We’re excited to share that poet & Fence poetry editor, Delicia Daniels, will judge the 2028 Fence Modern Poets Series Book Prize! 📖
Find the full guidelines for the 2028 Fence Modern Poets Series Book Prize, & submit your full-length poetry manuscript, at fence.submittable.com/submit! ✨
Fence Books invites you to our 25th Anniversary celebratory reading at the New Orleans Poetry Festival this Sunday, April 19th!
1 PM at The AllWays Lounge & Cabaret. 🍃
Hear authors Steven Alvarez, Kathryn Cowles, Amanda Deutch, & Martin Corless-Smith reading from their respective Fence Books! 💌
This Saturday, April 18th, SHANE KOWALSKI & SUZIE BOVENZI will read at 5 PM at Artists Space, 11 Cortlandt Alley, New York City. ✨
Find Shane Kowalski’s fiction in FENCE no. 42, & look forward to Suzie Bovenzi’s fiction in FENCE no. 43! Subscribe to FENCE today at fenceportal.org/subscribe! 💌
SONG FOR FOUR DANCERS the four dancers move like the blood on their feet is fire; that man on the street, a sweat-damp field.
Douglas Kearney
@fencebooks.bsky.social
PARADE The invisible knight Ripped the visor From his helmet & looked askance At a windmill Covered in poisonous berries
Daniel Brenner
@fencebooks.bsky.social
“...any attempt at a book of this sort leaves a negative center pointing to the poems.” 🍃
Read “Constant Craving”—Devin King’s review of CONSTANTINE CAVAFY: A NEW BIOGRAPHY by Gregory Jusdanis & Peter Jeffreys—on the Constant Critic!
fencedigital.com/2026/04/07/c... 🎟️
Fence’s Emily Wallis Hughes & Nik Slackman curated the Spring 2026 Season of the Segue Reading Series at Artists Space! 💌
This Saturday, April 11th, ARIANA REINES & BLAKE BUTLER will read at 5 PM sharp (doors at 4:30 PM) at Artists Space! Join us in New York City, or on the Zoom livestream. 🍃
The Fence Modern Poets Series is open for full-length poetry manuscript submissions! 🍃
& the Ottoline Prize is open for full-length poetry manuscript submissions by any person who identifies as a woman and/or female. ✨
Read our full guidelines & submit here: fence.submittable.com/submit! 💌
post-festival, attempting to find ground again in sportsbar corner, attending a stack of new Anstruther Press chapbooks, and new poetry titles by Amanda Deutch + Lydia Unsworth, etc / @fencebooks.bsky.social @lydiaunsworth.bsky.social
Find Koss's UNREQUITED OBJECTS, the latest visual poetry installation on Fence Steaming, at fenceportal.org/unrequited-objects/. ⛅️
& look forward to Amy Beth Sisson's continued curation of vispo on Steaming...
🌱 HAPPY PUBLICATION DAY to new york ironweed by Amanda Deutch! 🌱
Pictured here on the shelves of Three Lives & Company’s poetry section in New York City! 💌
“a weed / is what // you called / yourself // yesterday // you witchy babe”
— “chickweed” ✨
bookshop.org/p/books/new-... 🎟️
SACRIFICE The storm that stirs the Whirlpool is a tyrant Living in a great golden hall Everyone is exhausted Everyone is in love Everyone is pregnant Let us think Everyone is drunk The tyrant sucks it down like wisdom like a parasite From subjects Which are pondered amidst his magic cabinets
pretty obsessed with this Daniel Brenner collection
- 2011's June via @fencebooks.bsky.social
Find THE STRANGE WONDROUS WORKS OF ELEANOR ELEANOR by @kathryncowles.bsky.social—& soon, NEW YORK IRONWEED by Amanda Deutch (publishing March 31, 2026)—at your local bookstore, or at bookshop.org! 💌
& you’ll find these book ads in print in FENCE #43; subscribe at fenceportal.org/subscribe. 😮
The 2028 Ottoline Prize is OPEN to full-length poetry manuscripts by any person who identifies as a woman &/or female, including trans women.
Find our full guidelines & submit at fence.submittable.com/submit! 💌
& read yesterday’s full newsletter, here: mailchi.mp/fenceportal/...! 🦋
NO TIME June is coming Let every city hear Every umbrella & every ant ear Before the storm Spend nights winging Riddles at trees About planting pioneers This is a book An ear A throat A city Come bury it Come loose Get back
Daniel Brenner
@fencebooks.bsky.social
The New York Review published Margaret Jull Costa & Patricio Ferrari’s translation of Fernando Pessoa’s “Two Odes by Ricardo Reis” from the Portuguese.
