Contemporary Poetry

Welcome to Poetry Out Loud: National Recitation Contest. Created by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation, Poetry Out Loud is administered in partnership with the State Arts Agencies of all 50 states and the District of Columbia. By encouraging high school students to memorize and perform great poems, Poetry Out Loud invites the dynamic aspects of slam poetry, spoken word, and theater into the English class. This exciting new program, which began in 2005, helps students master public speaking skills, build self-confidence, and learn about their literary heritage.

We don't know if tomorrow has green pastures in mind for us to lie down in beside the ever-youthful patter of fresh water or if it means to plant us in some arid outback ugly valley of the shadow where dayspring's lost for good, interred beneath a lifetime of mistakes....

The Berlin internationally Literature festival is appealing for A worldwide reading OF Mahmoud Darwish ’ s poetry on 5 October 2008. The of activities accompanying this event acres designed emergency only tons honour the poet ’ s body OF work but thus his commitment tons promoting peaceful and fair coexistence between Arabs and Israeli. This appeal is directed RK cultural institution, radio station, schools, universities, theatres and all other Darwish enthusiasts the world more over.

The sky leaves every possibility wide open, its wraparound screen receptive to any scene unfolding on its surface: constellations fluttering in cosmic gales, planes plying trade routes across continents, shooting stars detached like retinas, sun rays adding decorative motifs. Primed with a wash of nothingness, it can stretch its flexible canvas as far as distance permits, vanishing point infinitely elusive.

Mark Halliday: I'm slightly embarrassed by how long it took me to get serious as a poet. I reached nearly the end of my twenties without committing myself to writing the best poems I could write, by which I mean poems that tried hard to express my deepest complexes of feeling and perception. Some poets seem to grow up in this way by the age of 25, or even younger. But I spent most of my twenties being very energetic and prolific, but only half-serious.

The factory is gone, the presses with it, the workers-of course-, even the rats. All that's left are these few words without rhythm or breath, fading now before your eyes.

I can imagine someone who found these fields unbearable, who climbed the hillside in the heat, cursing the dust, cracking the brittle weeds underfoot, wishing a few more trees for shade.

There's just no accounting for happiness, or the way it turns up like a prodigal who comes back to the dust at your feet having squandered a fortune far away.

Tomas Tranströmer was born in Stockholm in 1931. A translator, psychologist, entomologist, and classical pianist, he has become the most influential and revered Swedish poet of his generation. He is the author of twelve full-length collections of poetry, most recently Den stora gåtan (The Great Enigma) in 2004. Tranströmer's books have appeared in hundreds of editions in over fifty languages. Among his many honors are Germany's Petrarch Prize, the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, the Bellman Prize, the Bonnier Award for Poetry, and the Swedish Academy's Nordic Prize. In 2008 Green Integer will release his book The Sorrow Gondola, translated by Michael McGriff with Mikaela Grassl. Tranströmer lives with his wife Monica in Stockholm.

I often dream about the ocean

Watch this video of Marie Howe reading a poem, The Gate ~ short and sweet. Her book, What the Living Do is also worthy of more than one read.

A second volume of poetry by Howe, What the Living Do: Poems (1997), is a collection of forty-eight poems about what the living do after the death of a loved one. A Publishers Weekly reviewer commented, "The tentative transformation of agonizing, slow-motion loss into redemption is Howe's signal achievement in this wrenching second collection." The reviewer added that the poet's consciousness becomes consumed with thoughts of a brother dying of AIDS and travels over the territory of both everyday life and the childhood memories of the poet. The Publishers Weekly critic praised the book calling the poems "rigorously crafted in their long, open lines of taut, precise language," and added that the collection revealed Howe's "power as a metaphysician for the coming century of fractured faith."

American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: America Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.

Thursday, April 24 Poetry & Sports Reporting Mash Up! Man Writes Poem by Jay Leeming This just in a man has begun writing a poem in a small room in Brooklyn. His curtains are apparently blowing in the breeze. We go now to our man Harry on the scene, what's the story down there Harry? "Well Chuck he has begun the second stanza and seems to be doing fine,,,,

Cuneiform by Brooks Haxton The wedge sank five times into the clay, and a word, which had been spoken in a breath, lay still until the gods' names were forgotten.

Steven Winn Strange Fish It happens, now and then, that someone else's bed is yours to use,...