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Illuminating poetry since 1959

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Lines / from the current issue

The world knew that // I was unmarried to my bones

AMY GONG LIU | Lowering

Recent Features

  • Interview // Serious Books: A Conversation with John Martin

    Interview // Serious Books: A Conversation with John Martin

    Conducted by Jacob Uitti
  • Every Species Becomes a Metaphor

    Every Species Becomes a Metaphor

    Frances Cannon's visual review of Kathryn Nuernberger
  • Inside the Space It’s Given

    Inside the Space It’s Given

    Karen Kevorkian on the poems of Dan Beachy-Quick

poem of the week

MARTHA RONK
Ma-Lei’l Trail, Arcata, California

Published by Staff

the movingness of the world is right with us

August 13, 2020
Poems

AMIT MAJMUDAR
Two Poems

Published by Staff

Beware the noun
that tricks itself

August 8, 2020
Poems

KEVIN LATIMER
Last Dispatch From My Dying Mouth

Published by Staff

i want to die until
i do. i want to touch
everything before
i’m dust.

July 1, 2020
Poems

BEATRIX GATES
The Card, the Note, the Envelope

Published by Staff

It was not a circle.
It was broken, raw . . .

June 29, 2020
Poems

ALLY HARRIS
Amateur Rockhound

Published by Staff

so find the vein
beat it with a point

June 22, 2020
Poems

MICHAEL S. HARPER
Molasses and the Three Witches

Published by Staff

this is the first barnfire
in history

June 15, 2020
Archival Features, Poems

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Cinema Poetry NW

Features

Features

Line Cook

In which Editor Keetje Kuipers pairs an episode of a literary podcast with a delicious recipe.

August 11, 2020
Features

Other Rooms

In which our writers examine noteworthy work being published in contemporary poetry journals.

June 29, 2020
Features

On Failure

In which writers investigate the practice of failure.

April 5, 2020
Features

Cinema Poetry NW

A series of poetry videos presented by Poetry Northwest.

March 2, 2020
Features

Garrett Hongo: A Tribute

Five essays on Hongo's writing and teaching, an interview with Mark Jarman, and a new poem from Hongo.

February 29, 2020
Features

Native Poets Torchlight Series

In which Guest Editor Jennifer Elise Foerster celebrates contemporary Native American poets.

February 1, 2020

commentary

Interview // Serious Books: A Conversation with John Martin

Published by Staff

Conducted by Jacob Uitti

July 13, 2020
Interviews

Downward into Appetite: on Christine Shan Shan Hou’s “Like It Never Happened”

Published by Staff

Jay Aquinas Thompson on poetry from the latest issue of The Tiny

July 6, 2020
Other Rooms

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Essays

Faith in the Particular

Published by Staff

"Barot widens the circumference of lived experience in all its bittersweet rings." —an essay by Jane Wong on the poems of Rick Barot

May 10, 2020
Essays

Touching Time: The Poetry and Performance of Charles Simic

Published by Staff

"History consumes. It takes away and does not give back."—an essay by Austen Leah Rose

April 14, 2020
Essays

book reviews

July 20, 2020

How Insistent We Are to Return

Wendy Chen on the poems of Michael Prior

by Staff
July 13, 2020

Every Species Becomes a Metaphor

Frances Cannon's visual review of Kathryn Nuernberger

by Staff
July 8, 2020

Inside the Space It’s Given

Karen Kevorkian on the poems of Dan Beachy-Quick

by Staff
May 30, 2020

The Space Between

Sarah Bitter on the poems of Mark Irwin

by Staff

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Current Issue

Current Issue

Summer & Fall 2020

Helene Achanzar, Rae Armantrout, Taneum Bambrick, Cyrus Cassells, Sean Hill, Amit Majmudar, Dominica Phetteplace, Joy Priest, Dujie Tahat, Cody Walker, Daneen Wardrop, Shelley Wong & more

June 19, 2020

New from Poetry NW Editions

THEOREM <br>Elizabeth Bradfield & Antonia Contro
THEOREM
Elizabeth Bradfield & Antonia Contro
THE LACHRYMOSE REPORT <BR>Sierra Nelson
THE LACHRYMOSE REPORT
Sierra Nelson
IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF A THOUSAND GRIEFS <BR>Wei-Wei Lee
IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF A THOUSAND GRIEFS
Wei-Wei Lee

News

June 7, 2020

Black Lives Matter

Poetry Northwest stands in solidarity with all those who fight for justice and equity for Black lives.

by Staff

Twitter

University Book Store
Poetry Northwest Retweeted · University Book Store @ubookstoresea
2 days ago
Did you know that our beautiful Seattle is 1 of 39 @UNESCO Cities of Literature? When picking a book for "set in a city of literature" for your #BookBingoNW2020 card, celebrate our literary home!
🌎📚🌍
@SPLBuzz @SeaArtsLectures
#UniversityBookStore #IndieBookstore https://t.co/1UBkuCyXVi
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Poetry Northwest
Poetry Northwest @poetrynw
3 days ago
"The word for what
we do to what we
butcher: cure.

Beware the noun
that tricks itself
out as a verb."

