Every day Poets & Writers Magazine scans the headlines—from publishing reports to academic announcements to literary dispatches—for all the news that creative writers need to know. Here are today’s stories:
“Yes, and you want it to stop, you want the child pushed to the ground to be seen, to be helped to his feet, to be brushed off by the person that did not see him, has never seen him, has perhaps never seen anyone who is not a reflection of himself.” The decision of a grand jury in New York City not to indict officer Daniel Pantaleo in the chokehold death of unarmed Eric Garner has sparked outrage and protests nationwide this week. The news comes shortly after a parallel occurrence in Ferguson, Missouri, last week, in which officer Darren Wilson was not indicted in the shooting death of unarmed Mike Brown. Poet Claudia Rankine’s newest book, Citizen: An American Lyric (Graywolf Press, 2014) is a crucial and urgent investigation of racial politics, and of the increasing number of unarmed black men killed by white police officers. Watch Rankine read a prose poem from Citizen at PBS.
Pulitzer Prize winner and former Virginia poet laureate Claudia Emerson died Thursday from complications associated with cancer. Emerson won the Pulitzer in 2006 for her collection Late Wife, served as Virginia’s poet laureate from 2008 to 2010, and for the past year had taught in the Virginia Commonwealth University Creative Writing Program. She was fifty-seven.
The film adaptation of Cheryl Strayed’s bestselling book Wild will be released nationwide today. At Vulture, Strayed discusses her rise to success and the unexpected popularity of her story “in a culture with profoundly ambivalent feelings about independent women.”
At the Los Angeles Review of Books, Daniel Olivas interviews artist and author Juan Felipe Herrera about his new book, Portraits of Hispanic American Heroes, which serves to educate young people about the remarkable achievements of Latinos. Herrara hopes his book will encourage more writers to reverse the lack of available books and research on Latino identity in America, amidst ongoing immigration conflicts and debate.
The British high court has ruled that the recent ban on sending books to prisoners in the United Kingdom is unlawful. Top U.K. writers including poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy, Philip Pullman, Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, and Mary Beard had publicly protested the ban, and are relieved and pleased with the court’s ruling. “The imagination triumphs over small-mindedness,” said Ian McEwan. “This is great news for prisoners, great news for the book.” (Guardian)
British journalist Adam Feinstein discusses his new biography of poet Pablo Neruda at the Boston Review. Feinstein bridges connections between the poet’s autism and “the question of how to generalize specific experiences by means of metaphor and narration.”
New York City library patrons will soon be able to use their library cards to check out Wi-Fi hotspots. The “Check Out The Internet” program is part of an initiative to close the digital divide in New York City, as 30 percent of homes did not have Internet access as of 2011. The program is free for patrons who enroll in a library’s literacy or citizenship program. (Washington Post)
