Luso-American writer Marina Carreira discusses I Sing to that Bird Knowing He Won’t Sing Back: Fado Poems, growing up in Newark’s Ironbound neighborhood, and recovering from trauma.
Professor Vincent Toro, an English Kills Review contributor, is a poet and playwright from New York, where he teaches for The City University of New York’s Bronx Community College and The DreamYard Project, a nonprofit organization that places working artists in the schools and local communities. He has an MFA from Rutgers University, received a 2014 Poet’s House Emerging Poet’s Fellowship, and was awarded a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry for 2014. Ahsahta Press recently awarded Toro with the Sawtooth Poetry Prize; his manuscript of poems, just released in February 2016, is titled Stereo.Island.Mosaic.
Melissa Adamo: Congratulations, Vincent, on winning the Sawtooth Poetry Prize! Stereo. Island. Mosaic. is a stunning collection. How are you feeling now that your first poetry collection is out there in the world?
Vincent Toro: Thank you for the kind words. The first and strongest sensation I’ve felt since the book came out is one of relief. I’ve been dreaming of writing a book since the age of 17. I’m 40 now. The meal had been cooking for a long time. I think when I got the call from Janet Holmes about The Sawtooth Prize, the first thing I did was sigh because I thought maybe I could rest for a second and stop scaling the cliff, which is of course a myth. The climbing doesn’t cease. But at least you get to camp out for a night and make s’mores before you have to keep climbing in the morning.
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When you want to read your fiction after just publishing a book, but there just doesn’t seem to be a good fit for you in your state, what do you do?
Well, Nicole Haroutunian, an English Kills Review contributor, joined forces with Apryl Lee to create their own series in Montclair, New Jersey. Now, four times a year, The Halfway There Reading Series combines community and the arts to give both emerging and well-established authors a platform for their work without a hike into the city.
Angel Nafis will be reading at Free Water 8 on Friday, August 14th, at KGB, at 7 p.m. along with Tommy Pico, Lynn Melnick, and Morgan Parker.
What is the best poetry advice you’ve received?
Angel Nafis: Reading is writing too.
What are you currently working on?
Nafis: Bars! Writing hella Bars. My second book full of Bars. Bars-City, USA, population me.
Morgan Parker will be reading at Free Water 8 on Friday, August 14th, at KGB, at 7 p.m. along with Tommy Pico, Lynn Melnick, and Angel Nafis.
What is the best poetry advice you’ve received?
Morgan Parker: Write drunk, edit sober.
Tommy Pico will be reading at Free Water #8 on Friday, August 14th, at KGB, at 7 p.m. along with Morgan Parker, Lynn Melnick, and Angel Nafis.
What is the best poetry advice you’ve received?
Tommy Pico: Milk, milk, lemonade: around the corner, verse is made! Juuuust kidding. I think it was probably something like, “don’t be so vain” both with regard to my nerves while reading in front of people, and being too precious with the “I” of the poem. Like the speaker or whoever shouldn’t be the hero, the smartest, the best, the most witty or the most complex.
Lynn Melnick will be reading at Free Water #8 on Friday, August 14th, at KGB, at 7 p.m. along with Morgan Parker, Tommy Pico, and Angel Nafis.
What is the best poetry advice you’ve received?
Lynn Melnick: Alice Walker said “If art doesn’t make us better, then what on earth is it for?” That’s the best poetry advice I’ve received. But do you mean advice that I’ve personally received? One time a man told me he couldn’t take me seriously as a writer because I wear a lot of dresses so I’ve continued to wear a lot of dresses.
Claudia Cortes’s poems and lyric essays have found homes at Black Warrior Review, Blackbird, Crazyhorse, Kenyon Review Online, and Sixth Finch, among others. Cortese lives in New Jersey and is a poetry editor for Swarm. She has two chapbooks: Blood Medals (Thrush Poetry Press, 2015) and The Red Essay and Other Histories (forthcoming from Horse Less Press, 2015). Her chapbook, Blood Medals, was described by Winter Tangerine as “vicious and vibrant – [Cortese] writes girlhood as gorgeously fucked up, dolls-with-no-eyes hideous. Blood Medals follows Lucy, a shitty little princess that we can’t help but adore.” Poems from Blood Medals were also featured on Sundress Blog’s Wardrobe’s Best Dressed for June.