Laura McCullough

Welcome. Reading at the Bowery Poetry Club in NYC Nov. 15th 6-7:30 and emceeing for Black Lawrence Press!

Laura McCullough has three collections of poems, WHAT MEN WANT, published by XOXOX Press with blurbs by Hilda Raz, Denise Duhamel, and Kurt Brown, SPEECH ACTS, forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press with blurbs by Tony Hoagland, Michael Waters, Fred Marchant, and Brian Turner, and THE DANCING BEAR, with jacket blurbs by Stephen Dunn, Li-young Lee, and BJ Ward. Her chapbook of prose poems, ELEPHANT ANGER, is published online at Mudlark. She has been a fellow in both prose and poetry for the NJ State Arts Council and has an MFA in fiction from Goddard College. She's attended the Catskill Poetry Workshop, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the San Juan Workshops, the Summer Solstice Writers Conference, went to Bread Loaf 2x, once as part of the Social Staff, attended the Colrain Poetry Manuscript Conference, and the Vermont Studio Center, and she teaches in Peter Murphy's Winter Poetry and Prose Conference in New Jersey. Her work has appeared recently or is forthcoming in The American Poetry Review, The Writer's Chronicle, The Painted Bride Quarterly, Prairie Schooner, Spoon River, Guernica, Crab Orchard Review, Tusculum Review, Hanging Loose, Pebble Lake Review, The Hiram Poetry Review, Gargoyle, Iron Horse Quarterly, The Hiss Quarterly, The Pedestal, The Potomac, Nimrod, Boulevard, Tattoo Highway, Gulf Coast, Hotel Amerika, Poetry East, The Portland Review, and others. She is in the Critical and Creative Writing Doctoral Program at Bangor University in Wales, and her scholarship focuses on the poetry and essays of Stephen Dunn. She founded the Creative Writing Program at Brookdale Community College in central Jersey.

Check out some new work online

Check out this rangy crop of poetry which includes a few of mine: www.applevalleyreview.com

James May of New South interviewed me about WHAT MEN WANT and other things. Read the conversation here: http://www.review.gsu.edu/TheLimitationsLoveMakes.pdf

The American Poetry Review published my poem, "Speaking Malagasy on the Isle of Vanilla." It's one of the poems in my forthcoming collection, SPEECH ACTS (Black Lawrence Press, 2010). Read the poem here: http://www.aprweb.org/poem/speaking-malagasy-isle-vanilla

Stephen Page reviewed WHAT MEN WANT for Keyhole Magazine. You can read it here: http://www.keyholemagazine.com/articles/what-men-want-by-laura-mccullough

More work of mine you can find online

Check out http://thepotomacjournal.com/
They've got a review of WHAT MEN WANT and also my review of Andre Dubus III's recent novel THE GARDEN OF LAST DAYS

Pebble Lake Review's new health and illness issue includes a poem of mine: http://pebblelakereview.com/poetry/SweetSick.htm

Check out three of my poems at Sweet Lit, a super cool foodie-related lit mag. In this issue, there are also poems by Tim Seibles, Barbara Daniels, and Sarah Browning:
http://www.sweetlit.com/poem_laura_mccullough_avocados.html

My publisher, Jerry Kelly, created a micro-site for WMW that's a lot of fun: http://xoxoxpress.com/whatmenwant click on the fingers to read a poem

Read my chapbook of prose poems ELEPHANT ANGER at http://www.unf.edu/mudlark/mudlark32/contents.html#Contents

Reading in the "My new Life, my new poem," Woodbridge County poetry festival at the Baron Arts Center.

WHAT MEN WANT

My second collection of poetry has just been released from XOXOX Press. http://www.amazon.com/What-Men-Want-Laura-McCullough/dp/1880977265/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1231121601&sr=8-1  or contact Jerry Kelly at http://xoxoxpress.com/

Here's what Hilda Raz, Denise Duhamel, and Kurt Raz had to say:

The poet Laura McCullough is fearless, open hearted, and brilliant. Now in WHAT MEN WANT she’s written a masterpiece. These poems are certain of the ways power flows in a world of privilege, violence, and inequity and they offer stunning insights. They engage male/female negotiations – through sex (“Every man wants a blow job”), compassion, and love; they invoke our partners, lovers, sons, friends. They are poems apparently spoken by a goddess, the kinds of poems that everyone surely needs right now. -                            Hilda Raz

In What Men Want, Laura McCullough elbows Sigmund Freud and winks. Her poems are witty and barbed, but they are also tender, full of candor, echoing James Wright. This is a book of audacious love poems,
gutsy pronouncements, accounts of unabashed desire. McCullough crisscrosses personal accounts and societal expectations—she is a bombshell dropping bombshells. --Denise Duhamel

