Contact U of Mo-Ks. City Provost to save New Letters literary radio show and BkMk Press!

Dear writer friends, I sent this to telltheprovost@umkc.edu. Details are at KCUR.
Dear Provost and Administration Team, New Letters on the Air, BkMk Press and New Letters magazine are good for business. Please do not cut any of them. Four years ago I met at the Tannic Bar with Mayor Sly James and the convention coordinator, along with the AWP conference chair and assistant, to discuss the possibility of Associated Writers and Writing Programs having its annual conference of 15,000 in Kansas City. This is the largest literary conference in the world. (I had been AWP board president and conference chair previously and was their contact in the KC area.) Yes, there were BBQ and jazz as enticements, but more so there were the creative writing programs at UMKC and nearby KU and MU. In particular, the UMKC-sponsored suite of New Letters, NL on the Air, and BkMk Press were what the AWP conference staff recognized as national literary programs. AWP decided to locate the conference in KC in 2021 as a result of our discussion. https://www.awpwriter.org/awp_conference/overview . Indeed, the arts in Missouri are a 3 billion dollar asset, 3.3% of the state's economic value (National Endowment for the Arts https://www.arts.gov/artistic-fields/research-analysis/arts-data-profiles/arts-data-profile-25 ). Diminishing assets of UMKC may be a short-term fix, but in the long run, a shell of a vocational school might remain. Yes, the inhumane release of employees without health insurance with two weeks' notice is despicable. Yes, these are culturally essential heritages that are being extinguished. Yes, this will diminish UMKC in its accreditation profile. Also, this is bad business. Please reconsider your plans to cut New Letters on the Air and BkMk Press. Please do retain New Letters magazine.

Sincerely, Denise Low, Kansas Poet Laureate 2006-08 and proud New Letters, BkMk, and New Letters on the Air author.

Carolyne Wright reviews Jackalope by Denise Low for New Letters!

Much gratitude to Carolyn Lee Wright for her extended review, "Jackalope Walks into a Bar," in New

Letters. She extends the lore of Jackalope in important ways in addition to responding to my collection of short pieces--fiction or no?--in this book from Red Mountain Press. Many thanks! And the book is a steady seller at Small Press Distribution. 
The review is an artful piece, and it includes this commentary:
"In these interstices between fantasy and creatively tweaked fact, Low keeps her tone both lyrical and light; but shining through the humor—literary and Indian inside jokes, bawdy anecdotes, and gentle fun-poking at contemporary and historical indigenous and Anglo cultural figures—are glimpses of the very real oppression to which such oblique humor is one survival response.  In “Jackalope Walks into Custer’s Last Bar,” Jaq is offered the fanciest drink (“Custer’s Custard”) and is regaled with bitter anecdotes and jokes targeting this last-in-his-West-Point-class Civil War hero, who turned genocidal criminal against the plains tribes until his final demise at the Battle of Greasy Grass (aka Little Bighorn)."

New Letters publishes Denise Low's review of Lombardo's Sappho

I appreciate the elegant journal New Letter's publication of my review of Stanley Lombardo’s

translation Sappho: Complete Poems and Fragments (Hackett) for the new issue of New Letters. Here is a brief excerpt:
"Lombardo deliberately composes pages of the least complete fragments to preserve placements of text. This creates a field of inverse lacuna, as the few remaining words appear within the larger gaps of loss. This is a collage effect. Susan Howe’s 2017 book Debths has a similar, deliberate effect. She composes pages of white space and text clippings, some lines smudged beyond recognition. She explains the bricolage sections: 'Our eyes see what is outside in the landscape in the form of words on paper but inside, a slash or mark wells up from a deeper place where music before counting hails from' (22)." The complete text of the review is a PDF on the New Letters website.  New Letters v. 84, no. 1 (2017-18): 131-4.

See NEW LETTERS review of DG OKPIK's CORPSE WHALE

As the year winds down, I remember some of the exciting books published. Here is one, which I reviewed for New Letters (see link). Dg okpik is Inuit and mashes together Russian, English, Norse, and Inuit language/traditions to represent the Arctic experience. Amazing. http://www.newletters.org/UserFiles/File/79.3%20PDFs/Low_okpik%20Review.pdf


 

Stanley Banks New Letters on the Air Interview Available Until Aug. 15

I've been an admirer of Stan Banks since we published together in a volume Mid American Trio, a collection of 3 chapbooks by Stan, Greg Field, and myself. Dan Jaffee edited this for BookMark Press. Stan continues to be a leading figure in the KC area and beyond. New Letters on the Air has an excellent interview with him. Angela Elam brings out the best in her subjects. She also does her background research.

I have learned how to listen to these online podcasts and also download them, and what a luxury it is to hear the author and have the opportunity to acquire this interview free until Aug. 15. Treat yourself to this conversation between Stan Banks and Angela Elam. Here is the New Letters description and link:

"Stanley E. Banks’ poetry explores the segregated Kansas City of his youth and some of the difficulties of growing up in his black neighborhood. In this program, he discusses how he overcame racial prejudice to find success in the unlikely arena of poetry. A literary child of the earlier Missouri poet, Langston Hughes, Banks reads from Blue Beat Syncopation, the collection that captures the first 25 years of his career."

http://www.newletters.org/onTheAir.asp

New Letters on the Air Denise Low Interview Available to Aug. 8

Angela Elam of New Letters on the Air did this interview a few weeks ago, broadcast July 13. If you download this, you have a chance to win a free copy of my book Words of a Prairie Alchemist.

You may download the radio program free of charge until Aug. 8. After that, it is available for purchase on CD or cassette. My thanks to Angela and Dennis Cosgrove and Bob Stewart and everyone at New Letters!

Podcast Denise Low interview site: http://www.newletters.org/onTheAir.asp
New Letters On the Air podcast subscription site: http://www.newletters.org/feeds/podcast.xml