‘I really wanted that student to feel censored’: A poetry class confronts slurs, and finds grace
Jennifer L. Knox | Washington Post
Words that hurt people — like slurs against races, religions, ability levels and sexual orientations — can stop all forward momentum in a poem. Writing a poem is like cooking a dish, and words are your ingredients. Some words will render your dish sickening — even inedible.
‘Women’s bodies were absent from Irish history, except as tools, cyphers or vessels’
Kathy D’Arcy | The Irish Times
I’ll just say what I say whenever I read my work: that I wish I could write poems about flowers and horses and The Odyssey, but that that won’t be happening until I can prise de Valera’s cold, dead hands off my uterus. I can feel them there when I say the words, grasping, assaultive. I can feel them giving way, wizened interphalangeal joint by joint.
‘The Recovering’: One young writer’s intoxicating journey to sobriety
Matt McCarthy | USA Today
Jamison made a name for herself in 2014 with The Empathy Exams, a wide-ranging collection of essays that catalog poor choices, bizarre setbacks, and her complicated relationship with alcohol. In The Recovering, we learn that the romance with booze has faded — she increasingly finds herself drinking alone, vomiting during blackouts— and Jamison gradually acknowledges that she’s an alcoholic.
Posted: by Nace Phlaux
Category: Writing
Tags: censor, irish times, jennifer l knox, kathy d'arcy, matt mccarthy, poetry, pro-choice, sobriety, usa today, washington post