"If you would be a poet," Lawrence Ferlinghetti, a man who would know, wrote in 2007, "create works capable of answering the challenge of apocalyptic times, even if it means sounding apocalyptic...."
"I decided to have a book of poems published at my own expense." It was 1909, a year before William Carlos Williams would open his pediatric practice in his hometown of Rutherford, New Jersey. A friend of his father owned a local print shop, so Williams paid for Poems, his 22-page chapbook, to be produced. Epigraphs from Shakespeare and Keats led the earnest little book. Read more
Some books make little impression, others earn our respect. And others again make us greedy not just to read but to own them and return to them time and again. Enitharmon's aptly titled The Heart's Granary belongs to this last group. Read more
Annual sales of poetry books are set to surpass £10m for the first time since records began, The Bookseller can reveal on National Poetry Day today (6th October). Read more
In the summer of 2014, I met Kevin Bertolero at a writing conference in upstate New York. As two of very few millennials at this particular conference, we immediately bonded over internet-related nonsense. This "nonsense" comprised DIY presses, independent literature, Twitter geniuses, and, of course, memes. Read more
In honor of last month's National Poetry Month, Krystal Languell interviewed 11 poet-publishers for Literary Hub, asking them what it takes to run a small press.
Some highlights:
How many hours per week do you work for small press(es) or other poetry organization(s)? Of those hours, how many are paid? Read more
‘I always quote Kurt Vonnegut. He said in the early part of his career he was dismissed as a science fiction writer and that critics tend to put genre books, including sci-fi, in the bottom drawer of their desk... It's true. I get the New York Times every Sunday. In 37 novels, I've never had a stand-alone review. I'm always in the crime round-up.
A survey of 787 members of the Society of Authors (SoA) has found that a third of translators and a quarter of illustrators have lost work to generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems. Translators are also more likely to use AI to support their work, with 37% of respondents saying they have done so, followed by 25% of non-fiction writers.
The author Lynne Reid Banks, known for her novel The L-Shaped Room and her children's book series The Indian in the Cupboard, has died at the age of 94.
I launched my podcast Making It Up nearly three years ago with the goal of interviewing writers not for any particular work of theirs, but to talk to them about their lives. I didn't want to ask them what famous author they want to have dinner with or what their top five favorite books are ... yech. Read more
Until we have a mechanism to test for artificial intelligence, writers need a tool to maintain trust in their work. So I decided to be completely open with my readers