Awards
In 2016, Katherine E. Young‘s poem “Kingdom of Heaven” was selected for The Orison Anthology, “an annual collection of the finest spiritual writing in all genres published in periodicals during he preceding year.”
In 2016, Elizabeth Acevedo‘s poem “Dominican Superstitions” won an Independent Best American Poetry Prize.
In 2015, Terence Winch‘s poem “Subject to Change” was selected by Sherman Alexie for The Best American Poetry 2015.
In 2015, Joanne Rocky Delaplaine‘s poem “The Letter O” was selected by Kathy Fagan for the 2014 Best of the Net Anthology.
In 2011, 2010 and 2009, Beltway Poetry Quarterly editor Kim Roberts was a finalist in the DC Mayor’s Arts Awards, in the category of Service to the Arts.
In 2010, Kim Roberts won the inaugural Washington On-Line Award for Beltway Poetry Quarterly and “her valuable contribution to the Washington DC Arts Community.”
In 2008, Maureen Thorson‘s poem, “Superman Would Like to Come Down Now,” was a finalist in the Best of the Net Awards.
In 2007, Barbara Goldberg‘s poem “Kingdom of Speculation” won a Best of the Net award and Naomi Ayala‘s poem, “Restaurante Santa Rosa” was a finalist.
What They Say About Us in the Press
Beltway Poetry‘s Wikipedia Page covers the journal’s history, critical reviews, and themes.
A nice mention of Beltway Poetry is included in this June 3, 2019 article in the Washington Independent Review of Books, “Into the Wilds: DC’s literary life, venues, & dis-n-dat.”
In May 2019, Bidwell Hollow published “Beth Joselow on What’s True About DC’s Literary Scene.” Joselow calls Beltway Poetry a “worthy example” of a poetry sponsor.”
“In conversation, Kim Roberts refuses to answer some questions, discusses the importance of curating a magazine based on geography and community, argues that not making money in poetry can actually be good, and makes a critical announcement for the future of Beltway Poetry Quarterly.” Co-editor Margaret Corum’s interview of 2017.
Queen Mob’s Tea House interviewed editor Gowri Koneswaran in March 2016.
The Eugene McCarthy blog praises Peter Montgomery‘s “fine article” in a June 2013 posting. The essay on the Senator’s poetry and influences appeared in the Poetic Ancestors Issue in 2012.
The Washington Post quotes editor Kim Roberts in a March 2013 article, “Poetry’s tense relationship with e-readers.”
The Washington Post‘s Going Out Guide recommends Beltway Poetry, “now one of the longest-standing literary publications in the area,” in “Literary Washington: Where to get your fix when the book festival ends,” September 20, 2012.
The Hill Rag highlighted the Poets in Federal Government Issue in the August 2012 issue. In her column “The Literary Hill,” Karen Lyon quotes from poems by Patricia Gray, Carol J. Jennings, Pamela Murray Winters, and A.B. Spellman.
Ploughshares Literary Magazine‘s ongoing series on “Literary Boroughs” featured Washington, DC in August 2012. Beltway Poetry was listed in the “Where to get published” section.
The March 2012 issue of Where Washington, the hotel guidebook for travelers to the area, calls Beltway Poetry a “virtual salon” that proves that “poetic language matters here too” in the US Capital.
Art Works, the blog of the National Endowment of the Arts, interviewed editor Kim Roberts on January 31, 2012. She talks about how editing informs her own poetry, and the importance of place in literature, as well as describing Beltway Poetry Quarterly and the web exhibit DC Writers’ Homes.
BerniE-Zine reviewed the anthology Full Moon on K Street in September 2011. Editor Bernadette Geyer says, “The diversity of poets represented in this anthology is matched by the diversity of the subject matter.” She prints excerpts of poems by Myra Sklarew and E. Ethelbert Miller.
The New York Times blog “Diner’s Journal” recommended a poem on food vendors who dissappeared after 9/11, “The Old Neighborhood,” by Andrea Carter Brown, in a posting in September 2011. This poem appeared in Beltway Poetry‘s tenth anniversary issue.
Smartish Pace reviewed our tenth anniversary anthology, Full Moon on K Street, in 2011, praising how “the poems encapsulate the 20th century in remarkable ways…you can read the changing aesthetics of various decades as well as the changing cultural make up of the city.” The review was republished in the July 2011 issue of Gently Read Literature.
Poets/Artists in April 2011 featured “Grace Notes: Grace Cavalieri Interviews Three Women Editors,” with a section on Beltway Poetry editor Kim Roberts.
