Blackbird, In Previous Issues, v15n1

IN PREVIOUS ISSUES

Blackbird publishes new issues twice a year. The notion of “issue” is both a nod to the print journal and a way for us to call attention to the new work of a limited number of writers. However, publishing online allows us keep all issues available for reading, listening, and viewing. On this page, we wish to point you toward some of the content you may have missed but which still lives in our Archives.

		Betty Adcock Blackbird first published Betty Adcock with her poem “Found” in v7n2. Adcock was one of six readers at the October 2015 event “Poetic Principles: An Evening with the Poetry of Claudia Emerson,” hosted by the Library of Virginia and Blackbird. She is the author of seven books of poetry, including Slantwise(Louisiana State University Press, 2008), which won the L.E. Phillabaum Poetry Award, and her recent chapbook Widow Poems (Jacar Press, 2014).

		Traci Brimhall Traci Brimhall’s poetry first appeared in v10n2, which featured her poems “Our Lady of Ruins,” “Sans Terre,” and “To Poison the Lion.” Brimhall is the author of three books of poetry: Rookery (Southern Illinois University Press, 2010), Our Lady of the Ruins (W.W. Norton, 2012), and the forthcoming Saudade (Copper Canyon Press). Her first children’s book, Sophia & The Boy Who Fell, will be published in the spring of 2017 by Pleiades Press.

		David Caudle In v8n2, David Caudle’s play The Common Swallow was published along with commentary from the playwright and director Kirsten Kelly on the original performance at the Bleecker Street Theater in New York. The Common Swallow’s setting in the modern-day American heartland strikes a contrast with the newest inclusion in Blackbird of Caudle’s work: Likeness, in v15n2, which paints a scene of Revolutionary War-era Boston.

		Matt Donovan Matt Donovan first appeared as in v7n2’s Levis Remembered reading loop, featuring original poems. The Levis Remembered loop of v9n2 also contains an essay of Donovan’s, “Unreality & Real Distress: Ekphrasis and Emotion in the Poems of Larry Levis.” His nonfiction lyric essay about Rome’s Pantheon, “Almost a Full Year of Stone, Light, and Sky,” can be found in v14n1. In v15n1, Donovan returns to the topic of Levis with “What Someone Was Supposed to Swing: Secularizing the Spiritual in Larry Levis’s The Darkening Trapeze.”

		Beth Ann Fennelly Beth Ann Fennelly’s work was first published in Blackbird in v3n1 with two poems: “Favors” and “We Are the Renters.” Her poetry appeared as a longer series, accompanied by audio readings, in both v6n1 and v6n2. Excerpts from her series, “Say You Waved: A Dream Song Cycle,” first published by The Southern Review, were republished by Blackbird, in order to present the cycle in its totality. She is the author of three poetry collections from W.W. Norton.

		George Ferrandi George Ferrandi’s visual art first appeared in Blackbird’s v4n2 with an installation series titled Superhero, Sidekick, Gaggle of Ghosts, complimented with an artist introduction. This debut in Blackbird followed shortly after her installation, Leaving Visibility, appeared in spring 2005 at Virginia Commonwealth University. Ferrandi’s work appeared again in v13n1 with a performance piece titled The Prosthetics of Joy, with accompanying materials: drawings as well as process and performance videos and photographs.

		T.R. Hummer T.R. Hummer has a long history with Blackbird. Eleven of his poems, along with one nonfiction essay, appeared in v2n2, which also featured an interview with Blackbird editor Gregory Donovan. Since then his poetry has been featured in v9n1, v11n2, and v15n1. An audio recording of Hummer reading from Skandalon, his most recent poetry collection (LSU Press, 2014), was featured in v14n1. A review essay of his work appears in this issue under Nonfiction.

		Rodney Jones Blackbird first published a series of Rodney Jones’s poems in v4n1, and in v5n1, featured a reading sponsored by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and New Virginia Review, Inc., at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Since his appearance in Blackbird in 2005, Jones has published two more collection of poetry with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt: Salvation Blues: One Hundred Poems, 1985–2005 (2006) and Imaginary Logic (2011). In 2007 he received the Kingsley-Tuft Award.

		Anna Journey Anna Journey’s book reviews were first published in Blackbird in v4n1, appearing in many more issues. Her nonfiction piece, “Because Everyone Needs a Little Thantos,” appeared alongside several poems in v8n1. In v8n2, Randy Marshall reviewed her first poetry collection, If Birds Gather Your Hair for Nesting (University of Georgia, 2009), which was selected by Thomas Lux for the National Poetry Series. Her essay “Bluebeard’s Closet” appears in this issue.

		Andrew Kozma Andrew Kozma has been featured in Blackbird twice before. Two of his poems (“Essence and Justification” and “Where Humans Live Roaches”) appeared in v11n1, and a second set (“And Here It Seems the Author Died” and “Huge Piece of Building”) was featured in v13n1. His collection of poetry, City of Regret (Zone 3 Press), was published in 2007 and won the Zone 3 Press First Book Award for Poetry.

		Sofia Starnes Sofia Starnes first appeared in Blackbird with her poem, “Nightlife,” which was published in the fall of 2009 for issue v8n2. Since her Blackbird debut, Starnes published her fifth poetry collection, Love and the Afterlife (Franciscan University Press, 2012), and later served as Virginia’s 2012–14 Poet Laureate. Her new poem called “Last. Child. Last. Child” appears in v15n2.

		David St. John The work of David St. John has appeared intermittently in Blackbird since the premier issue in the spring of 2002, in which he contributed four enigmatic poems. St. John has also provided Blackbird with essays about the poetry of his contemporary, the late poet Larry Levis, including “From Elegy to Trapeze” in v13n2. Two new poems by St. John appear in v15n2: “Going Places” and “The Darkroom.”

		Terese Svoboda Terese Svoboda first appeared in Blackbird with her poem “Pineal” in v1n2. She returned in v5n2 with four new poems, including the adventurous “Control C,” a poem ignited by Wallace Stevens’s “The Comedian as the Letter C.” Svoboda makes her fiction debut with her story “A Thankful Scenario” in v15n2.