Writers Remember Prince, Poems for Earth Day, and More

by
Staff
4.22.16

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:

Musician and pop culture icon Prince died Thursday at age fifty-seven. At Literary Hub and the New Yorker, writers pay tribute to the influential performer. BuzzFeed has also compiled a list of the best writing about the artist from the past few decades.

At the Paris Review, translator Damion Searls attempts to define poetry through examining its challenging etymology.

“To risk something real as a writer is to risk making a fool of oneself.” Poet, translator, and novelist Idra Novey writes at Catapult about the risk and reward involved in her choice to write between genres.

Ahead of the four-hundredth anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death tomorrow, twenty-five authors, including Margaret Atwood, Gillian Flynn, and Alexander McCall Smith, share their fondest Shakespeare memories. (Signature)

Meanwhile, Transport for London and Shakespeare’s Globe have released a special edition of the London tube map to mark the occasion, complete with characters from the Bard’s plays alongside locations of theaters where his works were performed. (Independent)

Not to be outdone, today also marks the four-hundredth anniversary of Don Quixote author Miguel de Cervantes’s death. (NBC News)

Celebrate nature and the environment today with Bustle’s list of seven poems to read in honor of the forty-sixth annual Earth Day.