#BLauthor5: Amy King

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#BLauthor5 is poet Amy King.

Of I Want to Make You Safe (Litmus Press), John Ashbery describes Amy King's poems as bringing “abstractions to brilliant, jagged life, emerging into rather than out of the busyness of living.” Safe was one of Boston Globe’s Best Poetry Books of 2011. The Missing Museum is forthcoming in 2014 from Kore Press. King teaches Creative Writing at SUNY Nassau Community College and works with VIDA: Women in Literary Arts. Check her latest blog entries at Boston Review, Poetry Magazine and the Rumpus.

Be sure to check back next week for our interview with Amy.

For now, here are two new poems by her, with comments by co-ed Stacia M. Fleegal afterward:

A conversation with Laura Madeline Wiseman, editor of Women Write Resistance: Poets Resist Gender Violence, part 2

On Monday, we posted part 1 of the interview with Dr. Laura Madeline Wiseman, editor of the anthology Women Write Resistance: Poets Resist Gender Violence, which we've been giving a lot of attention during October's National Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Today, we share part 2 of that interview:

How women poets can change the world – Review of Women Write Resistance: Poets Resist Gender Violence, by Stacia M. Fleegal

In the anthology Women Write Resistance: Poets Resist Gender Violence, readers learn just how many forms of resistance to female-specific violence there are. 

The answer is: so many that I wrote a damn critical thesis just to tell you how great this anthology is (i.e., settle in for a long-but-worth-it read). Also, four BL authors have work in this collection, and it’s incredibly cool to have published talented writers who also happen to be compassionate and engaged. Congrats on your continued greatness, Grace Bauer (#23), Mary Stone Dockery (#21), July Westhale (#19), and Sarah A. Chavez (also #19).

I realized writing this piece is in itself a form of resistance. To speak at length and in unabashed praise of a collection of poetry written in mouthy backlash to the cultural norms of domestic violence, rape, childhood abuse, verbal harassment and assault on city streets, etc., is to stand with women as they refuse to stand for it anymore. It is to give thoughtful treatment to a problem that is largely being ignored by our lawmakers and our justice system, which is an attempt to extend the work these poets and this editor undertook in participating in the anthology. It is to defy anyone to suggest that these poems aren’t literary because they often sound colloquial, or to dismiss them as therapeutic or confessional or any of those other supposed “critical” terms that condescend to the kind of writing I and others call real talk.  We can do that in poetry. Not only is it allowed, but resistance is poetry’s legacy.

Affrilachian Appreciation interview 4: Parneshia Jones talks to Teneice Delgado

In recognition and appreciation of Appalachian heritage month, and in an effort to contribute to a more diverse conversation on what it means to be Appalachian, Stacia Fleegal and I decided to show a little love to a few talented poets that we’ve published in previous issues who are all members of an organization called the Affrilachian Poets (you can follow them here on Facebook and learn more about them here).

We're going to feature one poet every Monday that remains in October. Last week's interview was with Ellen Hagan. Week two featured Keith Wilson, and the week before that featured Ricardo Nazario y Colón. Our fourth and final interview is with Parneshia Jones, who will have work in the upcoming issue (#26)--but we include a timely reprint of one of her poems here, a poetic reminder to vote next week.

Enjoy the interview!

-Teneice Delgado