Enjoy the old Q&As! Maybe we'll do this again one day, soon. 

Poet(s) currently taking questions: None.

Archives:

Joseph J Capista Poetry Reading - May 12, 2019

Watch his reading here!  [ read more ]

Clarinda Harriss Poetry Reading - May 12, 2019

Watch her poetry reading here!  [ read more ]

Issue 15 Reading & Party Slideshow

Smartish Pace Issue 15 release party, May 31, 2008, at The Whole Gallery featuring Christopher Cunningham, Douglas Basford, Stephen Kampa, Lia Purpura & Terrance Wedin. Followed by music from Scout, Beans and Baby Venom (slideshow music). SP Editors in the house: Clare Banks, Traci O'Dea, Jared Fischer & Stephen Reichert.

Interview with Stephen Cushman

STEPHEN REICHERT: First off, thank you for agreeing to do this interview despite the busyness of your semester. I'd like to begin with your origins and influences. What was it about your upbringing that led to your life as a poet? STEPHEN CUSHMAN: I can think of two ways to answer this question. The first would be to reel off some autobiographical facts that might account for a love of language and literature. My father was a professor of American literature, my mother a librarian, so I grew up in a verbal household, one in which both talking and reading (or at first being read to) occupied a large share of my time. But these autobiographical facts only help to explain literacy; they don't explain why someone who grew up in such a household would choose writing in addition to reading, and they don't explain why such a person would choose to write verse rather than prose. To account for those developments is much harder. I know that I began to write poems in high school, and I suspect that I wrote them for much the same reason other people in high ... [ read more ]

Twigs & Knucklebones

Sarah Lindsay’s Twigs & Knucklebones is an ambitious poetry collection, with its center section, “The Kingdom of Nab,” every bit as complex and substantive and satisfying as a stand-alone book (Copper Canyon and the Lannan Foundation rarely disappoint). The theme of the book is artifact, and Lindsay has made this topic exactly as broad and narrow as it should be. “The Kingdom of Nab” is an archeology dig spanning decades. Stories emerge in this section ... [ read more ]