MARSH HAWK PRESS WELCOMES WILLIAM BENTON

We are delighted to announce our newest release: William Benton's LIGHT ON WATER: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS 1972-2022. Mr. Benton is a distinguished poet who began his career as a jazz player.

“What most distinguishes the poetry and makes it entirely individual is the manner in which, over the course of any given poem, there is a sense of “motion” in the transitions from phrase to phrase, line to line, a shifting of planes, between image or observation and the abstract, which seems to me unique to the practice of this artist."

-August Kleinzahler

ON MARSH HAWK PRESS POETRY PRIZE!

You are invited!

EILEEN R. TABIOS PART OF CLMP'S SUGGESTIONS FOR FILIPINO-AMERICAN HISTORY MONTH

Eileen R. Tabios' Selected Tercets collection, THE IN(TER)VENTION OF THE HAY(NA)KU, is included in CLMP's "A Reading List for Filipino American History Month"! Also featured is a book she edited on Jose Garcia Villa, THE ANCHORED ANGEL. You can see the entire list HERE.

THOMAS FINK ON READING POETRY & DEEPENING ENGAGEMENT

We are delighted to announce the October 2022 release of Thomas Fink's Reading Poetry with College and University Students (Bloomsbury Academic, 2022). More information at the publisher's BOOK LINK. Marsh Hawk is pleased to see the inclusion of Marsh Hawk poets Eileen R. Tabios and Paolo Javier.

COMPLETE LIST OF POETS:

Julia Alvarez

Amiri Baraka

Tom Beckett

Gwendolyn Brooks

Rosario Castellanos

John Donne

Denise Duhamel

Paolo Javier

Yusef Komunyakaa

Timothy Liu

Audre Lorde

Sheila E. Murphy

Trace Peterson

Adélia Prado

A.K. Ramanujan

Adrienne Rich

Evie Shockley

Wisława Szymborska

Eileen R. Tabios

Gail Tremblay

W.B. Yeats

FROM THE PUBLISHER:

Reading Poetry with College and University Students aims to help faculty foster students' intellectual and aesthetic engagement with poems while enabling them to sharpen critical and creative thinking skills. Reading authors across history and the globe--such as Julia Alvarez, Amiri Baraka, Gwendolyn Brooks, Mahmoud Darwish, John Donne, Paolo Javier, Yusef Komunyakaa, Audre Lorde, and Wislawa Szymborska--Thomas Fink zeroes in on how learners can surmount and even enjoy tackling the most difficult aspects of poetry. 

By exploring students' emotional identification with speakers and characters of poems as well as poets themselves, Fink shows how an instructor can motivate students to produce effective and empathic interpretations. Through divergent readings of selected poems, the book addresses the influence of various theoretical paradigms, ranging from ecological, psychological, feminist, and queer theory to deconstructive, postcolonial, and surface reading orientations. Instructors receive practical guidance through these poems, poets, and modes of reading, helping to give learners raw material to reach their own nuanced interpretations and strengthen their emotional, aesthetic, and intellectual acumen.

 

TONY TRIGILIO AS LATEST "CHAPTER ONE" CONTRIBUTOR

 

You are invited to read Tony Trigilio on Obstinacy Poetics HERE.

MARY MACKEY'S LATEST HONORS

Congratulations to Mary Mackey whose film script "Time Piece," co-written with Renee De Palma, has won the City of Angels Women's Film Festival Award for Best Short Film Script! More information is available HERE.

Mary's latest Marsh Hawk book, CREATIVITY: WHERE POEMS BEGIN, also was recently lauded by Small Press Distribution to be on its Recommended List!

MARY MACKEY ON CREATIVITY

You are invited to read the latest installment to Marsh Hawk Press' "Chapter One Project," an essay on creativity by Mary Mackey. It begins with

My memories go back a long way, too long to be true, people tell me. And yet they are there, stored in a wordless space in my mind, because they came before words, existing in a place that someday I will come to understand is the source of my poetry, perhaps the source of all poetry. It is a country without borders, a place without language, a universe that has not yet been talked into being.

A younger Mary Mackey in Costa Rica

We're delighted to share some words from the Sept/Oct Poets & Writers Magazine featuring On Becoming a Poet:

“The reflections of writers such as Jane Hirshfield, David Lehman, Phillip Lopate, and Arthur Sze offer inspiration, companionship, and good advice for any poet seeking permission to embark on their work.” --The Writer’s Bookshelf: A Year of Craft Reading and Advice, Poets & Writers Magazine

ON MARY MACKEY'S ON CREATIVITY

You're invited to read this wonderful engagement/review of Mary Mackey's book, ON CREATIVITY: WHERE POEMS BEGIN by the Steiny Road Poet! Here's an excerpt:

Mackey says she experienced an altered state of mind since childhood because of abnormally high (and life threatening) fevers. However, Mackey was curious about the culture Schultes studied in the Amazon and traveled and lived there to experience that environment firsthand. Uninterested in the surrealism (being in touch with the unconscious mind) of contemporaries like André Breton,  Stein relied on a disciplined schedule of writing which she did late at night when everyone else slept. Mackey describes how she developed her process of "extreme focus" to move from an ordinary object like an ashtray to her creative landscape. This method of concentration is what she says taught her to re-learn metaphor, something she could do at eleven years old. The point is that children have a natural ability to see things creatively until they lose touch with their inner child by what adults teach them.

