From JR Simons:
Fresh
off the publication of our first anthology, Mad As Hell: An Anthology
of Angry Poetry, Simple Simons Press is launching its second call for
submissions for a new anthology titled "Hope Springs Eternal." Poets
interested in contributing, please submit using this link: https://forms.gle/qmCz4bbVr8jgSW8Y9.
Monday, January 30, 2023
Coming soon: Hope Springs Eternal anthology from Simple Simons Press
Wednesday, January 18, 2023
Christine Howey Has a Poem About That
I Have a Poem About That is 36 pp, 6 x 9", perfect bound, with cover art by Jessie Herzfeld. ISBN 979-8-88596-993-2. Available for $10 from Crisis Chronicles Press, 535 Parkside Boulevard, Cleveland, Ohio 44143 USA.
This volume features 23 poems, including "When We Die We Become Birds," "My Skiff," "Camus at Camp," "A Meeting of Suburban Deer," "Eternity on Elm Street," "Inside Out," "Invert at the Gem Saloon, Deadwood, South Dakota, 1876," "My Name Is John Doe," "Mount Everest," "Paul Desmond's Slot Machine," "Ten Ill-Conceived Kitchen Gadgets," "Maybe I Should Have Told Different Lies," "After I'm Gone," "Blueberries, Summer, 1944," "The Last One," "The Road Oft Taken," "Sign of the Cross," "A Bubble-Off Romance," "The Birds and the Bees," "The History of Television," "The Universal Usage Guide," "An Ode to Richard Howie," and "My Words Are Too Big Today."
Christine has also been an award-winning theater critic in Cleveland for 25 years, currently with Cleveland Scene. She was named Transgender Leader of the Year in Northeast Ohio and received the Torch Award from the Human Rights Campaign for leadership on transgender issues.
Saturday, January 7, 2023
Wednesday, December 21, 2022
Charlotte Morgan interviews Judith Mansour for FreshWater Cleveland
Gratitude to Charlotte Morgan and FreshWater Cleveland for a fine interview with Judith Mansour, the author of Kan Zaman.
Read it here: https://www.freshwatercleveland.com/street-level/MansourMemoir122122.aspx.
Buy Mansour's Kan Zaman from Mac's Backs Books or at http://ccpress.blogspot.com/2022/10/mansour.html.
Wednesday, December 14, 2022
Sandusky Reading Event Saturday at 1:30
Eve Martinez is a Kenneth Patchen expert and vocalist.
She will be presenting some of Patchen's poems to vocal settings.
She comes to us via New York City, having moved to Oberlin.
Her work with Kenneth Patchen was through composer Jack Eric Williams.
She directs Flagrante Music Productions.
Thursday, December 8, 2022
Inaugural Toni Morrison Poetry Contest
From our friends at the Lorain Public Library System:
Thursday, December 1, 2022
Urbanshee / Siaara Freeman featured in Cleveland Magazine
Congratulations, Siaara Freeman! Urbanshee is quite the book.
Read the article by Annie Nickoloff at https://clevelandmagazine.com/entertainment/books/articles/cleveland-s-siaara-freeman-to-release-new-poetry-collection.
Pick up your own copy of Urbanshee at https://buttonpoetry.com/product/urbanshee/.
Monday, November 28, 2022
Applications for Ekphrastacy and the next Cleveland Heights Poet Laureate
From our friends at Heights Arts:
Cleveland Heights Poet Laureateship
Serving as Poet Laureate may increase your future funding possibilities. Our outgoing poet laureate, Ray McNiece, was awarded a substantial grant from the Academy of American Poets as a direct result of his role as CH poet laureate. Says McNiece of his laureateship, “Serving as The Cleveland Heights Poet Laureate has provided me with the opportunity not only to refocus on my poetry, but more so on my role as a community poet. Writing is often a solitary art, but the laureateship by its very nature engages my art, particularly through the Ekphrastacy series, which provides me and other poets in the community with an opportunity to work with a wider audience.”
Learn more and apply to be the next Cleveland Heights Poet Laureate
Ekphrastacy: Artists Talk and Poets Respond
The Ekphrastacy literary program is a series of artist talks + poetry readings held regularly in the Heights Arts gallery, in conjunction with our four, yearly exhibitions. Cleveland-area writers are invited to view the installed artworks and respond with poetry. Five weeks after the exhibition opening, the artists talk about their work and the poets read their poems, often resulting in a surprising dialogue. Participating poets receive an honorarium for their participation.
