Creative Support: July 2025

New books, events, workshops, and publishing advice for poets.

Photo by Yara on Unsplash

…

It was summer in Hokkaido.

The forest stole the wind

and I swallowed my footsteps.

Nobody came to the springs.

Butt naked I sat halfway

through my life measuring

this, that….

–from “Hokkaido,” by Kit Fan

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Hello and happy July, poets!

This month, I’ll be offering a remote seminar on manuscript building through the Taos Writers Conference. See below for details.

Kudos to Poet to Poet member/coaching client Erica Breen who recently placed selections from her manuscript-in-process about farming in Vermont in About Place and Lily Review. Congrats, Erica!

On my mind lately …

How extraordinarily lucky we are to be living in an era of poets like Fanny Howe, who passed a few days ago. Also, the inimitable Alice Notley, who passed in May, and Adam Zagajewski (1945-2021), whose presence was palpable at the recent Community of Writers Faculty Benefit Reading as Robert Hass read an epistolary poem addressed to his friend.

In 2006, my husband and I met Zagajewski. All I could say was “Your poems have meant so much to me.” He seemed pleased. Notley and I, in 2023, talked about sharing the inner life of art with our children. I never met Howe, but wish I had. Ilya Kaminsky on Facebook reflected:

The thing about Fanny was—is—that you knew a great mind was in front of you, yes. You read her prose and it changed you, yes. You loved her poems, the way silences glimpsed you in them, shimmering, yes. But that’s not it. Fanny was—is—a mystic. A great mind amongst us, in search, who invited you to join.

Without any snobbishness. With soup.

Which underscores this: Though the voice may extend well beyond the individual life of the poet, the moments we have to share our appreciation are limited. So write to a poet who has meant something to you, even if that person is famous and probably doesn’t need the praise.

New Books

• All the Possible Bodies, by Iain Haley Pollock. “In weaving resilience from the delicate fabric of the existential questions permeating the lives of African American men, All the Possible Bodies shimmers with a brilliance that allows the light of honesty and courage to penetrate the dense mass existent in the swirling of race and caste in America. Pollock is a brave poet, gifted with a voice that is the way of articulating his own body and soul while delicately tending to what gives life to all of us.” —Afaa M. Weaver

• Her Scant State, by Barbara Tomash. “In Barbara Tomash's brilliant reworking of Henry James's The Portrait of a Lady, the continuity and causality of the nineteenth-century novel are transformed into the isolate flecks of twenty-first century poetry. In this masterpiece of excision and refashioning, Tomash has uncovered the troubling, luminous strands within the text, and given us a revelatory and radical new experience of her protagonist, Isabel.”

• Is a River Alive, by Robert MacFarlane. Not poems. But MacFarlane is a poet and one of our most gifted ecological prose writers (he introed Jorie Graham’s [To] The Last [Be] Human). His allegiance to poetry shows in the vibrant, multivalent storytelling in his latest—a “mind-expanding exploration of an ancient, urgent idea: that rivers are living beings who should be recognized as such in imagination and law”—which features poet-activist protectors like Innu writer Rita Mestokosho. I highly recommend his interview with David Naimon.

Workshops, Events & More

• July 25-27 — The Annual Taos Writers Conference, in Taos, New Mexico and online. Join me and poets Nick Flynn, Veronica Golos, Aaron Abeyta, and others—plus fiction, memoir, and cross-genre writers—for discussions of craft, manuscript development, and more. Explore the conference.

• September 13, 12-2pm MT—Back by popular demand! Mapping Territory: Organizing Your Poetry Manuscript. This session gives you a clear roadmap and actionable steps to transform your poems into a book that guides the reader thoughtfully through its territory. Register.

Upcoming Deadlines

• July 31 — Washburn Chapbook Prize

• Aug 15 — Grayson Books Poetry Book Prize

• Aug 16 — Omnidawn Chapbook Prize

• Aug 31 — Nine Syllables Chapbook Prize

• Aug 31 — Off the Grid Poetry Book Prize (for writers over 60)

Advice

“If I could say I was assigned something at birth, it would be to keep the soul fresh and clean, and to not let anything bring it down. And that’s the spirit of childhood, usually. Once you know that that’s what you’re doing, even when you’re walking through a war field, you’re carrying something to keep it safe. It’s invisible but you know it’s there, and it’s a kind of vision and a weight.”

-Fanny How, interview in The Paris Review

Yours in poetry,

Radha