Lambda Literary Award Finalist

Congratulations to Thomas Meyer, whose volume Kintsugi is a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for gay poetry! Details on the award can be found here.

Dally Kimoko

Dally Kimoko is a legendary Congolese guitarist who has played in Orchestre Kamale, Sam Mangwana’s African All Stars, Soukous Stars, and as a session guitarist. In William Fuller’s Hallucination, one finds  a prose poem called “For Dally Kimoko”:

Who forgets to perfect enjoyment flakes apart from the force of a will to fail. After which, claims encumber thought. They cause the phone to be handed to her, into which she speaks, then hands it to me, and I speak, then a voice speaks, then several voices speak, and a shadow breaks apart. To be valid, this episode must be imputed to those who are absent. Then all prior states must vanish before the next phase can begin. But why be anxious? Why care about what else could be possible when the true goal involves having all our senses register every aspect of physical existence constantly and unremittingly? Such an attainment would fill up our hearts without resorting to paradox. Any estimated shortfall would still leave adequate amounts set aside to satisfy our need not to fluctuate. Even a dog knows this. A happy, inquisitive, spontaneous dog, eating hungrily. When in the future a kind of perpetual hum is heard, which grows louder as temperatures rise, strong hands will take command and clear light will darken us. At night a heavy body will be thrown against the floor and a tambourine will vibrate.

On Mr. Kimoko’s Facebook page, he calls the poem “Un vibrant hommage au célèbre guitariste congolais!”

Recent Notice

Roy Fisher’s Selected Poems, edited by August Kleinzahler, receives attention in the new issue of Notre Dame Review. Bunting’s Persia, edited by Don Share and forthcoming in April, has been recommended by The Paris Review.

Adamson Wins Patrick White Award

The Australian poet Robert Adamson has won the prestigious 2011 Patrick White Award. He is the author of twenty-one collections of poetry including The Goldfinches of Baghdad (Flood Editions). The annual award, currently worth $18,000 AUD, was established by Patrick White with the proceeds of his 1973 Nobel Prize for Literature to acknowledge writers who have made a significant contribution to Australian literature. Writers are automatically eligible without the necessity for submissions. On winning the Patrick White Award, Adamson said: “I am thrilled to be part of White’s marvellous legacy in the company of previous winners like Christina Stead, Gwen Harwood and Randolph Stow.”

Gilfillan in Chicago Review

The new issue of Chicago Review (56:2/3) includes a thoughtful review by Dustin Simpson of Merrill Gilfillan’s The Bark of the Dog (poems) and The Warbler Road (essays). The review can be read online here. The issue also contains an essay by Charles Alteri on Jennifer Moxley’s Clampdown (along with Juliana Spahr), and poems by William Fuller and Tom Pickard. Come to think of it, we recommend subscribing.

William Fuller News

William Fuller’s new book Hallucination is reviewed at Triquarterly. On October 26, he will be reading at Woodland Pattern Book Center in Milwaukee:

Pickard Wins The Bess Hokin Prize

Congratulations to Tom Pickard, who as won The Bess Hokin Prize from Poetry magazine for his poem “Lark and Merlin” (which appeared in the December 2010 issue).  He provided some comments on the poem: “Yes, since coming to live in this wilderness I’ve noticed that the poems increasingly reflect the sparseness of this apparently featureless landscape. Or at least a landscape without many vertical features. It’s a truism to say that in an ‘empty’ landscape the eye and mind assume a different sense of measure. The savage relentless beauty of it, hills just roll on ahead of you, and the sky laid out above. There’s a form to that: ‘I accrete—lichen to limestone/sphagnum to peat.’”

Pickard’s most recent books include Ballad of Jamie Allan and The Dark Months of May (both published by Flood Editions).

Adamson Wins Blake Prize

Congratulations to Robert Adamson, who has just won the Blake Poetry Prize for his poem “Via Negativa, the Divine Dark.” You can watch him receive the prize, discuss William Blake, and read his poem here.

Fisher Reviewed in The Nation

Roy Fisher’s Selected Poems has received an extended review by Ange Mlinko in The Nation: “The poet who has revisited and revised his works so often over the years is the same poet who nicked at Birmingham sandstone with his penknife, for whom feelings and motives leave unsentimental formations that come into focus only over the arc of a life. Fisher writes about what’s sorely missing, or is often dodged, in our virtual world of speed and simultaneity—the full weight of time.”

Fisher Reviewed in Poetry

 

Roy Fisher’s Selected Poems gets an enthusiastic review by Daisy Fried in the July/August issue of Poetry magazine: “Violent, ordinary, rapid, perverse, wakeful, finding corners everywhere, driven hard enough against time: Roy Fisher, wonderful at everything, is best, too, at describing himself.” The book can be ordered here.