Sprung Spring: Teaching, Editing & Poetry
Spring has fully sprung around us, and like many teachers, I’m on the cusp of a new season in my work life. Summer is the time I spend editing the forthcoming Perugia Press book (The Book Eaters, by Carolina Hotchandani – out this fall!), working with summer interns, and opening our annual contest. Before I turn more toward editorial work, I want to acknowledge that it’s been a really special academic year: I’ve been teaching creative writing at Westfield State University in my eleventh year there, and for the first time I taught poetry workshops at Amherst College, this spring as the James Merrill Visiting Poet. Being part of classroom communities centered in creative writing is a joy, and I’ll miss all the student writers I’ve had the honor to work with this year.
The end of the semester is an especially busy time, so I haven’t had the chance to shout out about some recent publications and events. This is mostly a spring roundup, except to announce that this morning I’ll be on the radio talking teaching, editing, and poetry with Megan Rubiner Zinn on her program “The Writers’ Block” on WHMP. You can listen live from 10:30-11:00 or check it out later on their podcast.
I had a great time at the Mass Poetry Festival the first weekend in May. I was there at the Small Press Fair representing Perugia Press and also got to be present at the CavanKerry Press table. The first day of the festival I was part of the reading “Memory & Desire: Poetry of Mid-life” with Perugia poet Gail Thomas and poet Jennifer Martelli, and I attended many other fabulous workshops, panels, and readings through the weekend. The festival took place in Salem, MA for the first time in person since 2018, and it was a really wonderful return of poetry and community to that unique city. Abundant thanks and kudos to all the Mass Poetry organizers and participants.
Thank you to the editors of the following journals and anthologies for accepting my work for these recent publications (click on the images to read the poems online):
