Djelloul Marbrook

Newspaper affirms the high estate of poets

Some people are holding parties. Some are learning what it’s like to walk on air. Some are gagging on their anger. But whether jubilation or fulmination is your dish of tea, I have something in mind that perhaps we might all celebrate: The New York Times on its op-ed page the day after our momentous [...]

An interview about Far From Algiers

Judyth Piazza, director of The Student Operated Press, whose students I advise, has interviewed me about Far From Algiers,  my first book of poems. The book is the 2007 winner of the Stan and Tom Wick Prize in Poetry of Kent State University in Ohio. Find the entire 30-minute interview here, and you can hear [...]

An arguable rearrangement

My wife and I rearranged our living room the other day. “Living room” has always struck me as a feckless term, questioning as it does what one does in other rooms. Our project was no mean feat, given our cranky backs and comic geometric discourse.
When we were done I glanced around the room, which also [...]

Hudson Valley, New York, pumpkin patch awaits The Headless Horseman.

My answers to some insightful questions

The poet Laurin Wolf of Kent State University in Ohio has asked me a series of questions about my life and poetry that has just been posted with my (windy) responses. The insight and depth of her questions took me by surprise, always a good sign in an interview. Her questions and my answers come [...]

A noteworthy review returns

Arabesques Review, which briefly suspended publications to reorganize, has issued a call for submissions. This trilingual literary and cultural review is published online from Chlef, Algeria, and has published work from writers worldwide. It will be represented Oct. 10-13 at Le Salon des Revues in Paris. Readers should note that the review’s Internet domain name [...]

Cervena Barva Press

Gloria Mindock,  editor of Cervena Barva Press, interviews me in the just posted No. 39 of the press’s newsletter. Gloria is the managing editor of the Istanbul Literary Review for which I recently wrote The Modernists of al-Andalus, a consideration of the Arab and Jewish poets of medieval Arab Spain, which the Arabs called al-Andalus, [...]

New essentials of book promotion

My wife Marilyn, an experienced editor and publisher, has prepared a seven-page handout on the new essentials of book promotion in a fast-changing publishing environment.  The handout proved so popular at the recent Baltimore Book Festival that we have decided to make it available on request. Just send us an e-mail if you would like [...]

The rains came and so did the crowd

In spite of a near apocalyptic rainfall—four inches courtesy of Hurricane Kyle—the Baltimore Book Festival Saturday proved once again that city’s durable literary vibrancy.
Dozens of white tents tethered to parking meters, lampposts and weighted barrels housed an exuberant crowd of diehard writers, publishers, educators and just plain readers as electrical cables snaked through impromptu ponds [...]

Here’s how I sound, I think

When I listen to myself I don’t sound like me. Do you sound like you? The voice I hear has a cold and is resolutely adolescent, suggesting to me that at age 74 I’m losing my battle to grow up before I die. The fact that I have company in this failed endeavor is not [...]