RING #3: Columns/Interviews/Reviews

Something delightful to file under “When poetry and technology play nice together”

But don’t you dare just file it! Sage Cohen, one of our sideshow barkers, needs you to submit your poems. Here’s how you can “take your poetry viral:”

Want to see your poetry appear in a poem-a-day iPhone app? Submit up to three, 20-line poems that express the spirit of “the life poetic” to “The Life Poetic iPoem Contest” before November 1. The contest, which is sponsored by Sage Cohen, author of Writing the Life Poetic: An Invitation to Read and Write Poetry and The Productive Writer: Tips and Tools for Writing More, Stressing Less and Creating Success, offers a range of prizes with a total value of more than $400. Visit this post for details!

Check our About page for a list of other Sideshow Barkers, friends of Big Tent Poetry who are generous enough to share with us their columns, interviews and reviews. There is no set schedule for these appearances; willy-nilly is a symptom of creative genius!

What happens to your poetry practice when you suddenly lose your words?

Sideshow barker Juliet Cook writes about how surviving a health crisis is only the beginning in a series of challenges, which include struggling with words when you used to be prolific, losing people you love and contending with the guilt of not being grateful enough for simply being alive.

Juliet’s article talks about her writing practice before and after her stroke and how words — not always the “right” ones, sometimes even more interesting ones — come.

Here is an excerpt:

I’m very pleased and happy that I am still so passionate about and turned on by poetry.  I’ve always drawn my poetic words from various sources, including product packaging, TV shows, scholarly articles, pop culture, porn and more.  Now, due to my own weirdly, slowly healing brain power, which continues to have a hard time remembering lots of little words without extreme concentration, that extreme concentration seems to be causing big, strange, oddball words and phrases to suddenly blurt out of my head.

Click on the excerpt to read the entire article. Check our About page for a list of other Sideshow Barkers, friends of Big Tent Poetry who are generous enough to share with us their columns, interviews and reviews. There is no set schedule for these appearances; willy-nilly is a symptom of creative genius!

An interview with Dave Bonta, Big Tent Poetry Sideshow Barker

Another one of our sideshow barkers, Dave Bonta, is currently featured in 10 questions: poetry & technology (an interview series by Nic Sebastian at Very Like a Whale).

“… most of all, I like seeing the generosity with which online poets and other writers link to each other, comment on each other’s work, workshop each other’s poems (the internet is great for that), and form new and I think more resilient networks than we’ve seen in a very long time, especially here in the U.S. where the poetry world is so factionalized.”

One of the neat things about this series at Very Like a Whale is that a number of our Sideshow Barkers are included, as well as other folks we read regularly. Both Ren Powell and January O’Neil have been featured. Be sure to read the entire series.

Click on the excerpt to read the entire article. Check our About page for a list of other Sideshow Barkers, friends of Big Tent Poetry who are generous enough to share with us their columns, interviews and reviews. There is no set schedule for these appearances; willy-nilly is a symptom of creative genius!