Tag Archives: Poets

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#MacArthur Foundation’s 20 Newest Fellows, 2026: #Artists, #Musicians, & #Performers; #Writers & #Poets; #Scientists & #Engineers; and, #Humanities & #Social Scientists

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#MacArthur Foundation’s 20 Newest Fellows, 2026:
#Artists, #Musicians, & #Performers; #Writers & #Poets; #Scientists & #Engineers; and, #Humanities & #Social Scientists

“For 45 years, MacArthur Fellows have defied boundaries, by questioning conventions, crossing disciplines, and driving collective progress….The 2026 fellows continue that creative tradition — they explore the depths of our humanity; they reveal untold origins to modern challenges; they expand the edge of scientific inquiry and life-saving research. They show us new ways to understand the world.”
Kristen Mack
Vice-President, Communications, MacArthur Fellows, and Partnerships

“The MacArthur Fellowship is a $800,000, no-strings-attached award to extraordinarily talented and creative individuals as an investment in their potential….Since 1981, 1197 people have been named MacArthur Fellows….

“Nominees are brought to the Program’s attention through a constantly changing pool of invited external nominators chosen from as broad a range of fields and areas of interest as possible. They are encouraged to draw on their expertise, accomplishments, and breadth of experience to nominate the most creative people they know within their field and beyond….

“There are three criteria for selection of Fellows:

  • Exceptional creativity
  • Promise for important future advances based on a track record of significant accomplishments which could be enabled by our support
  • Potential for the Fellowship to facilitate subsequent creative work.”

“The MacArthur Fellows Program is intended to encourage people of outstanding talent to pursue their own creative, intellectual, and professional inclinations. In keeping with this purpose, the Foundation awards fellowships directly to individuals rather than through institutions. Recipients may be writers, scientists, artists, social scientists, humanists, teachers, entrepreneurs, or those in other fields, with or without institutional affiliations. They may use their fellowship to advance their expertise, engage in bold new work, or, if they wish, to change fields or alter the direction of their careers.”

“By providing these individuals with unfettered support in pursuit of creative activities and knowledge, the Fellows Program seeks to:

  • Highlight the importance of imaginative thinking in creating new works of art that inspire;
  • Spotlight the value of risk-taking in addressing deep-rooted societal problems;
  • Expand our understanding of creativity; and
  • Cultivate the next generation of innovators.”

“Although nominees are reviewed for their achievements, the fellowship is not a lifetime achievement award, but rather an investment in a person’s originality, insight, and potential. Indeed, the purpose of the MacArthur Fellows Program is to enable recipients to exercise their own creative instincts for the benefit of human society.

“The Foundation does not require or expect specific products or reports from MacArthur Fellows and does not evaluate recipients’ creativity during the term of the fellowship. The MacArthur Fellowship is a “no strings attached” award in support of people, not projects. Each fellowship comes with a stipend of $800,000 to the recipient, paid out in equal quarterly installments over five years….”

Meet the newest crop of very fortunate creative sorts, this year’s MacArthur Fellows, who will each receive $800,000/year spread over 5 years, to do WHATEVER THEY WANT!

For bios, specific info on each Fellow (photos, videos, websites, more), and plenty about the Program and the Foundation, check out their website: https://www.macfound.org/programs/awards/

Imagine: There are no outside or public applications or nominations. The process for selection is so secretive and unknown that very few people (no one outside the Foundation, supposedly) even knows who the nominating and selection committees’ members ARE each year!

In the Foundation’s favor, the Fellows process has been great on “diversity” and varying geographic locations for quite a while (still heavier on both coasts than within the USA, though). They also seem to make a great effort to vary the balance of seeming gender identities, professions, and types of creativity.

Again, LOVE this!

Here are the award rationales/categories for each Fellow for 2026, many of whom are celebrated across more than two disciplines/areas of study and expertise:

Artists, Musicians, & Performers

Christine Sun Kim – Sound and visual performance artist investigating spatial dynamics of Deaf culture and systemic sound hierarchies, Deaf culture and communication.

Immanuel Wilkins – (New York University): Jazz saxophonist and composer expanding contemporary jazz through culturally synthesized compositions. Celebrated for his acclaimed debut album, Omega.

Rodney McMillian – (University of California, Los Angeles): Sculpture professor and Multimedia artist creating texturally complex art interrogating lives outside traditional American dream myths.

Trajal Harrell – Choreographer and contemporary dancer bridging voguing, postmodern dance, and Butoh traditions.

Chip Thomas – Practicing physician and documentary photographer utilizing public art installations on the Navajo Nation.

Vincent Valdez – Contemporary artist and master printmaker creating large-scale socio-political figurative works exposing institutional racism, focusing on political and social commentary.

Writers & Poets

Maaza Mengiste – (Wesleyan University) A widely published fiction writer and English professor. Capturing deeply human dimensions of Ethiopian history, gender dynamics and conflict through transformative historical fiction. Novelist and essayist, best known for her 2020 Booker Prize-shortlisted book, The Shadow King.

Bryan Washington – Fiction writer and essayist exploring community, identity, and queer life. Portraying nuanced, intersectional stories of queer identity, community, and domestic life in urban centers with sharp emotional resonance.

Layli Long Soldier – Award-winning poet, writer and citizen of the Oglala Lakota Nation. Using innovative poetic structures and language to confront historical injustices, indigenous sovereignty, and the complexities of tribal treaties.

Scientists & Engineers

Song Lin – (Stanford University): Chemist using electrochemistry to construct durable, complex organic molecules for sustainable applications.

Vincenzo Vitelli – (University of Chicago): Theoretical physicist studying the bizarre behaviors of metamaterials and active matter. James Franck Institute professor mapping collective behaviors of metamaterials and biological systems.

Liangfang Zhang – (University of California, San Diego): Chemical and nano engineering chair pioneering biomimetic nanotechnology by coating synthetic nanoparticles with natural cellular membranes.

Kaiyu Guan – (University of Illinois): Eco-hydrologist using supercomputing, satellite observations and physics to optimize agricultural ecosystems and crop yields.

Marika Holland – (National Center for Atmospheric Research): Atmospheric scientist mapping long-term sea ice changes in polar regions, advancing global understanding of long-term polar sea ice changes and climate variability.

Humanities & Social Scientists

Ellora Derenoncourt –Labor economist and economic historian recognized for her quantitative research on the systemic, historical roots of racial wealth disparities in the United States researching the historical roots of racial wealth disparities. Assistant Professor of Economics and Faculty Director of the Program for Research on Inequality at Princeton University The foundation honored her for utilizing meticulous data collection and economic frameworks to uncover how historical policy choices continue to shape modern racial inequality. Her landmark research traces the evolution of the Black-white wealth gap from pre-Emancipation to the present day. She is highly recognized for mapping out how the design of federal minimum wage policies affected racial earnings convergence during the Civil Rights Era, as well as examining the northern backlash against the Great Migration and its subsequent impact on Black upward mobility.

Elizabeth Ellis – Associate Professor at Princeton University: Historian tracking Indigenous politics and diplomacy in early North America. Restructuring early American histories by analyzing how smaller Indigenous nations leveraged complex diplomacy and political networks to retain their sovereignty.

Felipe De Brigard – Philosopher and cognitive neuroscientist: Professor in the Department of Philosophy and the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University. Pioneering work mapping how the human brain constructs memory and how it interacts with other complex cognitive processes. Bridges philosophy and science to analyze the neural and conceptual mechanisms behind moral judgment, imagination, regret and forgiveness, mapping memory construction and moral judgment.

Holly Jean Buck – Assistant Professor of Environment and Sustainability at the University of Buffalo, NY. Developing a compelling vision for equitable energy and climate transitions. Her research maps out how to implement large-scale climate interventions (like geoengineering and phasing out fossil fuels) while protecting rural communities, addressing social realities, and ensuring environmental justice. Sociologist evaluating rural innovation during climate and energy transitions.

Ariel Ron – History Professor at Southern Methodist University: Unearthing the systemic ties between 19th-century agricultural expansion and the broader rise of American industrial capitalism and economic policy, uncovering agriculture’s direct contributions to 19th-century economic developments.

Kate Spradley – Anthropology Professor at Texas State University: Forensic Anthropologist using skeletal data and biological markers to identify undocumented border crossers, mapping historic population migrations, and advocating for human rights in forensic identification.

You can view ALL 1197 recipients of this “Genius Grant” (all the Fellows): https://www.macfound.org/fellows/search/all and more information is here: https://www.macfound.org/programs/awards/fellows/

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#MacArthur Foundation’s 22 Newest Fellows, 2025: Physical #Scientists, Social Scientists, #Writers, #Artists, #Archaeologists, #Activists, #Poets, #Filmmakers, #Musicians, #Performers and #Historians

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#MacArthur Foundation’s 22 Newest Fellows, 2025:
Physical #Scientists, Social Scientists, #Writers, #Artists, #Archaeologists, #Activists, #Poets, #Filmmakers, #Musicians, #Performers and #Historians

The 2025 MacArthur Fellows expand the boundaries of knowledge, artistry, and human understanding. They focus our attention on microbial worlds and distant stars, community vitality and timeless traditions, sacred and improvisational music, and shared histories of our time on Earth. With virtuosity, persistence, and courage, they chart new paths toward collaborative, creative, and flourishing futures.
Kristen Mack
Vice President, Communications, MacArthur Fellows, and Partnerships

“The MacArthur Fellowship is a $800,000, no-strings-attached award to extraordinarily talented and creative individuals as an investment in their potential….Since 1981, 1175 people have been named MacArthur Fellows….

“Nominees are brought to the Program’s attention through a constantly changing pool of invited external nominators chosen from as broad a range of fields and areas of interest as possible. They are encouraged to draw on their expertise, accomplishments, and breadth of experience to nominate the most creative people they know within their field and beyond….

“There are three criteria for selection of Fellows:

  • Exceptional creativity
  • Promise for important future advances based on a track record of significant accomplishments which could be enabled by our support
  • Potential for the Fellowship to facilitate subsequent creative work.”

“The MacArthur Fellows Program is intended to encourage people of outstanding talent to pursue their own creative, intellectual, and professional inclinations. In keeping with this purpose, the Foundation awards fellowships directly to individuals rather than through institutions. Recipients may be writers, scientists, artists, social scientists, humanists, teachers, entrepreneurs, or those in other fields, with or without institutional affiliations. They may use their fellowship to advance their expertise, engage in bold new work, or, if they wish, to change fields or alter the direction of their careers.”

“By providing these individuals with unfettered support in pursuit of creative activities and knowledge, the Fellows Program seeks to:

  • Highlight the importance of imaginative thinking in creating new works of art that inspire;
  • Spotlight the value of risk-taking in addressing deep-rooted societal problems;
  • Expand our understanding of creativity; and
  • Cultivate the next generation of innovators.”

“Although nominees are reviewed for their achievements, the fellowship is not a lifetime achievement award, but rather an investment in a person’s originality, insight, and potential. Indeed, the purpose of the MacArthur Fellows Program is to enable recipients to exercise their own creative instincts for the benefit of human society.

“The Foundation does not require or expect specific products or reports from MacArthur Fellows and does not evaluate recipients’ creativity during the term of the fellowship. The MacArthur Fellowship is a “no strings attached” award in support of people, not projects. Each fellowship comes with a stipend of $800,000 to the recipient, paid out in equal quarterly installments over five years….”

Meet the newest crop of very fortunate creative sorts, this year’s MacArthur Fellows, who will each receive $800,000/year spread over 5 years, to do WHATEVER THEY WANT!

For bios, specific info on each Fellow (photos, videos, websites, more), and plenty about the Program and the Foundation, check out their website: https://www.macfound.org/programs/awards/fellows/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=enews&utm_campaign=fellows-landing-10-25

Imagine: There are no outside or public applications or nominations. The process for selection is so secretive and unknown that very few people (no one outside the Foundation, supposedly) even knows who the nominating and selection committees’ members ARE each year!

In the Foundation’s favor, the Fellows process has been great on “diversity” and varying geographic locations for quite a while (still heavier on both coasts than within the USA, though). They also seem to make a great effort to vary the balance of seeming gender identities, professions, and types of creativity.

Again, LOVE this!

Here are the award rationales/categories for each Fellow for 2025, many of whom are celebrated across more than two disciplines/areas of study and expertise:

Ángel F. Adames Corraliza, Madison, Wisconsin, Atmospheric Scientist “Investigating the mechanisms underlying tropical weather patterns. Adames combines deep knowledge of the physics of atmospheric waves with keen analysis of observational data and climate model simulations. He sheds light on tropical atmospheric dynamics that influence global weather patterns and phenomena such as tropical cyclones and monsoons.”

Matt Black, Exeter, California, photographer: “Chronicling people and landscapes in marginalized communities across the United States. In distinctive black and white images, Black compels viewers to grapple with the prevalence of poverty in the United States and its impacts on daily life for many Americans….[Black also] shows the impact of sustained drought on the [Central Valley, CA] region’s migrant farmworkers.”

Garrett Bradley, New Orleans, Artist and Filmmaker: “Blending elements of documentary, narrative, and experimental cinema to explore questions of justice, public memory, and cultural visibility…..Through formal experimentation that pushes aesthetic conventions, Bradley harnesses the full potential of moving images to evoke feeling and render the textures of her subjects’ lives.”

