Starrett Poetry Prize winner shares insight into hip hop Nate Marshall, 2014 winner of UPP’s Agnes Starrett Lynch Poetry Prize for his forthcoming collection Wild Hundreds, is also among the editors of the new release The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop. The book was recently highlighted in the Lambda Literary Review. The article includes comments from Marshall and his co-editors. “I think the reality of hip hop is that women and queer people and a lot of folks who we think about being in the margins have always been at the center of the culture,”…

Jack Foley, longtime esteemed California radio host, recently interviewed Rachel Tzvia Back, translator of In the Illuminated Dark: Selected Poems of Tuvia Ruebner. On KPFA radio’s “Cover to Cover,” Back tells Foley that she “felt completely possessed” reading Ruebner’s Hebrew verse, and contacted him saying she “must” translate his poems. In the Illuminated Dark was “a labor of love . . . a privilege and a delight,” she said. Hear the interview: here    

The special Ploughshares issue features selections by Neil Astley, editor of Bloodaxe Books. The poems chosen for this issue aim to bridge the “illogical divide between readerships on either side of the Atlantic,” and hopefully spark a conversation that will invigorate both literary traditions. Included are Pitt poets Aaron Smith, (Blue on Blue Ground and Appetite); Barbara Hamby (Babel, All-Night Lingo Tango and On the Street of Divine Love), and John Hodgen, (Grace and Heaven and Earth Holding Company). The spring 2015 issue is available in print and in digital format on pshares.org

“Re-Collecting Black Hawk puts forth a provocative and thorough examination of how a historical Sac and Fox leader has been reduced to a footnote. Native American historical figures have been subsumed into the US landscape via the naming customs of our European ancestors. Nicholas A. Brown and Sarah E. Kanouse use images and text in a juxtaposition that forces the viewer to think about what this means for Native Americans. Many streets and parks have been named for notable historical figures, but very few have been co-opted for business names. Makataimeshekiakiak’s English name, Black Hawk, has been used for everything from a…