New Books by Poetry Monday Featured Poets
A few leaves and flowers are here in the Northeast today, and with them some welcome new books by poets you have seen in this column and in our archives.
First, Mihaela Moscaliuc, an assistant professor of English at Monmouth University and teacher in the low-residency MFA Program in poetry and poetry in translation at Drew University, has done us the great favor of bringing into English the poems of Romanian poet Carmelia Leonte. Moscaliuc herself is Romanian by birth, but now writes in English. This stunning book, The Hiss of the Viper, ( Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2014), contains poems in a voice like none we have ever heard or read before, as well as a valuable introduction by Moscaliuc.
As if that were not enough, another new book by Michaela Moscaliu has recently become available. Immigrant Model (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015), the second full-length collection of her own poems, has already received high praise from Stephen Dunn, Naomi Shihab Nye and others.
The first poet from the U.K. featured on Poetry Monday pages was Chris Fogg, whose Special Relationships (Mudlark Press) you may remember. His new book, a rich collection of poems, stories and essays, also published by Mudlark, is called Northern Songs. He looks closely here at identity, at what makes us what we are and what we might have been if we had taken another path. This exploration of his Manchester roots and his life since is a hard book to put down. Fans of the television program Call the Midwife will especially appreciate the front and back cover images by Shirley Baker, courtesy of the Mary Evans Picture Library.
A playwright and dramaturge as well as a poet, Chris Fogg is currently working on a project as Director of a new solo show about recovery from childhood sexual abuse. Among the collaborators have been a psychiatrist and a therapist, he tells us, as well as a choreographer, musician and stand-up comedian – and, it is”surprisingly, an uplifting and at the same time funny piece, which somehow makes the darker aspects of it seem all the more powerful for their not being explicit …” The show premiered recently at the Strike a Light Festival in the Gloucester Guildhall and received a standing ovation.
Fogg is also in the middle of a creative collaboration with a choreographer and musician on a piece that explores different responses to meanings of home and belonging. This work too has had an initial presentation, with much success, and is now on tour, which will lead to a final production at a venue in London – the Rooftop Studio of the Siobhan Davies Dance Theatre, sometime this month.
Since this seems to be our month to talk about abuse, let me tell you about a smaller but powerful work by another of our Poetry Monday people, Lori Desrosiers. Her newest collection is a chapbook, Inner Sky (Glass Lyre Press, 2015), and it takes on, courageously, the topic of domestic violence.
Desrosiers, who teaches literature and compostion at Westfield State University and Holyoke Community College and poetry in the Interdisciplinary Studies program for Lesley University’s M.F.A. graduate program, is also the editor of Naugatuck River Review and maintains an e-mailed newsletter of Poetry News for readers in Western Massachusetts.
If you will bear with me for a bit longer, I have two more things to recommend for your reading pleasure: 1) “Object Lesson: Why We Need Physical Books” by William Giraldi (New Republic, May 2015), and 2) “Why Poets Translate” by Mira Rosenthal (American Poetry Review, May/June, 2015).
Note to readers:
I will be on a necessary vacation/book leave until September, but will continue to read submissions (by postal mail only). Do send us your best poems. We would also like to hear from you.
If any of you plan to be on Cape Cod this summer, I will be reading in the Calliope Series at the West Falmouth library on June 14th. As always, people who identify themselves as Poetry Monday readers, will receive a special discount on any of my books.
Have a happy summer!
Irene Willis
Poetry Editor