BREAD & STEEL: Illinois Poets Reading from Their Works
• Edited by Kevin Stein •
As Illinois Poet Laureate, I am pleased to announce release of the first-ever, audio compact disk poetry anthology, Bread & Steel: Illinois Poets Reading from Their Works. Through the poems of established poets and those just emerging in the art form, you journey along the thoroughfares and back roads of Illinois’s diverse poetic landscape.
Bread & Steel offers a literal “record” of Illinois’s twenty-first century multiethnic voices. The range of 24 contributors – including Dave Etter, Susan Hahn, Li-Young Lee, Haki Madhubuti, and Lisel Mueller – reflects the cultural, aesthetic, and racial mix of this state they call home.
Building on the popularity of audio and video poetry offerings on the Illinois Poet Laureate’s website (www.poetlaureate.il.gov), Bread & Steel contributors read a representative selection from their works on this approximately 50-minute CD. These poets' characteristic tones and inflections add considerable depth to the listener's experience, delivering the intimacy of the poetry coffeehouse to the library, classroom, or living room.
In sum, Bread & Steel personalizes the often intimidating experience of reading poetry. Designed to please the general listener as well as to enhance the classroom experience, Bread & Steel offers poems both accessible and appropriate to a range of ages.
Funds from the purchase of Bread & Steel support Poetry Now! This project aims to create an audience for contemporary poetry in rural and urban locales not generally immersed in the current poetry scene. By donating funds for libraries’ purchase of books by contemporary Illinois poets, I ensure that readers have access to poets writing in and of our shared moment in history.
Thus far, a number of Illinois libraries have received Poetry Now! funding, including Watseka Public Library, Knox College Library, Columbia College Library, Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville Library, Wheaton North High School Library, Kankakee Public Library, and a score of others. For a list of participating libraries, click here. GO>>
To order your copy of Bread & Steel online for $15.99, please click the following: www.cafepress.com/breadandsteel
Bread & Steel may be purchased online only by use of credit card. If you would like to order by check, please contact me at IL_Poet_Laureate@bradley.edu.
To view text of Bread & Steel poems, please click the following:
Bread & Steel Text of Poems
For my audio recitation of the Bread & Steel introduction, description and acknowledgments, please click the following: Bread & Steel Audio Intro
Thank you for your support of the word. In an age that seemingly conspires against it, you help to keep poetry alive for young and old alike.
Sincerely,
Kevin Stein
Illinois Poet Laureate
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