The great divide between men and women: how to cross it? What do men want? is a question Laura McCullough asks in her courageous and wide-ranging new book of poems. But the question soon takes on larger philosophical proportions: what divides us in general, what do any of us want, and why do we want it? Which amounts to an even more fundamental question: what is the nature of desire, and how can we control it? Or rather: how does it control us? Corollary to these questions are themes involving family, compassion, surrender, loss, violence, and suppressed love. In poems of formal grace and searching intelligence, McCullough confronts the mystery of otherness again and again in husbands, strangers, and sons. Nothing deters this poet from asking the questions she needs to ask in order to crack “the man-code” if she can, and emerge in sympathy on the other side.  — Kurt Brown

NEW WORK OF MINE JUST OUT

Read my review of Andre Dubus IIIs book, THE GARDEN OF LAST DAYS here: http://wdsreviewofbooks.webdelsol.com/Dubus.html
I interviewed Andre last June right after the book came out and that interview is forthcoming in AWP's The Writer's Chronicle.

Four new poems from PANIC, REDBANK are in the new issue of Riverbabble at http://www.iceflow.com/riverbabble/Welcome.html Just page down to the poetry section.

One new one from the same new ms is in the winter issue of Hotel Amerika, a classy mag, I must say, with a unique format.

Joe Milford interviewed me. Come listen to Joe's current guest at: http://joemilfordpoetryshow.com/
And check out his archives to hear my interview and tons of others suchh as Stephen Dunn, Matt Hart, Tony Hoagland and a ton of other great poets!

A new issue of Forklift, Ohio is out! I've got work in it along with a lot of other edgey writers. When you check out the site, make sure to look at The Management: some great thinkers and writers. http://www.hubcapart.com/ink/

My essay on Tony Hoagland's work in The Potomac, journal of art and politics can be found here: http://thepotomacjournal.com/review-TonyHoagland.htm
It's a really interesting issue, so check out the other essays and poems, and more!

New pieces of short fiction of mine at: http://thepotomacjournal.com/issue8/np-Laura.htm

Contact: speechacts@verizon.net or be in touch on facebook

Books of Poetry:

SPEECH ACTS     forthcoming Black Lawrence Press   http://blacklawrencepress.homestead.com/about.html

WHAT MEN WANT    2008 XOXOX Press http://xoxoxpress.com/

ELEPHANT ANGER (chapbook of prose poems) 2007 Mudlark http://www.unf.edu/mudlark/mudlark32/contents.html

THE DANCING BEAR 2006 Open Book Press   http://www.openbookpress.com/

Links to work online:

Podcasts Fishouse, 2River

http://www.fishousepoems.org/archives/laura_mccullough/index.shtml

http://www.2river.org/blog/2005/12/podcast-of-poems-by-laura-mccu.html

Interviews with me online:

By Adam Elenbass of Reality Sandwich

http://www.realitysandwich.com/what_men_want_interview_laura_mccullough

Interviews I’ve conducted:

With Bob Hicok for Small Spiral Notebook

http://www.smallspiralnotebook.com/interviews/2007/04/laura_mccullough_interviews_bo.shtml

With Matt Hart for Small Spiral Notebook

http://www.smallspiralnotebook.com/interviews/2007/01/laura_mccullough_interviews_ma.shtml

Reviews online

Of Li-young Lee’s “Book of My Nights” and BJ Ward’s “Gravedigger’s Birthday”

http://www.webdelsol.com/InPosse/mccullough15.htm

Of Major Jackon’s “Hoops” http://www.majorjackson.com/hoops_rev_ssn.html

Online journals:

Poetry

http://www.versedaily.org/2008/atthejumps.shtml

http://2river.org/2RView/11_4/poems/mccullough.html

http://www.versedaily.org/2006/argueregret.shtml

http://www.umbrellajournal.com/summer2008/poetry/LauraMcCullough.html

http://www.stickmanreview.com/V6N1/contents/mccullough3.html

http://www.rocksaltplum.com/RSPSpring2006/LauraMcCullough.html

http://home.alltel.net/ellablue/mccullough1.html

http://www.unf.edu/mudlark/mudlark32/contents.html

http://www.diodepoetry.com/v1n1/content/mccullough_l.html

http://www.softblow.com/mccullough.html

http://www.spokenwar.com/broek0.html

http://42opus.com/v5n4/moment

http://www.wordriot.org/template.php?ID=743

Prose

http://www.guernicamag.com/fiction/654/plastic_jade/