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Home / Newsroom / Metres Releases Shrapnel Maps
Phil Metres smiles for the camera

Dr. Philip Metres

John Carroll University professor and award-winning author Dr. Philip Metres will travel across the United States in support of his newest book release, Shrapnel Maps, this spring and summer. 

Metres will read his poetry at 11 stops from March through July on a tour that spans from Seattle to New York City, including a stop on campus at the JCU Young Writers Workshop from July 20-24. He will also make appearances at the AWP Conference in San Antonio and the Split This Rock Festival in Washington, D.C.

Writing into the wounds and reverberations of the Israel/Palestine conflict, Shrapnel Maps is set to be published by Copper Canyon Press, one of the top independent poetry presses in the country, in April 2020.

Shrapnel Maps is not merely in conversation with these other writers and books, it is a conversation," Metres says. "It is an attempt to model listening. And, of course, it's not even close to "the whole story"—nor should any book even pretend to try. That's the false projection of imperial cartography, filling in "empty" spaces. The poetry of Shrapnel Maps persists in the interstices of narratives, showing how even compelling national stories hide, erase, and damage. And I'm not talking just one side or the other here, even as we must acknowledge the dramatic power imbalance between Israel and the Palestinians. Every narrative excludes. Yet each life, each voice, has dignity and is worthy of our attention.

Metres teaches literature and creative writing at John Carroll and also serves as director of Peace, Justice and Human Rights Program. His work has garnered fellowships from the Lannan Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as six Ohio Arts Council grants, the Hunt Prize, the Adrienne Rich Award, two Arab American Book Awards, the Watson Fellowship, the Lyric Poetry Award, the Alice James Award, the Creative Workforce Fellowship, and the Cleveland Arts Prize.

More information on Shrapnel Maps and a Q&A with Metres is available from Green Linden Press. 

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