Heather Christian, Beacon, New York, Composer, Lyricist, Playwright, and Vocalist: “Creating music theater performances that explore the possibility for the sacred and spiritual in our modern world. Christian’s musical sound reflects a panoply of influences—the jazz and blues of her Southern upbringing, Catholic and Baptist liturgical music, and European choral traditions—and her exceptional artistry with vocal arrangements and orchestration.”

Nabarun Dasgupta, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Epidemiologist and Harm Reduction Advocate: “Creating practical programs to mitigate harms from drug use, particularly opioid overdose deaths. Dasgupta combines scientific studies with community engagement to improve the well-being and safety of people who use drugs and people living with debilitating pain.”

Kristina Douglass, New York, New York, Archaeologist: “Investigating how human societies and environments co-evolved and adapted to climate variability. Douglass’s research focuses on coastal communities in southwest Madagascar, a biodiversity hot spot that is particularly vulnerable to present-day climate change pressures.”

Kareem El-Badry, Pasadena, California, Astrophysicist: “investigating how stars form, evolve, and interact. El-Badry leverages astronomical datasets and theoretical modeling to investigate binary star systems, black holes, neutron stars, and other stellar bodies. His ability to extract insights from the enormous amounts of data gathered in space observation missions has led to many discoveries—from overlooked dormant black holes in our galaxy to new classes of stars and coupled systems.”

Jeremy Frey, Eddington, Maine, Artist: “Balancing tradition with innovation in technically precise and visually stunning woven artworks. Frey is descended from a long line of Wabanaki basket makers, and his art is imbued with the value systems, environmental stewardship, and history of traditional Wabanaki ash and sweetgrass basketry. Through experimentation with color, form, and materials, he forges a singular aesthetic that blurs the boundaries between craft, design, and contemporary art.”

Hahrie Han, Baltimore, Maryland, Political Scientist: “addressing critical questions about how and why people participate in civic and political life. Employing a range of ethnographic, sociological, experimental, and quantitative methods, she examines organizational structures and tactics that encourage individuals to interact across lines of difference and work together for change in the public sphere. Han combines the analytical rigor of political science with careful attention to the lived experiences of her subjects.”

Tonika Lewis Johnson, Chicago, Illinois, Photographer and Social Justice Artist: “Exposing the impacts of systematic disinvestment in urban communities. Johnson uses photography, maps, and multimedia storytelling to articulate the vast disparities in conditions, infrastructure, and investment between Chicago’s neighborhoods. At the same time, she creates pathways for residents to begin the process of restitution and repair.”

Ieva Jusionyte, Providence, Rhode Island, Cultural Anthropologist: “Exploring the political and moral ambiguities of border regions, where state policies regulate historically shifting distinctions between legal and illegal practices. Her ethnographic accounts are based on years of fieldwork and immersion among people whose occupations give them frontline vantage points on the ways border policies play out in the lives of individuals and communities. From these rarely observed perspectives, Jusionyte reveals how security mechanisms and cycles of violence perpetuate states of emergency and social fracture.”

Toby Kiers, Amsterdam, Netherlands, Evolutionary Biologist: “Investigating symbiotic partnerships between plants, fungi, and other microbes. She illuminates the evolutionary mechanisms underlying cooperation between species as well as the role of plant-microbe mutualisms in ecosystem health. Kiers’s research shows that microbes are not passive accessories to plants but powerful actors in their own right.”

Jason McLellan, Austin, Texas, Structural Biologist: “Investigating virus fusion proteins and developing new interventions to prevent infectious diseases. McLellan’s engineered viral proteins are critical to catalyzing vaccine design, particularly for infectious respiratory diseases.”

Tuan Andrew Nguyen, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, Multidisciplinary Artist: “Giving aesthetic form to the enduring repercussions of violence and dispossession. He grounds his films and sculptures in the histories of communities grappling with intergenerational traumas of war and displacement, in places ranging from his native Vietnam to the Philippines, Senegal, Papua New Guinea, and the United States. Much of his work explores moving images and material objects as repositories of memory and the potential for storytelling to be an instrument of healing and resistance against colonial erasure.”

Tommy Orange, Oakland, California, Fiction Writer: “Capturing a diverse range of Native American experiences and lives in novels that traverse time, space, and narrative perspectives. Orange’s novels center his characters’ interior lives: their emotions, ideas, and realizations in moments of joy and pain. Through expansive casts of interconnected characters, he shows the many ways historical trauma and dislocation can rupture the fabric of everyday life. Orange’s hometown of Oakland, California, serves as the backdrop for his depictions of urban Native Americans grappling with identity, survival, and healing.”

Margaret Wickens Pearce, Rockland, Maine, Cartographer: “Creating maps that foreground Indigenous Peoples’ understanding of land and place. Pearce pushes the boundaries of cartography beyond two-dimensional depictions of static and defined spaces. She draws on a wide range of archival materials and long-term collaborations with Indigenous communities to resurface their history, knowledge, and presence throughout North America.”

Sébastien Philippe, Madison, Wisconsin, Nuclear Security Specialist: “Exposing past harms and potential future risks from building, testing, and storing launch-ready nuclear weapons. Philippe draws on archival research, data modelling, and his training as a nuclear safety engineer to clarify the extent of human and environmental damage from nuclear tests and the risks associated with nuclear weapon modernization policies. He builds multidisciplinary collaborations to make his research accessible and useful to affected communities and policymakers. “

Gala Porras-Kim, London, England, Los Angeles, California, Interdisciplinary Artist: “Proposing new ways to make visible the layered meanings and functions of cultural artifacts held in museums and institutional collections. With nuance, empathy, and, at times, playfulness, Porras-Kim probes the methods institutions use to classify, conserve, and interpret items in their collections. Her research-intensive practice focuses on objects and forms of knowledge that have been separated from their original contexts.”

Teresa Puthussery, Berkeley, California, Neurobiologist and Optometrist: “Exploring how neural circuits of the retina encode visual information for the primate brain. Her research into retinal ganglion cells is filling a long-standing gap in knowledge about the human visual system. It also has implications for treating retinal neurodegenerative diseases such as glaucoma and macular degeneration.”

Craig Taborn, Brooklyn, New York, Improvising Musician and Composer: “Creating singular soundscapes through a virtuosic command of piano and expansive knowledge of musical genres. In performances and recordings as a soloist, bandleader, and sideman, Taborn brings a fearless and sophisticated approach to music making. He draws from musical traditions as varied as traditional and contemporary jazz, contemporary classical, experimental, electronic, rock, metal, and hip-hop. His constant exploration of genre and style informs his own distinct musical intelligence and voice.”

William Tarpeh, Stanford, California, Chemical Engineer: “Developing sustainable and practical methods to recover valuable chemical resources from wastewater. Tarpeh’s research focuses on recycling nitrogen, sulfur, and phosphorus. His resource recovery technologies require minimal infrastructure and energy, and they offer opportunities for sustainably sourcing agricultural nutrients and industrial metals in a range of contexts.”