--from Amit Majmudar's poem "Pinion"

https://t.co/B8Zhw1ll09
View on Twitter
3
5
Sumita Chakraborty ♈️
Poetry Northwest Retweeted · Sumita Chakraborty ♈️ @chakrabsumita
1 week ago
My first glimpse of ARROW in the wild, and in what outrageous company! 🖤🏹 thank you, Molly! https://t.co/1yUKxq7f9Q
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Katy Didden
Poetry Northwest Retweeted · Katy Didden @kedidden
1 week ago
#thesealeychallenge Day 2: @BarotRick The Galleons. I am so moved by “The Flea.” The book explores the Spanish Galleon trade, family histories, the shifting of consciousness between history, American racism, capitalism. Plus poems grounded in observations of the natural world. https://t.co/f99ErXgj8W
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Wei-Wei Lee is the 2019/2020 Youth Poet Laureate o Wei-Wei Lee is the 2019/2020 Youth Poet Laureate of Seattle. Lee was born in San Gabriel, California, but grew up one ocean away in Zhongli District, Taoyuan, Taiwan. To date, Lee has been Stateside for four years, and Seattle is the first US city she has ever known and loved. For her, poetry golds its beauty in language that comes from pure feeling and imagery. She set out to pay tribute to Taiwan and American in her work and hopes she duly honored both. Poetry Northwest is proud to publish her debut collection, In the Footsteps of a Thousand Griefs, the 5th book of poetry in the Seattle Youth Poet Laureate Series. Lee, a high school senior, writes poems that tackle all the things we never say. Lee’s poems span the distance between the United States, Taiwan, and all of the places in between, asking us to look at the way these places have impacted who we are. Available from @openpoetrybooks 📖📭 #poetrynw #pnwpoets #seattleartsandlectures #seattlepoets #seattleyouth #seattleyouthpoetlaureate
Our most recent June newsletter shared our stateme Our most recent June newsletter shared our statement of solidarity and demonstrates our support of Black lives with our words, dollars, actions, and future plans. Find details on our website. We ended this newsletter with this poem, "Molasses and the Three Witches" by Michael S. Harper originally published in the Autumn 1968 Issue. We have republished this relevant poem online to share with our readers.
As we prepare to send our next issue off to the pr As we prepare to send our next issue off to the printer, we’ve been leaning back into poems by contributors to our last issue, especially this one by Amaud Jamaul Johnson. “Pacman” appeared in our pages and also in Johnson's recently published third collection, IMPERIAL LIQUOR (@upittpress), which, among other themes, takes on racism, violence, and the unique and sometimes painful challenges of Black fatherhood in America. As Elias Rodriques notes in his praise of the book over at @poetryfoundation : “‘Every / decade now I grow more quiet,’ [Johnson writes]. In the face of so many [police] assaults, Johnson gives up speaking altogether. The end of speech, however, is the beginning of poetry.” So let us start there, too, with words and actions that break against the white silence that has long allowed for the murder of Black men, women, and children in our country. Yes, read the poem, but don’t stop there. Please join us in donating to @nationalbailout @nw_community_bail_fund and @blklivesmatter
The need is greater than ever. Please consider mak The need is greater than ever. Please consider making a donation to support Poetry Northwest today for #GiveBigTuesday. Head over to PayPal, if you are able and willing to contribute. Thank you for being a part of our community. We would not be here without you!
These screenshots were taken from the video poem b These screenshots were taken from the video poem by Erin Lynch @ermlyn which recently won the Northwest Artist Award during the 2020 Cadence: Video Poetry Festival for "Still Life with Small Objects of Perfect Choking Size" which features the poetry of our own editor Keetje Kuipers @poemonaboat. Rana San, Assistant Director at Northwest Film Forum and the Cadence: Video Poetry Festival 2020 Co-Host says, “I absolutely love this work by two extraordinary Pacific Northwest-based artists. It completely tingles my senses and takes the poem off the screen and  into my body. It’s beautiful for its use of found footage and ethereal soundtrack. It’s a really delightful example of the calibre of work coming out of our region.” Erin Lynch shared: “I created this video last summer out of conversations with poet Keetje Kuipers whose wonderful poem is the video’s title and its text. The archival footage that I used in the video came from a vintage instructional film teaching how to preserve and mount insects. I found so many resonances between these insects and the things being done to them and the poem’s considerations of time, violence, and change, ending with the line, “Everything is undone from within.” So, the insects became for me the small objects of the poem’s title as well as its still lives. As I rewatch the video again now, I find myself thinking about the wider implications of the genre of still life for this moment. Time in many ways, I think, for many of us, seems to have frozen, as many kinds of movement have stopped. In this time of still life, I myself feel like a small object, and as such, I find myself attuned to other small objects around me more than I would be otherwise.” 🦋🐛🦗 Keep your eyes peeled: video poetry from the 2020 Cadence Video Poetry Festival will be published on our website in the near future. 📽 🎬 📓 📼 #cadencevideopoetryfestival #seattleartists #poetryvideo #pnwpoets #pnwartists #poetrynorthwest
CLMP

from the archive

CHARLES WRIGHT
Gate City BreakdownLike a vein of hard coal, it was the strikeDecember 30, 2019

WILLIAM OLSEN
Raptorsbut I am afraid the eagles have their own theories of joyDecember 25, 2019

Winter & Spring 2020Michael Bazzett, Jehanne Dubrow, Gemma Gorga, Amaud Jamaul Johnson, Danusha Laméris, Stanley Plumly, Octavio...December 20, 2019

PARTIAL INDEX

3 recent advice AWP Carolyn Kizer Cathy Park Hong collaboration Copper Canyon Press correspondence David Biespiel Ed Skoog erasure Eric McHenry failure Garrett Hongo Graywolf Press Hugo House Jane Wong Jay Aquinas Thompson Jennifer Elise Foerster John Keats Kary Wayson Kevin Craft Lena Khalaf Tuffaha listening recommendation Michael Bazzett Michelle Peñaloza National Poetry Month 2018 Native Poets Torchlight Series nature photography podcast poetry and music poetry and science poetry and visual arts politics prose poetry Pushcart Prize Nominee Richard Kenney Seattle Arts & Lectures Sierra Nelson Tod Marshall translation visual poetry Wallace Stevens Zach Savich

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