History’s Dark Trace: Michael McGriff’s Early Hour

My review of Michael McGriff's gorgeous new collection, History's Dark Trace, is now up on Kenyon Review Online.

The Arrival of Evening

Looking for the perfect holiday gift? You can now purchase my limited edition chapbook from the inimitable Furniture Press Books.

A Review of Go On in Columbia Poetry Review: by Emily Bieniek

Check out this lovely new review of Go On.

You Need This Book

consolation snacks
by hassen saker with drawings by Don Riggs
a Furniture Press Book
Release: July 8, 2017

Hassen Saker is a transmedia creator, working in texts, audio, photography, film, performance and ephemeral acts. She is the author of the chapbook Salem from Belladonna, the poetry triptych, Sky Journal, from Dusie Press, and a forthcoming book of poetry from Least Weasel.

Saker has shown her photography in group shows and solo exhibitions. For her art film projects, in addition to producing and directing, she writes, scores, shoots, and edits the short films, which have been featured online, in public art spaces and screenings, and performed live in collaboration with other artists. The short poem-film, Solastalgia, a collaboration with poet Deborah Poe, will soon be featured on Gramma.press.

Since 2006 Saker has been a green business owner, committed to the core values and large impact of independent business adhering to a Triple Bottom Line to create an ethical economy.
Over the past 10 years, she has served on both the Board of Directors of the Sustainable Business Network of Greater Philadelphia and on the Executive Committee for the Philadelphia Independent Film and Video Association. She also collaborates on media projects with Natalie Jeremijenko of the xDesign Environmental Health Clinic at NYU.

In 2009, Saker founded the social media channel, VolkLibre, a community of artist-activists, for which she directed & produced Heroes, a series of short video interviews with sustainability role models.

Saker also directed and produced a feature length documentary film in 2012 and is currently in pre-production of two more feature documentaries with her company, Dog Feed Dog Productions.
Saker has lived throughout the U.S. & currently resides in the Philadelphia area.

This is clever meaningful wordplay in the purest sense. 
—Ashleigh Brilliant

University of Pennsylvania Bookstore: An Afternoon of Poetry Organized by Leonard Gontarek.

Apr 19, 2017, 12:30 PM 

University of Pennsylvania Bookstore 3601 Walnut St, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104

Please join us for an afternoon of poetry with local poets Alison Hicks, Ethel Rackin and Eleanor Stanford.

Alison Hicks is the author of poetry collections You Who Took the Boat Out, Kisand Falling Dreams, a novella, Love: A Story of Images, and an anthology, Prompted. Her poem “house in mind” was winner of Philadelphia City Paper 2011 poetry contest, and a second poem, “canoeing at night,” was selected as runner-up. She has twice received Pennsylvania Council on the Arts fellowships, in creative non-fiction in 2003 and in fiction in 2007.

Ethel Rackin is the author of The Forever Notes and Go On, a National Jewish Book Award finalist. Rackin's poems, book reviews, and collaborations have appeared widely in journals such as The American Poetry Review, Colorado Review, Hotel Amerika, Jacket2, Kenyon Review, Parabola, Verse Daily, and Volt. She earned her MFA from Bard College and her PhD in English Literature from Princeton University. She has taught at Penn State Brandywine, Haverford College, and Bucks County Community College in Pennsylvania, where she is currently an associate professor.

Eleanor Stanford is the author of two books of poetry, Bartram's Garden and The Book of Sleep, both from Carnegie Mellon University Press. Her poems and essays have appeared in Poetry, Ploughshares, the Harvard Review, the Kenyon Review, and many others. She was a 2014/2016 Fulbright fellow to Brazil, researching and writing about traditional midwifery.

This event was organized by local poet Leonard Gontarek.

Aphorism's Enduring Instant: A Review of James Richardson's During

My thoughts on James Richardson's stunning new collection, During, are now up on the Kenyon Review Online.

(Re)animating the City: A Review of 'Deep City' by Megan Kaminski

I'm happy to contribute to the conversation on Kaminski's wonderful work in this new review on Jacket 2.

