October 12th forum announcement

Dear Poetry Aficionados,

Poetry & Poets in Rags blog


Sweden and Norway have spoken, and our lead story is in fact a clutch of articles about poet Liu Xiaobo, who has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Seems the only people objecting to this choice are in the Chinese government, which has him imprisoned. This goes beyond the politics and ideologies of the people in power, into their simply being incompetent bullies, therefore corrupt people who have finagled a way, probably bullied their way, into commanding the police forces. They started their shenanigans before the award was announced, by blocking web sites with comments about Liu. Now the best they can come up with is that Liu's selection is "obscene" and they are refusing to honor a scheduled meeting with government officials in Norway, who have nothing to do with the prize selection, not being such bullies themselves. The rest of us in this world we all share with the Nobel winner, are saying to release him, right away, and don't do anything like that ever again. In Great Regulars, you'll find that Luisetta Mudie has translated a clutch clutch of articles on Liu Xiaobo and his Nobel from the Madarin and Cantonese for Radio Free Asia; and that the Dalai Lama congratulates him.

The Nobel in Literature again goes to novelist, a trend that is getting a little tired. Okay, so the Nobel selectors like novels on their coffee and bedside tables. But hello, we do have poets who are just as deserving as any of these recent novelists. As novelists go, though, Mario Vargas Llosa has risen to the award through both his writing and his politics. Being such a political novelist seems to be the key. You will find the best stories of the week about him to be written by several of our Great Regulars. And when brought together, we get a very good profile on Llosa. Check out the articles by Sarah Crown, John Freeman, Hillel Italie (as contributor), John Timpane, and David Ulin. The names of those Great Regulars are listed in alphabetical order, as that is how they are presented in our Great Regulars section, which follows the eleven articles in News at Eleven.

There is much more to tell you about in this jam-packed week for news in poetry. But I need to let you get to reading, and your own discovery.

Thanks for clicking in.

Yours,
Rus

Our links:

IBPC: Poetry & Poets in Rags

Poetry & Poets in Rags blog

IBPC Home

~~~~~~~~~~~