The DC Examiner published an article about the Beltway Poetry Panel at the 2011 AWP Conference in Washington, DC. Joshua Gray writes that “pairing four contemporary poets with four historical ones” is an “intriguing topic” that captures “a passion for the history of DC poets.” Published January 19, 2011.
Blog This Rock posted a Holiday Gift List on December 2, 2010. Full Moon on K Street was recommended in the anthologies section, with the note: “These poems tell stories of change, beauty, decay, and hope as they trace the last 50 years of poems about our national capital. Anyone who loves Washington, DC—or loves poems of place—will love this book.”
Scene4 Magazine‘s December 2010 issue includes Kathi Wolfe‘s “10 Things to Do Before You Die or During the Holidays.” Topping the list of recommended reading is Full Moon on K Street, which she calls “an engaging collection of poetry suberbly edited.”
Duotrope interviewed editor Kim Roberts in July 2010 (updated in January 2013).
Gently Read Literature published a review of Full Moon on K Street by Mike Maggio on July 1, 2010, that calls the anthology “vital” and “a unique glimpse into the heart and soul of the Capitol City through the eyes of long-time residents who have experienced first hand its life and history.” He concludes: ” This book is a great read and a treasure well worth preserving for future generations.”
New Pages published a review of Full Moon on K Street by Kimberly L. Becker on June 1, 2010, calling the book “a resplendent bouquet accompanying editor Kim Roberts’s ‘love letter’ to the City.” She quotes excerpts from poems by Essex Hemphill, Joel Dias-Porter, and Tina Darragh, and singles out poems by Minnie Bruce Pratt and Ramola D as “showstoppers.”
The Baltimore City Paper published “Beltways and Memes” by Geoffrey Himes on May 12, 2010. Himes writes, “It’s a challenge to turn something as amorphous as a city into poetryespecially a city dominated by bureaucrats, curators, and lobbyists. But the poets in Full Moon appear determined to prove, as [Michael] Lally puts it in his poem ‘DC,’ that Washington ‘doesn’t have to be a museum in the pits! Spies! Ritual catalogue of dates!’ How do you find the poetry, though, amid all that marble and concrete? ‘Where did the earth go?’ [Grace] Cavalieri writes in ‘Mapping DC (1966-2007),’ ‘Into Sterling Brown‘s voice . . . into the whine of the guitar of Bill Harris at the “Pigfoot” club.'” He notes that 29 contributors live in Maryland, and “Many of the poems in the volume originally appeared in the terrific regional-poetry web site, beltwaypoetry.com, which Roberts has run since 2000.”
Harriet, the blog of the Poetry Foundation, published a review by Annie Finch on April 26, “Place, Time, Consciousness: Three New Political Anthologies.” Of Full Moon on K Street, Finch writes: “The book is full of surprise and humor and energy, from Michael Lally opening a poem, ‘DC, do you wanna dance?’ to Esther Iverem‘s ‘tribute’ to Bush’s second inauguration…Fresh and memorable poems from a true range of voices. An additional unique charm is that each author bio ends with a sentence giving concrete information about DC evoked by that poets poem…All around, this is a fun and unique anthology and a great introduction to the very cool world of DC poetry.” She includes excerpts from poems by Esther Iverem and Hilary Tham.
Also: The Poetry Foundation selected Beltway Poetry Quarterly as its Featured Site in, “Around the Web,” noting that the journal “prides itself on its ability to capture the full scope of life in our nation’s capital.” And, finally, a notice on Harriet, on January 14, 2010, states, “It’s a good winter for poetry in the nation’s capital…our friends at the Beltway Poetry Quarterly…have begun celebrating their tenth anniversary in style.”
The Devil’s Accountant published a review of Full Moon on K Street on April 19, 2010. They write: “These are great poems. Good poetry alone however, cannot make for an important anthology. The editor plays a nearly equal part in such considerations, and in the case of this very provincial collection editor Kim Roberts has done a marvelous job…as a reader of poetry and a person quite familiar with other landmark anthologies I can confidently say that Roberts has assembled just that: a landmark. This is important work, not just to the community of Washington, DC, but to the nation at large. No doubt part of that national interest is born of the fact that this anthology deals with our nation’s capital… From the founding role of DC artists in what eventually became transplanted and known as the Harlem Renaissance to the protest poetry of the Bush presidency, with many a sun-baked or moonlit edifice between, Full Moon On K Street is remarkable as much because of the city as the poets’ individual talents.”
