Not Yo’ Mama’s Poetry!
May 16, 2014, by Inprint Staff
If you still have nightmares about interpreting The Rime of the Ancient Mariner for your seventh grade English teacher, come conquer your fear of poetry and hear what hip young poets are writing these days.
There is a ton of fresh, smart, and diverse poetry coming from Houston poets and it’s exciting to see. Inprint is proud that the four University of Houston Creative Writing Program PhD candidates who will be reading their poetry Monday night—Beth Lyons, David Tomas Martinez, Karyna McGlynn, and Justine Post—are good friends of the organization and the Houston reading and writing community. The free reading takes place Monday, May 19, 7 pm at Brazos Bookstore, Houston’s fine independent bookseller, 2421 Bissonnet.
All four poets have participated in Inprint’s Poetry Buskers program, which sends poets out to write poetry on demand (on a typewriter!) at Houston festivals and other public events. Justine and Karyna have each won the Inprint Paul Verlaine Prize in Poetry; David Tomas was one of the three pre-dinner readers at this year’s Inprint Poets & Writers Ball and will be teaching an Inprint Writers Workshop this summer; and Beth is currently working part-time at Inprint! We are also happy to report that all four are wonderful poets whose work yields many riches.
Here’s a short poem we promise you’ll understand from David Tomas Martinez’s just released book of poetry, Hustle, along with bios of each of the poets who will read Monday night
There have
been exciting
discoveries
in the field
of me.
Many
of which,
I have
made
myself.
Elizabeth Lyons’ poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Tin House, Indiana Review and Salt Hill. She has won fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, Vermont Studio Center, and the I-Park Foundation, and has an MFA from Purdue University. She is a PhD candidate at the University of Houston Creative Writing Program and a non-fiction editor for Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts, which is based at UH.
David Tomas Martinez is the author of Hustle, from Sarabande Books. His work has been published or is forthcoming in Forklift, Ohio, Poetry International, Gulf Coast, Drunken Boat, RHINO, Ampersand, Caldera Review, Verse Junkies, California Journal of Poetics, and Toe Good. He is a PhD candidate at the University of Houston Creative Writing Program, and reviews and interviews editor for Gulf Coast, and a CantoMundo Fellow.
Karyna McGlynn is the author of I Have to Go Back to 1994 and Kill a Girl, winner of the Kathryn A. Morton Prize from Sarabande Books, and two chapbooks. She is also the winner of the 2014 Inprint Paul Verlaine Prize in Poetry. Her poems have appeared in Fence, Salt Hill, Denver Quarterly, Ninth Letter, Court Green, and The Poetry Foundation’s Poem-a-Day. Karyna received her MFA from the University of Michigan, and is currently the Managing Editor of Gulf Coast, and coordinator of the Houston Indie Book Fest.
Justine Post is the author of Beast. She is currently earning her PhD at the University of Houston Creative Writing Program, where she is a poetry editor for Gulf Coast. She is the recipient of the 2013 Inprint Paul Verlaine Prize in Poetry, the “Discovery” / Boston Review Poetry Prize, and others. Her poems have recently appeared in American Letters & Commentary, Boston Review, Denver Quarterly, The Kenyon Review Online, and Pleiades.