ONLY POEMS PRIZE
$3600 Awarded
April 28
POET OF THE WEEK
CHEN CHEN
Chen Chen is the author of two books of poetry, Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency and When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities, both published by BOA Editions. He teaches for the low-residency MFA programs at New England College, Stonecoast, and Antioch.
tonight, i am the worst queer—i hate longing, detest
yearning. right now, i am the worst queer poet
Poems are the opposite of habits. They are explosions. Sometimes they are small explosions. But loud. Or huge, quiet explosions. I don’t know. I want to keep not knowing. Maybe that’s the tradition I’m writing out of: Not Knowing. Though I also believe I’m writing out of a queer, Asian American tradition that’s equal parts political and sensual. Also, funny.
$50 Saturday, May 18, 12 PM EST via Zoom with Karan Kapoor
1st Workshop Sold Out
2nd Workshop — 1 spot left
Learn to write, revise, and publish your prose poems. In this workshop, we will go through the brief history of the prose poem and discuss successful prose poets like Robert Hass, Luke Kennard, Ray Gonzáles, C.D. Wright, Carolyn Forché, Richard Garcia, Lydia Davis, Russell Edson, Claudia Rankine, and Mary Ruefle. We will also close-read a couple of prose poems together. After that, we will engage in some generative exercises to develop our own prose poem during the workshop. There will be an opportunity for live instructor and peer feedback.
After the workshop, I am happy to provide another round of editorial feedback on your complete prose poem.