Inaugural Poet – Elizabeth Alexander

Jan 1, 2009 by donny

American President-elect Barack Obama has picked Elizabeth Alexander, an award-winning and Pulitzer Prize Finalist poet, to read a poem at his inauguration on the 20 January 2009.  The poem shall be written specifically by Alexander for the event.

This is only the fourth time in America’s history that a president has invited a poet at the inauguration.  The others were Robert Frost for JFK, and Maya Angelou  and Miller Williams for Bill Clinton.

Alexander says in her website,

Poetry is not meant to cheer; rather, poetry challenges, and moves us towards transformation. Language distilled and artfully arranged shifts our experience of the words – and the worldviews – we live in.

Apparently she is a friend of Obama’s, but when asked if that played a part on her being picked, she had this to say:

“One of the things we’ve seen with every choice he’s made is that it’s based on what he perceives as excellence,” Ms. Alexander said. “I don’t think you would let friendship determine who you chose to do something like this. You can do lots of things to be nice to your friends — you can invite them to an inaugural ball. But I don’t think friends have to do each other this kind of favor.”

Read more about her in the WSJ and NYTimes.

Thanks to About.com.

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Harold Pinter RIP

Dec 25, 2008 by donny

Harold Pinter died a day before Christmas, it was reported today, after a protracted battle with throat cancer.  Pinter was a Nobel Prize for Literature winner, and his acceptance speech at the event remains one of the more controversial of any awards ceremony.

He was 78.

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Slate’s New Poetry Podcast

Dec 24, 2008 by donny

Slate already produces some of my most listened-to podcasts, including the Political Gabfest and Slate Daily Podcast (which is the read versions of their selected published articles).  And of course, they have an Audio Book Club podcast as well, which discusses specific books every episode.

One of their newer podcasts is the Slate Poetry podcast, which features poems read by their authors.

Now you can listen to Slate poetry wherever you go. Below, browse Slate‘s weekly lineup of new and renewed work by leading poets, selected by Robert Pinsky and read to you by the author. Or subscribe to Slate‘s new Poetry Podcast feed on iTunes and carry the poems with you.

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Twilight author stops work on sequel when draft leaked on the Internet

Dec 24, 2008 by donny

Almost nobody can escape the apparent mania surrounding Twilight, Stephenie Meyer’s vampire love story, given that the movie is generating plenty of silver screen buzz at the moment.

Shortly before the movie came out, the draft of her latest novel in her Twilight Saga, Midnight Sun, found its way to the Internet, and has been spread all across the popular social networking sites.

So upset at this revelation that Meyer has decided to shelf Midnight Sun indefinitely.  She also decided to make available the leaked draft at her own site.  You can read her reaction to the leak at her official website (her site is not a blog, so you’ll have to scroll until the August 28 2008 entry to read her take on the leak).

I can’t imagine what her fans might feel about this.  Imagine if Rowling decided not to publish The Deathly Hallows if her work was leaked.

So this story brings about a couple of questions for me:

Would you read leaked drafts – not even complete works! – of your favourite books, knowing full well that it’s probably not final and that things may change?  If you’re an author, would you react (or, as the case may be, retract) in the same way as Meyer?  What does this say about the writing process at this day and age, since it’s now so easy to proliferate digital content?  Was this preventable?

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