23 Friday Jan 2015
Posted in Blog
Listen to the podcast then turn off the phone and write some poems.
http://www.sciencefriday.com/segment/01/23/2015/put-down-your-phone-give-your-brain-a-break.html
31 Thursday Jul 2014
Posted in Blog
Tags
Brittany Cagle, Culture, entertainment, poem, Poetry, Publishing, writers, Writing
Follow the links to read the poems of our winner and finalists.
Winner: Brittany Cagle
Runner-Up: Christina Clark
Finalists:
Alison Palmer
Kelly Scarff
Theodora Ziolkowski
Katharyn Machan
Myra Rasmussen
Semi-Finalists:
Sydney Justice
Karla Linn Merrifield
M.K. Brake
Claire Scott
More about the Pangaea Prize
Also, we are currently accepting submissions for the Atlantis Award.
For more announcements you can follow us on facebook.
23 Wednesday Jul 2014
Posted in Blog
Tags
contemporary poetry, Culture, entertainment, poem, Poet, Poetry, writers, Writing
“Why are there so many people who think poems are like pretty little locks to be teased open? Why is there a vast majority in this country that suspects poetry has nothing to do with the real world where a person must work, fight in a war or struggle to make do? I’d wager that it has to do with something that has gotten into a heap of contemporary poetry and deadened it, making it about as interesting and relevant to others as a dog yipping at its own shadow: Irony.” — Tracy K. Smith
This is a great little article from the New York Times: read the rest here.
Don’t forget you can follow us on facebook.
16 Wednesday Jul 2014
Posted in Blog
Tags
Article, Culture, education, entertainment, Internet, poem, Poet, Poetry, Publishing, writers, Writing
“A century ago, poetry did not appear in little magazines devoted to it, but on the pages of newspapers and mass-circulation magazines. The big magazines and even the newspapers began declining about the time they stopped printing poetry.” — William Logan
This is a great article. Read it here: Poetry: Who Needs It?
20 Saturday Jul 2013
Posted in Blog
Tags
accident, Article, car, contest, Culture, education, entertainment, god, Internet, Lit. Journal, literature, news, online journal, poem, Poet, Poetry, Publishing, reading poetry, writers, Writing
The Poets Billow is happy to announce the winner of the 2013 Pangaea Prize. Here is an except from Caitlin Scarano’s Entry. Visit our Literary Art Gallery to read seven of her finally crafted poems.
Losing It
God came to me like a drunken man
running from a car accident. God came
at me with a mouth full of snow, blood
& broken teeth. I used to be alone.
I used to wake up without an arm across my neck.
No boys or gods licking the sole of my shoe
or testing the rope ladder hooked in my lower lip.
Sinning is storytelling –
you always look them in the eye. Your body
always betrays you. God came to me
like the accident itself. No, he came at me like the tree
that parted the car, or the girl that parted
the windshield. The only car accident I was ever in
was the night I lost my virginity in the backseat.
God wasn’t there.
Just a frightened, frightened boy.
17 Wednesday Jul 2013
Tags
Alanis Morissette, Culture, entertainment, ironic, irony, lyrics, music, musical qualities, poem, Poet, reading poetry, revision
Alanis Morissette’s 1996 hit “Ironic,” a catchy song that doubles as a true/false quiz for every middle school English teacher in America, is finally ironic.
Sisters Eliza and Rachael Hurwitz have righted all of Morissette’s wrongs in a cover called “It’s Finally Ironic,” with lyrics like “He won the lottery, and died the next day/from a severe paper cut from his lottery ticket/It’s a black fly in your chardonnay/that was specifically purchased to repel black flies.”
Check it out at Salon!
16 Tuesday Jul 2013
Posted in Blog
Tags
ban, chris brown, Culture, education, El Jones, entertainment, halifax, jian ghomeshi, music, nova scotia, petition, poem, Poet, poet laureate, Poetry, poets, protest, Society, violence against women, writers, Writing
El Jones, poet laureate of Halifax and Women’s Studies professor at Acadia University, joins Jian to express a more nuanced take on the controversy that has erupted around a planned Chris Brown concert in the Halifax area.
The Dartmouth, N.S. show is set to feature controversial R&B singer Chris Brown, who pleaded guilty to assaulting his girlfriend, pop star Rihanna, in 2009.
Check out the radio interview on the show Q with Jian Ghomenshi
10 Wednesday Jul 2013
Tags
Article, Bonczek, Culture, education, entertainment, literature, Orion, poem, Poet, Poetry, poets, Publishing, reading, reading poetry, writers, Writing
Check out the current beautiful issue of Orion Magazine to read a new poem by Michelle Bonczek, as well as an essay by Barry Lopez, and an article by environmental activist Bill McKibben.
Then journey over to Facebook to like TPB: The Poet’s Billow
09 Tuesday Jul 2013
Posted in Blog
Tags
Breastfeeding, Culture, entertainment, Health, Healthcare, Internet, literature, news, poem, Poet, Poetry, poets, reading, reading poetry, writers, Writing
We’ve heard a lot of thoughtful, impassioned arguments from moms who have to defend their rights to breastfeed in public, but we’ve never come across anything quite as powerful as this.
Hollie McNish, a published U.K. poet and spoken word artist, posted this video entitled “Embarrassed” on YouTube on July 4, that slowly but surely became a viral sensation.
Check it out: Embarrassed
Then check us out on Facebook: The Poet’s Billow
02 Tuesday Jul 2013
Recently, Nate Silver, the statistician who has become famous for the accuracy of his analyses of polling data, has weighed in on the inexorable decline of the humanities, and has found, using “numbers” and “arithmetic,” that “the relative decline of majors like English is modest when accounting for the increased propensity of Americans to go to college.”
“In fact, the number of new degrees in English is fairly similar to what it has been for most of the last 20 years as a share of the college-age population,” Silver said.
Read the article, see the numbers at The Chronicle of Higher Education.
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