Lauren K. Williams, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Mathematician: “Elucidating unexpected connections between algebraic combinatorics and concepts in other areas of math and physics. Williams has made significant contributions to numerous mathematical fields, including cluster algebras, representation theory, and algebraic geometry. She has also forged cross-disciplinary collaborations to tackle long-standing and challenging problems in physics related to quantum field theory, particle physics, and wave propagation.”

You can view ALL 1175 recipients of this “Genius Grant” (all the Fellows): https://www.macfound.org/fellows/search/all

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#MacArthur Foundation’s 22 Newest Fellows, 2024: #Scientists, #Writers, #Artists, Policy Makers, #Sociologists, #Activists, #Poets, #Filmmakers, #Musicians, #Performers, #Dancers, #Choreographers and #Historians

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#MacArthur Foundation’s 22 Newest Fellows, 2024:
#Scientists, #Writers, #Artists, Policy Makers, #Sociologists, #Activists, #Poets, #Filmmakers, #Musicians, #Performers, #Dancers, #Choreographers and #Historians

The 2024 MacArthur Fellows pursue rigorous inquiry with aspiration and purpose. They expose biases built into emerging technologies and social systems and fill critical gaps in the knowledge of cycles that sustain life on Earth. Their work highlights our shared humanity, centering the agency of disabled people, the humor and histories of Indigenous communities, the emotional lives of adolescents, and perspectives of rural Americans.
Marlies Carruth, Director, MacArthur Fellows

“The MacArthur Fellowship is a $800,000, no-strings-attached award to extraordinarily talented and creative individuals as an investment in their potential….Since 1981, 1153 people have been named MacArthur Fellows….

“Nominees are brought to the Program’s attention through a constantly changing pool of invited external nominators chosen from as broad a range of fields and areas of interest as possible. They are encouraged to draw on their expertise, accomplishments, and breadth of experience to nominate the most creative people they know within their field and beyond….

“The MacArthur Fellows Program is intended to encourage people of outstanding talent to pursue their own creative, intellectual, and professional inclinations. In keeping with this purpose, the Foundation awards fellowships directly to individuals rather than through institutions. Recipients may be writers, scientists, artists, social scientists, humanists, teachers, entrepreneurs, or those in other fields, with or without institutional affiliations. They may use their fellowship to advance their expertise, engage in bold new work, or, if they wish, to change fields or alter the direction of their careers.

“Although nominees are reviewed for their achievements, the fellowship is not a lifetime achievement award, but rather an investment in a person’s originality, insight, and potential. Indeed, the purpose of the MacArthur Fellows Program is to enable recipients to exercise their own creative instincts for the benefit of human society.

“The Foundation does not require or expect specific products or reports from MacArthur Fellows and does not evaluate recipients’ creativity during the term of the fellowship. The MacArthur Fellowship is a “no strings attached” award in support of people, not projects. Each fellowship comes with a stipend of $800,000 to the recipient, paid out in equal quarterly installments over five years….”

“There are three criteria for selection of Fellows:

  1. Exceptional creativity
  2. Promise for important future advances based on a track record of significant accomplishments
  3. Potential for the Fellowship to facilitate subsequent creative work.”

Meet the newest crop of very fortunate creative sorts, this year’s MacArthur Fellows, who will each receive $800,000/year spread over 5 years, to do WHATEVER THEY WANT!

For bios, specific info on each Fellow (photos, videos, websites, more), and plenty about the Program and the Foundation, check out their website: https://www.macfound.org/programs/awards/fellows/results?fellow_class=2024

Imagine: There are no outside or public applications or nominations. The process for selection is so secretive and unknown that very few people (no one outside the Foundation, supposedly) even knows who the nominating and selection committees’ members ARE each year!

In the Foundation’s favor, the Fellows process has been great on “diversity” and varying geographic locations for quite a while (still heavier on both coasts than within the USA, though). They also seem to make a great effort to vary the balance of seeming gender identities, professions, and types of creativity.

Again, LOVE this!

Here are the award rationales/categories for each Fellow for 2024:

Loka Ashwood, Lexington, KY, Sociologist: “Shedding light on rural identity and culture and on the ecological, economic, and social challenges facing many rural communities.”

Ruha Benjamin, Princeton, NJ, Transdisciplinary Scholar & Writer: “Illuminating how technology reflects and reproduces inequality and championing the role of imagination in social transformation.”

Justin Vivian Bond, New York, NY, Artist & Performer: “Working in the cabaret tradition and weaving cultural critique and an ethic of care into performances that center queer joy.”

Jericho Brown, Atlanta, GA, Poet: “Reflecting on contemporary culture and identity in works that combine formal experimentation and intense self-examination.”

Tony Cokes, Providence, RI, Media Artist: “Creating video works that recontextualize historical and cultural moments.”

Nicola Dell, New York, NY, Computer & Information Scientist: “Developing technology interventions to address the needs of overlooked populations, such as survivors of intimate partner violence.”

Johnny Gandelsman, New Paltz, NY, Violinist & Producer: “Reimagining classical works and nurturing the creation of new music across styles and genres.”

Sterlin Harjo, Tulsa, OK, Filmmaker: “Telling stories about the daily lives of contemporary Native Americans with humor and deep affection.”

Juan Felipe Herrera, Fresno, CA, Poet, Educator, Writer: “Uplifting Chicanx culture and amplifying shared experiences of solidarity and empowerment.”

Ling Ma, Chicago, IL, Fiction Writer: “Mixing speculative and realist modes of storytelling to throw into relief the surreal aspects of our contemporary condition.”

Jennifer L. Morgan, New York NY, Historian: “Deepening understanding of how the exploitation of enslaved women enabled the institutionalization of race-based slavery in early America and the Black Atlantic.”

Martha Muñoz, New Haven, CT, Evolutionary Biologist: “Investigating the motors and brakes of evolution.”

Shailaja Paik, Cincinnati, OH, Historian: “Exploring the intersection of caste, gender, and sexuality in modern India through the lives of Dalit women.”

Joseph Parker, Pasadena, CA, Evolutionary Biologist: “Uncovering the origins of symbiosis in rove beetles and the evolution of complex organismal traits.”

Ebony G. Patterson, Chicago, IL, & Kingston, Jamaica, Multimedia Artist: “Creating visually dazzling works that explore themes of visibility, beauty, race, class, violence, mourning, and regeneration.”

Shamel Pitts, Brooklyn, NY, Dancer & Choreographer: “Pioneering experimental performance works inspired by Afrofuturism while reimagining collective ways of world-building.”

Wendy Red Star, Portland, OR, Visual Artist: “Engaging with archival materials in works that challenge colonial historical narratives.”

Jason Reynolds, Washington, D.C., Children’s & Young Adult Writer: “Depicting the rich inner lives of kids of color and ensuring that they see themselves and their communities in literature.”

