A poem by alum Jamaal May (poetry, ’11) appears at See Spot Run:
Ask Where I’ve Been
Let fingers roam
the busy angles
of my shoulders.
Ask why skin dries
in rime-white patches, cracks
like a puddle stepped on. Ask
about the scars that interrupt
blacktop, a keloid on my bicep:
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A number of Warren Wilson faculty, alums and current students will be participating in more than 30 readings, panels and craft lectures at the 2016 AWP Conference & Bookfair in Los Angeles, March 30 – April 2.
Programming will include a WWC MFA Program 40th Anniverary Reading featuring Debra Allbery, program director, and faculty members Pablo Medina, Gabrielle Calvocoressi, Charles Baxter and A. Van Jordan. WWC faculty members and alums will also host a panel titled, “Diversifying MFA Programs: A Case Study,” about the WWC MFA program’s efforts to promote diversity and inclusiveness within the faculty and student body.
You can find the full schedule of WWC MFA programming at AWP here: WWCMFA at AWP 2016.
A story by alum Amelie Prusik (fiction, ’12) appears at The Copenhagen Review:
Lighted Rooms
The moment Louise sees the Dutch Colonial she knows it will give her trouble. The brass number 29 on the front of the building looks askew and the left shutter hangs cockeye, giving the house a skeptical look, one Louise returns as she punches in the code and elbows the front door open. She works for a company called Spotless that cleans houses repossessed by banks—houses seized from their owners under stressful circumstances. Louise’s crew removes whatever furniture or garbage is left behind and sanitizes the house completely so it can be resold. They mop floors, wash walls, banish smells.
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Alum Patrick Donnelly (poetry, ’03), current poet laureate of Northampton, Massachusetts, is a long-time advocate for poetry, not only as an “on-the-page” experience, but as a spoken-out-loud, communal, theatrical art. In the fall of 2015 Donnelly called together a group of Northampton-area residents to perform an excerpt of Albert Goldbarth’s epic poem “Library.” The poem was performed live at Donnelly’s inaugural reading on November 1, 2015 at Smith College, and earlier that same day filmmaker Melissa McClung also made this film of the performance.
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A poem by alum Matt Hart (poetry, ’02) appears at the Kenyon Review:
"I love poetry because it makes me love / and presents me life”
—Gregory Corso
It’s out of my hands, or
it’s all in my hands
Grace, Faith, Beauty
O hell
I’m catching light,
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Alum Margaree Little (poetry, ’12) read two poems, “The Visit” and “Revision,” at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference on August 14, 2015, where she was the John Ciardi Scholar in Poetry.
Visit the New England Review to hear the audio from the reading.
Three poems by alum Beverley Bie Brahic (poetry, ’06) appear in The Manchester Review:
Movie Night at Sunrise Manor
‘Island at War, Part II’ tonight,
though, if she saw Part I, Mum’s forgotten.
It feels like yesterday, their War.
On walkers and canes they press
from pudding to the Social Room,
Please Don’t Disturb the Jigsaw Puzzle,
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Two poems by alum Jennifer Givhan (poetry, ’15) appear in Reservoir:
Inca Ice Maiden, Momia Juanita
Peru procession to Ampato
I’m left to sleep in a cave of ice,
my belly full of brittle chocolate
and llama meat like the privileged,
like a queen, fattened of gold,
my hair roped in a hundred gangly braids.
There was no path up
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Friends of Writers has learned of the passing of Alumna Michelle Gillett (Poetry ’82). Michelle began her MFA studies when the program was housed at Goddard and completed her degree at Warren Wilson.
Her collection of poems Coming About will be published in 2017 by Salmon Press. The title poem from the collection appeared in issue 50 of Cortland Review, where you can also hear Michelle reading it along with a second poem:
Coming About
The boat loves the water
the way pages are bound to a book
on the table by the window. Salt breeze
turns the pages, fills the jib. Coming about,
the boat leans close to the surface—
they almost touch, the real and reflected. …
Read the rest of the poem here: Michelle Gillett in Cortland Review
And read about her accomplished life here: Michelle Gillett Obituary
A poem by alum Laura Swearingen-Steadwell (poetry, ’14) appears at The Cortland Review:
Eight hours standing, stocking beer coolers
before the local men shuffled in after work,
brown and worn from building in the sun,
or windburned, caked with ocean salt. I wiped fat
off the cylinders of the hot dog machine until
I smelled metal; made change; spoke to anyone:
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