Read more about the Mormon Poetry Slam here and see the posting schedule here. Vote for your favorite performance here (the link will go live once all the entries have been posted). Use #MormonPoetrySlam if you post about this in your social media circles.
Poet Highlight: Emily Stanfill, “Then I Became Eve“ What strikes me most about the poem, first, is the way the poet “verbs” the adjective innocent, using it not to describe her Eve—as in, “I am/was innocent/an innocent person”—but as a means of modifying her, as in, “He made me innocent.” This out-of-the-ordinary usage highlights, for me, the possibility of Adam… Read more »
Poet Highlight: Kimberly Johnson, “Ode on My Episiotomy“ Yep. That’s right. Episiotomy. A woman’s “most matronly adornment,” as Kim has it. What better reason, then, to write an “Ode on My Episiotomy.” (Not that I have one—not that I’ll ever have one, unless, like I ruminate here, I can slip on my wife’s. Not likely though.) I adore this poem—as… Read more »
Anthology Poet Highlight 12/82: Laraine Wilkins: “Make Yourself at Home“ (scroll down) While Laraine Wilkins has passed on and while I never knew her (though we did share a few brief emails when she was editor of Irreantum: A Review of Mormon Literature and Film and I’d submitted some poems for publication), I believe her impact on the world… Read more »
FitP Poet Highlight 11/82: Kristen Eliason, “arms upon arms to an earth“ “Kristen Eliason’s delicious prose and poetry drive a hard bargain between elegy and Japanese wabi-sabi.” So says whoever wrote the bio note on this event page announcing a Kristen Eliason reading at Notre Dame. I nod in agreement: “Yes. Yes, Kristen’s poetry is elegaic, very haiku-like in its… Read more »
Anthology Poet Highlight 10/82: Javen Tanner, Curses For Your Sake “The title of Tanner’s chapbook frames well the experience captured in his lyric narrative poems. Extracted from the decree God directed towards Adam and Eve at the moment he expelled them from the Garden of Eden, the phrase ‘curses for your sake’ (see Gen. 3:17) suggests that moral paradox and… Read more »
Anthology Poet Highlight 9/82: Karen Kelsay, In Spite of Her In her chapbook of narrative poems, In Spite of Her, Karen explores the relationship between a middle-aged woman and a world that changes and moves on “in spite of her” (“In Spite of Her,” line 11). These poems become acts of mourning mixed with moments of acceptance of and resignation… Read more »