Recent news featuring Copper Canyon Press poets.
Richard Siken in Divedapper
“Figurative language is a purposeful distortion of the language. The bend away from the literal makes it artful, expressive. It’s language that moves sideways, that encourages lateral thinking. It celebrates possibility. Because it evokes instead of defines, some find it infuriating. Poetry suggests, it doesn’t explain.”—Richard Siken
You Must Live included among “Best Recent Poetry” in The Guardian
“Featuring more than 30 poets living in Gaza and the West Bank, with work written in the last few years, these poems testify to the resilience of the artists, and the role that poetry still has to give voice and bear witness in times of crisis.”—The Guardian, “Best Recent Poetry”
Retrospectives: An Interview with Christopher Kondrich” by The National Poetry Series
“A poem is a door that one uses words to pass through. It is both a text and an experience—the door itself and the act of passing through it, and, as such, a poem is both what is discovered and the means of discovery. It leads one either to the interiority of the external world or to the externalization of one’s interior life. The door is drawn on the page, on the poet, and on the ear. The poem’s primary reality is that it is heard.” –Christopher Kondrich
“Marianne Boruch on Her Process” in Poets & Writers
Listen to Marienne Boruch, winner of the 2026 Jackson Poetry Prize, talk about The Book of Hours (Copper Canyon Press, 2011), which received the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award in 2013.
“U.S. Poet Laureate Arthur Sze is taking on the art of translated poetry” on Where We Live radio show
Connecticut Public Radio hosts Arthur Sze for a conversation on “poetry, the power of language, and the art of translation.”
Listen to the full episode here.
A Review of Kelli Russell Agodon’s Accidental Devotions in the Adroit Journal
“An incandescent and tender exploration of what it means to be human in the confusion of contemporary life.”—Maria Surrichio, Adroit Journal
“U.S. Poet Laureate offers advice for the poetry curious” in Durango Herald
“I also think poetry has a vital role to play, because it requires that a reader slow down and say the poem aloud, listen to the sounds and the rhythm and feel it in your body. We live in such a fast-paced world, but we’re moving on the surface, and we sacrifice depth because of that. Poetry makes you slow down and deepen your experience and awareness.”–Arthur Sze
Arthur Sze inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters
On May 20, U.S. Poet Laureate Arthur Sze was inducted into the Department of Literature of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Founded in 1898, the American Academy of Arts and Letters represents the highest standards of artistic achievement in this country, and our community of members are among the leading contemporary architects, visual artists, writers, and composers. Congratulations to Arthur Sze! View the photo journal for a chronicle of the day.
“Leila Chatti on the Many Ways to Be (and Not to Be) a Mother” in Literary Hub“This is the past of the past, but I am telling you now because it is important. This is what / would happen in a film that trusts its audience. To be difficult. To establish empathy, / context. White Volkswagen Beetle with gingham seats. Singing “Landslide,” my eyes / brimming earnestly. Miles of trees, green still, but turning. Can I handle the seasons of my life?“—Leila Chatti“Mirage” by Arthur Sze in The New Yorker
“A neighbor travels to Göbekli Tepe and ponders / T-shaped pillars with carved gazelles and vultures”—Arthur Sze