Shira Dentz

Poetry in Performance at the College of Saint Rose

Students perform poems from Shira Dentz’s how do i net thee (Salmon Poetry, 2018). Listen here at SoundCloud

“Let the possum go,” a poem from THE SUN A BLAZING ZERO (Lavender Ink/Diálogos, 2019) featured at Verse Daily on Monday, 3/16/20. Read it here!

“MAGICAL REALISM” BY SHIRA DENTZ

Wow, what James Knippen wrote in his shout-out to a a few of the best books of poetry he’s read in 2019:

“THE SUN A BLAZING ZERO, Shira Dentz: I am a sucker for poems that eschew traditional syntax for purposes of rhythmicality and general weirdness. But too often such poems, entertaining as they are, feel more gimmicky than authentic—the strangeness being the point rather than the strangeness serving the point. Dentz’s poems, though, are personal and feel wholly authentic—less Ron Silliman (strangeness constructed) and more Alfred Starr Hamilton or Michael Burkard (strangeness inherent). Their syntactical and tonal variety, and rhythmicality, work toward elucidating heartbreak and trauma rather than obscuring it. And what self-respecting poet wouldn’t succumb to language like this: “i want tomatoes rocks a whole story happened/flying across water a leaf falls birdacross/the sound sparrow tight welcoming//saw words the element sparrow of wind. it mat i like wate. breast botta moving./procks alone”?”

It’s Sugar House Review‘s 10-year anniversary. Which means instead of publishing two issues in 2019, there’s one, deluxe issue—available now!

I’m honored to have four poems in this incredible issue with such great writers and writing.

Check out this unique magazine in which all its contents are inspired and centered on MAPS! My piece, “COME, BE ONE WITH ME,” was inspired by a map of a dual tetrahedron. Read the whole 11th issue here

Volume Reading Series, a monthly reading series, co-curated by Hallie Goodman and Dani Grammerstorf French, is happening again Saturday, October 12 at 7PM, and I’m looking forward to reading from my new book, THE SUN A BLAZING ZERO, along with writers Leland Cheuk and Elissa Altman. Yay to Spotty Dog Books in Hudson, NY who host this reading series! More info here

New poems by Steven Alvarez, James Shea, and yours truly, in the new issue of Newfound!

A serene fog of moons sprinkled with plums

The schedule is up for this symposium!

“Slow: A Symposium in Praxis & Theory”—a one-day interdisciplinary event hosted by MCLA and MASS MoCA—will be held at MASS MoCA in North Adams, MA on Friday, November 1, 2019. The symposium will feature over 40 speakers from a range of scholarly and creative disciplines including keynote lecturer, Tina Campt, Owen F. Walker Professor of Humanities and Modern Culture and Media at Brown University and author of Listening to Images (Duke UP, 2017) and Image Matters: Archive, Photography, and the African Diaspora in Europe (Duke UP, 2012).

I’ll be moderating and presenting on a panel, Traces & Tracing: Slowness as an Approach to the  Phenomenological in Creative Writing, with Shena McAullife, Union College – “Trace as in Map, ”Adam Tedesco, Independent Artist – “Trace as in Follow,” and Shira Dentz, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute – “Trace as in Remainder”

Kelly Lydick interviews me about my most recent books, how do i net thee and the sun a blazing zero, and my forthcoming book, Sisyphusina from Pank Books in “Shira Dentz: The Arc, the Form, the Formless | interviewed by Kelly Lydick”