Through the auspices of the Mississippi Humanities Council Speakers Bureau, I’m honored to be giving a lecture on recent trends in Mississippi poetry to two separate audiences in the coming month. This lecture takes a sustained look at the last decade of work by Mississippi poets, a term which is tricky to define but whose trickiness lends much of the joy of the topic.

On Monday, April 25, I’ll be speaking to the Pass Christian Historical Society at the Pass Christian Public Library. And on Saturday, April 30, I’ll be giving the same lecture (and a reading) to the Mississippi Poetry Society at their annual conference at Lake Tiak O’Khata.

If anyone is in the area and would like to join, please do contact the organizers of each event — I’ll post more details as they become available.

Our team at Crime Capsule, hosted by Evergreen Podcasts and Arcadia Publishing, have just learned that we’ve been named as a Platinum Winner in the 2022 Muse Awards, the highest tier of award offered. We’re thrilled, but above all humbled, and further inspired to bring the best of true crime authorship to our audiences in the months to come.

More information about Crime Capsule (and all previous and current episodes) can be found at our show page.

Peauxdunque Review #6, featuring the works of all the prize-winning entries in this year’s Words and Music Festival, including my poem “The Dream of Light,” is now available for order.

The lineup for the 2022 NOPF is now taking shape, and we’re thrilled to announce that we’ll be returning to an in-person festival for the first time since 2019 (festivals in 2020 and 2021 were all-digital due to the pandemic). A few virtual events will still take place to kick the festival off, but the main events will be on-site in New Orleans once more.

Further details are available at nolapoetry.com. Best news of all? Thanks to some wonderful grants from SouthArts, The Academy of American Poets, and more, the 2022 festival is totally, 100%, free.

I am beyond excited to join poets Amy Fleury and Christopher Louis Romaguera at Beausoleil Books in Lafayette next month, for their monthly Pour It and Poet reading series. The only regular poetry night in Acadiana’s capital, Pour It has built a devoted following of book lovers from across southwestern Louisiana — and rumor has it they have one of the best ‘local interest’ sections of any bookshop in the state.

The reading starts at 7pm on January 12, and will be followed by an open mic, which I’m told is always excellent. Free and open to all.