16 PennSound poems about spring

Spring comes to the home of PennSound & Kelly Writers House, and in honor of the vernal feeling the PennSound staffers have put together an anthology of poems from that vast archive about the return of warmth and green and, well, of love (ah, poetry). This selection is posted on the front page of Jacket2 magazine currently. Click here and scroll down until you see the PennSound box in the right column. To get you started, here's Paul Blackburn reading "It might as well be spring" and here's Writers House Fellow Eileen Myles performing her "April 5." The photo at right was taken by KWH Faculty Director Al Filreis on one of his springtime walks, just a block or so from 3805 Locust.

Lunch with Uzodinma Iweala - March 24 at noon

Join us on March 24, at noon, for lunch with Uzodinma Iweala. RSVP by writing wh@writing.upenn.edu or by calling 215-746-POEM. Uzodinma Iweala is a writer and medical doctor. His first book, Beasts of No Nation (HarperCollins, 2005), tells the story of a child soldier in West Africa. Beasts of No Nation won numerous awards, including the Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction from the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes, the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize from Booktrust, and the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His second book, Our Kind of People: Thoughts on HIV/AIDS in Nigeria, was released in Nigeria, the United Kingdom, and the United States in the summer of 2012. He has also published numerous short stories and essays and has worked in international development on matters of health policy. Mr. Iweala is currently working on a novel titled Speak No Evil—a series of interlinked narratives set in Washington, DC—that explores the themes of choice, freedom, and what we must compromise to live in a secure society. The book follows six different characters as they interact with one another and the city in which they live.