MEENA ALEXANDER TO JUDGE MARSH HAWK PRESS ANNUAL POETRY PRIZES

THE FOURTEENTH ANNUAL MARSH HAWK PRESS POETRY PRIZE
Including:
The Marsh Hawk Press Robert Creeley Memorial Award
Named for the late Poet and Member of the Marsh Hawk Press Advisory Board
&
The Rochelle Ratner Memorial Award
Named for the late Poet and Marsh Hawk Press Editor

Submission Deadline: April 30, 2017

CONTEST JUDGE:

Meena Alexander

Meena Alexander Meena Alexander is an award winning author and scholar. Her new book of poetry, Atmospheric Embroidery, was published in 2015 by Hachette India. Her volumes of poetry include Birthplace with Buried Stones, Illiterate Heart (winner of the PEN Open Book Award), Raw Silk and Quickly Changing River. Her poetry has been translated into several languages and set to music. She has written the acclaimed autobiography, Fault Lines as well as two novels. She is author of the academic study Women in Romanticism and the book of essays Poetics of Dislocation. She is Distinguished Professor of English at the City University of New York and  teaches at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York. Click here to read poems from Meena Alexander’s newest collection of poetry, Atmospheric Embroidery (2015)

NEWS: Exhibition of Basil King - February 25 to March 31, 2017

"Basil King: Bird Scripts," Opening February 25, 2017 - 5 to 7pm.

John Molloy Gallery, 49 East 78^th Street, 2^nd floor, New York City

Regular gallery hours: Tuesday through Friday, 11 am to 6 pm and Saturday 11 am to 5 pm. 

There will be a screening of "Basil King:MIRAGE," a 22-minute film by Nicole Peyrafitte  and Miles Joris-Peyrafitte,

 followed by a poetry reading by Basil King at the gallery on March 18, 3pm - 5pm. 

King has been working with bird images since 197l. The works on exhibit were all made between 2013 and 2017. The world-wide city pigeon is a central inspiration for King works that range through many emotions. Below, Perch, mixed media on canvas, 34" x 48" - 2016.

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For more information visit info@johnmolloygallery.com or phone (212) 249-3020; cell (917) 854-6543. 

This show follows two  museum shows in North Carolina this past fall.

"Basil King: Between Painting and Writing" --September 2 to December 24, 2016

Curated by Vincent Katz and Brian Butler at the Black Mountain College Museum & Arts Center, Asheville, NC.   

This mini-retrospective included King’s cover art for some 60 poetry books and journals, along with 18 paintings  and 138 small works on paper. Also featured was  a screening of the Nicole Peyrafitte-Miles Joris-Peyrafitte film, "Basil King: MIRAGE" and a reading by Basil King of his poetry. Below, the opening with King's book-cover art in vitrines, and a painting from The Cards.

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"Basil King’s Birds" -- October 28 to November 19, 2016

Curated by Tom Patterson and art department staff at St. Andrews University, Laurinburg, NC.  

This show, focused on King’s bird images, was part of a semester-long Black Mountain College Festival, with many exciting artists, dancers, poets and Black Mountain historians in residence for short visits. Below, partial view of installation at St. Andrew's University Museum.

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GEORGE QUASHA FEATURE IN TALISMAN!

You are invited to invite a special focus on George Quasha in TALISMAN! You can see it by going to Burt Kimmelman's wonderful Introduction HERE, which begins

George Quasha’s presence in the life and work of a great many poets, artists, musicians and filmmakers is most remarkable. And so nearly a dozen critical appreciations of his achievements in the arts have been assembled here. Written by luminaries in their own right, they are meant to broaden awareness of Quasha’s unique contributions in a number of fields of endeavor. George and Susan Quasha (a marvelous artist herself) have been mainstays in a community located close enough to New York City to be an instrumental force in the city’s artistic and intellectual goings on, yet far enough north of the city to have developed a collective character and outlook that may owe something to the bucolic experience possible there. The Quashas put down roots, specifically in Barrytown, New York, having already become a part of the avant garde that was taking shape during the 1960s and ‘70s in the city and its environs.            

George Quasha was born in White Plains, New York in 1942, and from age three to seventeen he lived in Miami, Florida. Already a musician, he was reading Nietzsche, Thoreau and Eliot at fourteen, and won the Florida State debate championship at fifteen. Connected to his debate activities, while starting college at the University of Miami the following year, he won a scholarship to the then new and unprecedented International School of America. This award took him and sixteen other high school graduates around the world. They lived with local families in thirteen countries over nine months, accompanied by five university faculty including Edgar Snow and artist Emerson Burkhart. Their curriculum included audiences with the likes of Eleanor Roosevelt, I.F. Stone, Jawaharlal Nehru, Rajendra Prasad, and Willie Brandt. 

Following that school year, Quasha spent the summer in Paris learning French. He subsequently attended Ohio State (studying poetry with Milton Kessler, German with Sigurd Burckhardt, and philosophy with Morris Weitz), then enrolling in Mexico City College (where he concentrated in Spanish, anthropology, and geology) before going on to the Sorbonne (in order to study French language and literature). At twenty-one, he finished college as an English major at NYU.            

Living in the East Village, while attending NYU across town, Quasha frequented the legendary readings at Café Le Métro, and struck up friendships with Jerome Rothenberg, Paul Blackburn, Jackson Mac Low, Diane di Prima, David Antin, Ed Sanders, Carol Bergé, Diane Wakoski, Harold Dicker, Allen Ginsberg, and others working at the forefront of experimental poetry. He began graduate school at NYU (where he was befriended by Anais Nin), studying at length with M. L. Rosenthal (in whose poetry theory seminars he began reading Robert Creeley, Robert Duncan and others, thanks to a presentation in the course by David Antin).

CALL FOR EKPHRASTIC WRITINGS

Eileen Tabios is curating a new ekphrasis project where poets and writers may write in response to artworks on the Filipino American Artists Directory site. 

This is an invitation to all creative writers to participate. More information is available at the Call for Writings which is at http://www.filamartistdirectory.com/call-for-writing/  Deadline is ongoing; writings are featured as they are received/accepted.

Marsh Hawker Susan Terris as well as Eileen Tabios have already provided poems in response. Go to the link to see more examples!

Participants are also offered two of Eileen's Marsh Hawk Press books: Reproductions of the Empty Flagpole and SUN STIGMATA.

TANA JEAN WELCH POEM IN THE NEW YORK TIMES

Marsh Hawk is delighted to announce that Tana Jean Welch's poem, "'Leda' Burning, Immendorf Palace, 1945" will appear in The New York Times Sunday Magazine this weekend. Fortunately, it also is now available online HERE.

Congratulations, Tana Jean!

Tana Jean, of course, is the author of Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize Recipient Latest Volcano.

SANDY McINTOSH DOCUMENTED

Sandy McIntosh is soon to be featured in a number of documentaries on Donald Trump:

PBS Frontline has recut it's Donald Trump documentary and it's airing tonight at 10:00 pm. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/watch/

The Japanese network TBS will air an interview with Sandy on the same subject tomorrow, but it will be featured in Japan only. 

Finally, around Inauguration Day the BBC will air it's own show, in which Sandy has a part.