signs of spring & other 2014 news

After the longest winter of polar vortexes ever, the daffodils are starting to come up here in Virginia.  I just got back from AWP 2014 in Seattle, where I got to participate in a terrific panel (“Daydreaming at the Mini-Mart”), a fantabulous on-site reading (for Anhinga Press’s 40th Birthday), and an amazing off-site reading (for Muzzle Magazine & Vinyl Poetry).  I read and hung out with so many supa-cool poets that my head felt like it might explode (in the best possible way)!

I’m headed to Omaha, NE to read at Creighton University on March 27th, and I’m really excited to be a part of this summer’s New Harmony Writers Workshop (June 8-14), where I’ll be teaching poetry workshops along with poet-extraordinaire Adrian Matejka.

I’ve got new poems out this winter in Pleiades and Barn Owl Review, and a bunch of new poems going up over the next few weeks at Ampersand Review and Plume.  I’ve got more new stuff coming soon in Shenandoah, Puerto del Sol, Forklift, Ohio, and The Kenyon Review.  And I’ve got poems due out in a few anthology projects:  Please Excuse This Poem: 100 New Poems for the Next Generation (Viking Penguin), The Book of Scented Things: 100 Contemporary Poems About Perfume (The Literary House Press).  Also, I just published a love letter to Jenny Browne’s new book Dear Stranger over at the Los Angeles Review of Books as part of a Valentines feature edited by Alan Michael Parker.

I’ve got an incredible cover for my new book (due out in August 2014 from BOA Editions–thanks Sandy Knight/hoopskirt studio!), and you can pre-order the book already from amazon.  I love to do readings and craft talks–email me if you want me to come visit!  I’ll be posting a study guide for Copia in the next few weeks on my book page, if you’re thinking about course adoption for next year.

Most excitingly, I’ve just found out that I’ve received a UK Fulbright to be the Distinguished Scholar in Creative Writing at the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry at Queen’s University Belfast, in Northern Ireland, for my spring 2015 sabbatical!