Patricio Ferrari’s MUD SONGS (winner of the 2026 Fence Modern Poets Series Prize) comes out later this year! 🌊
www.nybooks.com/articles/202... ✨
@prairielights.com appreciation post! 💫 This beloved Iowa City independent bookstore consistently carries Fence Books on their shelves & website, including @kathryncowles.bsky.social’s THE STRANGE WONDROUS WORKS OF ELEANOR ELEANOR & soon: Amanda Deutch’s forthcoming NEW YORK IRONWEED! 🌾
We’re excited to share the full cover for Amanda Deutch’s new york ironweed, which won the 2025 Ottoline Prize, & which Fence Books will publish on March 31, 2026! 💌
Pre-order new york ironweed at Bookshop.org: bookshop.org/p/books/new-...! 🌱
We’re so excited to invite you all to our free, collaborative offsite reading at Red Emma’s Bookstore Coffeehouse (Baltimore, Maryland) on Saturday, March 7th from 8-10 PM! 💌
In this new review for The Constant Critic, Joshua Weiner writes about Christian Lehnert’s WICKERWORK (translated from the German by Richard Seiburth) within the context of ecopoetics with careful, thorough attention.
Review edited by Anthony Madrid. 🐛
fencedigital.com/2026/02/20/c... 💌
Our new rendition goes live tomorrow with two new pieces, but before then, make sure to give a read to The Bulb Region writer Shy Watson’s (@formermissnj.bsky.social) punchy prose, “The Lunch Lady,” in @fencebooks.bsky.social.
fenceportal.org/the-lunch-la...
The Louisville Conference on Art & Literature’s “The Future of the Little Magazine Panel”—this Friday, February 20th from 9-10:30 AM—will feature Fence Editorial Director Emily Wallis Hughes & Associate Editor Soham Patel! 💌
artsandsciences.louisville.edu/news-events/... ✨
Some part of this is like some part of that. Your mind kind of goes where it goes until it sees something and stops. You like what you like repeated. There's no good way to tell you that you hardly matter to me, so I'll build you up, love you, love you, love you. You're kind of a ghost. You're holding a lamb.
Lesle Lewis
@fencebooks.bsky.social
We’re excited & honored to announce that PORN W/OUT SEX by Mark Faunlagui was selected by Emily Wallis Hughes (Editorial Director & Books Editor) as the winner of the 2027 Fence Modern Poets Series Book Prize! 💌
Read full newsletter: mailchi.mp/fenceportal/..., & subscribe at fenceportal.org. 🎟️
Kenneth Reveiz interviews Michael Leong for The Constant Critic: the two poets speak about poetry, community, & the practice of collage. 💌
Read the full interview on Fence Digital: fencedigital.com/2026/02/13/c.... 🗞️
I’m pleased to share Fence’s annotation of The Poetry Project’s wonderful Spring 2026 reading series lineup! 💌
Attend these readings at The Parish Hall at St. Mark's Church in New York City, or tune into the free livestream on The Poetry Project’s YouTube channel.
www.poetryproject.org ✨
Our warm & most enthusiastic congratulations to @sharmico.bsky.social & TINY EVOLUTIONS, which Emily Wallis Hughes selected as winner of the 2027 Ottoline Prize!
We’re honored to announce this selection & our other finalists. ✨
Thank you, thoughtful first readers.
mailchi.mp/fenceportal/...! 🐛
a college from the new collection The Strange Wondrous Works of Eleanor Eleanor (2025) the text says: "The women are cutouts / of women of real / women the cutouts / are real but they are not / real women they are / real cutouts."
Kathryn Cowles
@fencebooks.bsky.social / @kathryncowles.bsky.social
Celebrate Kathryn Cowles’s THE STRANGE WONDROUS WORKS OF ELEANOR ELEANOR, winner of the 2025 Fence Modern Poets Series Book Prize, in combination with Geoffrey Babbitt’s A GRAIN OF SAND IN LAMBETH this Thursday, February 5th at 7 PM! 💌 @kathryncowles.bsky.social @geoffreybabbitt.bsky.social
Bright blue book release poster with author photos and book covers—Kathryn Cowles- The Strange Wondrous Works of Eleanor Eleanor; and Geoffrey Babbitt - A Grain of Sand in Lambeth.
Two tiny tiny books in a palm.
Three little coloring books with a bird lady on the cover.
Finger Lakes Friends: Double Book Release Reading! Thursday at 7 - HWS campus in Geneva (Demarest Hall)
Kathryn Cowles and Geoffrey Babbitt. I’ll be handing out some tiny books❤️