Poetry Daily

Adult Acne

Noah Arhm Choi

The only time my grandmother touched my mother was praying over her womb, saying boy boy boy when really she meant history history history. The only time she brought her food was the red ginseng, the bitter melon as if a full mouth always gives you what you want. Everytime my mother tells my birth story it changes.

from the journal The Adroit Journal

Essay: "Something about the way I had been taught or had come to think about metaphor... was causing this sense of not being at home in metaphor or in the world."
(TYR)
#pdnews
https://yalereview.org/article/jennifer-grotz-metaphor

Report: "Right now, the future is extremely uncertain for SPD’s former small presses—but they’re adapting as quickly as they can."
(LitHub)
#pdnews
https://lithub.com/the-small-press-world-is-about-to-fall-apart-on-the-collapse-of-small-press-distribution/

Announcement: "Poet-critic Hanif Abdurraqib... [is] among this year's recipients of Windham-Campbell Prizes, for which winners each receive $175,000 cash awards."
(SF Chronicle)
#pdnews
https://www.sfchronicle.com/entertainment/article/poet-critic-hanif-abdurraqib-among-8-winners-of-19381764.php

Interview: "When I first started writing poems, I thought I was supposed to sound like everyone else."
(P&W)
#pdnews
https://www.pw.org/content/wanderer_wonderer_a_qa_with_victoria_chang

Report: "The Nuyorican Poets Cafe... has launched a $24 million, city-funded renovation that organizers hope will ensure the cafe's future for decades to come."
(Gothamist)
#pdnews
https://gothamist.com/news/nuyorican-poets-cafe-an-east-village-icon-begins-a-24m-makeover

Retrospective: "Roughly 20 minutes before our presentations were set to begin, however, we received a text from her husband Larry Ochs that Lyn had died that morning. Stunned by the news, we had no thought but to continue."
(LARB)
#pdnews
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/allegorical-moments-lyn-hejinians-life-in-writing/

Obituary: "Marjorie Perloff... one of the world’s leading scholars of contemporary poetry, died on Sunday at her home in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles. She was 92."
(NYT)
#pdnews
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/26/books/marjorie-perloff-dead.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Report: "Small Press Distribution, one of the last remaining independent book distributors in the United States, has closed."
(PW)
#pdnews
https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/94690-small-press-distribution-shuts-down.html

Essay: "Even for small magazines like us, there’s always going to be some degree of tension between radical poetic content and the realities of publishing."
(P&W)
#pdnews
https://www.pw.org/agents_editors_recommend/dominick_knowles_of_protean

Essay: "I wrote myself back to writing, I wrote myself through each day. I wrote myself, however ambivalently, back to life."
(LitHub)
#pdnews
https://lithub.com/style-as-survival-on-writing-after-death/

What Sparks Poetry

Ecopoetry Now

What Sparks Poetry is a serialized feature that explores experiences and ideas that spark the writing of new poems.

In Ecopoetry Now, invited poets engage in an ecopoetic conversation across borders. In poems and poetics statements, their work describes important local differences, including bioregion and language, as well as a shared concern for the Earth. We hope to highlight poetry’s integral role in creating and sustaining a broadly ecological imagination that is most alive when biologically, culturally, and linguistically diverse.

This week's issue: Jody Gladding on [she is one who looks]

Catch Up on Recent Poems

April 15, 2024

[she is one who looks]

Jody Gladding

A poem playing with open space and multiple readings.

April 14, 2024

8 . 18 . 20

Joyelle McSweeney

i decide to buy the milk later in the day to clear time to write and now all i think about is milk milk milk i crawl all over the house looking for dirty bottles rubber nipples and plastic collars "like nebuchadnezzar" i set em in the sink to further rot

April 13, 2024

A Stain on All Our Houses

Daniel Khalastchi

First it was the Realtor knocking quick against our door asking when we planned on leaving. Why would we be leaving? we asked, and then she pointed to the stain.

April 12, 2024

The Battered Inside

Niels Hav (translated from the Danish by Per Brask & Patrick Friesen)

But here under the sink a time warp has been allowed its hidden existence. Here is the wash tub with the floor cloth, the plunger and a forgotten bit of caustic soda. Here the spider moves about undisturbed.

April 11, 2024

Apologia (Failure)

Willie Lin

I died in my sleep last night. Against this, I ask you to imagine a birch branch.

Poetry Daily Depends on You

With your support, we make reading the best contemporary poetry a treasured daily experience. Consider a contribution today.

Meet Our Editorial Board

Each member of our diverse board selects poems for our daily poem feature and works with us to identify new outstanding, interesting publications for our thousands of daily readers.

B&W Photo of Dana Levin by B.A. Van Sise — Dana Levin

Phillip B. Williams