The Blog

University of Iowa Launches Poetry Writing MOOC

Samantha Nissen

The International Writing Program (IWP) is delighted to announce The University of Iowa’s first creative writing MOOC (Massive Open Online Course): How Writers Write Poetry, now open for enrollment. The free six-week course (June 28 to August 9, 2014) will include discussions and workshops, as well as craft talks by more than 20 contributing poets, including former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Hass, Kwame Dawes, Kate Greenstreet, Kiki Petrosino, and Shane McCrae. The course is part of a new University of Iowa MOOC series: How Writers Write: Talks on Craft and Commitment; a fiction writing course will launch in September 2014.

Charles Wright named U.S. poet laureate

TIR staff

Six-time Iowa Review contributor Charles Wright has been named America's next poet laureate! Read the New York Times article.

Here's his poem "China Mail" from our Summer 1996 issue:

China Mail

It's deep summer east of the Blue Ridge.
Temperatures over 90 for the twenty-fifth day in a row.
The sound of the asphalt trucks down Locust Avenue
Echoes between the limp trees.
Nothing's cool to the touch.

The Periscopic Poetics of Stephanie Strickland’s DRAGON LOGIC

Julie Marie Wade

Miami is the best place to be during National Poetry Month, no question. I’ve only lived here two years, and I have already willingly consumed prodigious quantities of the local literary Kool-Aid. Thanks to P. Scott Cunningham, founder of the annual O, Miami Poetry Festival, and a diverse and committed group of south Florida poets, every day of the month of April is dedicated to multiple poetry-centered events throughout the city, from Miami-Dade County in the south stretching north to Broward and the Palm Beaches.

Iowa Review Award winners!

TIR staff

We're thrilled to announce the following winners and runners-up of the 2014 Iowa Review Awards. These essays, stories, and poems will appear in our December 2014 issue. Thanks to all who entered, and thanks to our judges, David Shields (nonfiction), Rachel Kushner (fiction), and Robyn Schiff (poetry).

NONFICTION

Winner: Amy Butcher, "Reenacting"

Amy Butcher

Matias Viegener's 2500 RANDOM THINGS ABOUT ME TOO

Janis Butler Holm

An entire book composed solely of lists on Facebook? Please—spare me. Or so one might think before reading Matias Viegener's 2500 Random Things about Me Too, a memoir-like experiment in nonfiction constraint writing. In this tour de force, Viegener—artist, writer, critic, and teacher at the California Institute of the Arts—has taken postmodern fragmentation to its successful extreme, providing by accumulation a strangely satisfying nonnarrative of his life and world. Published by Les Figues Press, a print venue known for its support of innovative artists, the book is simply and handsomely designed, with a short introduction by writer Kevin Killian.