PoetryTag

Facing (the Failure of) an Empty Event

There’s a particular kind of feeling to describe preparing and planning for a literary event, only to show up and find the room empty, or nearly empty. You keep looking at the door hoping the passers-by ...

Nicholas Ruddock & Ashley Barron Show Tenderness to Tiny Fragile Snakes, and Other Creatures

It's always fun and insightful to have picture book authors featured on Open Book, but we're doubly lucky today to share this conversation between author Nicholas Ruddock and illustrator Ashley Barron. ...

When Life Influences Form

What’s the best form for your next writing project? Often, this is decided by the sort of thing you want to write. Your sprawling epic fantasy idea likely won’t work as a short story, for example. ...

I think I have a manuscript

This is what I said to myself about four years into publishing my poems in journals, magazines, and through chapbooks. Sifting through folders to put poems into a single Word document, I saw the page ...

Michael V. Smith on the Unexpected Journey of His Spectacular Seventh Book, Queers Like Me

Michael V. Smith's seventh book, the poetry collection Queers Like Me (Book*hug Press) was a surprise to him – it wasn't a book he expected to or even set out to write, but it's a gift to readers: ...

Cara-Lyn Morgan Navigates the Trauma of Abuse While Building a Better Future for Her Child in Her Fiery New Collection

When Cara-Lyn Morgan courageously disclosed generations of abuse that had been hidden and sheltered in her family, she found herself estranged from people who should have protected her. It wasn't until ...

Jan Conn's 10th Collection Blends Flowers, Neurons, & More to Celebrate and Cry Out for the Earth

Jan Conn's award-winning brand of poetry, which she has established in her nine previous collections, is absorbing, smart, and constantly curious; a poetry engaged with the world as it is and might be.  ...

Bradley Peters' Debut Poetry Collection Takes Readers into the Prison Experience & the Systemic Problems Within

One of the poems in Bradley Peters' Sonnets from a Cell (Brick Books) closes with the musing "A sonnet is not memory. More so/ It is a room the shape of my own face." This lyrical creativity and exploration ...

"Part of This is a Reclamation" Poet D. A. Lockhart on Crafting New Myths to Explore Land & Identity

Just south of Pelee Island is Middle Island, a small island that is part of Point Pelee National Park. It is home to no permanent settlements, with a ruined 19th century lighthouse as one of the only ...

Susan Vande Griek on How the Reemergence of Urban Animals Around the World Inspired Her New Picture Book

Anyone who has ever seen a deer, fox, or other skittish wildlife knows that your best bet to catch a glimpse is to stay still and quiet – to pretend, in essence, that you're not there. In The Animals ...