Dean Rader Reviews Go On for the Kenyon Review

Check out this gem of a review by the very fine poet Dean Rader.

American Fix

Dug the truck out of Phil's garage but didn't know where Phil had gone.

~

Enough love and song on the byways

enough coming to grips.

~

Before I could tell another's lie I was lying in it.

from Go On (Parlor Press, 2016)

The gorgeous cover of Go On. Cover design by David Blakesley. Cover image: Rebecca Hoenig. "Grandma's Game." 1998. Mixed media.

Go On is now available for purchase from Parlor Press or Amazon.

GO ON: Launch Events

I'm looking forward to reading from my forthcoming poetry collection, Go On, at these upcoming events:

Offsite Free Verse Editions Reading
AWP Conference
February 9, 2017, 5:30 pm

Courtyard Washington Embassy Row

1600 Rhode Island Ave NW, Washington, District of Columbia 20036

Wordsmiths Reading Series
Bucks County Community College
With J.C. Todd
Newtown, PA
February 20, 2017, 1 pm

Cambridge Public Library
With Ruth Lepson and Celia Gilbert
Cambridge, Massachusetts
March 19, 2017
Details TBA

Hope to see you there!

Fall Reading Series

I'm really excited about the reading series that I'm co-directing with poet Christopher Bursk at Bucks County Community College. If you're local, I hope to see you there!

Bucks County Community College is pleased to announce its Wordsmiths Reading Series schedule for Fall 2016:

Friday, September 30, 7:30 p.m., Zlock Performing Arts Center
Li-Young Lee with Vida Chu

Friday, November 13, 2 p.m., Orangery
40th Annual Bucks County Poet Laureate Reading

Friday, December 2, 7:30 p.m., Gallagher Room
Richard Blanco with Winners of the LGBT Youth Poetry Prize

Saturday, December 3 – Writers' Conference, 10 a.m.-3:30 p.m., Gallagher Room
Featuring Richard Blanco, President Obama's 2013 Inaugural Poet and benefiting The Rainbow Room, Attic Center, and Galaei

The Wordsmiths Reading Series is sponsored by the College’s Cultural Programming Committee. Events are free and open to the community, and held at the College's Newtown Campus. For more information contact Chris Bursk: 215.968.8156 or burskc@bucks.edu. 

Bucks County Community College

275 Swamp Road

Newtown PA, 18940

http://www.bucks.edu/news/culture/wordsmiths/

Bucks County Launches Search for the Next Poet Laureate

Bucks County Community College launches search for the next Poet Laureate - Bucks News - BucksLocalNews.com

Thomas Merton Prize in Poetry of the Sacred

I'm so pleased and honored that “Soledad,” a lyric sequence that I co-authored with Elizabeth Savage, was selected by Elizabeth Robinson as the winning poem for the Thomas Merton Prize in Poetry of the Sacred.

Here's the link to the 21st annual Festival of Faiths taking place now in Louisville, KY. Our poem will be performed later today (time tba): Festival of Faiths

Our sequence will be published in the winter issue of Parabola. Here's a sneak peek:

Soledad

In which the sun

as bright as an orb

(which it was)

as sparks flew

or spurs

from disappointment’s—

that was all

as she drove listening

lone survivor

not a song

but a lyric

ran through it

*

When the dead are lost

in the sun—who are you

praying for? once

they blazed a path

once they burned

and the sparks blink

behind in effort

what survives the lyric

some small night

holds wilder nouns

in alien calm

one winter psalm

*

an alien calmness

engulfs an edge

wraps round

the wilder brush

beyond effort’s saving

sparks blind

crush

while stones

like thieves

find the rush

insatiable

and tell lies as lyric’s lost

accomplices

*

accomplices blind

by alien calm

a rap unrushed

a guest that lies

a thief in trust

in hindsight

crushed

if all we strike

breaks to light

*

if all we bend’s

already bent

invisibly

as a node’s nudge

dives down

only to be

caught

in dust

gust

*

bent to tend

low of dusk

sun belies

lyrics rushed

*                                     

this winter song

her lone accomplice

as stars once wished upon

now stare down

on woodland thrush

*

once along sabbath

sun

            startling orb

thrust upon

woodland wished

accomplishment

The lives that include us | Jacket2

A review I wrote with Kasey Jueds on Randall Potts' brilliant book, Trickster.

