Deadline to Apply to 2022 Writers’ Trust Mentorship Program

Are you a developing writer completing your first manuscript and seeking a mentor? Or do you know one?
Submissions are now open for the 2022 Writers’ Trust Mentorship program, which pairs established and developing writers working in fiction, poetry, and literary nonfiction for one-on-one instruction.
Apply by January 10th for a chance to be mentored by Kaie Kellough, our 2020 Griffin Poetry Prize Canadian winner! More info here: writerstrust.com/Mentorship

Palm Beach Poetry Festival

18th Annual Palm Beach Poetry Festival Virtual Workshop Applications are now open on Submittable!

Our line-up features Workshop Faculty Poets: Kim Addonizio, Laure-Anne Bosselaar, Chard deNiord, Mark Doty, Yona Harvey, John Murillo, Matthew Olzmann, & Diane Seuss.

Our Special Guest is Yusef Komunakaa; Poet-at-Large Aimee Nezhukumatathil; and Conference Faculty: Lorna Knowles Blake, Sally Bliumis-Dunn, Nickole Brown, Jessica Jacobs, and Angela Narciso Torres. A Special Craft Talk will be presented by Kwame Dawes. Applications open soon  for this extraordinary opportunity to attend the festival virtually.

Deadline to apply: Executive Director, Writers’ Guild of Alberta

Location: Edmonton, Alberta

The Writers’ Guild of Alberta (WGA) is seeking a dynamic, experienced Executive Director.

The successful candidate will effectively represent the WGA, its mission, its members, and its programs. The Executive Director is responsible for the successful management of the Writers’ Guild of Alberta according to the mission of the organization and the strategic direction set by the members of the organization through the Board of Directors. The position involves direct responsibility for five staff (3 full time at 35 hours a week, 2 at 21 hours a week) as well as interaction with a number of contract employees and seasonal staff.  The Executive Director works under the direction of a policy board to design, develop and implement strategic plans for the organization in a cost-effective and time-efficient manner.

Projected Salary:  $60,000 – $70,000.   Closing Date: 7 January 2022

Apply to Bocas Emerging Writers Fellowships

The Bocas Emerging Writers Fellowships, to be awarded simultaneously in 2022, are a pair of one-time fellowships for emerging Caribbean-based writers in English, in two categories: prose (fiction or non-fiction) and poetry.
The fellowships are made possible by generous donations, including by our Griffin Poetry Prize winners Canisia Lubrin and Dionne Brand, as well as Christina Sharpe and Allyson Holder.
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From Homer: War Music

Christopher Logue

copyright ©2001



Ever since men began in time, time and
Time again they met in parliaments,
Where, in due turn, letting the next man speak,
With mouthfuls of soft air they tried to stop
Themselves from ravening their talking throats;
Hoping enunciated airs would fall
With verisimiltitude in different minds,
And bring some concord to those minds; only soft air
Between the hatred human animals
Monotonously bear towards themselves.
No work was more regarded in our times,
And nothing failed so often. Knowing this,
The army came to hear Achilles say;
‘Pax., Agamemnon.’ And Agamemnon’s: ‘Pax.’

Notes on the Poem

Our Poem of the Week is from the 2002 Griffin-shortlisted collection by Christopher Logue, Homer: War Music. Of the collection the judges said, “Christopher Logue is one of those all too rare poets whose ability to tell the story transforms each word of it to a freshness and a presence one had feared was lost. What could be more intimidating than Homer’s great epic, the Iliad? Yet Logue’s War Music (which collects the first three volumes of his brilliant adaptation) ‘makes it new’ with all the vigor and invention the old recountings could no longer carry. If ‘translation’ is literally a ‘carrying over,’ then War Music is a vivid and reaffirming instance of its power. First and last, Logue is a poet whose own authority here is as timeless as his master’s.”

To celebrate the acquisition of his archive and the release of War Music as an audiobook, The British Library organized Arrival of the Poet in the Library: A Celebration of Christopher Logue, with Tariq Ali, John Hegley, Rosemary Hill, Christopher Reid, Harriet Walter and Astrid Williamson, hosted by Andrew O’Hagan.

Don Mee Choi and Sung Un Gang

Join Don Mee Choi? on Wednesday, December 1 at 1pm ET for her reading, “War, Resistance, Poetry.” She will read from her books Hardly War and DMZ Colony. The reading will be followed by a conversation with scholar and podcaster Sung Un Gang on writing, translating, and her time as a Picador Guest Professor at the University of Leipzig.

Don Mee Choi was our 2019 Griffin Poetry Prize International winner for her translation of Kim Hyesoon’s Autobiography of Death. This year, she was awarded the 2021 MacArthur Fellowship, the 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship for Poetry, and the 2021 Picador Professorship for Literature.