Welcome to our first installment of This Week in Poetry! This week, in poetry, there’s lots of great news for The Journal contributors!

• Nate Marshall, a contributor to our upcoming Winter issue (which you can buy at our table at AWP!), co-edited an anthology of hip-hop poetry called The BreakBeat Poets, out next week from Haymarket Books. Poetry Magazine (yes, that Poetry Magazine) liked it so much that all—yes, all—the poems in their April issue are from The BreakBeat Poets. So maybe you should check it out.

 

• Poetry Editors Megan Peak and David Winter are pleased to announce their nominations for Best New Poets 2015: “Agency” by Emily Vizzo from Issue 38.3, and “knob & tube” by Leia Darwish from Issue 38.4. Vizzo was also a finalist for last year’s Wheeler Prize in Poetry.

 

• Contributor Danez Smith, whose “My Body (Thug Mansion Remix)” appeared in Issue 38.4, has just signed a contract with Graywolf Press for his second book, expected in 2017. Way to Go, Danez!

 

• Spring contributor John Paul Davis, a poet and web designer, has created a website for poets trying to do the National Poetry Month 30 Poems in 30 Days Challenge (not to be confused for ESPN’s acclaimed sports documentary series, 30 for 30). Here’s what he had to say about it, via Facebook: “Hey poets! Planning on doing a 30/30 this year? The online tool I built in 2013 for posting poems privately to a personal blog is still up and running. You can post poems no one but people you approve see, and you can request to see the poems of other poets if you like. All the poets to whom you are subscribed get aggregated into a feed on your home page.” Check it out at www.thirtythirty.org
Lauren C. Barret is a writer and editor living in Portland, Maine. She received her MFA in creative writing from The Ohio State University in 2015, and a BA from Kenyon College many years before that. She tweets at @laurencbarret and tumbls only for you.