LAUREL PRIZE

As a judge for the international Laurel Prize with poets Glyn Maxwell and Tishani Doshi, I will be in England for the month of September, 2022. During that time, I will take part in the Birmingham and Yorkshire ceremonies, teach four classes, and give four readings. https://laurelprize.com/

‘We are facing the most catastrophic threat to the future of our planet that we have ever encountered.’

Over the course of my ten-year Laureateship I want one of the headline projects to be a prize or award that recognises and encourages the resurgence of nature and environmental writing, currently taking place in poetry.

The new wave of nature writing in non-fiction has been well documented over recent years but not enough attention has been paid to a similar move in poetry, with climate crisis and environmental concerns clearly provoking this important strand of work.

I have established The Laurel Prize as an annual award for the best collection of nature or environmental poetry to highlight the climate crisis and raise awareness of the challenges and potential solutions at this critical point in our planet’s life. The Prize will dovetail and partner with The Ginkgo Prize which rewards best single poems.

In celebrating and rewarding this work, the Prize aims to encourage more of it, and to become part of the discourse and awareness about our current environmental predicament.

Building on the success of its inaugural year, the Laurel Prize will now become an international award for nature poetry written in English. This is also a way of recognising the global importance of environmentalism, and drawing together concerned voices from across the planet.

I will donate my annual Laureate Honorarium of £5,000 towards the prize money each year.

Simon Armitage., Poet Laureate

The Laurel Prize

First Prize – £5,000
Second Prize – £2,000
Third Prize – £1,000
Prize for Best First Collection – £500

APRIL ~ MAY EVENTS!

Elena Karina Byrne If This Makes You Nervous (Omnidawn Publishing, 2021)

 

Saturday, April 2, 2022

Lummis Day Library Series

http://www.lummisday.org/poetryinthelibrary

Eagle Rock Library/ zoom

3:00–4:30 p.m. PT

 

Sunday, April 24, 2022

The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books

with Marty Williams

U.S.C Campus

12:30–1:00 p.m. PT

 

Thursday, April 28, 2022

Chevaliers Book Store

Reading with poets: Gail Wronsky,

Maureen Alsop, & Yun Wang.

 

Tuesday, May 3, 2022

PRATIK Anthology Reading

with So. Cal poets

Whittier College

5:00–7:00 p.m. PT

 

Sunday, May 15, 2022

POETS.LA Live Video Interview

with Mariano Zaro

 

Saturday, May 28, 2022

The Claremont Library Reading Series

with Daniel Romo

Helen Renwick Library

2:00–4:00 p.m. PT

 

SO delighted to be one of the writers included in this marvelous anthology

What Falls Away is Always: Writers Over 60 on Writing & Death (What Books Press, 2021)

Anthology on Writing & Death

In 2019, writers from Los Angeles' Glass Table Collective, all over 60, gathered at AWP Portland to take up the idea of late-stage writing. What is it like to grow old as a writer, to face both the page and one's final years in the same breath? Then the pandemic came. By turns searing, poignant, and downright funny, What Falls Away is Always brings together more than thirty writers of both prose and poetry to reflect on the experiences of aging and writing they share, along with the possibly more daunting question—what next?
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"I am always looking for advice on how to live the dwindling remainder of my days and how to write despite this awareness. This volume of short essays (averaging four pages each) seemed exactly what I needed. I would learn strategies for how to thrive as an aging writer, I supposed. But that's not exactly what happened...I turned to this collection for wisdom...What I found instead was comfort: comfort in the company of writers who go before me."
— Jessica Goodyear's review in Barrelhouse Magazine

"Taking its cue from Theodore Roethke's sublime, indelible villanelle, 'The Waking,' this is an eclectic and wise compendium of writers addressing the richness and challenges of embracing aging, leave-taking, and the majestic journey toward death. Some of these testimonial essays are so tell-true and bracing, it's exhilarating. Diane Seuss, one of America's best and liveliest contemporary poets insists: "Death is not an artificial boundary. It's as dumb and real as Trump's wall. It's as dumb and real as artificial flowers." These way-showing, articulate elders bear candid witness to the late-in-life craving for mundane joy and 'mere existence' alongside rallying impulses to attempt their best, most daring work yet. An invigorating and inspiring book!" -— Cyrus Cassells

"Theodore Roethke, whose words give this anthology its title, once wrote 'There are times when reality comes closer,' and in these meditations death comes close, oh so close, to the reader. The
​authors here entertain pressing questions: What ghosts should we keep around, and which let go? How do we talk to Death? Do we invite and her accept her into the commotion of life? Must we take inventory of our past accomplishments? How do we proceed with artistic endeavors in old age? Is there such a thing as a 'late style'? Be consoles, and surprised, as you listen in to these courageous voices." — Molly Bendall

My First Reading from my new book, If This Makes You Nervous (Omnidawn, October 2021)

My First Reading! from my new book, If This Makes You Nervous (Omnidawn, October 2021)will take place on zoom with US poet Patricia Smith and UK poet John McCullough will take place Saturday, October 23, 12:30 Pacific Time, as a part of The Big Poetry Weekend UK Festival.

https://bigpoetryweekend.com/2021-full-programme/?fbclid=IwAR10mXevX6Q9gMw-kVOEaHlM1hzKjlX1bw8cBk7HyebjXe54QUgOh-R3j8U

https://www.facebook.com/BigPoetryWknd/

@BigPoetryWknd

Elena Karina Byrne’s chapbook NO, DON'T Is Available Now

Elena Karina Byrne’s new chapbook, NO, DON’T, offers a restless portrait of identity that reflects the shifting terrains of desire and gender, of personal loss and punishing empowerment, and of political and cultural abuse. Under the influence of language's “steeplechase hours,” this book’s “carnal ambition” becomes a cinematic crash between fate and will as reality marries wild imagination. Each inventive poem turns perception into action and feeling into a musical art of attention as the poet travels between the past and the present, between conscious and unconscious thinking in order to tell a powerful story.

INTERVIEWS With Megan Ferndandez, Perry Janes, Enrique Martinéz Celaya