Coal Mountain Elementary

by Mark Nowak (Author), Ian Teh (Photographer)

New
Illustrated
2009
$19.60

A singular, genre-defying treatise from one of America's most innovative political poets, Coal Mountain Elementary remixes verbatim testimony from the surviving Sago, West Virginia miners and rescue teams, the American Coal Foundation's curriculum for schoolchildren, newspaper accounts of mining disasters in China, and full-color photographs of Chinese miners by renowned photojournalist Ian Teh.
A poet and labor activist heralded by Adrienne Rich for regenerating the rich tradition of working-class literature, Mark Nowak regularly leads transnational poetry workshops between American and international trade unions. The author of Revenants and Shut Up Shut Down, he is also a frequent contributor to the Poetry Foundation's Harriet blog.

Synopsis

A singular, genre-defying treatise from one of America's most innovative political poets, Coal Mountain Elementary remixes verbatim testimony from the surviving Sago, West Virginia miners and rescue teams, the American Coal Foundation's curriculum for schoolchildren, newspaper accounts of mining disasters in China, and full-color photographs of Chinese miners by renowned photojournalist Ian Teh.

A poet and labor activist heralded by Adrienne Rich for regenerating the rich tradition of working-class literature, Mark Nowak regularly leads transnational poetry workshops between American and international trade unions. The author of Revenants and Shut Up Shut Down, he is also a frequent contributor to the Poetry Foundation's Harriet blog.

$19.60

Quantity

20+ in stock

More Information

Format: Illustrated
Pages: 190
Edition: Illustrated
Publisher: Coffee House Press
Published: Apr 2009
ISBN 10: 1566892287
ISBN 13: 9781566892285
Book Overview: 1. Finished books will be available for review copy mailings in January, which will help us secure media and bookseller interest in advance of publication. We'll actively seek print media and radio interviews to coincide with National Poetry Month. 2. Additional marketing will include National Poetry Month sponsorship, conference display, academic direct mail marketing, and a large, pre-publication finished book review copy mailing to all major newspapers, progressive and labor media, and poetics journals. International attention is likely due to the global subject matter and the involvement of the internationally renowned photojournalist Ian Teh. 3. Mark Nowak has a speaker's agent who will actively help land major events and appearances. Performances of the work are already scheduled in West Virginia and elsewhere--and are to be covered by a reporter from the Poetry Foundation. PBS News Hour has also shown some interest in covering the author's workshops with union members.

Media Reviews

A stunning collage . . . Nowak's willingness to submerge his own voice beneath these other accounts, privileging other voices -- those of survivors, widows, journalists -- above his own. He is a legislator whose job is allowing others to be heard. New York Times Sunday Book Review
The aim of making poetry to make change, to make history, is what makes Nowak's work most radical and most daring, moving into the realm where knowing is a kind of collective being and doing. --Kenyon Review Mark Nowak is restoring the perspective of working class Americans to contemporary American poetry. --Buffalo News

Coal Mountain Elementary is an imaginative and shocking reminder of what it means, in the most human and poignant terms, to be a miner, whether in this country or in China, or for that matter anywhere in the industrial world. It is also a tribute to miners and working people everywhere. It manages, in photos and in words, to portray an entire culture. And it is a stunning educational tool. --Howard Zinn

Author Bio

A poet and labor activist heralded by Adrienne Rich for regenerating the rich tradition of working-class literature, Mark Nowak regularly leads transnational poetry workshops between American and international trade unions. The author of Revenants and Shut Up Shut Down, he has also been a contributor to the Poetry Foundation's Harriet blog. A Malaysian-born, British photojournalist, Ian Teh has been documenting working conditions in China for over a decade. His photographs have appeared in Newsweek, Time, Fortune, The New Yorker and the UK Independent Magazine and have been widely exhibited, most recently in Beijing.