My friend and fellow Wilkes University alum, Dawn Leas, author of the poetry chapbook I Know When to Keep Quiet, was recently interviewed on the local  WVIA radio station for a program called “The Art Scene.” The interviewer, Erika Funke, did a great job with the questions and covered everything from Dawn’s writing process to creating a narrative arc for her book.

There’s a lot about the interview I liked, including the portion where she talked about revision/the writing process. She mentioned that while attending the Wilkes University Graduate Creative Writing Program, she had trouble parting with some lines in her poems based on feedback given by her mentors and peers. Anyone who writes knows how hard it is to sometimes axe lines or even whole pages, but ultimately, we come to trust the advice of our fellow writers and our work ends up stronger.

Dawn also read a few poems during the interview and discussed some of the poets she studied that influenced the central theme of family/place that fill the poems.

To listen to the full interview, click here.

Also, I will be reading with Dawn on Friday, Jan. 21 at the Barnes & Noble in downtown Wilkes-Barre  (7 S. Main Street) at 7 p.m. Her chapbook and my chapbook, Front Man, will be available for sale there.

I just received word yesterday that poet/writer/human rights activist Carolyn Forché is coming to the University of Scranton in February. Here is the press release that was shared with me. This event is going to be free and well-worth checking out, considering Forché is one of the biggest names in the contemporary American poetry scene.

As part of its 2010 – 2011 Education for Justice theme of peace and reconciliation, The University of Scranton will welcome Carolyn Forché — an award-winning poet, essayist and human rights activist — for a lecture on Wednesday, Feb. 16. The event, which is free and open to the public, will take place at 7 p.m. in the Pearn Auditorium of Brennan Hall.

No stranger to the University, Forché received an honorary degree following her inspiring speech at Scranton’s 2010 undergraduate commencement. She told graduates that they “have the potential to be noble of spirit” and that they may “become the most important generation that has ever lived.” At the ceremony, Rev. Scott R. Pilarz, S.J., president of The University of Scranton, said, “The witness of her words and example resonates with the University’s commitment to promote justice in the Jesuit tradition.”

Titled “The Voice of Witness,” the lecture will focus on ways in which warfare, imprisonment and other forms of suffering are given voice by writers around the world.

Forché has commented on some of the most devastating social events of the 20th century. Her first book of poetry, “Gathering the Tribes,” won the 1975 Yale Series of Younger Poets Award. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Forché traveled as part of Amnesty International to El Salvador, where she witnessed a civil war — an experience that inspired her to write “The Country Between Us,” a book of poems that was named the 1981 Lamont Poetry Selection and became a rare poetry bestseller.

A noted translator and a teacher of poetry and literature for 35 years, she holds and directs the Lannan Chair of Poetry and Poetics at Georgetown University. Forché has received three fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, a Lannan Foundation Fellowship and other literary and teaching awards — including the Robert Creeley Award in 2005 and The Golden Rose from the New England Poetry Club in 2008. In 1998, she was presented the Edita and Ira Morris Hiroshima Foundation Award for Peace and Culture in Stockholm, Sweden, for her work on behalf of human rights and the preservation of memory and culture.

The Education for Justice Office promotes justice throughout The University of Scranton community through various programs, lectures and activities. The office wishes to educate students on the importance of justice, so they may act

Happy New Year everyone!

In the spirit of the new year and new possibilities, I want to share an interesting blog/journal I discovered recently that may appeal to some of the fellow writers who read my blog. The journal I’m talking about is titled Young American Poets. Check it out here. I’m especially impressed with this site because the editors publish a poem every few days, except when they shut down for a few weeks during the holidays. The site is also unique because the editors only publish poets born on or before July 20, 1971 from all 50 states.

So, if you’re looking to get your work out there, you may want to check their submission guidelines, since they’ll be open for submissions again soon. I just sent them work a few weeks ago.

Good luck, and happy new year!

