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:
Swedish poet and Nobel laureate Tomas Tranströmer, considered one of the most influential contemporary Scandinavian poets, passed away on Thursday at age eighty-three. The New York Times notes that the poet’s work, which has been translated into over sixty languages, was known for “shrewd metaphors couched in deceptively spare language, crystalline descriptions of natural beauty and explorations of the mysteries of identity and creativity.”
Last Thursday, a fire destroyed the Holly House hotel located on Long Island, New York. The building housed the Fire Island Artist Residency, which is the world’s first residency to host LGBTQ artists. (ArtNet)
In an interview with the Guardian, Nigerian Nobel Prize–winning writer and former political prisoner Wole Soyinka shared his fears about Nigeria’s corrupt electoral process and the “sinister force” behind it, and his recent conversation with Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan.
This June, the arts nonprofit FLUX Foundation will construct a library made entirely out of books at the inaugural Bay Area Book Festival. The structure, called Lacuna, will be built from 50,000 donated books. (GalleyCat)
Thanks to a £780,000 grant from the National Heritage Memorial Fund, Charles Dickens’s writing desk, which was “hidden away” for over 150 years, will go on permanent public display at the Dickens Museum in London. (Guardian)
To mark the centenary of his death, the British Library is releasing a new book about the celebrated British World War I poet Rupert Brooke. The Second I Saw You: The True Love Story of Rupert Brooke and Phyllis Gardner reveals a different side to the “Edwardian hero”—one that opposed women’s rights movements. (Daily Mail)
“In her almost psychedelic musings on time and what it means to preserve one’s own life, she has managed to transcribe an entirely interior world. She has written the memoir we didn’t realize we needed.” At the New Yorker, Alice Gregory reflects on Sarah Manguso’s new memoir Ongoingness, and journaling in our age of over-sharing.
