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Messages began to accumulate like snow online over the weekend as the chilling news of poet Lucille Clifton’s death began to travel from one poetry lover to another. I feel bereft as so many others do because Clifton was the sort of poet who spoke to everyone about everything that matters with unfailing clarity, conviction, and [...]

Casting aside the mantle of starving artist, D.A. Powell joins the ranks of the well-paid. He won the $100,000 award for his collection Chronic. Read more about Powell’s win here.

Philip Gross’  The Water Table won the £15,000 TS Eliot prize for poetry, beating out Christopher Reid’s Costa-winning A Scattering. Read more about Gross’ win in the Guardian.

With Reid’s A Scattering named Costa’s Book of the Year, Colm Toibin continues to be a bridesmaid. Albeit a bridesmaid £5,000 richer. Reid’s book of poetry, an account of his wife’s struggle with cancer and eventual death, won in an upset over Toibin’s Brooklyn. Unlike last year’s winner, the panel of judges had nothing but glowing [...]

On Saturday, the National Book Critics Circle gave nods to the best in fiction, nonfiction, autobiography, biography, poetry, and criticism, including Booklist’s own Donna Seaman. For the complete list of finalists, visit the NBCC’s blog. Winners will be announced on March 11.

In their first post-election 60 Minutes interview, the President- and First Lady-elect said they’d like to open the White House up to the people. They mentioned poetry and jazz. I knew that Michelle Obama had seen spoken word and poetry slam poets while in Chicago, so I called them. I reminded myself that their house, [...]

Here’s some video of poetry slam founder Marc Kelly Smith, who I wrote about yesterday. The first link (excuse the lighting) is a show I put together for the Society of Midland Authors April program in the beautiful Cliff Dwellers Club on Michigan Avenue. The room is all windows, high in the air, with a [...]

I first met poet and poetry slam founder Marc Kelly Smith in a class that he taught at Lewis University in Romeoville, Illinois, way back in 1991. An enthusiast of poetry and fiction in all of their personalities for a long while, I can say with pride that I am but one of a legion of [...]

Last week, the New York Times asked, “Is Slam Poetry Going Soft?” I was intrigued by the question, but I didn’t think they answered it. So I asked Mark Eleveld, a Booklist reviewer, the author of The Spoken Word Revolution Redux, and a poetry publisher himself, to take a crack at it. Mark’s credentials and [...]

Booklist copyeditor extraordinaire Eloise Kinney passed on an urgent news item: Craig Arnold, a poet (Shells, 1999) and university professor, is missing in Japan (“University Professor Missing for Several Days,” Laramie Boomerang). According to the university, Assistant Professor Craig Arnold, a faculty member in the Department of English, is in Japan through the U.S.-Japan Friendship Commission’s Creative [...]