The Montserrat Review published a “Best Books for Spring Reading, 2010” list, compiled by Grace Cavalieri, which included Full Moon on K Street among the top six anthologies.
The Washington Post published a terrific review of the anthology Full Moon on K Street on the front page of the Style Section in February 2010, calling it “the first anthology of modern poetry to be wholly for, about and by current and former Washington residents[that] teems with poets who’ve distilled the region’s lifeblood into verse over the past 50 years.” Of the editor, Kim Roberts, they write she “has a reputation for being animated, orderly and exacting, and these traits lurk between the lines in Full Moon on K Street.”
During the worst of our winter 2010 blizzards, on February 12, Chez Robert Giron, the blog from the publisher of Gival Press, published a review of the anthology they called “Make that Full Sun on K Street,” quoting poems that mentioned weather from Jose Emilio Pacheco, Richard Peabody, Venus Thrash, Rebecca Villarreal, and Belle Waring.
GW Today, the campus newspaper for George Washington University, published a “Washington Reading List” on January 27, 2010, recommending 8 books set in DC. Full Moon on K Street is the only book of poems on the list. They write: “This newly released collection features more than a hundred contemporary poems with subjects ranging from DC’s monuments to its lawyers and half-smokes. Edited by Kim Roberts, a former visiting poet at GW, contributors include Professor of English David McAleavey and part-time faculty members Christina Daub and Ramola Dharmaraj.”
The Current Newspapers‘ family of neighborhood papers (The Northwest Current, Georgetown Current, and Dupont Current) featured a rave review of the anthology Full Moon on K Street: Poems About Washington, DC, noting Beltway Poetry‘s tenth anniversary, in January 2010. Calling the anthology a celebration of “the built environment and how we live in it,” they say, “If you love DC, even if you haven’t read a poem since high school, you’ll find that the book is full of intriguing perspectives on familiar places and events…And for newcomersor those who want to send the book to folks back homethe introduction to each poem explains the local references.”
The Dressing, an arts blog by Karren L. Alenier in Scene4 Magazine, included a review, with photos, of the January reading at the Folger Shakespeare Library, celebrating the anniversaries of Poet Lore and Beltway Poetry Quarterly. She calls the anthology Full Moon on K Street: Poems About Washington, DC “a graphically handsome volume that will serve as a literary historian’s reference and a unique tour of Washington, DC.”
The Hill Rag reviewed the Tenth Anniversary Issue in January 2010, emphasizing “the effect that Beltway Poetry Quarterly has had on [poets] and on the local poetry community.”
The Best American Poetry blog posted an entry on Little Magazines in April 2009, calling Beltway Poetry “a great literary journal” and part of a “spiritual life force.”
The DC Examiner announced the First Books Issue in April 2009, saying Beltway Poetry “enhances National Poetry Month.”
Gay Wisdom, the blog from White Crane Magazine, gave a very nice plug to BeltwayPoetry, linking to our coverage on Ed Cox and calling us “the repository of the brain of DC Poetic history” in 2007.
The Washington Post On-line published an article on the Beltway Resource Bank list of public statuary depicting writers (part of our Museum list) in 2007.
Jordan Davis selected 4 poems from Beltway Poetry, Issue 8, Number 1 for his Imaginary Anthology 2007, a list of 154 best American poems. Posted in his blog, Equanimity, Davis includes two poems by Kyle Dargan, and one each by Reb Livingston and Hayes Davis.
The Washington Post published a review of the DC Places Issue in 2006.
Soujourner’s Magazine published a short article on The Wartime Issue in 2006.
The Washington Post published a feature article on the festival “DC Celebrates Whitman: 150 Years of Leaves of Grass,” with links to Beltway Poetry in 2005.
The Washington Blade also published a feature on “DC Celebrates Whitman” with links to Beltway Poetry in 2005.
The Washington Post published a feature on The Whitman Issue of Beltway Poetry in 2005.
The Washington Post published a feature article on the poetry community in DC that prominently featured Beltway Poetry in 2004.
The Washington Times published a feature article on the Walt Whitman research of Kim Roberts, first published in the Special Memorial Issue of Beltway Poetry, in May 2004.
The Chronical of Higher Education published an article on online publishing in November 2003; the accompanying resource list links to Beltway Poetry, citing it as one of nine “poetry sites worth exploring.”
Chickenbones published a feature on Beltway Poetry on the occasion of our Special Memorial Issue in October 2003.
The Washington Post published a feature article on Beltway Poetry on the occasion of our second anniversary in March 2001.