13 December 2016
That Lil Red Car is headed into the shop this morning. I’m now marooned in my lil house 🙂 It’s all good.
Make art about being stranded.
14 December 2016
The pups and I wandered through this this morning.
Make art about walking in a fog.
4 December 2016
Make art about nothing going as you planned.
5 December 2016
Make art about driving in the dark.
6 December 2016
Make art about standing up for yourself.
7 December 2016
Make art about corruption, about calling out corruption.
8 December 2016
Make art about needing silence, about the recharge, rebirth, renewal of strength to be found a a period of silence.
9 December 2016
Make art about needing to scream, about the release, the energy, the power, to be found in a good primal scream.
10 December 2016
Make art about hospitals, about being in the hospital.
11 December 2016
Make art about drawing strength from the energy and creativity and spontaneity of young people.
12 December 2016
Make art about coming to terms with the inevitability of death.
This week’s recommendation is a collection, a vital gathering of voices that should be in every poet’s library, in every classroom where we talk poetry: Of Poetry and Protest: From Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin,compiled by Phil Cushway and edited by Michael Warr.
“This stunning work illuminates today’s black experience through the voices of our most transformative and powerful African American poets.
Included in this extraordinary volume are the poems of 43 of America’s most talented African American wordsmiths, including Pulitzer Prize–winning poets Rita Dove, Natasha Tretheway, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Tracy K. Smith, as well as the work of other luminaries such as Elizabeth Alexander, Ishmael Reed, and Sonia Sanchez. Included are poems such as “No Wound of Exit” by Patricia Smith, “We Are Not Responsible” by Harryette Mullen, and “Poem for My Father” by Quincy Troupe. Each is accompanied by a photograph of the poet along with a first-person biography. The anthology also contains personal essays on race such as “The Talk” by Jeannine Amber and works by Harry Belafonte, Amiri Baraka, and The Reverend Dr. William Barber II, architect of the Moral Mondays movement, as well as images and iconic political posters of the Black Lives Matter movement, Malcolm X, and the Black Panther Party. Taken together, Of Poetry and Protest gives voice to the current conversation about race in America while also providing historical and cultural context. It serves as an excellent introduction to African American poetry and is a must-have for every reader committed to social justice and racial harmony.”
Buy Of Poetry and Protest: From Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin Here
More on this collection online
Of Poetry and Protest in Poets & Writers
Michael Warr on The Morning Mixtape discussing Of Poetry and Protest
Of Poetry and Protest Readings
2 December 2016
De·fi·ance (dəˈfīəns/) noun
open resistance; bold disobedience.
“the demonstration was held in defiance of official warnings”
Make art about acts of defiance, small or large.
3 December 2016
Making new stocking for our family with remnants of late 40s-early 50s vintage fabric.
Make art about remaking something old into something new.
NEGATIVE CAPABILITY PRESS wants to know your secrets! Please send your secrets as prose, poetry, flash-fiction, non-fiction, and hybrid work for this special edition of the journal.
Deadline January 15, 2017.
Please visit the Submittable page and choose Literature or Artwork to view the specific submission guidelines. https://negativecapability.submittable.com/submit/
30 November 2016
“My soul is impatient with itself, as with a bothersome child; its restlessness keeps growing and is forever the same. Everything interests me, but nothing holds me. I attend to everything, dreaming all the while. […]. I’m two, and both keep their distance”-Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet
Make art about restlessness, about disquiet.
29 November 2016
I’ve had only two brief replies to all of the emails and letters I’ve sent to my senators, members of Congress, or the White House. The two I have received came from Senators Kaine and Warner. Neither response actually addressed what I had written them. Neither response actually said anything at all.
Nonanswer (noun (plural nonanswers)
Make art about someone giving a Non-Answer.
Our annual Better Than Black Friday Mini Writing Marathon is over, but you can still keep writing!
24 New Prompts! Check it out!
Visit the Better Than Black Friday Facebook Group for tons of prompts and inspiration!
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1512919158978356/
Feral: ˈferəl,ˈfirəl/
adjective
Df: (especially of an animal) in a wild state, especially after escape from captivity or domestication.
Make art about wildness, about being in a state of wildness, about escaping domestication.
Nate Pritts, author of Post Human, from A-Minor Press is this week’s recommended read. He is the author of eight books of poetry, including Revenant Tracer, which won the 42 Miles Press Poetry Award and will be published in the fall of 2017. Nate is the Director and Founding Editor of H_NGM_N (2001), an independent publishing house that started as a mimeograph ‘zine and which has grown to encompass an annual online journal, an occasional digital chapbook series, a continuing series of single-author books and sporadic limited edition/low-fi projects.
His most recent collection is Post Human (2016) which Publishers Weekly says “leads readers through a poetic dystopia that reveals the fragility of the human relationship with technology. Weaving his poems together as a meditative critique of technology and its numbing effect on the everyday, Pritts asks readers to imagine other possibilities amid ‘this daily flood/ of ephemera, this electronic life.'”
Publishers Weekly described his fifth book, Sweet Nothing (2011), as “both baroque and irreverent, banal and romantic, his poems […] arrive at a place of vulnerability and sincerity.” POETRY Magazine called The Wonderfull Yeare (2009), “rich, vivid, intimate, & somewhat troubled” while The Rumpus called Big Bright Sun(2010) “a textual record of mistakes made and insights gleaned…[in] a voice that knows its part in self-destruction.”
Nate Pritts is Associate Professor at Ashford University where he serves as Curriculum Lead and Administrative head of the Film program.
Nate’s Website: http://www.natepritts.com/
Buy Nate’s Books!
The Wonderful Yeare (A Shepherd’s Calendar)
Read More from Nate Online
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/nate-pritts
https://superstitionreview.asu.edu/issue12/poetry/natepritts
http://www.poolpoetry.com/poetry-nate-pritts.html
http://sporkpress.com/weeklies/poetry/archives/00000016.htm
https://theawl.com/a-poem-by-nate-pritts-bba876458796#.5nrjez1cl
http://www.rattle.com/the-wonderfull-yeare-by-nate-pritts/
http://indigestmag.com/blog/?p=17863#.WDw65NUrKM8
Interviews
http://www.natepritts.com/essays-interviews/
http://bombmagazine.org/article/6536/
http://www.bookslut.com/features/2010_02_015660.php
Happy reading, y’all!
xo
Mary
Mary Carroll-Hackett: Poetry and Prose 
Recent Comments