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Of Poets and Blogs

Need some poetry today? If so–and really, any day is a good day for poetry–here are two semi-new blogs worth a visit.

First, “Fresh, Local, Wild: The Poetics of Food” is the blog of  a Spring Term poetry workshop at Washington and Lee, taught by English professor Deborah Miranda. As the title suggests, the subject of the students’ poetry is food. And the range of topics is wide: Strawberry Smoothie to A Drop of Honey. It’s not all been slaving over their quill pens for the students. For inspiration, they have taken field trips, including one to Wade’s Mill in nearby Raphine. Deborah explains that the students write two poems a week—one comes through the poetry workshop in class, the other goes up on the blog for group critique. Consequently, the poems that you’ll find along the right side represent only about half of the work. Check back for audio of close readings of poems.

Second, Lesley Wheeler, professor of English at W&L, is spending half the the year in New Zealand on a Fulbright grant. She is at Victoria University in Wellington conducting research on a new scholarly study, “Poetry and Community in the 21st Century.” Lesley is also blogging about her work at “the cave, the hive,” which takes its name from a poem by  Bill Manhire, founder of New Zealand’s first creative-writing course, at Victoria University, and director of the International Institute of Modern Letters (IIML) there.