Thursday, November 22, 2007

What is Idra Novey reading?

The latest contributor to Writers Read: Idra Novey, whose poems appear in the Paris Review, Ploughshares, Slate, and Barrow Street. Her first book of poems received the Kinereth Gensler Award from Alice James and will be published in fall 2008.

Her entry opens:
Beside my bed, I like to keep a mix of new books and a few favorites in case I’m in the mood to be nourished by something already familiar. Recently, I’ve been rereading Near to the Wild Heart, a first novel by the brilliant Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector. I’ve read all of Lispector’s novels more than once, and The Passion According to G.H. probably four times. With a Lispector novel, I find I can open to almost any page and come across a question or insight that brings a new sharpness to my thinking about whatever I’ve been mulling over during the day. [read on]
Novey's chapbook of poems The Next Country won the 2005 Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship and her translations of Brazilian poet Paulo Henriques Britto received a PEN Translation Fund grant. She teaches writing at Columbia University.

Novey's poems available online include "Aubade," "Maddox Road," and "Definition of Stranger."

Writers Read: Idra Novey.

--Marshal Zeringue