Church with Dana Levin

In case you missed Dana Levin at the last Works in Progress, or like me you can’t get enough of her…   come to Church of Beethoven this SUNDAY or WEDNESDAY:

Sunday, Oct. 11, 10:30am
Weds., Oct. 14, 6pm

1715 5th St NW

Albuquerque, NM 87102

AT:  1715 5th St NW, Albuquerque, NM 87102

MUSIC:  Mozart Concerto No.3 for Violin and Orchestra by Mozart. Violin soloist Roberta Arruda; Barber Adagio for Strings.

Poet Dana Levin will read.

If you haven’t met Dana yet, check out this interview from THE ALIBI:

Poet and new UNM prof Dana Levin talks teaching
By Erin Adair-Hodges

For 11 years, poet Dana Levin taught creative writing at the College of Santa Fe. Though CSF has managed to come back to life in an altered form after its near-total collapse, Levin has moved on. She is now the new Russo Chair of creative writing at UNM. Levin’s first book, In the Surgical Theatre, won the 1999 APR/Honickman First Book Prize, among many others. She is also the author of Wedding Day. Her third book, Sky Burial, is slated for a 2011 release from Copper Canyon Press.

Q:  What do you see as the connection between being a poet and being a teacher? Most poets teach; is that natural? How has that evolved?
read the answer online at THE ALIBI–>

Hayden’s Ferry Review Puts the Spotlight on Erika Sanchez

My writing process is a bit like me: irrational.

Sometimes images seem to haunt me until I am compelled to write a poem around them; other times I do everything I can to “break my eye open” (this concept comes from my favorite TV series, “Six Feet Under.”) To break your eye open is exactly what it sounds like— to see the world in a new way, to make unusual associations. I do this is by delving into my subconscious—a fecund and frightening place. I love writing exercises for that reason. They help me find startling images and fresh language after I feel I’ve exhausted all of my own. One of my favorites is

a dada exercise that I learned from my wonderful poetry instructor in Spain– Jesús Urceloy. What a brilliant man. He had everyone follow the most specific and absurd instructions and the end result was amazing. For example, he made us write the word “lamp” on a sheet of paper and leave it near our bed. Upon waking we were to immediately write every word that came to mind when we thought of “lamp.” Then in class he made us write all of the words we associated with “fish” along with a series of other similar instructions. Towards the end we were to give one of the lines we had written to a partner as a gift. He then instructed us to recite our lines in a specific order, then at random until they began sounding like an incantation. Everyone wrote incredible poems and that class remains as one of my most beloved memories. I miss those people profoundly…

CONTINUE READING ONLINE–>

Instructor Amy Beeder: Poetry in Review(s)

Amy Beeder’s poems are forthcoming this fall in Poetry, The Southern Review, Indiana Review, Quarterly West and The Laurel Review.

Her poem, “Captain Haddock vs. the PTA,” which appeared in Poetry’s July/August issue, was also featured on a Poetry magazine podcast.

In September she will read poems as part of Ellen Rothenberg’s exhibition Reading Landscapes at the Albuquerque Museum–an installation that combines text & visual production.

Here’s a sneak peek at Amy reading for last years Poetry Month Presentation at UNM’s Bookstore

Louise Gluck and Dana Levin: a conversation

Dana Levin recently interviewed poet Louise Gluck, from www.poets.org–  This article originally appeared in issue 36 of American Poet, the biannual journal of the Academy of American Poets:

Dana Levin: I wanted to start by asking about your new book, A Village Life, which is coming out this Fall. Time feels spatial in the book, as if all the book’s varied voices are speaking, events are happening, in a simultaneous temporal moment.

Louise Glück: There’s something very strange in these poems that I’ve been unable to put my finger on. It’s certainly not a willed or deliberate quality, but it has to do with that simultaneity. And it strikes me that the book has something in common with “Landscape,” a poem in Averno, in which the stages of a life are represented by individual sections, but the narrative elements and even the point of view shift from section to section—and yet what’s represented is the whole of a life. It occurred to me that A Village Life engages that horrible axiom that, at the end of your life, as you’re dying, the whole of your life floods back. That’s what the book feels like to me: the whole of a life, but not progressive, not narrative: simultaneous. And there’s no drama attendant in the idea of dying. It’s beyond the drama of the forfeit of the world; it’s just a long exhalation.

DL: What did the book teach you aesthetically?

CONTINUE READING ONLINE –>

Pixels for Elizabeth

Elizabeth Tannen (MFA/ creative non-fiction) just had a piece published over on NPR.org, Victorian Thorns In Today’s Modern Love:

I tend to think of my romantic dilemmas as distinctly modern. You know, navigating things like Facebook and text messaging and everything else along that awkward precipice between men and technology.

Recently, though, it’s the love life of a 19th century Victorian with which I’ve been identifying. I began to relate when I first came upon her on the page this summer, and when — two weeks ago — I watched Vicki Kennedy elegantly mourning the terrible if not unexpected loss of her older husband, I thought of her again.

I’m talking about Dorothea……CONTINUE READING ONLINE –>

Congrats Elizabeth!… and note, this is not Elizabeth’s first essay published over at NPR… a quick search will net several essays on dating and other topics like Mothers, Dads, memories and even text messages…

Congratulations to our Published Comrades!

From Julie

Lori Ostlund, whose wonderful story “No One Walks to the Mennonites” appeared in Blue Mesa Review Issue 19, will give a reading and host a fiction workshop on Friday, November 6th. Lori is the author of THE BIGNESS OF THE WORLD, which won the 2008 Flannery O’Connor Short Fiction award. I just received word that the collection was one of six selected for the 2009 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award. I’m very excited about Lori’s visit and hope students in the creative writing program–both MFAs and undergrads–will take advantage of this opportunity to come hear Lori read and show her some of your work.

Gary Jackson – I heard the good news from Lisa Gill over the weekend that Gary Jackson, MFA grad and former teacher of 224, has won the Cave Canem First book award for 2009. This award was judged by poet Yusef Komunyakaa. Gary’s collection will be published by Graywolf Press.

Still more good news:

Elena Sanchez, who graduated from our creative writing program, went on to Mills College for her MFA, and is currently teaching in South Korea, had a story short-listed in Glimmer Train’s Starts contest.

Robyn Mundy, who received an MA from our creative writing program in fiction and is living and teaching in Australia, has published her first novel THE NATURE OF ICE.

News from Erika Sanchez

My poem “Earthquake: Nicaragua,1972″ will be published in Whiskey Island. Thanks! See you soon.

Best,
Erika Sanchez

Fiesta Erika

More good news for Erika Sanchez–  her poem “Fiesta Mexicana” will be published in the next issue of Crab Orchard Review.

Poetry All Over the Place!

Puerto del Sol will be publishing Anastasia Andersen’s “My daughter thinks safety means spotless”, in the upcoming Spring issue.

…but wait! there’s more!

The e-zine Heavy Bear will feature Anastasia’s “Van Leeuwenhoek”, “slitting the wrists of the old astronomy”, and “Flowers. In bad times” in the Fall Issue #4.

Congratulations! and keep the good news coming!

Erika did it again!

Congratulations again to Erika Sanchez!
Her poem “Lavapiés” has been accepted by Hayden’s Ferry Review