Dorothy Roberts, Philadelphia, PA, Legal Scholar & Public Policy Researcher: “Exposing racial inequities embedded in social service systems and uplifting the experiences of people caught up in them.”

Keivan Stassun, Nashville, TN, Science Educator & Astronomer: “Expanding opportunities in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education and careers for underrepresented populations.”

Benjamin Van Mooy, Woods Hole, MA, Oceanographer: “Investigating how microbial organisms shape cycling of elements fundamental to life in marine environments.”

Alice Wong, San Francisco, CA, Writer, Educator & Disability Rights Advocate: “Increasing the political and cultural visibility of people with disabilities and catalyzing broader understandings of disability.”

You can view ALL 1153 recipients of this “Genius Grant” (all the Fellows): https://www.macfound.org/fellows/search/all

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Mazel Tov to all this year’s#NationalBookAwards #Winners, 11/17/22, via Shelf Awareness

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From #authors to #awardwinners!

Great reads, here. Check them out!

https://www.shelf-awareness.com/issue.html?issue=4362&share=true#m58290

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#MacArthur Foundation’s 25 Newest Fellows, 2022: #Scientists, #Filmmakers, #Artists, #Sociologists, #Musicians, #Writers, #Activists and #Historians

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#MacArthur Foundation’s 25 Newest Fellows, 2022:
#Scientists, #Filmmakers, #Artists, #Sociologists, #Musicians, #Writers, #Activists and #Historians

logo 2022

The 2022 MacArthur Fellows are architects of new modes of activism, artistic practice, and citizen science. They are excavators uncovering what has been overlooked, undervalued, or poorly understood. They are archivists reminding us of what should survive.

Their work extends from the molecular level to the land beneath our feet to Earth’s orbital environment—offering new ways for us to understand the communities, systems, and social forces that shape our lives around the globe.

—Marlies Carruth
Director, MacArthur Fellows

“The MacArthur Fellowship is a $800,000, no-strings-attached award to extraordinarily talented and creative individuals as an investment in their potential….Since 1981, 1061 people have been named MacArthur Fellows….

“Nominees are brought to the Program’s attention through a constantly changing pool of invited external nominators chosen from as broad a range of fields and areas of interest as possible. They are encouraged to draw on their expertise, accomplishments, and breadth of experience to nominate the most creative people they know within their field and beyond….

“The MacArthur Fellows Program is intended to encourage people of outstanding talent to pursue their own creative, intellectual, and professional inclinations. In keeping with this purpose, the Foundation awards fellowships directly to individuals rather than through institutions. Recipients may be writers, scientists, artists, social scientists, humanists, teachers, entrepreneurs, or those in other fields, with or without institutional affiliations. They may use their fellowship to advance their expertise, engage in bold new work, or, if they wish, to change fields or alter the direction of their careers.

“Although nominees are reviewed for their achievements, the fellowship is not a lifetime achievement award, but rather an investment in a person’s originality, insight, and potential. Indeed, the purpose of the MacArthur Fellows Program is to enable recipients to exercise their own creative instincts for the benefit of human society.

“The Foundation does not require or expect specific products or reports from MacArthur Fellows and does not evaluate recipients’ creativity during the term of the fellowship. The MacArthur Fellowship is a “no strings attached” award in support of people, not projects. Each fellowship comes with a stipend of $800,000 to the recipient, paid out in equal quarterly installments over five years….”

“There are three criteria for selection of Fellows:

  1. Exceptional creativity
  2. Promise for important future advances based on a track record of significant accomplishments
  3. Potential for the Fellowship to facilitate subsequent creative work.”

Meet the newest crop of very fortunate creative sorts, this year’s MacArthur Fellows, who will each receive $800,000/year spread over 5 years, to do WHATEVER THEY WANT!

MacArthur Fellows 2022
John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

For bios, specific info on each Fellow, and more about the Program and the Foundation, check out their website: https://www.macfound.org/programs/fellows/

Imagine: There are no outside or public applications or nominations. The process for selection is so secretive and unknown that very few people (no one outside the Foundation, supposedly) even knows who the nominating and selection committees’ members ARE each year!

In the Foundation’s favor, this year—for the FIRST time since I’ve been tracking it, which is many years—the female-appearing Fellows are exceeding the male-appearing Fellows: 9 seeming males, 16 seeming female and 1 nonbinary fellow. The Fellows process has been great on “diversity” and varying geographic locations for quite a while. This year, only about 5 appear to be Caucasian. You can check out the stats on their site any time.

Again, LOVE this! Here are mini-bios of each Fellow for 2022:

Jennifer Carlson of Tucson, AZ, is a sociologist who studies “the motivations, assumptions, and social forces that drive gun ownership and shape gun culture in the United States.”

Paul Chan of New York, NY, is an artist, “testing the capacity of art to make human experience available for critical reflection and to effect social change.”

Yejin Choi of the University of Washington is a computer scientist who uses, “natural language processing to develop artificial intelligence systems that can understand language and make inferences about the world.”

P. Gabrielle Foreman of Pennsylvania State University is a literary historian and digital humanist who specializes in “nineteenth-century collective Black organizing efforts through initiatives such as the Colored Conventions Project.”

Danna Freedman of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a synthetic inorganic chemist, “creating novel molecular materials with unique properties directly relevant to quantum information technologies.”

Martha Gonzalez of Scripps College is a musician, scholar and artist/activist “strengthening cross-border ties and advancing participatory methods of artistic knowledge production in the service of social justice.”

Sky Hopinka of Bard College is an artist and filmmaker who combines “imagery and language in films and videos that offer new strategies of representation for the expression of Indigenous worldviews.”

June Huh of Princeton University is a mathematician who studies the “underlying connections between disparate areas of mathematics and proving long-standing mathematical conjectures.”

Moriba Jah of the University of Texas, Austin, is an astrodynamicist “envisioning transparent and collaborative solutions for creating a circular space economy that improves oversight of Earth’s orbital spheres.”

Jenna Jambeck of the University of Georgia is an environmental engineer “investigating the scale and pathways of plastic pollution and galvanizing efforts to address plastic waste.”

Monica Kim of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, is an historian who examines “the interplay between U.S. foreign policy, military intervention, processes of decolonization, and individual rights in regional settings around the globe.”

Robin Wall Kimmerer of SUNY-Syracuse is a plant ecologist, educator, and writer “articulating an alternative vision of environmental stewardship informed by traditional ecological knowledge.”

Priti Krishtel of the Initiative for Medicines, Access, and Knowledge (I-MAK) in Oakland, CA, is a health justice lawyer “exposing the inequities in the patent system to increase access to affordable, life-saving medications on a global scale.”

Joseph Drew Lanham of Clemson University is an ornithologist, naturalist and writer “creating a new model of conservation that combines conservation science with personal, historical, and cultural narratives of nature.”

