Mary Biddinger's Blog, page 7
April 2, 2017
New poem (and audio!) at Glass: A Journal of Poetry
[image error]National Poetry Month is upon us! I’m already feeling completely behind, but I reckon I feel that way every April. I’m excited to share the link to my new poem “Bone Concept,” which is featured over at Glass: A Journal of Poetry. Many thanks to Glass for giving this poem a home with such excellent company.
Lots of friends are doing a poem a day for National Poetry Month, but that’s just not feasible for me at this time of the semester. So I’m going to aspire to write on the even numbered days in April. Wish me luck, and best wishes to all the poets out there doing NaPoWriMo.
March 27, 2017
Reading recap (#poetrylives)
[image error]As much as anyone might plan for a poetry reading, you can never fully anticipate the crowd, or the mood, and wow did we luck out for our Rethinking Gender event, as it was an absolute delight in every way. The room was full of friends, current and former students, future friends, future students, colleagues, and some students who were probably required to be there but (hopefully) had fun nonetheless.
It was such a thrill reading with Holly. We’d never read together before (people thought we had!) but co-taught an amazing poetry workshop for a semester, so maybe that’s how we got our synergy. At any rate, we left ourselves plenty of room to choose poems on the fly for our braided reading, and it worked out quite well. Holly shared a bunch of poems from her NEOMFA thesis, and I read poems from my three most recent books. We could have read for two hours, not one.
Many thanks to everyone who attended (not an empty seat, some standing!), and if you weren’t able to make it you can hear Holly Brown read at the next Big Big Mess. Poetry lives, folks. It really does.
March 17, 2017
In Print Festival at Ball State University
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What a pleasure to participate in a publishing panel at Ball State University with Sequoia Nagamatsu, Dan Raeburn, and Iliana Rocha. Thanks to Ball State Creative Writing for capturing us in action with this photo. It was great to bring a bit of Akron (including some #poetrylives buttons) to Indiana, and to talk about my experiences as a poet and editor.
March 9, 2017
Rethinking Gender poetry reading with Mary Biddinger & Holly Brown
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Northeast Ohio folks, please add this event to your calendars.
Next week: the In Print Festival at Ball State University.
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Many thanks to the organizers of the In Print Festival of First Books at Ball State University for inviting me to come speak about my experiences as a poet and as the editor of the Akron Series in Poetry. From their website:
In Print XII (2017) will feature poet Iliana Rocha, fiction writer Sequoia Nagamatsu, and creative nonfiction writer Dan Raeburn. Rocha, Nagamatsu, and Raeburn will read from their work on Wednesday, March 15 at 8 PM in AJ 175. They will be joined by publisher/poet Mary Biddinger for a panel discussion about the publication industry on Thursday, March 16 at 8 PM in AJ 175.
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February 6, 2017
AWP 2017 Dance Card
#poetrylives
Dear friends, I hope to see you at AWP this week! Here’s where you’ll be able to find me.
Book signing at the Black Lawrence Press booth (393) on Friday, February 10, 2017, 10:00-11:00 a.m. Come say hello and get a signed copy of The Czar, or Small Enterprise, or both.
Exhibiting at the University of Akron Press table (T-620) where we’ll have our newest Poetry Lives button + a slew of gorgeous books.
Don’t Stop the Presses: On the Enduring Value of the University Press: featuring Rebecca Hazelton, Claire Kirch, Ned Stuckey-French, Mary Biddinger, and Peter Berkery. Thursday, February 9, 2017 12:00-1:15 p.m.
Stars to Steer By: Rethinking Creative Writing Curriculum for the 21st Century: featuring Cathy Day, Porter Shreve, Mary Biddinger, and Terry L. Kennedy. Friday, February 10, 2017 4:30-5:45 p.m.
Safe and happy travels to all!
January 10, 2017
mary biddinger
Three new poems at SMOKING GLUE GUN. Thanks for taking a look!
MARY BIDDINGER is the author of five full-length collections of poetry, most recently
Small Enterprise
(Black Lawrence Press, 2015) and The Czar (with Jay Robinson, Black Lawrence Press, 2016). Her work has appeared in Denver Quarterly, Five Points, Green Mountains Review, jubilat, The Laurel Review, and Pleiades, among others. She is the recipient of a 2015 National Endowment for the Arts creative writing fellowship in poetry, and is currently working on a book-length volume of prose poems. Find her work online in
Blackbird
,
Ampersand Review
,
Toad
, &
Thrush
.
January 4, 2017
Two Panels for AWP 2017 in DC
AWP 2017 in DC is a little over a month away. How is that possible? I’m excited to be presenting on two panels this year: “Don’t Stop the Presses: On the Enduring Value of the University Press” early Thursday afternoon, and “Stars to Steer By: Rethinking Creative Writing Curriculum for the 21st Century” late Friday afternoon. I hope to see you there. Happy 2017 to all![image error]
November 23, 2016
An interview with JENNY magazine
Many thanks to the editors of Jenny magazine, a fine journal out of Youngstown, Ohio, for this interview.
Here’s a sneak peek:
What is your personal creative process normally like? How do you move from an idea to a finished piece?
My process is always frantic, so it’s a good thing that I’m a poet and can work in a compressed form. I do best when I jot down my thoughts before writing, so when I actually get a spare moment I can jump right in with minimal fanfare. For me, the drafting process is relatively quick, and then I save the file and back away from the desk and let it rest for a while. I try to write without second guessing, and I like finishing a poem in one sitting.
Right now I am almost done with a new collection that is all prose poems, and with this book I have tried to write longer poems in multiple installments. The majority of the poems in this project are organized into five stanzagraphs, and having some distance from the poem’s initial stanzas can help me craft effective turns. Often I’ll over-write a poem, and then go back and trim excess before considering it finished. I do reach a point where I stop tinkering, however, rather than feeling like a poem is never done.
October 27, 2016
Mary Biddinger and Matthew Cheney in Conversation
New interview!
*
*Mary Biddinger and Matthew Cheney have both published books with Black Lawrence Press, in Mary’s case five books of poetry and in Matthew’s a collection of short stories. Both are also ensconced in academia: Mary is a professor of English at the University of Akron, where she also edits the Akron Series in Poetry, and Matthew is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the University of New Hampshire, where he studies modernist prose and its legacies.***
MATTHEW CHENEY: First, maybe we can start with the most important question: Do you have any pets? Dogs? Cats?
MARY BIDDINGER: Matt, this is my favorite kind of question. When at home I’m surrounded by pets: four cats, and one dog. Sure, they can be pesky (try sequencing a poetry manuscript on a hardwood floor with an overzealous tabby who wants to give her input on section breaks), but they are…
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