The Jewish Book Council's 2016 Berru Poetry Award

I am honored to have been named a finalist for this year's National Jewish Book Award. Thank you to the Berru Charitable Foundation and to the Jewish Book Council. Here is a photo of the reading I gave last Wednesday, March 8 with Stanley Moss and Yehoshua November at the Harvard Club in New York.

Reading with J.C. Todd at Bucks County Community College

Bucks County Community College, whose Wordsmiths Reading Series brings the voices of award-winning poets and authors to the region, invites the public to hear J.C. Todd and Ethel Rackin read their poetry at 1 p.m. Monday February 20, in historic Tyler Hall on the Newtown campus.

Todd, winner of the 2016 International Literary Award in poetry and a 2014-16 Pew Fellow, has held fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Ragdale and Ucross and a writing residency at Humboldt University in Berlin. Her books include What Space This Body (Wind, 2008) and two chapbooks. Individual poems have been published in The Paris Review, The American Poetry Review, Ekphrasis, and are forthcoming in Beloit Poetry Journal.

Todd teaches in the Creative Writing Program at Bryn Mawr College. Last fall, Todd served as judge for the Bucks County Poet Laureate Competition.

Rackin is the author of The Forever Notes (2013) and Go On (2016), both from Parlor Press. Elizabeth Robinson awarded her collaborative lyric sequence “Soledad,” written with Elizabeth Savage, the 2016 Thomas Merton Prize for Poetry of the Sacred. Her poems, book reviews, and collaborations have appeared in journals such as Colorado Review, Hotel Amerika, Kenyon Review, Jacket2, Parabola, Verse Daily, and Volt.

Rackin earned her MFA from Bard College and her Ph.D. in English Literature from Princeton University. She is an associate professor of Language and Literature at Bucks County Community College, where she co-directs the Wordsmiths Reading Series and the Poet Laureate Program with Dr. Christopher Bursk.

The poetry reading takes place at 1 p.m. Monday, February 20 in room 142 of Tyler Hall, the French Norman mansion listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Bucks County Community College is located at 275 Swamp Rd., Newtown, Pa., 18940, where there is ample free parking. The reading is free and open to the public.

The Wordsmiths Reading Series continues Friday, March 24, with author Lorene Carey and writer Kaitlin Moore, followed by Montgomery County Poet Laureate Amy Small-McKinney reading with Philadelphia Poet Laureate Yolanda Wisher on Friday, April 21. To learn more, visit www.bucks.edu/news/culture/wordsmiths.

The free series is part of Bucks Live!, innovative programs to inform, inspire, and enrich the life of grater Bucks County, sponsored by the Bucks County Community College Cultural Affairs Committee. To learn more, contact Dr. Christopher Bursk at Chris.Bursk@bucks.edu or 215-968-8156 or visit www.bucks.edu/cultural.

Off Site Free Verse Editions Reading, Washington DC AWP

Off Site Verse Editions Reading, Washington DC  Associated Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) Conference Thursday, February 9 at 5:30 PM-7PM  Courtyard Washington Embassy Row 1600 Rode Island Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20036

Join us in celebrating fine new books by Free Verse Editions writers as well as hearing poetry read by outstanding past and upcoming writers on the Free Verse Editions list. Readers will include Jennifer Atkinson, Bruce Bond, Hannah Craig, Derek Gromadzki, Lew Klatt, Eric Pankey, Donald Platt, Ethel Rackin, Jon Thompson, and Felicia Zamora.
 
In addition, Free Verse Editions will have a table at the Bookfair (653T). Please stop by!

Rendering the Poem Combustible: Arthur Vogelsang’s Orbit - The Kenyon Review

I'm excited to announce this new review, and am hoping that it renews interest in Vogelsang's work, which is more relevant than ever.

2016 National Jewish Book Awards Winners and Finalists

I'm pleased and honored to announce that Go On was named a finalist for the 2016 National Jewish Book Award in Poetry.

More information here.