2016 News: Belfast & Back

It’s been a while since I’ve posted here. I was on sabbatical in Northern Ireland for a big chunk of last year as the 2014-15 US-UK Fulbright Distinguished Scholar in Creative Writing at the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry at Queen’s University Belfast, where I taught a post-graduate module to their amazing MA and PhD students on Documentary & Investigative Poetry. I did a bunch of readings and talks in Belfast, Dublin, Limerick, and Stirling, and met many amazing people! Anyone reading this should definitely check out the work of Belfast poets Sinéad Morrissey (her Parallax and Selected Poems is available in the US now) and Leontia Flynn, and prose writer Glenn Patterson. And if you find yourself in Belfast, go visit No Alibis Bookstore and be sure to get to a Lifeboat Reading at The Sunflower!

This fall I took over directing the MFA Program at Virginia Tech, where I’ve taught since 2007. I did a bit of traveling in the fall to Rotterdam to read in the Geen Daden Maar Woorden Festival (and stay on a decommissioned cruise ship!), and to Colby College to visit with and read to their creative writing students. And this spring I got to be a part of the always wonderful Virginia Festival of the Book, where I read with VA poets Gary Dop and Lesley Wheeler.

I’ve got some newer stuff up online–“Ghost Eden” over at the Academy of American Poets, two poems in Memorious 24, and on World Poetry Day The Huffington Post named me one of “Fourteen Brilliant Women Poets to Read on World Poetry Day” (with a cool follow-up post by BOA Editions here).  In 2015, I published a bunch of stuff in print journals: Fourteen Hills, Tin House, Copper Nickel, The Kenyon Review, Apalachee Review, Crab Orchard Review, and had a poem from Copia in The New York Times Sunday Magazine. Most of my online poems (including the newer publications) are available on my poems page.

If you’re looking for me this spring, I’ll be at AWP in LA (3/30-4/3) signing copies of Copia at the BOA Editions table (800/802) from 1-2pm on Thursday 3/31, doing a panel on Friday 4/1 from 4:30-5:45 (with Traci Brimhall, Natalie Diaz, and David Kirby) called “The Poem You’ll Write Tomorrow: How to Teach Vision” (in Room 501, LA Convention Center, Meeting Room Level), and reading on Saturday 4/2 from 7-9pm with a ton of other poets at AWP Off-Site Extravaganza: Fourteen Hills and Red Light Lit at Lilith’s Corner (672 S La Fayette Park Pl). And I’m headed to Wisconsin at the end of April to do a reading for the amazing Monsters of Poetry series on Saturday 4/23, and then to UW Platteville for their 2016 Creative Writing Festival.

And I love to do readings, class visits (skype or in-person), craft talks and workshops, so drop me a line if you want me to come to your school or reading series!