Summer's fade, Boston poet laureate's big award, Black Ocean's new series, and Freedom to Read

Dear all, the tomatoes are fat and the corn is sweet and we are in summer and summer’s fade. Yesterday in Harvard Square, two women near me spoke of their long bike ride that morning. “You could feel fall in the air,” one said. “No, no, don’t say it,” the other objected. But she was right. You could. You can. Mid-August’s fluttered tension, the melted ease of summer and its end on the horizon visible. I’m reading old poems, and back in Lisa Robertson’s Riverwork. I saw The Odyssey and wow the Cyclops and gosh the Circe scene, and what a snooze the whole Calypso framing was. Three hours moved quick, and sometimes my brain stopped yelling it’s Matt Damon, it’s Matt Damon, and I was held by the spectacle. Buying tomatoes at the farmers’ market the other day, I asked the woman how her summer was. “Still on this side of the eternal dirt blanket, so no complaints.” Like Achilles in the Underworld says, he’d rather toil for a farmer “than rule down here over all the breathless dead.” I feel lucky to be here, and lucky you’re with me. Here in the waning weeks of August, some quick literary news for you.

Boston poet laureate receives big Academy of American Poets award

The Academy of American Poets recently announced its most recent group of poets laureate around the country who will each receive $50,000, allowing the poets to create “meaningful and innovative” poetry projects for their communities. Twenty-two poets were awarded the money this year. In New England, Emmanuel Oppong-Yeboah, poet laureate of Boston, received the award, and will be establishing a yearly writing retreat in Boston’s majority-Black neighborhoods, as well as expand the NorthBeast Regional Poetry Slam and Festival. Besides serving as Boston’s fourth poet laureate, Oppong-Yeboah is a Ghanaian American educator, school librarian, and editor.

Black Ocean launches new series of Arab women’s poetry in translation
In celebration of its 20^th year, the powerful, depthy Boston-based Black Ocean press is launching a ten-book series of new Arab women’s poetry in translation. The first book in the “Songs for Fairuz” series is Iraqi poet Hanaa Ahmad Jabr’s I Drag My Sorrow by His Collar, translated by Salem, Mass-based poet and translator Jennifer Jean and Wadaq Qais. (You can pre-order it here.) Black Ocean received a $20,000 grant from the Merrill Family Charitable Trust to support the series, and they’re looking to raise $20,000 more from reader donations. The money will go towards compensating poets, translators, and editors, covering design, printing, and production costs. I admire what Black Ocean does, their commitment to work on the edges, work in translation, work that travels further into the reaches than a lot of places. You can support their work and this new series right here.

Massachusetts passes Freedom to Read bill

Last week, Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey signed into law the ‘An Act Regarding Free Expression,’ the Freedom to Read bill, fighting against book bans and protecting the right to access books in Massachusetts libraries. Mass Freedom to Read, a coalition including local organizations, national partners, and a number of committed individuals, has been working to push this bill forward in a fervent fight against censorship. “Politically motivated book challenges are dangerous acts of censorship that harm us all,” said executive director of the ACLU of Massachusetts Carol Rose. “This new law builds a firewall against such cynical acts, protecting students’ freedom to read and learn and respecting the expertise of professional educators and librarians.” And Gayatri Patnaik, director of Beacon Books commented, “Governor Healey’s signing of the Freedom to Read bill is a victory for readers, authors, educators, librarians, and everyone who believes in the power of ideas. Massachusetts has long been a beacon for intellectual freedom, and today’s action reinforces that proud tradition.” Learn more about Mass Freedom to Read right here.

Books of note out this week

Her Own Voice: Eight Women Who Rewrote Life and Art by Anne E. Fernald (Beacon).

The Maltese Version by Katy Simpson Smith (FSG).

Range by Dorthe Nors, translated from Danish by Caroline Waight (Graywolf).

Booksellers’ best: Staff picks from New England independent booksellers
Alice at the Brookline Booksmith in Brookline, Massachusetts, recommends Indelible City: Dispossession and Defiance in Hong Kong by Louisa Lim (Riverhead): “A deeply personal history that centers the voices of Hong Kongers and chronicles how colonial forces shape lives and erase identities. Woven in is a micro-history of the King of Kowloon, Tsang Tsou Choi, a trash collector and iconic, guerrilla street calligrapher whose defiance symbolizes the Hong Kong peoples’ centuries of resistance.”

Thank you as always for being here. Thank you for being part of this. You’re helping keep the literary ecosystem healthy. If this work matters to you, if you appreciate what I’m up to, please help me keep it going with a paid subscription. With my gratitude always, and my warmth to you wherever you are in your summer.