New Work by Elizabeth Savage

Buy. This. Book. Then spread the word.

YEW

Please check out the GORGEOUS new (mini-)issue of YEW.

Kenyon Review

Check out my review of Daniel Mark Epstein's New and Selected on Kenyon Review Online.

Colorado Review

Can't wait to read the new issue of Colorado Review! Here's my new poem that appears in it.

Spring Reading Series

I'm really excited about the reading series that I'm co-directing with poet Christopher Bursk at Bucks County Community College. If you're local, I hope to see you there!

Bucks County Community College is pleased to announce its Wordsmiths Reading Series schedule for Spring 2016:

Friday, March 4, 7:30 p.m., Orangery
Dean Rader and Elizabeth Savage

Dean Rader’s debut collection of poems, Works & Days, won the 2010 T. S. Eliot Poetry Prize. His recent collection Landscape Portrait Figure Form (Omnidawn) was named by the Barnes & Noble Review as one of the Best Books of Poetry of the year. He was won numerous awards for his writing, including the 2015 George Bogin Award from the Poetry Society of America. Rader is a professor of English at the University of San Francisco and the editor of the 2014 anthology 99 Poems for the 99 Percent. His forthcoming collection, Self-Portrait as Wikipedia Entry, will appear in 2016 from Copper Canyon.

Elizabeth Savage is author of Idylliad (2015) and Grammar (2013), both from Furniture Press Books, and two chapbooks, Jane & Paige or Sister Goose and Woman Looking at a Vase of Flowers. Her critical work appears most recently in The Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century American Women Poets, Contemporary Women's Writing, and Jacket. She has served as poetry editor for Kestrel: A Journal of Literature & Art since 2008.

Friday, April 8, 7:30 p.m., Orangery
Mary Biddinger and Katherine Falk

Mary Biddinger is the author of four full-length collections of poetry, most recently Small Enterprise (Black Lawrence Press, 2015). Her work has appeared in Denver Quarterly, Green Mountains Review, jubilat, The Laurel Review, and Pleiades, among others. She is a Professor of English at the University of Akron, where she teaches poetry writing and literature, and edits the Akron Series in Poetry at the University of Akron Press. She is the recipient of a 2015 National Endowment for the Arts creative writing fellowship in poetry, and is currently working on a book-length volume of prose poems. 

Katherine Hahn Falk was first runner up for Bucks County Poet Laureate 2015. She won Bowman’s Hill First Annual Poetry Contest and the H. MacKnight-Black Poetry and Literature prize. Katherine was a runner-up in Japan Airlines’ Haiku contest (out of 40,000 entries). Her poems have been published in US 1 Worksheets and Freshet anthologies. Katherine has had the privilege and joy of being a member of Dr. Christopher Bursk’s workshops and the Bucks County poetry community for over a decade. Prior to meeting Chris Bursk, Katherine studied at the graduate level at the City University of New York’s Lehman College with Billy Collins. She was a poet in the New Jersey Poets in the Schools Program.

Saturday, April 23, 2016 – “”The Muse is in the Details: A  Free Workshop for High School Teachers of Poetry,” sponsored by the Bucks County Poet Laureate Program  10- 3 p.m. in the Solarium, Bucks County Community College’s Newtown campus. To register call 215-968-8156.

Friday, May 6, 2016 – BCCC’s Wordsmiths Reading Series presents George Drew, author of Down and Dirty and the forthcoming Pastoral Habits: New and Selected, and the 2016 Bucks County Muse Award recipients, Jim Freeman, David Kime, Kathleen Mulholland, and Marylou Kelly Streznewski. The 7:30 reading is held in the Orangery of BCCC’s Newtown Campus and is free and open to campus and community.

Saturday, May 7 – The Herb and Pamela Perkins-Frederick Book Fair and Alumni Reading; a 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. series of open readings by BCCC alumni/ae and community authors selling and signing their books. Local authors who wish to display and sell their books and alumni/ae interested in reading should register by calling 215-968-8156.

The Wordsmiths Reading Series is sponsored by the College’s Cultural Programming Committee. Events are free and open to the community, and held at the College's Newtown Campus. For more information contact Ethel Rackin: ethel.rackin@bucks.edu or 215-497-8719. 

Bucks County Community College

275 Swamp Road

Newtown PA, 18940

http://www.bucks.edu/news/culture/wordsmiths/