“Sometimes you want to soothe with the music; sometimes you want to disturb with the music. All I can say is I am a Motown baby.” – Patricia Smith
Continue reading“In a poem, if you can flex the music, line, and form enough, no matter what has happened, or what continues to happen even in a pained world, anything might still be possible, accompanied by the right song. That’s freedom.”
Continue reading“Even if you are a writer who simply thinks of literature as an escape, you cannot control how your reader approaches it, and the interaction between writer and reader is a core part of the process. Otherwise you are just writing a journal for yourself. Whatever is happening in the world is always going to influence how people to respond to art.”
Continue reading“I was drawn to poetry as soon as I learned to read. I’d describe it as simply an attraction, though that in itself could also be said to be inexplicable, metaphysical, ontological, fated, fatal (not to be dramatic or anything—good movie though).”
Continue reading“Suddenly, it seemed possible to become a composer myself, creating in a medium I’d always loved: language.”
Continue reading“I have also become habituated, daily, to writing newer, stranger, and hopefully more truthful and revelatory things, which has its own, gentler, less urgent but nonetheless compelling edge.”
Continue reading“As we study an art form or professionalize ourselves as artists, we forsake some of the play, the risk. I can get closer to that initial wildness in my notebook, a big unlined artist’s sketchbook.”
Continue readingThe National Poetry Series congratulates the five winners of the 2025 National Poetry Series Open Competition: Hajjar Baban, Stephanie Horvath, Weston Morrow, Kira Alexis Tucker, and Yi Wei.
Continue readingThe National Poetry Series congratulates the five winners of the 2024 National Poetry Series Competition: Games for Children by Keith Wilson Chosen by Rosalie Moffett for Milkweed Editions 82nd Division by D.M. Aderibigbe Chosen by Colin Channer for Akashic Books Blue Loop by AJ White Chosen by Chelsea Dingman for University of Georgia Press Our Hands Hold Violence by Kieron Walquist Chosen by Brenda Hillman for Beacon Press Shade is a Place by MaKshya Tolbert Chosen by Maggie
Continue readingThe National Poetry Series, in collaboration with Miami Dade College’s (MDC) acclaimed Miami Book Fair, is pleased to announce the 2024 Paz Prize for Poetry winner: Venezuelan poet Maria Auxiliadora Alvarez for her manuscript Un sol caído avanza. Her book was chosen by German Guerra and will be published by Akashic Press in 2025. María Auxiliadora Álvarez (Caracas, Venezuela, 1956) is a professor emerita at Miami University, Ohio, since 2023. Growing up in different countries
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