Deanna YoungTag

Poetry School: Dana Gioia on the matter of poetry

Twenty-eight years ago US poet Dana Gioia’s essay “Can Poetry Matter?” was published in the Atlantic, sparking “a firestorm of debate and discussion” over the role of the poet in contemporary ...

Poetry School: Getting specific with Amiri Baraka

Writing is reading, teaching is learning. As I said in my invitation for readers to join me this month-long online Poetry School, I expected to benefit the most from these researches into the craft and ...

Poetry School: Feminist re-vision with Ms. Rich

Feminist revisionist mythologies represent a vibrant stream in mid-to-late 20th- and 21st-century poetry. I’m thinking of Muriel Rukeyser’s Orpheus; Carol Ann Duffy’s The World’s Wife and Feminine ...

Poetry School: Rilke’s advice against advice

My aversion to the poetry workshop grew quickly many years ago. Let me correct that: my aversion to the untutored, undisciplined poetry workshop.Although I’ve been writing poems off and on since I was ...

Poetry School: Denise Levertov on form as a revelation

After reading poet Denise Levertov’s 1965 essay “Some Notes on Organic Form,” I had a revelation: I write poetry mainly in organic form. Given that the notion of the work of art as a self-germinating ...

Poetry School: The insincerity of Louise Glück

In my invitation for you to join me this month at Poetry School, I promised to offer up morsels of wisdom about writing poetry from an assortment of essays on the topic. Today I dig into an essay by American ...

Poetry School: Keeping it real with Wordsworth

Lyric poetry. We say it casually, but what does it mean? The musical connotation is there, even if we don’t accompany our lyric poems with music. An inherent music, then. The lifts and falls. Rhythm. ...

Poetry School: An invitation

Over the next month I invite you to join me at Poetry School. I will not be the teacher, but merely the messenger, a fellow student. Though the balance may one day shift, for me writing poetry is about ...

A Title Should Be a "Dream in Which the Work Lives": Talking with our February 2019 writer-in-residence Deanna Young

Ottawa poet Deanna Young is the author of four collections of poetry, which have earned her praise and nominations for numerous prizes including the Trillium Book Award for Poetry, the Ottawa Book Award, ...