December 2nd forum announcement

Dear Poetry Aficionados,

IBPC: Poetry & Poets in Rags

As Mary Karr notes in Great Regulars, "we're entering Advent season, the four weeks before Christmas." And a theme has been taken up in some of the articles this week, that of a little more religion, not specifically mentioning holidays, but parallels of poetry to religion, to psalms and prayers, and conversion experience. There is also a theme of imprisonment in a few articles, a North Korean gulag escapee in the Luisetta Mudie item for instance, and the former president of Taiwan, Chen Shui-bian, in another. But in our back page link, when Breyten Breytenbach talks about poetry from prison, he says, "I think if you're going to do that you would rather go into a monastery."

But let's begin with women poets, as a group, shall we? Or shouldn't we? Well, that is the question. Our first three articles are on or about poets who happen to be female.

Fascinating poet Mark Doty shows up in two articles, both linked to in our Great Regulars section. The first is by John Freeman, and follows Mark's getting the National Book Award just a couple weeks back. This item is about his winning collection of poetry, Fire to Fire. The second article is from the Guardian, and is written by him. For December, he's hosting a mesmerizing online poetry workshop there.

Yours,
Rus

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