The latest issue of Poets & Writers is now in bookstores.  For anyone interested in strengthening their writing and learning more about the poetry business, this magazine should be a standard. But I think the current issue is a little more special than others. It features the 6th Annual Debut Poets Roundup, meaning it contains blurbs on several poets who released debut poetry collections recently. Each featured poet also provides advice on writing/publishing.

Unforutnately, Poets & Writers’ content is only available in print, so I can’t post a link to the section, but I will share some helpful advice .

J. Michael Martinez, author of Heredities, published by Lousiana State Unviversity Press, says, “I’d recomend poets focus on the actual act of writing. It is easy to get preoccupied with the fetishizing of publication and lose sight of why we do what we do.”

Here’s some good advice on publishing from Keetje Kuipers, author of Beautiful in the Mouth, published by BOA Editions.

“Good poems are good poems, and they’ll find a home somewhere. But when you’re sending your manuscript out to contests and publishers, you know that your work is going up against a whole lot of good poems. That’s why structure and order and cohesion of a collection are all so important.”

Finally, I’ll end with some advice by John Murillo, author of Up Jump the Boogie, one of my favorite collections of the last year.

“Take as long as you need to write the best book you can, work hard until you are generally satisfied. Then send it out and hope for the best. Second, know that what’s meant for you will find you; what isn’t, won’t. It’s a waste of both time and energy worrying about where this person publishes or what this person wins… Don’t hate, hustle.”

Happy Holidays everyone! Since it’s Christmas Eve, I thought I would post a holiday poem- “Christmas Trees” By Robert Frost. Enjoy!

A Christmas Circular Letter

The city had withdrawn into itself
And left at last the country to the country;
When between whirls of snow not come to lie
And whirls of foliage not yet laid, there drove
A stranger to our yard, who looked the city,
Yet did in country fashion in that there
He sat and waited till he drew us out
A-buttoning coats to ask him who he was.
He proved to be the city come again
To look for something it had left behind
And could not do without and keep its Christmas.
He asked if I would sell my Christmas trees;
My woods—the young fir balsams like a place
Where houses all are churches and have spires.
I hadn't thought of them as Christmas Trees.
I doubt if I was tempted for a moment
To sell them off their feet to go in cars
And leave the slope behind the house all bare,
Where the sun shines now no warmer than the moon.
I'd hate to have them know it if I was.
Yet more I'd hate to hold my trees except
As others hold theirs or refuse for them,
Beyond the time of profitable growth,
The trial by market everything must come to.
I dallied so much with the thought of selling.
Then whether from mistaken courtesy
And fear of seeming short of speech, or whether
From hope of hearing good of what was mine,
I said, "There aren't enough to be worth while."

"I could soon tell how many they would cut,
You let me look them over."  

                                    "You could look.
But don't expect I'm going to let you have them."
Pasture they spring in, some in clumps too close
That lop each other of boughs, but not a few
Quite solitary and having equal boughs
All round and round. The latter he nodded "Yes" to,
Or paused to say beneath some lovelier one,
With a buyer's moderation, "That would do."
I thought so too, but wasn't there to say so.
We climbed the pasture on the south, crossed over,
And came down on the north. 

                                    He said, "A thousand."  

"A thousand Christmas trees!—at what apiece?"  

He felt some need of softening that to me:
"A thousand trees would come to thirty dollars."  

Then I was certain I had never meant
To let him have them. Never show surprise!
But thirty dollars seemed so small beside
The extent of pasture I should strip, three cents
(For that was all they figured out apiece),
Three cents so small beside the dollar friends
I should be writing to within the hour
Would pay in cities for good trees like those,
Regular vestry-trees whole Sunday Schools
Could hang enough on to pick off enough.
A thousand Christmas trees I didn't know I had!
Worth three cents more to give away than sell,
As may be shown by a simple calculation.
Too bad I couldn't lay one in a letter.
I can't help wishing I could send you one,
In wishing you herewith a Merry Christmas