Tom Mandel

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Crowdsourcing collaborative close readings of supposedly 'difficult' poems globally

Al Filreis

Today I distributed the following announcement widely to 130,000 participants in "ModPo," the free, open-enrollment, noncredit 10-week course in modern and contemporary U.S. poetry:

I am very excited to announce a new aspect of ModPo that I hope will intrigue you and perhaps induce you to participate. We have created a new section of ModPo that parallels the main ModPo syllabus, "chapter" by "chapter" and week by week, and offers links to short video recordings of ModPo people around the world gathered in small groups conducting collaborative close readings of our poems — and related poems — themselves. Yes: we are now calling for crowdsourced collaborative close readings.

February 28, 2015

A short interview with Sandra Ridley

rob mclennan

Sandra Ridley is the author of three books of poetry: Fallout (Hagios Press), Post-Apothecary (Pedlar Press), and most recently, The Counting House (BookThug). She has taught poetry at Carleton University and has mentored poets through Ottawa’s Salus and Artswell’s “Footprints to Recovery” program for people living with mental illness. Sandra has also facilitated poetry workshops for the City of Ottawa, Ottawa Public Library, and the Tree Reading series. She knows how to use a compass.

Q: Your work tends to favour the extended sequence, often utilizing extended lyric stretches, and avoiding individual, stand-alone poems. What is it about the sequence that appeals? Are all your poems in conversation with one another?

February 28, 2015

A reading at the Woodward Line

Paul Jaussen

My first encounter with a Detroit poetry institution was the Woodward Line Poetry series, a monthly reading at the Scarab Club in Midtown curated by James Hart III and Kim Hunter. The series has been running for over 10 years, featuring poets from within and beyond Detroit. I first attended the Woodward Line back in September, when Nathaniel Mackey opened the 2014-15 series.

The January 2015 reading featured two Detroit writers, Steve Hughes and James LaCroix, and a Windsor, Ontario writer, Gustave Morin. Snow had fallen all day, so the crowd was initially sparse.

February 27, 2015