2022 RECIPIENTS OF MARSH HAWK PRESS POETRY PRIZE!!

 Congratulations to the poets featured below!!!!

2022 MARSH HAWK PRESS POETRY PRIZE AWARDS
CONTEST JUDGE: John Yau

($1,000.00 Cash Prize and Publication of the Book)
“Translation Zone” by Brian Cochran
($1,000.00 Cash Prize and Publication of the Book)

The ROCHELLE RATNER MEMORIAL AWARD
“The War in the War” by Dennis Etzel, Jr.
($250.00 Cash Prize)

The ROBERT CREELEY MEMORIAL AWARD
“Bamboo On the Tracks” by Tony Wallin-Sato
($250.00 Cash Prize)

FINALISTS
Jeremy Schmidt
Brian Strang
Adam Scheffler
Nancy Davis
Daniel Meltz
Danielle Hanson
Sawnie Morris
Michael Opperman
Freke Räihä
Melissa Tuckey
Adam Day

More info at https://marshhawkpress.org/2022-marsh-hawk-press-poetry-prize-awards/

MCINTOSH AND CERVANTES ON LATEST SPD BESTSELLER LISTS

We're delighted to share that two of our books made it to SPD's latest Bestseller Lists:

PLAN B: A POET'S SURVIVORS MANUAL by Sandy McIntosh

and

APRIL ON OLYMPIA by Lorna Dee Cervantes

ACADEMY OF AMERICAN POETS RECOMMENDS SANDY MCINTOSH'S BOOK!

Congratulations to Sandy McIntosh whose latest Marsh Hawk Press book, PLAN B FOR POETS, has been chosen for the Academy of American Poets 2022 Summer Poetry Reading List: https://poets.org/2022-summer-books-list

MARSH HAWK REVIEW, SPRING 2022

You are invited to read the just-released Spring 2022 issue of Marsh Hawk Review through the wise efforts of editor Daniel Morris and prose editor Burt Kimmelman. You can see the issue at this link: https://marshhawkpress.org/the-marsh-hawk-press-review/

DENISE LOW ON "CHAPTER ONE"

Denise Low provides a moving memoir in the new installment of Marsh Hawk Press' "Chapter One" series. You can read it HERE.

PLAN B RECOMMENDED BY SPD!

 More information HERE!

ON BECOMING A POET

 Marsh Hawk Press' historic anthology, On Becoming A Poet, is now available at Small Press Distribution. Here's more info:

NEW WEBSITE: CHAPTER ONE PROJECT

Marsh Hawk Press has created a new website for its Chapter One Project. This is a useful website for poetry lovers and educators. Featuring some of today's most experienced and wise poets, the website also expands the theme of its first book project, the forthcoming anthology ON BECOMING A POET. You can see the website HERE.

RAFAEL JESUS GONZALEZ IN "CHAPTER ONE" SERIES!

Berkeley's first Poet Laureate Rafael Jesus Gonzalez is latest participant in Marsh Hawk Press' "Chapter One" series about poets' beginnings. Gonzalez, also the founder of the Mexican & Latin American Studies Dept. at Laney College, Oakland, begins his contribution with the following (and do go HERE for entire essay):

"I was born into flor y canto, in xochitl in cuicatl, flower & song, poetry taught me by my father Jesús and my mother Carmen (who before she married compiled a collection of poems, in Spanish of course, meticulously typed on two- hundred-fifty pages bound in an embossed binder from the custom house in Cd. Juárez where my aunt Luz worked, the first book I ever attempted to illustrate, to my mother’s consternation, at the age of three or four.)"

A REVIEW FOR LORNA DEE CERVANTES' NEW MARSH HAWK BOOK!

Rosa Martha Villareal reviews Lorna Dee Cervantes' April on Olympia. You can see review HERE but here's an excerpt: 

Cervantes conjures the ghosts of her literary and artistic godparents, guides of the subconscious mind’s nights of darkness, the givers of the word/logos, which orders the chaos of imagination just as the gardener organizes the fecundity of nature. The artists: Theodore Roethke, Gil Scott Heron, Billie Holliday, Federico García Lorca, Allen Ginsberg. The social warriors who shaped her sensibilities and gave definition to her indignation: César Chávez, Nestora Salgado, Carlos Almaráz. She elaborates in “River: for my murdered mother” that the inheritance of remembrance, sorrow, and the continuum of thought and passion through time are vehicles of freedom because the quest for justice takes longer than one lifetime.

ARTHUR SZE ON REVELING IN COMPLEXITY

Arthur Sze contributes to Marsh Hawk Press' "Chapter One" Project. You can read his contribution through an interview with Jim Natal HERE.

ON BECOMING A POET

Marsh Hawk Press will be publishing four new titles later this spring in its Chapter One series. Here's the cover for our anthology. (To learn more about what we're doing go to: https://marshhawkpress.org/chapter-one-series/

BARBARA NOVACK ON "CHAPTER ONE"

You are invited to read Barbara Novack's contribution to Marsh Hawk Press' "Chapter One" project that presents established poets discussing their early days as writers. You can see her essay HERE.