Cherene Sherrard is a poet, scholar, and essayist, and the Sally Mead Hands-Bascom Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. About her most recent poetry collection, Grimoire (Autumn House Press, 2020), Terrance Hayes writes, “Her ingredients are positively cornucopian, but it’s Sherrard’s keen, enlivening spirit that gives this remarkable book its flavor….[She] shows us how…
Tag: poet
Voice In and Out of Poetry
Cleopatra Mathis’ After the Body: Poems New and Selected, was published this year by Sarabande Books. In this eighth book of poems, as Michael Collier writes, one discovers “the resolute heart and keen human insights” that have made her one of “our most important and essential poets.” Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, notes her…
Personal History and the Power of Repetition
A Poetry Prompt from Nathan McClain Using as a template Gregory Pardlo’s “Written by Himself” (from his book Digest), in which variations of “I was born” begin many of the lines, McClain asks his writing students to introduce themselves via the poetic method of repetition known as anaphora, with a repeated phrase of their own…
Nathan McClain
“I was concerned…that these were the only poems I’d ever write.” Interview by Sara London, WTP Poetry Editor Nathan McClain is the author of Scale (Four Way Books, 2017) and a recipient of fellowships from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, The Frost Place, and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. Currently, he teaches at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts,…
Robert B. Shaw
“The internet has made it easier for metrical poets to find each other.” Interview by Sara London, Poetry Editor Robert B. Shaw is the author, most recently, of A Late Spring, and After (Pinyon Publishing, 2016). Among his previous six collections are Aromatics, a co-winner of The Poets’ Prize, and Solving for X. He is…
Lee Briccetti
“I tell myself to live writing!” Interview with Sara London, Poetry Editor Lee Briccetti is the author of Blue Guide and Day Mark, poetry collections published by Four Way Books. She is also the Executive Director of Poets House, a national poetry library and literary center in New York City. Born in Italy, she earned…
Terri Witek
“I’m definitely happier now as a mixed-bag poet.” Interview by Jennifer Nelson, WTP Feature Writer Terri Witek’s most recent book is The Rape Kit (2018). She is also the author of Body Switch (2016); Exit Island (2012); The Shipwreck Dress (2008), a Florida Book Award winner; Carnal World (2006); Fools and Crows (2003); Courting Couples, a winner of the 2000 Center for Book…
WTP 2018 Winner: Cynthia Manick
“As a poet, the poem has to be more than a single moment; it has to point to something.” Interview by Joyce Peseroff, WTP 2018 Poetry Judge Cynthia Manick is the author of Blue Hallelujahs (Black Lawrence Press, 2016), and is a Pushcart Prize–nominated poet with an MFA in Creative Writing from the New School.…
A Visit With Donald Hall
Where a Poet Lives By Joyce Peseroff, Contributing Editor Donald Hall used to have his own zip code. So prodigious was his correspondence, it overwhelmed the Danbury, New Hampshire, post office where his mail was delivered. Later, his mailing address switched to Wilmot, and he grudgingly obtained an email address for his assistant. But he…
Site Review: Wally Swist
“Living in a farming area and observing nature…has been my own version of living a Thoreauvian or Franciscan kind of life” By Emily Jaeger, Features Editor Submit your website for review by WTP Wally Swist’s works range the gamut—as the author of over twenty collections of poetry, on his website you will find his complete bibliography,…
J.D. Scrimgeour: Finding Inspiration in the Classroom
“Classrooms can be some of the most intimate public spaces.” by Emily Jaeger, Features Editor J. D. Scrimgeour is the author of Themes For English B: A Professor’s Education In and Out of Class, which won the AWP Award for Nonfiction. Recent nonfiction has appeared in African American Review, biostories, Brilliant Corners, Pangyrus, The Quotable…
Poetry and News
Tweets can Be Poems, Too By Joyce Peseroff, Contributing Editor After 18 months of retirement, I finally unpacked the last box of books from my office at UMass Boston. I found books by colleagues; duplicate volumes of collected poems by Elizabeth Bishop, Emily Dickinson, and Jane Kenyon (I absolutely needed both at home and at…