Authors Talk: Meriwether Clarke

Meriwether ClarkeToday we are pleased to feature author Meriwether Clarke as our Authors Talk series contributor. Meriwether discusses the way that all three of her poems from Issue 18 focus on female shame. She reveals that she likes to think about her poems “as something that can potentially help a reader question the dominant narrative our society tells.”

Meriwether also discusses our current political climate, and she explains how she has been “looking for solace in books more than she has in quite some time.”  She then shares the words of both James Baldwin and Robert Hass to convey the responsibility of a writer. She notes how poetry asks questions and exposes us to discomfort, which is crucial at this time in history. Meriwether ends by saying that literature is “a means to ask the seemingly un-askable and learn the seemingly un-learnable.”

You can access Meriwether’s poetry in Issue 18 of Superstition Review.

#ArtLitPhx: Brenda Hillman & Robert Hass at the Phoenix Art Museum

Robert-Hass-Brenda-Hillman-Oct7

The University of Arizona Poetry Center presents distinguished poets Brenda Hillman and Robert Hass at the Phoenix Art Museum. The event takes place on Friday, October 7th at 7:00 p.m. After the reading, there will be a short Q&A and a book signing. The Poetry Center is proud to partner with the Phoenix Art Museum with additional support from ASU’s Creative Writing Program, Superstition Review, Four Chambers Press, and the Literary & Prologue Society of the Southwest.

Brenda Hillman is the author of nine collections of poetry: White Dress, Fortress, Death Tractates, Bright Existence, Loose Sugar, Cascadia, Pieces of Air in the Epic, Practical Water, for which she won the LA Times Book Award for Poetry, and Seasonal Works with Letters on Fire, which received the 2014 Griffin Poetry Prize and the Northern California Book Award for Poetry. Among the awards Hillman has received are the 2012 Academy of American Poets Fellowship, the 2005 William Carlos Williams Prize for poetry, and Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. In 2016 she was named Academy of American Poets Chancellor.

Robert Hass has published many books of poetry including Field Guide, Praise, Human Wishes, and Sun Under Wood, as well as a book of essays on poetry, Twentieth Century Pleasures. Hass translated many of the works of Nobel Prize-winning Polish poet, Czeslaw Milosz, and he edited Selected Poems: 1954-1986 by Tomas Transtromer, The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson, and Issa; Poet’s Choice: Poems for Everyday Life; and Modernist Women Poets: An Anthology (with Paul Ebenkamp). He was the guest editor of the 2001 edition of Best American Poetry. His essay collection Now & Then, which includes his Washington Post articles, was published in April 2007. As US Poet Laureate (1995-1997), his deep commitment to environmental issues led him to found River of Words (ROW), an organization that promotes environmental and arts education in affiliation with the Library of Congress Center for the Book.

Leah Marché will be opening the reading. Leah Marché is an arts entrepreneur, performance poet and journalist/writer. In 2005, she co-founded BlackPoet Ventures, a Valley-based performance arts company that produces spoken word theatrical performances.

For more information and updates, please visit the Facebook event.

U of A Poetry Center Fall 2016 Phoenix Reading Series

U of A Poetry CenterSuperstition Review is thrilled to co-sponsor the University of Arizona Poetry Center Phoenix Reading Series at the Phoenix Art Museum.

On September 2, 2016, Solmaz Sharif and Danniel Schoonebeek will read. Solmaz Sharif’s work has been recognized with a “Discovery” / Boston Review Poetry Prize, and multiple fellowships. Danniel Schoonebeek was awarded a Ruth Lily and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry fellowship from the Poetry Foundation and his second book of poems was a winner of the 2015 National Poetry Series.

On October 7, 2016, Brenda Hillman and Robert Hass will read. Brenda Hillman authored nine collections of poetry and received the William Carlos Williams Prize for Poetry and several fellowships.  Robert Hass is a former U.S. Poet Laureate, a MacArthur “Genius” Fellow, and National Book Critics’ Circle Award winner.