46 PUBLISHERS WEEKLY ■ APRIL 6, 2020
Poetry
- The American Academy of Poets, which launched National Poetry Month in 1996, is building a resource list to help poets and poetry organizations
during the epidemic, says Jeffrey Gleaves, digital engagement and content director. The academy will publish guidelines and best practices for
virtual events and readings, and organizations are encouraged to submit virtual events to its Poetry Near You listings page on Poets.org.
(^) • On March 20, the academy launched the #ShelterInPoems initiative, which invites readers to select a poem from the Poets.org website and
post on social media why they find the poem inspiring. The effort will continue through at least April, Gleaves said, and the organization is
sending select testimonials to its newsletter list weekly.
(^) • Weekdays through April, U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo will guest edit the Poem-a-Day on Poets.org. Other resources at the academy’s
website include a list of 30 ways to celebrate National Poetry Month at home and in a digital classroom.
(^) • Paul Slovak, executive editor at Viking, is looking after the Penguin poetry list, as he’s done for the past two decades. On World Poetry Day,
March 21, Penguin announced a social media initiative encouraging readers to pause and take a moment for poetry. The first poem, excerpted
from American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin by Terrance Hayes, was shared on March 24 across Penguin’s socials. The campaign will
continue through National Poetry Month.
(^) • In April, Penguin Books is releasing a Farsi/English edition of Iranian poet Garous Abdolmalekian’s Lean Against This Late Hour , the first English
language publication of his work and the first time the Penguin Poets series has done poetry in translation. “It always seemed a long shot that Garous
would be able to come from Iran for the publication,” Slovak said. “We had set up a launch event
at Poets House in New York for April 16 that was to include the two translators, Idra Novey and
Ahmad Nadalizadeh, and are now exploring whether that event could be done virtually.”
(^) • Four Way Books is also looking into virtual events, says publicity director Clarissa Long.
The press, which releases 16–18 titles per year, published Gregory Pardlo’s 2015 Pulitzer
Prize–winning collection, Digest , and its spring poetry list includes Fantasia for the Man in Blue by
Tommye Blount, Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry by John Murillo, and Let It Be Broke by Ed Pavlic ́.
Four Way is speaking with venues that had been scheduled to host its authors and brainstorming
ways to promote new books without an in-person reading, such as livestreaming q&as.
As events across the country are canceled and book launches postponed, a community supports its poets
566 Native nations in the U.S., IAIA prioritizes a recognition of the multiplicity
and complexity of Native experience, which ranges from rural to urban. As Erdrich
points out, many Americans are unaware that the vast majority of Native Americans
don’t live on reservations.
Chip Livingston, a poet and short story writer from the Poarch Band of Creek Indians
in Alabama, lives in Uruguay and teaches in IAIA’s popular low-residency MFA
program. “Sometimes visitors or students from the dominant culture are for the first
time not in the majority,” he says of the culture at IAIA. “I think that’s a good feeling
for everyone, and especially helpful for conscientious writers.”
Themes in Livingston’s work include southeastern Indians, gay sex, world politics,
and life in North and South America, evincing a typically multivalent Native existence
and the complexities of Native heritage. “Although I’m mixed blood, I physically
appear very Anglo/gringo,” he says, “and my life experience has included being afforded
a lot of white male privilege based on my appearance and other people’s assumptions
about that appearance.”
Part of the appeal of IAIA, and other institutions such as Diné College, in Arizona,
the first tribally controlled and accredited collegiate institution in the U.S., is a
freedom from performing Native stereotypes. “At IAIA we have a particular kind of
continued from p. 42
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