PUBLISHING NEW WOMEN POETS SINCE 1997

* Please VOTE for The Book Eaters *
 
Congratulations to poet Carolina Hotchandani and The Book Eaters
on being named a finalist for the Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards for Poetry, for an Eric Hoffer Book Award, for the Poetry by the Sea Book Award, and for a Reading the West Award.

The Reading the West Award is determined by reader support
through voting, which runs through TOMORROW!
 
 

Emerging BIWOC Poet Spotlight

May 2024 Poet: Preeti Vangani

Unremember

One way of bringing you back is to observe 
your garlanded frame as art: dying, obsolete 
unappreciated between origami and handmade candles.
Another is to bring back the heat of imitation 
leather from hospital guest beds. Who knew waiting rooms 
were carriers of sweaty fevers, making it impossible to sieve
dream from memory: What could I have said to raise you 
from the dead? What do volumes of elegies contain that I don't?
Their own inabilities to say the unsaid to the one who will 
unsee unhear untouch unmove un-understand, understand 
I am trying to backpack through the geography of a future 
without you, my compass, and no one has written a Lonely 
Planet Guide titled 100 Getaways Without Mother, or 
let's produce a reality TV show for contestants to adventure 
through losses on a shoestring budget: Today you are 
not allowed to take the deceased's name. Today you are 
not to remember the way she smiled when she said yours.
You cannot hold faith as a torch light over reality's head.
You will be disqualified if you re-enter the symmetry 
of this world with longing as your wild card. For your last 
challenge, you must dump the vanishing remains into a glass 
exhibit and create an event of everything that is, label it was.                                                          
From Mother Tongue Apologize, RLFPA Editions, 2018

To read more about this poet and her work, check out our blog.

* Recent Perugia Partnerships & Events *

 
Perugia Press and the Saint Louis Poetry Center teamed up 
to present a Perugia Press Showcase featuring Melody S. Gee, 
Carolina Hotchandani & Catherine Anderson at Poetry at the Point on April 23. You can view a recording of this reading, followed by conversation about small press publishing.
 
 
 
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Perugia Press and Black Writers Read collaborated
on a reading a conversation between BWR host Nicole Young-Martin and Lynne Thompson on April 28. You can view a recording of this reading on YouTube, or listen to the podcast.
 
 
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Perugia Press traveled to the inaugural Nossrat Yassini Poetry Festival in NH in April. Here’s Editor/Director Rebecca Olander at the Perugia table with Perugia volunteer and literary citizen extraordinaire Jenna Baillargeon and poet Camille Dungy showing Carolina Hotchandani’s The Book Eaters some love.
 

* CLMP Monthly Spotlights *
 
Many thanks to CLMP for featuring Melanie Braverman’s Red
reading list for Jewish American Heritage Month.
Check out all the great recommended reads at CLMP.org.
 
 
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Many thanks to CLMP for featuring Melody S. Gee's Each
 in their reading list for Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month. Check out all the fantastic recommended reads at CLMP.org.

* Perugia Poet News *

 
Perugia poet Carolina Hotchandani had her poem "My Book
Had Come Undone" published in The Atlantic. Also, her Perugia book The Book Eaters was chosen for Omaha Public Library's
"Top Shelf" list of staff favorites from 2023.
 
 
 
 
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in Water~Stone Review in a feature called “In The Field”
in which they have conversations with their contributors,
about her poem “Reading Alone in a Square Room”
from Volume 26. Here's an excerpt:
 
 
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