February 2019

Why We Chose It

BY KATHARINE WEBER, EDITOR AT LARGE

“You Are Here,” by Lia Greenwell, appears in the Jan/Feb 2019 issue of KROnline.

“Once, I didn’t know what it was like to feel safe. That is, I had generally felt that way, so it was invisible.” Lia Greenwell’s “You Are Here” is an understated and poetic elegy for that invisibility. From its opening lines, a description of a childhood hide and seek game on a farm that ends with the narrator fleeing a galloping horse by jumping between electrified fence wires to safety, we are there, carried along in the child’s exuberant panic of running and hiding. Read the rest of “Why We Chose It.”

Nina Martin Wins Young Poet’s Prize

Congratulations to Nina Martin, a junior at the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities, in Greenville, South Carolina, who took first place in KR’s Patricia Grodd Poetry Prize for Young Writers. Martin’s winning poem, “November Picnic with Louise,” was selected from nearly nine hundred submissions by young writers in forty-seven states and eighteen countries outside of the United States. Contest judge Richie Hofmann, an award-winning poet and one of KR’s book review editors, praised the poem for its “boldness and verve,” emotional complexity, and “sonnet-like” compression. The poem will be published in the Sept/Oct 2019 issue of the Kenyon Review, along with poems by the two runners-up. In addition, Martin will receive a full scholarship to attend the Young Writers Workshop this summer. Learn about the Grodd Prize runners-up and read the winning poem.

The Rigorous Fluidity of Keith S. Wilson

Maybe the best way to talk about Keith S. Wilson’s multi-faceted inventiveness would be to create an alternative-reality game in which a poet-hero propels himself through galaxies that he spins out as he goes, from surprise to surprise. Linguistically arresting, visually alluring, at once fanciful and serious, elusive, pensive, and direct, a game, yes, that would be perfect. The trouble is, to pull it off, you’d have to be Keith Wilson. Meet the new KR Fellow in Poetry, a methodical experimenter who explores race, love, and outer space with a game designer’s flair and a fascination with “associative” writing.

Workshop Focus: Translators, Teachers

This month we call your attention to two often-unsung cultural heroes—the translator, the teacher—by way of reminding you that KR offers summer workshops designed specifically for practitioners of these arts. Online registration is open now for:

The Translator’s Voice: A Polyglot Workshop, July 7-13, 2019. Ideal for both aspiring and mid-career literary translators, this workshop focuses on translation as cross-cultural “transcreation,” a creative endeavor spanning two languages. By the end of the week, participants will have finished a polished translation that they may continue to prepare for publication. Click here for more information. You can get a feel for the spirit of the workshop in a podcast, from last year’s session, featuring our two instructors. Listen here.

The Writers Workshop for Teachers, July 7-13, 2019. Part writers’ retreat, part professional development, this workshop welcomes high school teachers interested in exploring creative writing as a teaching tool. Participants will learn about prompts and strategies that inspire their own work as well as their students. Kenyon College credit is awarded for the workshop. Click here for more information.

And don’t forget our workshops in poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and spiritual writing. For more information on all of our summer workshops, click here.

And a Focus for Young Science Writers: Sheer Wonder

Yes, wonder is at the heart of the KR Young Science Writers Workshop, June 23-July 6, 2019. Science sparks wonder through close observation, contact with nature, and myriad forms of discovery. And good science writing can inspire wonder just as fiction and poetry do—through story, character, imagery, and words that sing with sensory precision. In this two-week workshop, students ages 16 to 18 who love both science and writing will find plenty of wonder, and wonderful experiences: in the lab and nature preserve, on Kenyon’s beautiful campus, and in the seminar room with great teachers and kindred spirits. We’re accepting applications now, and need-based financial aid is available.
Click here to learn more.

An Early Heads-Up: Join Us at AWP

Now is the time to make your plans for the 2019 conference of the Association of Writers & Writing Programs, to be held March 27-30 in Portland, Oregon. Visit KR at Booth #8072, and be sure to stop by the booth on Friday, March 29, at 2:00 p.m., when we’ll be celebrating the eightieth—yes, eightieth—birthday of the Kenyon Review. We’ll also mark the occasion with a special reading, and we’ll be sponsoring a panel on literary translation. Plus: David H. Lynn, the David F. Banks Editor of the Kenyon Review, will be at our booth to sign copies of his new book, Children of God: New & Selected Stories (Braddock Aveune Books).

New in KR Podcasts

Elizabeth Dark, KR’s associate director of programs, talks with prose writer Hilary Plum about documentary fiction, the experience of reading the news, and the stories we choose to keep in our collected memory. Listen to it!
And if you want to get a feel for our summer workshop in translation—The Translator’s Voice—we have a podcast from the 2018 session, in which Edgar Garbelotto and Katrine Øgaard Jensen speak with instructors (and professional translators) Elizabeth Lowe and Katherine Hedeen about the workshop, about literary translation as a creative discipline, and about how they fell in love with this field. Listen to it!

From the KR Blog: “Poetry for People Who Hate Poetry”

BY DAVE LUCAS

January 3, 2019

The lens of metaphor clarifies even as it distorts. We become familiar with what is strange by speaking of the strange in terms of the familiar. Or, as the poet Beth Ann Fennelly writes, “you are closest to something / when naming what it’s not.” That paradox captures the urgency of metaphor—for poetry, yes, but also for language itself, for our experience of daily life. Metaphor is not merely a useful way to think; it is essential to the way we think.
Read the essay.

Behind the Scenes: KR Associate of the Month

This month KR intern Tyler Raso interviews Taylor Hazan ’19, an English and anthropology double-major from Charlotte, North Carolina. An athlete and long-time student employee in the Kenyon College Library, Taylor has a lot of experience juggling roles on campus. Here she reflects on the way life meets narrative, the power of collaboration, and the evolving importance of libraries. Read the interview.

FEBRUARY 2019
CONTENTS
Why We Chose It
Poetry Prize Awarded
Profile: Keith S. Wilson
Writers Workshops
Young Science Writers
Join us at AWP!
KR Podcast
From the Blog
KR Associate Interview

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