My Chapbook "Dear Jean Seberg" winner of the 2010 Burnside Review Chapbook Contest

I'm very happy to announce that my chapbook, "Dear Jean Seberg," has been chosen by judge Matthew Dickman as the winner of the 2010 Burnside Review Chapbook Contest. Burnside Review is an exciting, clever, eclectic literary journal based in Portland, Oregon, and I am flattered to have been chosen as the winner of their 6th annual chapbook contest. Check out the journal itself and the generous comments Matthew Dickman (a wonderful poet himself) had to say about the chapbook--poised to be released in February 2011. I will keep you updated about the release date for this chapbook in a future post on this website. Currently I am scouting out possible images to use for the cover. For those of you who are not familiar with the intense, brief  life of Jean Seberg, the "midwest cherub" from the sixties, just try to picture the blond pixie in Jean Godard's Breathless--the film that made her famous and the doll of Paris.

The Midwest Book Review on The Park of Upside-Down Chairs

The Midwest Book Review chose to scribble a few words about my collection of poems, The Park of Upside-Down Chairs, published this past April (CW Books, WordTech Press). Feel free to click on the Poetry Shelf to read their August selection of reviews on poetry books published by small presses.  My book is listed along with several other intriguing entries. Happy summer reading....

Five Inspiring World Museums!

I had the pleasure this week of being the guest blogger on C.M. Mayo's Blog, Madam Mayo. C.M. Mayo is a wonderful prose writer on Mexico (and other themes), as well as a captivating, poetic fiction writer (check out her novel: The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire--just the title makes you want to read it!!!). Her blog is multi-faceted and deals with travel, creative writing, books, literary translation, and even pugs!!! Asked by her to write about a theme connected to my new book of poems, The Park of Upside-Down Chairs, I chose to blog (briefly!!!:)) on five inspiring world museums that I have encountered over the years and which, somehow, fed into several of the poems in my book. Feel free to read this "musing" on museums, as well as the blog posts of the other writers and artists she's asked to contribute to her site. It makes for colorful, informative reading!

Blog Posting about The Park of Upside-Down Chairs

My publisher, Kevin Walzer, has a blog on poetry and recently blogged about my book, The Park of Upside-Down Chairs, along with several other poetry books recently published by WordTech Communications, his independent poetry press.

Stony Brook Manhattan Reading on April 27th!

I had the pleasure of reading last Tuesday evening (exactly a week ago today--and exactly at this time--) at the Manhattan Campus of Stony Brook University on Park Avenue South. It was my true book launch for The Park of Upside Down Chairs--my new book just out from Word Tech Communications. I also was delighted to be able to read with two exceptional poets, Tom Healy and John Rybicki. Friends, family and poetry lovers were all in attendance. After, we had a book signing, arranged by the host of the event, the talented poet Julie Sheehan. I found Tom's work riveting, with each word dropping like a dense weight on the page. The silences in his poems are both sensual and palpable. John's poems were full of raw honest pain and a certain mesmerizing luminescence. The evening fed me--both as reciter of poetry and as listener. Here are a few photos. One taken of us at the book signing and one of me (glasses donned) reading from my poems.

The Park of Upside-Down Chairs has arrived at my Doorstep!

On Friday, April 9th, I received my first full-length book in the mail! The Park of Upside-Down Chairs arrived intact, delivered not by the stork but by UPS on a rainy, unassuming evening. I am, I must admit, still in a bit of shock. It feels wonderful to weigh its heft in my palms. I know e-books, etc... are taking off these days, but there is nothing yet to replace the gentle but solid feel of a book; its intimate, yet sovereign presence--something not dependent on computers or URL's. I especially relish the whispery flipping of its pages.... I just saw Bright Star--the Jane Campion film about John Keats--and find myself feeling especially wistful this weekend and thinking of poets with first and second books and the possible fates that await those books! It is also spring in full form right now. Trees are frilled with white blossoms, yet a chill still persists in the air. April is speeding by! To access the WordTech link to my book, simply click on the following link: The Park of Upside-Down Chairs.

Alexandra van de Kamp is the author of The Park of Upside-Down Chairs, forthcoming from CW Books (WordTech Press) in the Spring of 2010.

Her earlier collections include The Photographer's Interview (2006, Premier Poets Chapbook Series: 34); A Living Book (2004), with artwork by Rebecca Aidlin; and The Rainiest May in the Twentieth Century (2002 Wind Magazine), winner of the 2001 Quentin R. Howard Poetry Prize.

Her poems, essays and translations have appeared in numerous journals, including Meridian, Rain Taxi, Red Rock Review, Poetry Northwest, Court Green, Salt Hill, Crab Orchard Review, Lake Effect, Quarter After Eight and Washington Square.

Her translations of two Spanish women poets, Ángela Pérez Ovejero and Marta López-Luaces, were featured in the Canadian magazine filling Station, and an interview with Billy Collins was
reprinted nationally in Imagine magazine (Johns Hopkins). She is one of the founding editors of Terra Incognita, an international literary/cultural journal in English and Spanish.

Alexandra lives in Port Jefferson, New York, with her husband, William Glenn, and teaches at Stony Brook University.