Final Week of National Poetry Month
We published original poems every weekday throughout the month of April. Here's the last week.
"Spring Sonnet" by Zeina Hashem Beck
“Meanwhile the maple blooms & the marriage / withers. Goes quiet. I stare at the news / of the dead, of the blood & the flour. / I say, “lost love,” but I mean history.”
"Tension Introduction" by Leslie Sainz
“What is the narrative function of fear? In the horror games / I watch but don't play, the protagonists are faceless. / Nameless. Meaning: until you are threatened, you are / nothing.” |
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A look inside
THE WRITERS WELCOME KIT |
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 | | The key feature of The Writer’s Welcome Kit is its online coursebook, which is packed with lessons and exercises on the life, craft, and the practice of writing. |
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We've just launched a new Rumpus offering: the Writer's Welcome Kit, a 5-week asynchronous course to establish your regular writing practice for writers at the beginning of their journeys.
This course was created by writer and writing coach Paulette Perhach specifically for writers who are looking for a starting point as they begin to practice their craft in an intentional way. *Perhach's book, Welcome to the Writer's Life, was published in 2018 by Sasquatch Books / Penguin Random House and was selected as one of Poets & Writers' Best Books for Writers.
The version offered by The Rumpus has 51 lessons and projects as well as additional contributions on best practices, resources, and insights shared by our team.
As part of the launch of The Writer’s Welcome Kit with The Rumpus, writers can take part in a FREE live accountability class along with the self-directed course. These meetups will feature additional lessons, tips, and tools surrounding the topics of each week, community discussions, and support from class founder, Paulette Perhach, as well as guest visits from Rumpus editors. This is also our chance to hear feedback from folks on what they enjoy and would like more of from The Rumpusas we decide on future class, workshop, and seminar offerings.
Purchase the course now through May 21 and you’ll receive a sign-up link to join the group. Please note all meetups will take place live on ZOOM on Wednesdays from 6:30–7:30 p.m. ET. The meet up dates will be May 22, May 29, June 5, June 12, and June 19. Attendance optional, but we hope to see you there!
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Interviews & Reviews
Abigail Oswald interviews Jackie Wang about Alien Daughters Walk Into the Sun
“I really have to figure out a way of balancing that spirit of experimentation but also the desire to form this connection with the reader.”
Lauren Booker reviews Fine Gråbøl's What Kingdom
“Gråbøl, who previously published two collections of poetry...has a lyrical sensibility that shines through What Kingdom‘s impressionistic vignettes and prose.”
Megan E. O'Laughlin interviews Mary Biddinger about A Mollusk Without a Shell
“We are still dazzled by how these ten essays came together to create a guide for writers from many different backgrounds.”
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 | "A crush reveals so much about a character. What do they find appealing? What assumptions do they make about the object of their affection in the absence of actual knowledge? Is there a hole in their life that this desire was invented to fill? Here is a list of books that, to me, answer the original question. What is a crush?"
—Fiona Warnick, What To Read When You're Crushing |
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| Letters in the Mail (from authors!) |
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Letters in the Mail from authors is a Rumpus subscription in which you receive an actual, postmarked letter from one of our favorite writers in your IRL mailbox twice a month. All letters are non-promotional, include a creative prompt, and have a return mailing address in case you'd like to write the author back!
Up next, an author letter from . . .
May 15: Julian Randall is a Living Queer Black poet from Chicago. A recipient of multiple fellowships, including a Pushcart Prize. He holds an MFA from University of Mississippi. His writing appears in New York Times Magazine, POETRY, Marvel Comics, and the Atlantic. Julian is the author of Refuse (Pitt, 2018), winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize and a finalist for an NAACP Image Award, The Pilar Ramirez Duet (Holt Books for Young Readers), The Chainbreakers (HBYR, 2024) and The Dead Don’t Need Reminding: Essays (Bold Type Books, 2024). He can be found at @JulianThePoet and on his website JulianDavidRandall.com. Subscribe by May 14! |
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| Next up in our Indie x Indie
POETRY BOOK CLUB:
Girl Work by Zefyr Lisowski
x Noemi Press |
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For our September 2023 - August 2024 selections (and possibly beyond!), we’ll focus on great new poetry collections AND hear from the indie publishers behind the books with our new Indie x Indie Poetry Book Club format!
Join by midnight May 15, to receive our JUNE Poetry Book Club pick Girl Work by Zefyr Lisowski and join our subscriber-only conversation with author Zefyr Lisowski, Katie Kosma The Rumpus'sEnough column editor, and a representative from Noemi Press.
As a subscriber, we'll send you a copy of this book the first week of June and you'll also be invited to an exclusive online video discussion with the book's author + the author's editor + a Rumpus Editor and fellow book club members. Subscribers are encouraged to join in the chat with their questions before and during the conversations. These will take place on the Rumpus' Crowdcast channel and will remain available to subscribers for 1 month after they take place.
About JUNE's Poetry Book Club Selection: Girl Work, a book-length meditation on sexual violence and feminized labor, centers hybrid-form and prose poems exploring haunting, labor, sexual trauma, and the assertion of a gender- nonconforming self in our current political moment. Written in injunctions to the self, to past assailants, and to friends, Girl Work, challenges canonical representations of pain as punitive, redemptive, or separable from the environmental conditions it springs from. Throughout Girl Work, a self is restored from the detritus of memory—flashes of sexual violence, pop cultural touchstones like the movie The Ring, the music of Ke$ha, the sudden death of a father, the paintings of Henry Darger, and more. Winner of the 2022 Book Award from Noemi Press.
About the author:
Zefyr Lisowski is a trans and queer writer, artist, and North Carolinian currently living in NYC. She's a Poetry Co-editor for Apogee Journal and the author of Blood Box, winner of the Black River Editor's Choice Award from Black Lawrence Press and released in fall 2019; she's also the author of the microchap Wolf Inventory (Ghost City Press, 2018) and a 2019 Tin House Summer Workshop Fellow. Zefyr's work has appeared in Literary Hub, Nat. Brut., Muzzle Magazine, and DIAGRAM, among many other places; she's also received support from Sundress Academy for the Arts, McGill University, the New York Live Ideas Fest, the Blue Mountain Center for the Arts, and the 2019 CUNY Graduate Center Adjunct Incubator Grant. A three-time nominee for the Pushcart Prize, she also goes by Zef.
About the Press:
Founded in 2002, Noemi Press is a 501(c)(3) literary arts organization dedicated to publishing and promoting the work of emerging and established authors and artists. Noemi Press relies on the support of those who believe in the future of literature. Please consider making a tax-deductible donation today.
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Reader Support Keeps The Rumpus Going! |
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Founded in 2009 in San Francisco, CA and now based in Asheville, NC with readers and editors all over the US and abroad, The Rumpusis one of the longest-running independent online literary and culture magazines. Our mostly volunteer-run magazine strives to be a platform for risk-taking voices and writing that might not find a home elsewhere. We lift up new voices alongside those of more established writers readers already know and love. Often, we are an emerging writer's first notable publication, which is something we’re really proud of. We believe that literature builds community—and if reading The Rumpus makes you feel more connected, please show your support! Our Membership and subscription programs along with tax-deductible donations made to The Rumpus through our fiscal sponsor, Fractured Atlas, help keep us going and brings us closer to sustainability.
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