Kiese Laymon of Rice University is a writer “bearing witness to the myriad forms of violence that mark the Black experience in formally inventive fiction and nonfiction.”

Reuben Jonathan Miller of the University of Chicago is a sociologist, criminologist and social worker who traces “the long-term consequences that incarceration and re-entry systems have on the lives of individuals and their families.”

Ikue Mori of New York, NY, is an electronic music composer and performer “transforming the use of percussion in improvisation and expanding the boundaries of machine-based music.”

Steven Prohira of the University of Kansas is a physicist “challenging conventional theories and engineering new tools to detect ultra-high energy subatomic particles that could hold clues to long-held mysteries of our universe.”

Tomeka Reid of Chicago, Ill., is a jazz cellist and composer “forging a unique jazz sound that draws from a range of musical traditions and expanding the expressive possibilities of the cello in improvised music.”

Loretta J. Ross of Smith College is a reproductive justice and human rights advocate “shaping a visionary paradigm linking social justice, human rights, and reproductive justice.”

Steven Ruggles of the University of Minnesota is an historical demographer “setting new standards in quantitative historical research by building the world’s largest publicly available database of population statistics.” 

Tavares Strachan of New York, NY, and Nassau, The Bahamas, is an interdisciplinary conceptual artist “expanding the possibilities for what art can be and illuminating overlooked contributions of marginalized figures throughout history.”

Emily Wang of Yale University School of Medicine is a primary care physician and researcher who partners with “people recently released from prison to address their needs and the ways that incarceration influences chronic health conditions.” 

Amanda Williams of Chicago, IL, is an artist and architect “reimagining public space to expose the complex ways that value, both cultural and economic, intersects with race in the built environment.” 

Melanie Matchett Wood of Harvard University is a mathematician “addressing foundational questions in number theory from the perspective of arithmetic statistics.” 

You can view ALL 1061 recipients of this “Genius Grant” (all the Fellows): https://www.macfound.org/fellows/search/all

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#nationalbookawards USA 2018 have more female and POC authors on each #longlist than ever before!

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“THE 2018 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD LONGLIST FOR #FICTION”
national Book Awards Foundation logo

https://bookriot.com/2018/09/14/2018-national-book-award-longlist-for-fiction/

Read about the other #longlists released for the 2018 National Book Awards:

Young People’s Literature Longlist

  • Elizabeth Acevedo, The Poet X
    (HarperTeen / HarperCollins Publishers)
  • M. T. Anderson and Eugene Yelchin, The Assassination of Brangwain Spurge
    (Candlewick Press)
  • Bryan Bliss, We’ll Fly Away
    (Greenwillow Books / HarperCollins Publishers)
  • Leslie Connor, The Truth as Told by Mason Buttle
    (Katherine Tegen Books / HarperCollins Publishers)
  • Christopher Paul Curtis, The Journey of Little Charlie
    (Scholastic Press / Scholastic, Inc.)
  • Jarrett J. Krosoczka, Hey, Kiddo
    (Graphix / Scholastic, Inc.)
  • Tahereh Mafi, A Very Large Expanse of Sea
    (HarperTeen / HarperCollins Publishers)
  • Joy McCullough, Blood Water Paint
    (Dutton Children’s Books / Penguin Random House)
  • Elizabeth Partridge, Boots on the Ground: America’s War in Vietnam
    (Viking Children’s Books / Penguin Random House)
  • Vesper Stamper, What the Night Sings
    (Knopf Books for Young Readers / Penguin Random House)

Translated Literature Longlist

  • Négar Djavadi, Disoriental
    Translated by Tina Kover
    (Europa Editions)
  • Roque Larraquy, Comemadre
    Translated by Heather Cleary
    (Coffee House Press)
  • Dunya Mikhail, The Beekeeper: Rescuing the Stolen Women of Iraq
    Translated by Max Weiss and Dunya Mikhail
    (New Directions Publishing)
  • Perumal Murugan, One Part Woman
    Translated by Aniruddhan Vasudevan
    (Black Cat / Grove Atlantic)
  • Hanne Ørstavik, Love
    Translated by Martin Aitken
    (Archipelago Books)
  • Gunnhild Øyehaug, Wait, Blink: A Perfect Picture of Inner Life
    Translated by Kari Dickson
    (Farrar, Straus and Giroux / Macmillan Publishers)
  • Domenico Starnone, Trick
    Translated by Jhumpa Lahiri
    (Europa Editions)
  • Yoko Tawada, The Emissary
    Translated by Margaret Mitsutani
    (New Directions Publishing)
  • Olga Tokarczuk, Flights
    Translated by Jennifer Croft
    (Riverhead Books / Penguin Random House)
  • Tatyana Tolstaya, Aetherial Worlds
    Translated by Anya Migdal
    (Alfred A. Knopf / Penguin Random House)

Nonfiction Longlist

  • Carol Anderson, One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy
    (Bloomsbury Publishing)
  • Colin G. Calloway, The Indian World of George Washington: The First President, the First Americans, and the Birth of the Nation
    (Oxford University Press)
  • Steve Coll, Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America’s Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan
    (Penguin Press / Penguin Random House)
  • Marwan Hisham and Molly Crabapple, Brothers of the Gun: A Memoir of the Syrian War
    (One World / Penguin Random House)
  • Victoria Johnson, American Eden: David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic
    (Liveright / W. W. Norton & Company)
  • David Quammen, The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life
    (Simon & Schuster)
  • Sarah Smarsh, Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth
    (Scribner / Simon & Schuster)
  • Rebecca Solnit, Call Them by Their True Names: American Crises (and Essays)
    (Haymarket Books)
  • Jeffrey C. Stewart, The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke
    (Oxford University Press)
  • Adam Winkler, We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights
    (Liveright / W. W. Norton & Company)

and

Poetry Longlist

October 10: Finalists Announced

November 14: National Book Awards Ceremony and Benefit Dinner (Winners announced)

The Sixty-Ninth National Book Awards Ceremony and Benefit Dinner will be held at Cipriani Wall Street in New York City on Wednesday, November 14, and will also be live-streamed online in its entirety.

FMI, book covers, other years’ awards lists, to get tickets and more:  http://www.nationalbook.org/nba2018.html#.W6FbVs5Kipo

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2017 Winners of the National Book Award: Kudos to these Authors!

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2017 #Winners of the National #Book #Award: Kudos to these #Authors!


National Book Foundation, presenter of the National Book Award
Website: http://www.nationalbook.org/

from the story on NPR:
“[F]our writers emerged with one of the world’s most illustrious literary prizes, the National Book Award:
—Jesmyn Ward’s “Sing, Unburied, Sing,” won for fiction;
—Masha Gessen’s “The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia,” for nonfiction;
—Frank Bidart’s “Half-light: Collected Poems 1965-2016,” for poetry; and
—Robin Benway’s “Far from the Tree,” for young people’s literature.

