying to a MFA Writing Program? My friend, NC Poet Laureate Kathryn Stripling Byer recently sent me this information to share with you. Check out CONVERSE COLLEGE Low Residency MFA Writing Program in Spartenburg, SC.

http://www.converse.edu/academics/school-education-and-graduate-studies/graduate-programs/graduate-programs-other-fields/m-6

Two other Low Residency MFA Writing Programs are: Warren Wilson College at Swananona, NC
(Talk with graduate Nancy Simpson)

http://www.warren-wilson.edu/academics/catalog/catalog2.php?name=mfa_program&contents=no&year=08-09

or Low Residency MFA at Spalding College in Kentucky (talk with graduate Rosemary Royston.)

http://spalding.edu/academics/mfa/

What poem most changed you as a human or most influenced you as a poet?

Question?

What poem most changed you as a human or most influenced you as a poet?

Nancy Simpson: "The Teeth Mother Naked at Last" by Robert Bly in 1970 and later incorporated into his book Sleepers Joining Hands both changed me as a human and influenced me as a poet. As I read the poem for the first time (alone, young and unknowing, an unquestioning American Citizen)  I kept asking myself - "What is this? And answering myself: "It's war. It's the Vietnam war, and all war and every other lie about humanity that was ever told."

You can read this poem in it's entirety, if you can read it, if you can stay with it. I hope you will.

http://bibliosity.blogspot.com/2009/09/teeth-mother-naked-at-last.html

A second poem I hope you will read, in the same vein is Robert S. King's poem "After the War, The War," first published  by Foundling Review. Read Now on line at  FutureCycle Press.

http://futurecycle.org/FutureCyclePoetry/AfterTheWar.aspx

Celebrating the birth and life of Doctor Martin Luther King,  poet Kathryn Stripling Byer shares with readers in her post  "Continuing to Excavate Our Southern Past,"  one of her poems that was first published in Crab Orchard Review and forthcoming in her new book titled Descent from LSU Press,  her poem "What I See Now."
http://kathrynstriplingbyer.blogspot.com/2012/01/continuing-to-excavate-our-southern.html

Read the poem. Your comments are welcome.

Rosemary Royston Featured on Red Neck Press - TW0 POEMS

Rosemary Royston is featured on  Red Neck Press With Fried Chicken and Coffee, a blogzine of rural literature, working class literature, Appalachian Literature and off-on commentary, reviews and rants.

http://www.friedchickenandcoffee.com/2012/01/10/poems-by-rosemary-royston-2/

WANT TO HELP JAPAN RECOVER FROM EARTHQUAKE AND TSUNAMI? Proceeds from the sale of this book will go to ongoing relief efforts in Japan

Poems by Nancy Simpson
Janice Townley Moore
Maren O. Mitchell
Karen Paul Holmes
and others


http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/amikayepf

ACROSS THE MILES - A Note From my Editor Andrea L. Watson

Dear Nancy,

Now that the (poetic) dust has cleared from getting our new anthology out and about, I wish to take a moment to say thank you for sending us a copy of your book from Carolina Wren Press, Living Above the Frost Line. 

I have so enjoyed reading your selected poems this week, watching the snow fall in Denver and Taos, enjoying the very wonderful and different scenery of your poetry set in North Carolina. I especially love the poems entitled, "At the End of Always" and "This Night", "Traveling", "Night Student", "Sharing the Bed with Mother" (and I have been there!), "Heritage", and, of course, "The Collection", which we admire in Collecting Life. 

Brava for your use of imagery, lining, and your ability to create and re-create situations with which we all can associate and, too, engage in commiseration.

Also, thank you for your participation and patience with bringing our anthology to birth and for your very kind words about it on your blog.

I truly hope that we will someday have the opportunity to meet.

Best regards across the miles,

Andrea 

--
-Andrea L. Watson

 www.3taospress.com

Collecting Life: Poets on Objects Known and Imagined

may be obtained directly from the press or from Amazon

COLLECTING LIFE: POETS ON OBJECTS KNOWN AND IMAGINED - A NEW POETRY ANTHOLOGY

Poetry Lovers, Here is a new anthology hot off the press with poems by some of your favorite poets: "The Composer, The Bone Yard" by Pattiann Rogers, "Morpho" by Penelope Schambly Schott, "Lauds" by Kathryn Stripling Byer, "On the Beach" by Jane Hirschfield and others, including "The Collection" by Nancy Simpson.







Collecting Life was edited by Madelyn Garner and Andrea Watson with an introduction by Bill Brown Professor of  American Culture, University of Chicago.

Until now, no anthology about collecting existed.

Buy your copy:http://www.amazon.com/Collecting-Life-Poets-Objects-Imagined/dp/0984792503

NOMINATE YOUR FAVORITE BOOK FOR S.I.B.A.

SIBA SOUTHERN INDEPENDENT BOOKSELLERS AWARD Nominations are now open. Nominations will close Feb 14th, 2012. Poetry books can be nominated.  The book must be published in 2011 and must be set in the south or written by a southerner - preferably both. Did you read a new book last year? Want to nominate it for SIBA? Find your member book store on the list and name your favorite 2011 book.


http://www.sibaweb.com/home/siba-book-award


Meanwhile - Want to see this site continue? Sorry to ask, but I am curious about what you practicing poets want. Let me know.