The 2024 National Book Critics Circle award for poetry long list

 On December 18th, The National Book Critics Circle announced their long list for their poetry category:https://www.bookcritics.org/2024/12/18/2024-nbcc-awards-longlist-poetry/

The winner and four runners up will be announced in March of 2025. I'm behind in my reading of this past year's nominees and prize winners but I'm still excited to see this list. It includes books by only three poets I'm familiar with: Carl Phillips, Kwame Dawes, and Anne Carson, which means that six of the poets are new to me: Jennifer Chang, Kenzie Allen, Oliver Baez Bendorf, V. Penelope Pelizzon, Dawn Lundy Martin, Armen Davoudian, and Janice N. Harrington.

There's also a press, Nightboat, that I've never heard of that has two book represented on the 10-book list. The other presses are BOA, New Directions, Tin House, Copper Canyon, Farrar, Giroux & Strauss, Norton, and the University of Pittsburgh.

I don't often agree with (or even like) the books that ultimately get the awards, but reading from the final lists of the National Book Critics Circle Awards, the Pulitzers, and the National Book Awards, introduces me to some new voices and keeps me abreast of poetry that's being published now and I appreciate the labor that goes into choosing these awards. The buzz it creates is part of what keeps poetry alive and books being published.

Venturing into poetry-related RSS feeds

A few months ago, I decided to learn about RSS feeds. Thanks to a Youtube video, I learned how to check if a page has an RSS option, which opened up possibilities that weren't previously apparent. I use the Feedly.com feed reader, which had some poetry options immediately available. I currently subscribe to the following journals on Feedly:

Via Negativa

Poetry Northwest

Rattle

The Adroit Journal

The Best American Poetry blog (which sometimes posts original poetry)

The Carcanet blog

The Offing

Zyzzyva

In addition, I've subscribed to the Daily News feed of Poets & Writers and to the Announcements page of the National Book Critics Circle. 

That results in more than I can keep up with in a day but I'm glad that I've got this fount to dip into from time to time and I'd rather have it in feedly than coming to my email inbox.

It is through this venture into RSS feeds that I learned that the National Book Critics Circle puts out a long list for their March awards in December (more about that in a later post). 

Overall I'm glad I've learned a little and have established some feeds to keep me informed and to have another avenue for dipping into poetry currently being published.

Trying to donate poetry magazine subscriptions to my local library

I recently decided to subscribe to a few poetry journals. However, I recalled that I am bad about not reading them in a timely manner. They can begin to pile up and become a "burden." Yet I still wanted access to them. I decided the answer was to donate subscriptions to some of them to my local library.

This suggestion was novel to the library staff when I called and I was referred to the director of the library. I found it encouraging that he was willing to entertain the idea but I quickly learned how limited libraries can be in their selection of what they put on their shelves. 

I live in a small/medium-sized town. Due to dedication and fundraising, it has a rather glorious library with lots of space. However, its budget is limited. That limited budget seems to limit the sort of book options they have. They apparently belong to lists and if a periodical isn't on a list, adding it to their catalog is problematic. And since these periodical lists are based on a monthly subscription model, the literary journal models of annual, bi-annual, and quarterly publication are just too weird.

In addition, the literary journals I looked at charged more for an institutional subscription. If that institution were a university, I could understand. But charging more to a library? 

Again, I was lucky to work with a library director who was willing to give this a try and to entertain some work-arounds. In the end, I subscribed to the journals (Poetry Magazine, Rattle, and the Southern Poetry Review) as an individual but used the library as my address. The people who do their intake of periodicals where informed of this unconventional situation and of how often the publications would be expected to come in. Of course, I left them with my phone number in the event they had any other questions.

I was surprised by how much finagling this required and also by how limited libraries could be by certain conventions within their industry. It's yet another window into why poetry journals (and lit mags in general) are so rarely seen on the shelves of libraries and bookstores.