BOA Blog

Latern Review - the journal of "Asian American Poetry Unbound" - reviews Barbara Jane Reyes' Diwata for their December 20 blog: "In Poeta in San Francisco, Barbara Jane Reyes’ previous book, diwata was someone “elders say” had once “walked on earth” before the “the nailed god came” (30). These are the traces and rumors from which the titular Diwata of her latest book is resurrected. Then, like slippery oral art, like slips of the tongue, creation stories about men, women, and diwata—a god or spirit in Philippine mythology—are made up and told again and again. The poems in Diwata draw...

"Society needs art more than art needs society. Art has always existed in nature, no matter what society springs up around it, but it's we who need art to make our lives whole." Matthew Shenoda has published two collections of poetry, Somewhere Else and Season of Lotus, Season of Bone, the latter, published by BOA in 2009. He currently holds two positions within the School of Critical Studies at California Institute of the Arts. The interview with Caty Gordon from The Minnesota Review, touches on everything from the evidence of Egyptian influence in Shenoda's writing to his passion for Reggae...

Let it be known that on Friday, December 3rd, FuturPointe Dance came to BOA's holiday gala and rocked the house. See for yourself! This is a video of the dance they choreographed as an interpretation of the poem"The City in Which I Love You" by Li-Young Lee. Keep in mind, they're performing in a small hallway outside the BOA office and basically no one watching even knew this was about to happen. Talk about a nice surprise! The featured dancers are: N'jelle Gage, William Knighten, Melinda Phillips, Heather Roffe, and Guy Thorne. The art projection you see in the background was done by Guy Thorne...

Cradle Book comes off its mention in the New Yorker as one of the “Eleven Best Poetry Books of 2010” with a lovely review in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Among other things, the review points out: “Ours is a world in which fables are uncomfortable inhabitants. Craig Morgan Teicher, the 2007 Colorado Prize-winning poet for "Brenda Is in the Room and Other Poems," knows this. He knows we are unlikely to fall for (or follow) some pithy statement about how we ought to live our lives. Instead, in "Cradle Book," he leaves the reader, usually in some charged darkness, wondering what to...

[caption id="attachment_369" align="aligncenter" width="150" caption="Naomi Shihab Nye. BOA Poet."][/caption] We're thrilled to announce that BOA will publish Naomi Shihab Nye's new poetry collection, Transfer, in September 2011! Naomi is a long-time BOA author and a bona fide American  poetry treasure. If you ever get the chance to hear her read... take it. We guarantee that her voice and presence will stay with you for many, many moons afterwards. Here's a little taste of what we're talking about. The Academy of American Poets just posted a clip of Naomi reading the poem "Alive" from the Transfer collection. Enjoy! [Naomi Shihab Nye reads "Alive"]