From the Blog

10 Questions for Chard deNiord

April 15, 2024 - By Franchesca Viaud

I think you’re still here sometimes
calling to me like the thrush at dusk
inside the woods where I lose my way.
I search for you like a ghost myself
in all the usual places, stand on the shore
this side of you and speak to the river
that flows and stays, stays and flows.
—from "This Side of You," Volume 65, Issue 1 (Spring 2024)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
I began writing short lyrical poems in my early teens. I had no idea where
they came from or what inspired them. All I remember is that they both mystified and
frightened me. But I kept writing them. They were often self-instructional as well.
Here’s an example of some juvenilia I remember:

...

10 Questions for Adrian Blevins

April 10, 2024 - By Franchesca Viaud

Years after it was over and he was gone, I would think of the unfortunate woman
he was living with now and engaged to marry. Poor woman with the face
               so pale and flat

like a slide down a mountain rock. Poor plus-fifty bride-to-be with the voice
               too whispery
and the chin too jutty. The hair too thin and white, the thighs too big, the walk
              so lumbering.
—from "Quiet Part Out Loud," Volume 65, Issue 1 (Spring 2024)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
It’s so hard to remember! I started writing at 13 or so, and wrote terribly...

10 Questions for Daniel Byronson

April 1, 2024 - By Franchesca Viaud

I would have liked to see myself going into the little room at the Café Boscán enraged and pistol in hand looking for his face facing some other face among the tables. He spoke wet, moldy words. I’d have stuck the barrel of the pistol to his forehead and, sublime as he ever was, he would even thank me for granting him the iron’s cool touch in the final moments of his life. Midnight sparrowhawks rose up, shaken, from the tables. Halfway through the foxtrot a shot rang out and when the lights came up they saw me, kissing the blood that ran across the shadow’s face. It tasted bittersweet and when I awoke from my dream I said so. 
—from "Selections from Ballads of Sweet Jim," Volume 65, Issue 1 (Spring 2024)

...

2024 Winner of the Anne Halley Poetry Prize

March 27, 2024 - By Staff

Congratulations to MICHAEL LAVERS, winner of this year's Anne Halley Poetry Prize!

Nathan McClain and Abigail Chabitnoy have selected Michael Lavers' poem "Sun, Birds, and Leaves" from MR's Summer 2023 issue (Vol. 64, Issue 2) for the prestigious prize.

MICHAEL LAVERS is the author of After Earth and The Inextinguishable, both published by the University of Tampa Press. His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, AGNI, Southwest Review, Best New Poets 2015...

February/March 2024 Contributor Publications

March 26, 2024 - By Staff

Past Contributor and Current Prose in Translation editor Corine Tachtiris book of critical studies, Translation and Race,is out now with Routledge.

...