This is the last IPM poetry update for the moment but full of good news and new things to read:
Benjamin Norris, poet, artist, and university lecturer, after a spate of publications in February has continued to write, his most recent work can be found on his website A View from a Carpark:
My sleight of hand grows tepid, shaken
kept unbound, it withers down
the coins invariably end their trail
somewhere behind the ears of a child…(excerpt from Petty Magicks)
—
American poet Tim Seibles’ book Fast Animal became available in February and I found this review at Ringside Reviews the most engaging of the five that I read. The reviewer, Micah Ling, cited a poem entitled Dawn which I found on-line at eleveneleven journal. Here’s a taste:
So, I thought about death and the dying
it requires and the idea of lying
face-down somewhere: I thoughtit’s just too much—the not
knowing, the anytime anyplace
of it: my heart runningout of gas—me: tagged
by a bus—my well-meaning self
clipped in the urban crossfire.Or the giving up on everything,
the world a banquet of good reasons
for clocking out and chomping the black
sandwich. But I thought but…(excerpt from the poem Dawn in the collection Fast Animal)
Finally, American poet and playwright Octavio Solis premiered his latest theatrical work Cloudlands (a musical for which he wrote the script and lyrics in collaboration with Adam Gwon) at the South Coast Repertory Theater in Costa Mesa, California. It received this glowing review in the L.A. Times. We hope that he’ll have time to keep writing poetry now that it’s in production.
All the best to everyone and thanks for reading!
Bonnie McClellan-Broussard 