Poetry Rules

Today I woke up to a new copy of They Talk About Death chapbook sold. I am sure I owe the sale to the recent, beautiful review by lovely poet Sandra Marchetti appeared in the amazing Fall 2014 edition of Menacing Hedge . Fall is coming and some projects are drawing to a close. I have completed the translations of Paper Offerings by Alejandro Murguía , current SF Poet Laureate, and I have translated and edited  A New Anthology of American Poets . Both should be published by the end of the year. I am also translating the Poet for a new publication and, last but not least, I have asked 16 contemporary women poets to allow me to translate their poems for an Italian magazine I collaborate with. I plan to complete these translations by December. With the new year I have decided to put poetry translation projects on hiatus, in order to concentrate solely on the Poet's biography. I want to complete it by next year, as earliest as possible. And then there is my poetry. Right no...

So, it has happened at last. I am so happy of having a chapbook of my poems published in the US. It is a dream come true. It is almost a great act of hybris for somebody whose mother tongue is Italian, but who has dwelled in the English language since the age of 8 when she lived abroad for 5 years--in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates--attending American and International schools. I write poetry in Italian as well naturally but, I do believe that I write my best poems  in English. I hope this will not sound conceited. Honestly, I just look at some of my poems from this collection and think to myself that they make me proud. I guess I can say that a hint to how "good" one of the poems is came from a rejection that John Rosenwald, Co-editor of Beloit Poetry Journal  mailed to me: Dear Alessandra Bava, At our quarterly editorial board meeting that concluded yesterday we spent considerable time discussing your work, especially "Never Thirty-Seven" and "...

I woke up this morning to the wonderful news that Editor Juliet Cook has selected my chapbook "They Talk About Death" as one of the 3 winners of the 2014 Blood Pudding Press Chapbook Contest. I am particularly grateful, and not just because this is the second chapbook I have got an acceptance for this year, but mostly because I believe that some of my best poems are collected in this chapbook, starting from the one who gives it its title, i.e. a poem dedicated to two of my literary muses Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath .