Articles on Utah literary arts, Utah authors, Utah literature and poetry published in 15 Bytes.
Marilynn Bybee Rockelman describes her work as containing “sexual language” that doesn’t rely on constructions like “f—k” to masquerade for the word itself. Chapter one of her manuscript earned an honorable mention in the Creative Nonfiction category of 2020’s Utah Original Writing Competition.
There’s a scene from playwright David Kranes’ 1971 novel, Margins, set in densely populated New York City, that might appeal to a 15 Bytes reader today. Here we witness a man falling in love with a woman through the medium of art: They walked unhurriedly down Madison Avenue. […]
“I love how Joy Harjo’s poems tap into the spiritual, the animal, and the human all at the same time,” says Laura Stott, a poet, professor and the 2020 recipient of the Ogden City Mayor’s Award in the Arts. “They show how connected we all are on […]
Elizabeth Bishop’s “The End of March” has resonated with Lisa Bickmore since the first time she read it. It has spoken to the Utah poet of her own “deep desire for retreat — for solitude and silence — and also how impossible it is, or can feel, […]
“I love Pablo Neruda’s big-hearted exuberance, especially his odes,” says former Utah poet laureate (2012 – 2017) Lance Larsen. “Linguistically and metaphorically, ‘Ode to My Socks,’ goes everywhere. Neruda the man was a collector of antiques, maritime flotsam and jetsam, glassware, seashells, figureheads of ships. In 2019 I […]
Sunni Brown Wilkinson says Joseph Stroud’s Of This World is one of the best poetry collections she has ever read. “Joseph Stroud is a remarkable but less well-known poet, mainly because he purposely shuns the spotlight,” Wilkinson says. “He lives part of the year in a cabin in […]
In their citation for the 15 Bytes Book Award for Poetry, the jurors of the 2018 prize wrote: In her brilliant new collection, “The Worrier,” Nancy Takacs has presented her readers with her most finely nuanced and psychologically sophisticated collection of poetry to date. Each piece is an […]
During this month of April, 2021, we return to Poets in Pajamas, an audio series celebrating National Poetry Month launched last year at the beginning of the pandemic. In this series, we ask Utah poets to read one of their own works, as well as a work by […]
Gray is known for crumpling paper into balls and throwing them behind him. The papers contain love notes or apologies. “I have fallen in love and apologized so often,” he says. We are proud to present four of his poems here.
“Out of characters struggling between religious convictions and emotional contradictions, Peterson manages to create an intense vision of Mormon life in the Mormon West.” —Page Stegner In the 19th century, Utah communities collaborated to send their most promising artists to Europe to be trained to the standards of […]
READ LOCAL First boasts Utah’s most comprehensive collection of poets and authors. Today, we bring you five poems by Jared Pearce. Pearce obtained a Master’s degree in English from Brigham Young University, and a PhD (in American Poetry, 19th & 20th Century British Literature, and Critical Theory) from […]
There’s a small problem with Utah Poet Laureate Paisley Rekdal’s first book, and while it doesn’t adversely affect her sophisticated and engaging essays, it could discourage potential readers, which is clearly the opposite of what the publishers intended when they packaged the collection 20 years ago. First, the […]
