Latest from Incredible Sestinas
MassPo Challenge Sestina by Kolleen Carney!
At the Massachusetts Poetry Festival reading, six readers — Ravi Shankar, Michael Costello, Jade Sylvan, Peter Jay Shippy, Lewis Turco, and Victor D. Infante — each contributed an end-word for a "sestina challenge." Could anyone write a sestina using the words radiate, code, tentacles, multiple, and more? Kolleen Carney rose to the occasion.
Read Kolleen Carney's sestina →Guess Which Prize-Winning, Established Poet Sent This Sestina to McSweeney's, circa 2003!
A playful look back at a sestina submission sent to McSweeney's around 2003 by a prize-winning poet — a piece that captures the wit and formal daring the anthology celebrates.
Photos from Mass Poetry Festival Reading
A gallery of moments from the Massachusetts Poetry Festival reading, where contributors to The Incredible Sestina Anthology gathered to share their work with an enthusiastic audience.
Stay tuned for more news, challenges, and community sestina projects.
The Incredible Sestina Anthology continues to celebrate the enduring power of this demanding poetic form, which has challenged and inspired writers for centuries. From its medieval origins to its modern revival, the sestina's intricate pattern of repeated end-words rewards both the disciplined craftsman and the playful experimenter. The site's news section has long served as a gathering place for poets, editors, and readers who share a passion for the form — whether they are chronicling festival readings, sharing new work, or debating the fine line between comedy and tragedy, the sacred and the profane. The ongoing conversation reminds us that the sestina remains a vital, living tradition, one that continues to emerge in surprising new voices and settings, from small journals to major anthologies.