New from Wick

...and the latest news from the Wick Poetry Center at Kent State:

Happy Holidays from the Wick Poetry Center, On behalf of the Wick Poetry Center staff and students, I want to wish you all a joyful holiday season with peace, love, and poetry. We are filled with gratitude for you, our remarkable community, for all of the support you have given us this year. Poetry, like community, does not exist in isolation—it is the means by which we connect with others, with the larger world, and with a deeper sense of ourselves. With your unwavering support and advocacy for our programs and outreach, we are thrilled to announce the opening of the Traveling Stanzas: Writing Across Borders exhibit, which will be be launched on a three-year national tour at Summit ArtSpace in Akron, Ohio, January 19-February 17 (Gallery Hours: Thursdays & Fridays, 12-7pm, Saturdays, 12-5pm). The exhibit and community workshops were made possible by a $250,000 matching grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, one of the largest grants for poetry in the country. The interactive exhibit is free and open to all, and we hope that you will visit and witness the work that we have done in the North Hill community with participants at the International Institute of Akron, Project Learn and Urban Vision, many of whom are refugee and immigrant newcomers to Akron. Again, we wish you all the very happiest of holidays, from our Wick family to yours.    In peace and poetry,        David Hassler    Director    Wick Poetry Center

New from CSU

The Cleveland State University Poetry Center sends along their most recent update on their activities this year:

END OF YEAR ROUND-UP We’ve had a wonderful year at the Cleveland State University Poetry Center, and as the days get shorter and the air gets chillier, we’d like to bring you some of our most exciting news and updates. If you’re inspired by what you see below and would like to donate to our cause of publishing 3-5 collections of contemporary poetry, prose, and translation a year in addition to running The Lighthouse Reading Series and providing pedagogical and outreach opportunities for CSU students please know that your support is what allows us to continue publishing and programming throughout the year. AUTHOR NEWS James Allen Hall’s collection of essays, I Liked You Better Before I Knew You So Well, appeared on SPD’s bestsellers list; QNotes’ “Ideas for the LGBTQ book lovers on your holiday gift list;” and Anomalous Press’ “Books to Watch Out For.” Hall was interviewed by Alex DiFrancesco at the CSU Poetry Center blog and appeared on Woodstock Book Talk in October. Colorado Review says Hall handles fraught topics “deftly, with a sly sense of humor;” Newpages writes that “a collection of essays has never been so utterly tragic and full of truth;” and Queen Mob’s Tea House says I Liked You Better “takes the cool, intellectual quality of conceptual writing and poetics and turns it in on the self, allowing for experimentation while maintaining intimacy.” More can be found at American Microreviews, Reviews by Amos Lassen, Hunger Mountain, and The Rumpus. In Entropy, Carrie Lorig writes of Jane Lewty’s second book, In One Form to Find Another, that “Lewty feels through the body’s ferocious, complex response to trauma while refusing to create a linearity and narrative arc which names or details the transgressive / traumatic event.” Lewty’s collection was named “Book of the Week” at the Volta and excerpts can be found at La Vague and Verse Daily. Sheila McMullin’s first book of poetry, daughterrarium has been beautifully reviewed at Forward Reviews, Southern Indiana Review, Heavy Feather Review, Galatea Resurrects, and So To Speak, where Kristen Brida writes that, “McMullin focuses and reveals the many ways the feminine body is exploited, is overpowered in the patriarchal schema of the world.” You can also find new books, poems, reviews, or interviews by Leora Fridman, Allison Titus, Lo Kwa Mei-en, Phil Metres, Dora Malech, Rebecca Gayle Howell, Zach Savich, Sandra Simonds, Elyse Fenton, Lee Upton, and Lily Hoang. Shane McCrae, author of Mule (CSU Poetry Center, 2010) ) was recently the winner of a Lannan Literary Award and a National Book Award finalist for his newest collection, In the Language of My Captor, published this year by Wesleyan. Congrats, Shane! CSU POETRY CENTER GRADUATE ASSISTANTSHIPS The CSU Poetry Center offers graduate assistantships in small press editing and publishing for CSU-based students in the NEOMFA (Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing). If you or anyone you know is researching MFA programs in creative writing you might consider Cleveland State where we’re lucky to host the Lighthouse Reading Series, Playwrights Festival, and Whiskey Island Magazine, among other exciting writing programing. The NEOMFA is the nation's only consortial MFA program in the nation and boasts four schools’ worth of creative writing faculty and a great visiting writers series (this year includes CAConrad, Kelly Link, Emily Mitchell, Rob Handel, and Adam Gopnick). Application deadline: January 15th.  TRANSLATION SUBMISSIONS  The CSU Poetry Center invites queries regarding book-length volumes of poetry in translation for a new occasional series. Please send 1) A cover letter describing the project and confirming any necessary permissions; and 2) a sample translation of at least 20 pages. Full manuscripts are welcome. Email materials to associate director Hilary Plum at h.plum [at] csuohio [dot] edu. Submissions will be open until December 31, 2017. LIGHTHOUSE READING SERIES This year’s Lighthouse Reading Series has hosted Abraham Smith, Hayan Charara, Sheila McMullin, and Eric Fair, all of whom absolutely blew our audiences (and us!) away. Spring readers include Yona Harvey and James Allen Hall (2/9/18), and Dave Lucas and Renee Gladman (3/30/18). If you live in Northeast Ohio, we hope to see you in the spring! Share Tweet Forward Copyright © 2017 Cleveland State University Poetry Center, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email as a lover of poetry, prose, and innovative literary publishing. Our mailing address is: Cleveland State University Poetry Center 2121 Euclid Avenue Rhodes Tower, Room 1841 Cleveland, OH  44115