Category Archives: Author Update

New releases and news related to an author previously published by Accents Publishing

Frederick Smock: The New Poet Laureate of Kentucky

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Frederick Smock, author of The Deer at Gethsemani: Ecologues, is the new Poet Laureate of Kentucky! The Kentucky Arts council made an announcement on Tuesday, April 18. Smock will officially be inducted on Kentucky Writers’ Day, which is May 1, 2017.

A new Poet Laureate is picked on every odd-numbered year. The honor of Poet Laureate has been held by a few Accents-published authors including George Ella Lyon, Frank X Walker, and Richard Taylor. The current Poet Laureate is George Ella Lyon.

Frederick Smock’s newest book, The Bounteous World, is currently available from Broadstone Books.

New Collection by Nettie Farris: The Wendy Bird Poems

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A new collection by Nettie Farris has been released from Dancing Girl Press. The Wendy Bird Poems continues the short-line style we saw in Communion (Accents Publishing, 2013). Here are some comments about the chapbook by Jeremy Paden and Katerina Stoykova-Klemer:

Indeed! I simply adore these slender poems. Farris knows how to spin and craft and shape the smallest of poems, how to turn the word as on lathe to shave away all that is unnecessary. It is not that she has grown accustomed to the diminished size, it is that she works with the tension between what is said and unsaid, with the tiniest of head nod and wink, and in the smallest of spaces she lays bare great psychological drama that opens up into insight. Do not think because the line is minimal and the poem short that you can skim across the surface of these words.

-Jeremy Paden,
Author of ruina montium
(Broadstone Books, 2016)

The Wendy Bird Poems is a truly unique book, and Nettie Farris is a truly unique poet. The collection encompasses a tender love story, so delicate, that it needs to be told not in sentences, not in words even, but in syllables. The content is distilled to such an extent that we need to be aware of the importance and the weight of every sound. Nettie Farris gives us a huge gift with this book – not only does she present a new kind of poetry, but also she teaches us to read in a new way, to see poems anew. Dear reader, enjoy this work, read it slowly and multiple times. These poems will teach you about sound, lineation, intention.

-Katerina Stoykova-Klemer,
Senior Editor/Founder Accents Publishing

Nettie’s book is currently available at the Dancing Girl Press & Studio website.

Frank X Walker Organizes Kentucky Artists in Danville

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According to Rich Copley of the Herald-Leader, Frank X Walker and Lamin Swann are organizing Kentucky artists to meet in Danville. According to the article, Frank said, “I’m crazy enough to believe Kentucky has more artists and writers than horses and distilleries. Yet our arts/artists still seem to be one of our best kept secrets. Given the current political climate in the country, I think its important for artists to be proactive and not reactionary.” Continue reading →

Holler 100 in the Media

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This Friday, September 30th, marks the 100th Holler Poets Series event at Al’s Bar as well as the last monthly installment of the series. While series founder Eric Scott Sutherland hasn’t made any concrete plans, he has hinted that it will continue in some form, just not as a monthly series and not necessarily at Al’s Bar.

Below are a few news articles about Holler 100.

Continue reading →

K. Nicole Wilson’s This Temple from Finishing Line Press

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This Temple by K Nicole Wilson (Finishing Line Press)K. Nicole Wilson has been published in & Grace, Circe’s Lament, This Wretched Vessel, and Her Limestone Bones. Wilson’s newest chapbook, This Temple, is, according to her, “a book of poems about the body and the heart, and contemplations on both the metaphorical and physical deaths of each.”

Accents Founder, Katerina Stoykova-Klemer, says:

In “This Temple” K Nicole Wilson masterfully marries the rhythm and music of language with the memorable images of pain. These kinetic poems are alive with truth and emotion. The readers feel the energy of each knot in both flesh and psyche, the buildup of tension between fear of death and the welcoming of death’s seeming relief. Relationships and expectations are explored and broken open to heal in the air of the words. The collection begins and ends with the heart – a place where beginnings and endings live together in beauty and poetry. Congratulations to K Nicole for a wonderful debut collection!

This Temple is released on September 9th, 2016, but advanced sales run until the end of the day July 15th.

