…is up here. Jon Stewart’s visit to IU, Snooki, suicide, and teaching composition are all involved. Needless to say, it covers some ground!
Grateful to know my newest batch of students, grateful for social critics, and continually grateful for the freedom to express my views on it all. Hope you enjoy it.
I am honored to report that my nomination of exiled Chinese writer Tumenulzei Bayunmend to the Human Rights Watch Hellman/Hammett Grant was successful! Tumenulzei's story was what I went to Istanbul in 2010 to tell, at the second-ever Writers and Literary Translators International Congress. He was granted passage to the USA within a year.
I've written extensively about the impact this man, who bought me pizza in that -45 iceworld and comforted me with warm lambchops and beer when I had a relationship Read more [...]
Dear Ones,
A poem I wrote for a departed friend, "under the larches", is up over at Ink Node, where the editors just notified me that it's featured currently as the front page marquee poem! Very grateful that folks seem to like it.
I know I have long been silent on this site--Kenya was an incredible experience and I am working on a longer piece of writing about it as something of a self-challenge. Several outlets have asked me for pieces on the work I did there, and rest assured that when Read more [...]
I am officially Kenya-bound! Thanks to an International Enhancement Grant, I'll be working with the amazing Michael Littig at the Great Globe Foundation, PEN Freedom to Write, the Summer Literary Seminars, the UNHCR Kenya, and other awesome orgs and peeps to bring creative writing workshops to young urban female refugees in Kenya this summer!
The grant is for the development and implementation of creative writing workshops for young urban female refugees in Kenya, the country home to the largest Read more [...]
I managed to find a way to bring my favorite 20th century Objectivist poet George Oppen into a conversation about the Oscars and politics (specifically my favorite topic, freedom of expression) on The Huffington Post. Leave it to the Huffington Post for these kinds of far-ranging and inclusive commentaries finally to be given space and room and sun and water. It's up here on the politics page.
Yours,
Ming Read more [...]
Is doing something cool enough for me to crow about it on Huffington Post’s Books Page. She began it at AWP, with a response to a troubling Hoagland poem, and she’s turning it into an open forum for discussion on race and writing. Check it out, and add to the voices!
I am thoroughly pleased to announce the arrival of "The Loss Letters", my Dusie Kollektiv chapbook with the incredible Bronwen Tate (managing editor at Stanford's Mantis), available for purchase here. You can pay as little as 1 cent! Each copy is hand-sewn by Ms. Tate herself. She knows how to do these things, and also how to knit amazing hats and mittens and concoct beauty in the kitchen. She's indubitably a better poet than I am, and it was an honor to trade with her.
The chapbook formed Read more [...]
You can check it out over at the BAP blog here. It was an honor and an eye-opener to get a sense of the meaning of American poetry to those hailing from other shores.
It was also just so effing amazing to be in Turkey. And listen to Maureen Freely speak. And Eugene Schoulgin. And Olov Hyllienmark. And...sigh. A blessing of a whirlwind weekend, for sure.
Yours,
Ming Read more [...]
You can read it here.
Dawn was breaking as I wrote it after staying up til 5am to grade student portfolios. It was my turn to write a pantoum anyway for my chapbook with Bronwen Tate (we're doing a form poem trade for the Dusie Kollective, which you can read about at Poets & Writers here) so I wrote that Dusie pantoum with Stacey Hardwoods "please hold while our representatives are assisting other callers" facebook status update as a prompt. It as Mark Doty who suggested that the status might Read more [...]