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Today is pub day for White Blood: a Lyric of Virginia! The collection has already been named a “Book of the Day” & reviewed by The Foreword:
“In each section, Petrosino makes inherited forms fresh, including the sonnet, the villanelle, and the erasure poem. The cycling, elusive memory-making of the villanelle is most apt as the speaker tries to wring more clarity from the static nature of written history. The form makes real the frustrating, solipsistic nature of such endeavors.”
White Blood: a Lyric of Virginia officially launches tomorrow! A poem from the book, “Louisa County Patrol Claims: 1770-1863” is the current feature on the Academy of American Poets’ “Poem-a-Day”:
My brother-in-law, Johnny Gamber, co-hosts the Erasable podcast, a podcast about pencils & stationery, with Andy Welfle and Tim Wasem. They invited me to talk about National Poetry Month & other obsessions on Episode 140. Thank you for the opportunity!
Many thanks to Rebecca Sutton for speaking with me on NEA Art Talk. White Blood: a Lyric of Virginia launches May 5!
“as I was going on this journey, I realized that my ancestors had left plenty for me to read: they left the land that they had owned, they left the burial grounds where they had buried their loved ones, they left their names.”
Full story here. I’m honored for White Blood: a Lyric of Virginia to share space with these amazing works.
I received my author copies of White Blood: a Lyric of Virginia today. Here are a few beauty shots (click the below image to see the slideshow). I’m so delighted by how everything turned out! The official publication date is May 5, 2020. Pre-order your copy today on the Sarabande website.
Cathy Hannabach interviewed me for the Imagine Otherwise podcast. We talked about Witch Wife, about my new teaching job at the University of Virginia, and about the pleasures & challenges of writing from the body.
My poem, “Monticello House Tour,” which first appeared in Washington Square Review, has won a Pushcart Prize & will be featured in Pushcart Prize XLIV: Best of the Small Presses in 2020. I’m thrilled & grateful to the editors of the anthology, and of Washington Square Review, for this honor.
I’m grateful for this review of Witch Wife, now available on The Bind. Thank you!
Many thanks to Anna Tomlinson for her careful reading of Witch Wife, now available in Meridian, the University of Virginia’s national literary magazine. This review originally appeared in 2018; I’m glad to have found it today!
“Rather than final or enclosed, the repetition here feels wild, infinite, becoming.”
I’m very grateful to Canadian poet & all-around literary curator Rob McLennan for his thoughtful review of Witch Wife, now posted to Rob’s blog.
Rob McLennan
Today, U.S. Poet Laureate, Tracy K. Smith, reads and discusses my poem, “Europe,” on her podcast, The Slowdown. I’m honored by Smith’s careful, sensitive reading of this piece, which, as she explains in the podcast, is all about first heartbreak. “Europe” is actually my favorite poem from the book & I’m so glad Smith selected it to feature today.
I’m delighted to announce that I’ve been selected for a 2019 Fellowship in Creative Writing from the National Endowment for the Arts. Through its Creative Writing Fellowships, the Arts Endowment gives writers the time and space needed to create. It is an honor to share this recognition with 34 other poets from around the United States.
To find out more about how National Endowment for the Arts grants impact individuals and communities, visit www.arts.gov.
I was asked by Louisville Magazine to compose an original piece of writing in response to the Kroger shootings. I wrote a poem, “Psalm,” and talked about the process of composition in an interview with LouMag editor (and my former student), Dylon Jones. Since “Psalm” appeared on line, it’s been shared dozens of times on social media. I’m glad that Louisville readers have found solace in the poem during this difficult time for our city.
I wrote a double sonnet crown, “Happinefs,” about my undergraduate days at the University of Virginia. A “double sonnet” or “heroic crown” begins with fourteen sonnets, each linked by a common line. The fifteenth sonnet, composed of the repetitions, “crowns” the sequence. My thanks to Camille Dungy and the editors of Tin House for making a home for this new piece on their blog.
Many thanks to Emily Perez and Rhino Poetry for this wonderful review of Witch Wife.
Many thanks to Caroline Crew for her thoughtful review of Witch Wife in Five Points journal, Georgia State University’s literary magazine.
“There is no moment of Witch Wife that slacks— Petrosino revels in the crafting of sculptural cats-cradle like poems: strange and beautiful, morbid and musical, Witch Wife confirms Petrosino as both magician and master, and certainly one of America’s most fascinating contemporary poets.”
I'm delighted to announce that I've been awarded an Al Smith Individual Artist Fellowship Award from the Kentucky Arts Council, the state arts agency in Kentucky. This year, sixteen writers across the Commonwealth were selected for these awards through a competitive application process. Check out KAC's list of recipients, past and present, a dynamic constellation of literary artists of all genres. Kentucky is a place of storytellers, musicians, and poets. I'm proud to be in this company.
At the AWP Conference in Tampa last spring, I sat down for an interview with Florida International University student Samantha Leon to talk about Witch Wife, the "Velcro nature of English," and cathedrals made of popsicle sticks. Read all about it on the Iowa Review blog.
Witch Wife has been marked Rave on Book Marks, the book reviews aggregator of LitHub.
