2015 Balocating Prize for Poetry: “Memorial Day” by Connor Yeck

Congratulations to Connor Yeck, a Senior in English and the winner of the 2015 Annie Balocating Undergraduate Prize for Poetry! Yeck’s poem “Memorial Day” was selected by guest judge Carolyn Forché and presented during her reading at the RCAH Center for Poetry on April 22, 2015 in Snyder-Phillips Hall. The Balocating Prize is an award

Poem of the Week: “The Colonel” by Carolyn Forché

Perhaps Carolyn Forché’s most well-known poem, “The Colonel” was published in her book The Country Between Us (1981) and captures “her now-famous encounter with a Salvadoran colonel who, as he made light of human rights, emptied a bag of human ears before Forché” (from The Poetry Foundation). Forché will visit the RCAH Center for Poetry this

Poem of the Week: “Ice Music” by Terry Blackhawk

Detroit-based poet Terry Blackhawk will join the Center for Poetry for a reading and talk on April 15th as part of our Spring Poetry Festival. You can read more about her visit on our website. “Ice Music” by Terry Blackhawk ice melt ice lace ice breaking up upstream coming down from up north in variegated

Poem of the Week: “Resurrection Yoga” by Dennis Hinrichsen

In celebration of an upcoming visit by Lansing poet Dennis Hinrichsen, we present his poem “Resurrection Yoga” from Kurosawa’s Dog (Oberlin Press, 2009). Dennis will visit the RCAH Center for Poetry on April 1, and at his reading, the Center for Poetry will release handmade broadside sheets with the poem “Resurrection Yoga” printed in-house on the

Poem of the Week: “The Chairs That No One Sits In” by Billy Collins

You see them on porches and on lawns down by the lakeside, usually arranged in pairs implying a couple who might sit there and look out at the water or the big shade trees. The trouble is you never see anyone sitting in these forlorn chairs though at one time it must have seemed a

Poem of the Week: “Keeping Quiet” by Pablo Neruda

Now we will count to twelve and we will all keep still. For once on the face of the earth, let’s not speak in any language; let’s stop for one second, and not move our arms so much. It would be an exotic moment without rush, without engines; we would all be together in a

Poem of the Week: “Negative” by Kevin Young

Negative by Kevin Young Wake to find everything black what was white, all the vice versa—white maids on TV, black sitcoms that star white dwarfs cute as pearl buttons. Black Presidents, Black Houses. White horse candidates. All bleach burns clothes black. Drive roads white as you are, white songs on the radio stolen by black