Category: community features
-
community feature: Artists Undeterred – Art Exhibit
This week, I’d like to introduce a new type of feature on the Influence: community features. In these features, I’ll be promoting events put on by marginalized literary communities and spotlighting their efforts. If you have a community you feel should be highlighted, feel free to message me about it either on Twitter (@JoseAraguz) or […]
-
writer feature: Adeeba Shahid Talukder
This week’s poetry feature comes from the work of Adeeba Shahid Talukder whose chapbook What Is Not Beautiful is out now from Glass Poetry Press. Talukder’s work was featured here once before in 2012 and I continue to be floored by her consistently engaging lyric sensibility. I actually had the opportunity to get an early read of What Is […]
-
writer feature: two poems by German Dario
One of my favorite quotes to go back to when talking about poetry is W. H. Auden’s idea that a poem is an individual’s version of reality. He said this specifically in terms of poets dealing with rejection; whereas the novelist may have a set of characters, a plot, and a whole world of complex […]
-
writer feature: Shirani Rajapakse
For this feature, we have two poems and short essay by poet Shirani Rajapakse. The poems are from her recent collection, Chant of a Million Women, and her essay goes into the themes of the collection and the role these two poems play. I am honored to provide a forum for the discussion and interrogation […]
-
writer feature: Trust Tonji
This week’s poem, “The thing about colors,” is a fine example of how poets often have to be unsettled in language. For instance, there is the performance of language in the public realm, where we do our best to honor one another in regards to pronoun preference, ability, and sexuality as well as cultural and […]
-
writer feature: Laura M Kaminski
One thing I admire about poetry is the space it creates where meditation can balance into consideration and reckoning. This week’s poem, “Bonding” by Laura M Kaminski, is a good example of what I mean. The first stanza not only sets the scene, but also presents the range of meditation. The act of walking a […]
-
writer feature: Oka Bernard Osahon
Often when I read a love poem, I find myself most invested in what the poem evokes in terms of connection and disconnection. Love poems aren’t love, but are expressions of the world around a love relationship, a world made up of inside jokes, shared intimacies and understanding. The reader of a love poem is […]
-
visiting Jeju w/ daniel paul marshall
This week’s post features a poem by Daniel Paul Marshall. Marshall writes about the Haenyeo, female divers from the Korean province of Jeju. The Hangul for the word, (해녀)roughly translates to sea women, and serves as the title for this poem. When I informed Marshall I planned on featuring this particular poem, he was kind enough […]