12 Apr Excerpt from “…Again” by Mark Nowak
About the Poet
Mark Nowak is a poet, writer, social critic, and labor activist whose books include Revenants (Coffee House Press, 2000), Shut Up Shut Down: Poems (Coffee House Press, 2004), Coal Mountain Elementary (Coffee House Press, 2009), and Social Poetics (Coffee House Press, 2020).
This excerpt is from… AGAIN from Coffee House Press, Nowak’s new serial abecedarian documentary poem about January 6, 2021 at the U.S. Capitol and its aftermath in America.
A native of Buffalo, NY, Nowak is a professor of English at Manhattanville College and the founding director, in collaboration with PEN America, of the Worker Writers School (https://www.workerwriters.org) an international organization which links the global working class to literary practice. He edited Coronavirus Haiku (Kenning Editions, 2021), guest-edited the “Why We Write” issue of Michigan Quarterly Review (Fall 2021), and wrote an introduction to Celes Tisdale’s When the Smoke Cleared: Attica Prison Poems and Journal (Duke University Press, 2022).
Nowak has been awarded fellowships from the Guggenheim and Lannan Foundations as well as the Freedom Plow Award for Poetry & Activism from Split This Rock. He has taught at St. Catherine University and Washington College, where he also worked as the director of the Rose O’Neill Literary House. He has led poetry workshops for workers and trade unions in Belgium, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, the United States, and South Africa.
Related Event
- At 6 p.m. on Friday, April 17th The University at Buffalo Poetics Plus Series and Fitz Books will present a book talk and book launch event for Mark Nowak’s … AGAIN (Coffee House Press, 2026), his new serial abecedarian documentary poem about January 6, 2021 at the U.S. Capitol and its aftermath in America. Copies of Nowak’s book will be available for signing. The event is free and open to the public at Fitz Books, 1462 Main Street in Buffalo.
The Poem of the Week feature is curated by literary legacy awardee R.D. Pohl.