Update: The original post incorrectly listed the pre-order deadline as July 14th.

Accents Update: Frank X Walker

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Just in time for the Derby, NPR ran a piece by Frank X Walker about the heritage behind “My Old Kentucky Home”.

You can read the write-up by NPR staff by clicking here.

Over the past few months, Walker has been touring local colleges, including Northeast State, Western Kentucky University, and Tuskegee University.

You can find out more information by visiting his website.

Robert Beary Has Guts: Recent Accolades and Readings

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DeflectionRoberta Beary‘s Deflection (Accents Publishing) recently won an honorable mention by the Haiku Foundation for their Touchstone Award, and Beary also won the distinction of being the only woman among the winners and runners up.

Of Deflection, the panelists said:

“Roberta Beary has guts. Within the first few pages of Deflection, the reader is presented with haibun and haiku sequences about loss of attraction, adultery, the deterioration of the author’s mother, and the author’s son coming out as gay. That’s a lot to take in, but Roberta Beary is a skilled poet, and she pulls it off.”
(source)

The winners were Dan Schwerin’s ORS (Red Moon Press, 2015) and John Stevenson’s Nest Feathers (The Heron’s Nest Press, 2015).

Roberta BearyRoberta Beary also recently read at AWP for Rattle along with Troy Jollimore, Joan Murray, and Chris Anderson. She also read from Deflection at the Writer’s Center in Bethesda, Maryland with Ann Bracken.

Beary will be at the North Carolina Haiku Society’s Haiku Holiday Conference this Satuday, April 30 at Bolin Brook Farm in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The Charlotte Observer recently ran a piece on the event, featuring Beary and mentioning her haiku studies in Japan. If you’re in the area, be sure to check her out, along with Robert Moyer and Lenard D. Moore.

For more information about Roberta Beary, check out her website.

Deflection is currently available from the Accents Store.

Matthew Minicucci Interview with Shelterbelt Reading Series

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Matthew Minicucci

photo from NPR

Matthew Minicucci, author of Reliquary (Accents Publishing, 2013) was interviewed by the University of Illinois at Springfield (UIS) radio station 91.9FM. Minicucci’s newest book, Translation (Kent State University Press, 2015) is his first full-length. The audio interview is available by clicking here.

The Shelterbelt Creative Writing and Publishing Series from UIS is a radio show that presents emerging and established writers, focusing on place. You can find more recordings from WUIS 91.9FM by clicking here.

Author Update: Emily R. Grosholz

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Emily R. Grosholz is teaching a seminar called “Poetry, Time and Space” at Writing the Rockies in July.

Writing the Rockies is an intensive creative writing retreat at Western State Colorado University from July 22-July 26. Emily’s three-day seminar will look over “Cosmologies” (such as a Platonic, Biblical, Copernican) in order to investigate the relationship between time and space in the work of such poets as Chaucer, Marlowe, Spenser, Dryden, and others.

For more information, you can download this PDF from the Western State website.

For more information:

emily_grosholz_smEmily Grosholz grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia, and has taught philosophy at the Pennsylvania State University for thirty-five years, with sojourns in France, England, Germany, the Netherlands, Israel, Finland, Costa Rica, Russia, Greece, Spain and Italy. She and her husband Robert R. Edwards (medievalist, rugbyman, and soccer coach) raised four children in State College, Pennsylvania, surrounded by small farms and green hills on one side and the town and university on the other. She is an advisory editor for The Hudson Review,and this is her seventh book of poetry.

Accents Author Update: Bobby Steve Baker

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Bobby Steve BakerBobby Steve Baker (author of Numbered Bones) is set to release a new collection of ekphrastic poetry, This Crazy Urge to Live (Linnet’s Wings), and was recently interviewed by Bop Dead City (you can read the interview by clicking here). In the interview, he talks about his greatest influences, his inspirations, and even doles out some wisdom for aspiring poets:

“I don’t care what critique groups say about a poem; if I like it then it’s a keeper.”

–source

This Crazy Urge to Live is expected in March, so keep checking out the Linnett’s Wings site, or stay tuned to the Accents Blog for updates on all of our authors as well as anything Lexington poetry-related.