“In addition to a bronze medal and statue, each winner receives $10,000 with the distinction. That said, the finalists don’t go home bereft — each author gets $1,000 and a bronze medal of their own.

“…Annie Proulx [is] the novelist who won the medal for distinguished contribution to American letters, the National Book Foundation’s slightly verbose name for their lifetime achievement award.”

FMI: https://www.mprnews.org/story/2017/11/16/npr-books-national-book-awards?utm_campaign=The+Thread_20171117&utm_medium=email&utm_source=sfmc_Newsletter&utm_content=The%202017%20National%20Book%20Award%20winners%20are…

2017 WINNERS and FINALISTS, National Book Award

Fiction
Jesmyn Ward
Jesmyn Ward: Sing, Unburied, Sing = WINNER

Ward’s Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/Jesmyn-Ward/e/B001JOW9NW/ref=dp_byline_cont_pop_book_1
Ward’s Publisher Website: http://www.simonandschuster.com/authors/Jesmyn-Ward/547648874

FICTION FINALISTS:
Elliot Ackerman: Dark at the Crossing
Lisa Ko: The Leavers
Min Jin Lee: Pachinko
Carmen Maria Machado: Her Body and Other Parties: Stories

Nonfiction
Masha Gessen; Photo: © Tanya Sazansky
Masha Gessen: The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia = WINNER

Gessen’s Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/Masha-Gessen/e/B001H6MBXK/ref=dp_byline_cont_pop_book_1
Gessen’s Publisher’s Website: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/9953/masha-gessen

FINALISTS:
Erica Armstrong Dunbar: Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge
Frances FitzGerald: The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America
David Grann: Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI
Nancy MacLean: Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America

Poetry
Frank Bidart; Photo from Sigrid Estrada
Frank Bidart: Half-light: Collected Poems 1965-2016 = WINNER

Bidart’s Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/Frank-Bidart/e/B001H6W2N4/ref=dp_byline_cont_pop_book_1
Bidart’s Publisher’s Website: https://us.macmillan.com/author/frankbidart

FINALISTS:
Leslie Harrison: The Book of Endings
Layli Long Soldier: WHEREAS
Shane McCrae: In the Language of My Captor
Danez Smith: Don’t Call Us Dead: Poems

Young People’s Literature

Robin Benway: Far from the Tree = WINNER

Benway’s Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/Robin-Benway/e/B001JP7ZO4/ref=dp_byline_cont_book_1
Benway’s Publisher’s Website: https://www.harpercollins.com/cr-115402/robin-benway

FINALISTS:
Elana K. Arnold: What Girls Are Made Of
Erika L. Sánchez: I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter
Rita Williams-Garcia: Clayton Byrd Goes Underground
Ibi Zoboi: American Street

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Newest #PoetLaureate for the #USA is Tracy K. Smith

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Newest #PoetLaureate for the #USA is Tracy K. Smith

[photo credit, from the article (link below): James Estrin/The New York Times]

USA’s Library of Congress has announced Tracy K. Smith as its newest national treasure, the country’s “poet laureate consultant in poetry,” the 22nd individual to hold that position.

A Pulitzer-Prize-winning poet (for her 2011 science-fiction-themed collection, Life on Mars, Smith, 45, who holds a BA from Harvard University and an M.F.A. (Master’s in Fine Arts) from Columbia, is the Director of the creative writing program at Princeton University.

Mazel Tov!

Here is a great article about her life, current projects and past creative work:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/14/books/tracy-k-smith-is-the-new-poet-laureate.html

Read and listen to some of her poetry and read more about her/all her writing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLIH6ewfplA
and
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/28/books/review/life-on-mars-by-tracy-k-smith-book-review.html
and
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/55522
and
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/tracy-k-smith
and
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/06/05/wade-in-the-water

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Honoring World #Poetry Day, March 21st, with a review of Ursula K. Le Guin’s latest collection

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World Poetry Day is March 21st, 2016: Celebrate Poetry Globally

To honor this day and #Women’s History Month, both, I’m reviewing and discussing some of the poems from one of my favorite poets and authors, fellow #feminist/#Buddhist Ursula K. Le Guin. Her latest collection, Late in the Day: Poems 2010-2014, is a delight.

late in the day real
Late in the Day: Poems 2010-2014, by Ursula K. Le Guin
http://www.ursulakleguin.com/Index-LateInTheDay.html

Ursula K. Le Guin is my favorite writer. No contest. In fact, I wrote a review of another poetry collection early this year, which I enjoyed enormously: https://sallyember.com/2016/01/19/homage-to-and-review-of-ursula-k-le-guins-finding-my-elegy-new-and-selected-poems/ Some of the explanations of my connection to Le Guin are repeated from that post, below.

I have enjoyed, admired, appreciated, envied and learned from her novels, novellas, short stories, essays, and poetry for over forty years. She is about my mom’s age (in her early 80s, now) and still going strong. She is my idol, my mentor, and my role model. I also found out, after reading a recent collection, that she and I share not only a love of writing, speculative fiction, feminism, social justice, pacifism and environmentalism, but also, Buddhism and meditation. Frabjous day!

Poetry is meant to be read aloud. I enjoy reading poetry aloud as if I am the poet, wondering as I hear each word, line, idea, image, stanza, what the poet was imagining and how this exact turn of phrase came to capture it. Knowing how long many poets take to conjure the precise manner in which to describe and evoke every part of their intention, I want to savor it.

I do NOT read in that artificial, almost-questioning (upturned inflection on the end of lines), drawling almost-monotone that many poetry readers make the horrible mistake of using.

No.

I read poetry aloud as if each poem is its own story, because this unique version of that story is interesting, new, and not mine. I use the line breaks and punctuation as suggestions to help me go with the poet’s flow. I smile, I laugh, I pause, I taste the words on my tongue.

Try it. You’ll like it!

In her introduction, Le Guin discusses the interdependent relationships among seemingly inanimate objects (whose apparent lack of sentience she and others challenge), places, humans, animals, life events and circumstances with eloquence and grace. As in all of her public writing and speeches, she has a way of turning things around with her verbal kaleidoscope to inspire us to see things from new perspectives with each turn. Her unique points of view become more accessible as one continues to read and ponder her body of work, which I’ve been doing for over forty years (she’s been writing for over 60).

This collection is divided into eight sections: Relations, Contemplations, Messengers, Four Lines, Works, Times, The Old Music and Envoi, but I couldn’t explain them or why some poems are in one but not another section. I was very impressed, though, with her poems about things, especially kitchen objects. Amazing.

Enough of all that explanatory stuff. You can get that elsewhere and any time. Let’s enjoy some of her poems!

