Writing Poetry

The Irish punk-poet recommends four otherworldly stories, from Flann O’Brien to Virginia Woolf Achieving an avant-garde sensibility in music seems near impossible in the era of artistic density. Sinead O’Brien’s debut album Time Bend and Break The Bower experiments in merging punk and poetry, producing something so ultramodern and unfamiliar in its sound that it …

Sinead O’Brien’s book guide for surreal journeys in absurd times Read More »

Welcome to this installation of The Beat‘s Comics Crowdfunding Round-Up! We’ve got five diverse Kickstarter projects, from an all-women and nonbinary anti-patriarchy anthology about purity to a children’s picture book that combats the negativity of the messaging of anti-gay legislation. Check it out! The Dark Side of Purity Creators: Heather Vaughan (cover artist), Burton River, …

THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, THE DARK SIDE OF PURITY, and 3 more campaigns we love Read More »

Luke Zarzeckilzarzecki@coloradocommunitymedia.com Robert Nesladek carves wood. He works in a sawdust-filled studio behind his house in Arvada, which he has owned for 47 years. He uses two wood lathes to carve out bowls, vases and other works of art from wood charred by wildfires. One of those lathes was handed down from his grandfather to …

Wildfire art can create beauty out of tragedy Read More »

The mother of a missing Norridgewock man who fled Dorothea Dix Psychiatric Center in Bangor last week said that law enforcement have failed to share much information about the search for her son, frustrating her family and leaving them wondering who is in charge of finding him. Graham Lacher, 37, bolted from the hospital, where …

Mother of missing man says Bangor police left family in the dark about search efforts Read More »

While at The Block Northway with her father, 12-year-old Noor Khraisat heard the faint sounds of a typewriter. The girl, who is blind, followed the frantic clicking and found a kindred spirit. Perched in front of an antique Smith Corona, Haley Clancy was busy writing personalized poems for $10 a pop. She asked Noor if …

Poet Haley Clancy found her artistic vision from a friend who is blind Read More »

Grade 10 student Kellan MacKenzie from St. Peter Catholic Secondary School is one of the seven winners of the Lakefield Literary Festival’s 2022 Young Writers Contest. Kellan, who won in two categories (junior poetry and junior fiction) also won the junior fiction category in 2021. (Photo courtesy of Lakefield Literary Festival) Although the Lakefield Literary …

Lakefield Literary Festival announces winners of 2022 Young Writers Contest Read More »

When he first began to publish poems, Seamus Heaney’s chosen pseudonym was ‘Incertus’, meaning ‘not sure of himself’. Characteristically, this was a subtle irony. While he referred in later years to a ‘residual Incertus’ inside himself, his early prominence was based on a sure-footed sense of his own direction, an energetic ambition, and his own …

Seamus Heaney, pseudonym ‘Incertus’ | Princeton University Press Read More »