I marked pages of this book with pieces of scrap paper so I’d remember which stanzas, poems, titles, lines caught my heart. Here are some, in no particular order. I sometimes annotate or explain. Find your own parts to love and for your own reasons.

Le Guin has many poems rooted (pun intended) in nature, and those in this collection follow that trend. She is also the child of two anthropologists and somewhat of a social and physical scientist herself. I love this opinion she expressed poetically and eloquently, from the introduction to this volume (excerpted from a speech she gave in May, 2014, at a conference that occurred at the University of California/Santa Cruz, “Anthropocene: Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet”), in which she explained her view of the relationship between poetry and science and why we need both:

Science describes accurately from outside, poetry describes accurately from inside. Science explicates, poetry implicates. Both celebrate what they describe. We need the languages of both science and poetry to save us from merely stockpiling endless “information” that fails to inform our ignorance or our irresponsibility.

By replacing unfounded, willful opinion, science can increase moral sensitivity; by demonstrating and performing aesthetic order or beauty, poetry can move minds to the sense of fellowship that prevents careless usage and exploitation of our fellow beings, waste and cruelty. (p. ix)

One of my favorites from this collection, Constellating, situates relationships between people as if between stars:

Constellating
Mind draws the lines between the stars
that let the Eagle and the Swan
fly vast and bright and far
above the dark before the dawn.

Between two solitary minds
as far as Deneb from Altair,
love flings the unimaginable line
that marries fire to fire.

How beautifully she depicts that intangible bond humans create to connect us which is like nothing else, yet she finds the commonality in constellations.

In The Games, Le Guin manages to indicate our views on aging and reflecting on past accomplishments in a perfect metaphor:

The Games
The crowds that cheered me when I took the Gold,
who were they then? Where are they now?
It’s queer to think about. Do they know how
you look at the hurdles, long before you’re old,
and wonder how you ever ran that race?
I’m not sorry, now all’s said and done,
to lie here by myself with nowhere to run,
in quiet, in this immense dark place.

Definition, or, Seeing the Horse is the type of poem about poetry that I usually eschew. But, one stanza from it is so perfect I have to share it, here, because it perfectly captures the limitations of poetry:

Definition, or, Seeing the Horse
from iii. Judith’s Fear of Naming
To define’s not to confine,
words can’t reach so far.
Even the poet’s line can only hold
a moment of the uncontainable.
The horse runs free.

Le Guin has written many essays, books and articles about the art and craft of writing, but never have I read or heard her convey what she feels about being a writer so well as in this poem, My Job. She lyricizes about writing’s being something she first learned as a child (“I started out as a prentice”) and is still learning. My favorite of her sentiments are these:

from My Job
Sometimes the pay is terrible.
Sometimes it’s only fairy gold.
Then again sometimes the wages
are beyond imagination and desire.
I am glad to have worked for this company.

Two poems, side-by-side in this book (which cannot be an accident), show her wonderful deployment of language and imagery: Sea Hallowe’en and Between. In all of her poems, she demonstrates her mastery of many different poetic forms: rhyming and non-rhyming, exploding into free verse and staying within those more formally ruled for meter, line length, repetition and other constraints. She calls herself a “caperer,” in her essay about her poetic choices and learning to write in various forms in her Afterword, meaning, one who moves among all forms and free verse as she wishes. She also writes here about how a form can “give” her a poem. Fascinating stuff. Love to read about her process.

From Between, I especially admire this final couplet:

A winter wind just whispers where
two winter trees stand tense and bare.

And, from Sea Hallowe’en, who can’t love this whimsical phrasing that ends each of the stanzas?

west to the tide rising,
cold, cold and wild.

a ghost on a north wind blowing
wild, wild and cold.

At best, I am a mediocre poet, despite having been published and won poetry prizes at a younger age, having written songs that were performed, and including my poetry in my science-fiction books as if written by its protagonist, Clara (http://www.sallyember.com/Spanners for more information). I make no claims to being an actual poet if Ursula K. Le Guin is an example. I yield and bow to her and many others for entertaining, informing, inspiring and enlivening us with their use of words and images.

She writes and speaks often about the rewards of writing and art and the politics and capitalism that haunt the industry. This poetry collection is ended with a speech she gave on these topics. The final lines are very moving:

I’ve had a long career as a writer, and a good one, in good company. Here at the end of it, I don’t want to watch American literature get sold down the river. We who live by writing and publishing want and should demand our fair share of the proceeds, but the name of our beautiful reward isn’t profit. its name is freedom.

Yes.

Ursula K Le Guin photo
image from her website, photo ©by Marian Wood Kolisch

Thank you, Ursula, for sharing your deep and soulful moments with us all. May your contributions to our literary and emotional landscapes always be known as blessings while you still live and after you die, and may all beings benefit.

Find these poems, this and all her other work here: http://www.ursulakleguin.com

For more information about poetic forms and World Poetry Day:

Poetry adds moments of beauty to our everyday lives, connects our emotions in unique ways, and helps people everywhere express themselves in amazing ways. Poetry of all kinds is definitely something to celebrate, so join us in looking around the world for inspiration. In honor of World Poetry Day, we (The New Rivers Press) wanted to share with you some unique global poetry styles.

Ghazal: an ancient form of poetry dating back to 700 CE in the Arab lands, and later Persia. It is fairly intricate, but contains anywhere from 5 to 15 independent couplets that create a beautiful whole, all with lines of the same length, meter, or syllable count. It is an extremely well-known form in Iran, where the 14th-century Persian writer, Hafez, published his famous ghazal collection, the Divan of Hafez. For examples of ghazals and more detailed information, visit http://poets.org or The Ghazal Page.

Haiku: arguably one of the most well-known types of international poetry forms, this form comes from ancient Japan. It consists of three short lines with five, seven, and five syllables each. The subject of a haiku was originally restricted to nature and the seasons, but that later was opened up to many different subject matters. Some of the most famous Japanese haiku writers include Basho (the “saint of haiku” in Japan), Buson, and Issa. For more in-depth history of the haiku, check out Poetry through the Ages or Encyclopedia Brittanica.

Doha: another ancient form of poetry common in India. It is a 24-syllable couplet, typically in Hindi. The lines are split unevenly, with the first line having 13 syllables and the second having 11 syllables. It was made more famous by such poets as Kabir and Nanak at the end of the 15th century and beginning of the 16th century, as well as Goswami Tulsidas, whose work, Ramcharitmanas, is still famous among Hindus across northern India. To find out more about this and many other poetry forms, explore the book A Poet’s Glossary, by Edward Hirsch.
from The New Rivers Press‘ newsletter, Riverine, Volume 3, Issue 7, http://www.newriverspress.com/

Also, the Poetry Foundation has a great website and mobile phone app that can put almost any poem and poet right into your hands any time: http://www.poetryfoundation.org They also put out Poetry Magazine and a poetry podcast.