Learn more and apply to perform in the 2023 Ekphrastacy: Artists Talk and Poets Respond series
Porcelains and Poetry in South Euclid: Rescheduled for Spring 2023
From the press release:
"Enjoy readings by a dozen prominent local poets created in response to art at the American Museum of Porcelain Art with musical interludes by a string quartet from Charles F. Brush High School. Hors d'oeuvres and beverages will be served. Proceeds from the fundraising event will support a One South Euclid program that helps senior residents age in place."
Buy your ticket ($55) at https://www.onesoutheuclid.org/event-details/porcelains-poetry.
Participating poets:
Doc Janning
Raja Belle Freeman
John Burroughs
Ray McNiece
Shelley Chernin
Amy Kesegich
Jeremy Jusek
Cat Russell
Russ Vidrick
Barbara Marie Minney
Mimi Plevin-Foust
Abdul Ghani
Museum of American Porcelain Art
4645 Mayfield Road
South Euclid, Ohio 44121
Thursday, November 17, 2022
Himalayan Poet to Visit Cleveland; Ray McNiece Leads Poem for Cleveland Project
Poet Friends, two events
upcoming:
One, this Sunday at the Millard Fillmore on Waterloo,
world-traveling Himalayan poet Yuyutsu Sharma will perform with the
Tongue in Groove Jam band and you can too, bring a poem of gratitude or
gray, or gratitude for gray, the palette of Cleveland from November
until May for the open mic. [Side note: Yuyutsu will also be leading a workshop, to be followed by open mic, on Monday at G.A.R. Hall in Peninsula.]
On that note, those of you who would like
to participate in the Poem for Cleveland Project (and that includes
Northeast Ohio) can come to any free workshops listed below. This
Saturday's workshop at the MLK branch of CPL on Stokes Avenue is being
covered by a reporter from the Plain Dealer. It happens, as do all the
workshops, from 10:30 till Noon.
Friday, November 4, 2022
Thursday, November 3, 2022
Connections
Join us in lovely downtown Sandusky for a Celebration of haiku
and Barbara Sabol and Larry Smith's new book CONNECTIONS.
We will all be writing and sharing haiku. Come and share.
Saturday Nov. 19th...1:30 - 3:00
Monday, October 31, 2022
Kan Zaman by Judith Mansour to be released November 5th
Crisis Chronicles Press is thrilled to announce the imminent publication of Kan Zaman, a memoir in poetry and prose by Judith Mansour. Pre-order now for $15 and receive free shipping. Or meet the author at our book release event on November 5th at Beaumont School in Cleveland Heights.
Mansour,
a native of Youngstown, Ohio, walks the minefield of grief and
nostalgia in her first full-length collection. Soot-covered porches from
the once-booming steel industry of the Mahoning Valley are the backdrop
for visceral, playful and devastating memories.
The title, Kan Zaman, is Arabic for "a long time ago" —
often used to mean once upon a time or way back when. Apropos for this
collection born of losing people Mansour loved and who shaped who she
is.
"Judith Mansour’s
Kan Zaman is an irresistible evocation of the Lebanese household she
grew up in. This magical book is both a love poem to her family and an
invitation for all of us to revisit our childhood, that paradise to
which we can only return through memory. Mansour’s writing, by turns
both sensual and hauntingly lyrical, is as welcoming as a warm kitchen on a winter night."
— George Bilgere
You may also pre-order Kan Zaman from our friends at Mac's Backs Books on Coventry in Cleveland Heights.
Thursday, October 20, 2022
Judy Garland is Not a Sunrise
Available here: https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/judy-garland-is-not-a-sunrise-by-e-f-schraeder/.
— Dianne Borsenik, Raga for What Comes Next (Stubborn Mule Press, 2019)
Judy Garland is Not a Sunrise is a meditation on fame and the horrors and responsibilities that come along with it, for better or worse. This collection gives an honest look into the life and lifestyle of artists and discusses how fans oftentimes marry suffering to the creation of art, all while commenting on mental health, the body, and how the heart processes pain, overstimulation, and the need to constantly produce and survive. A must-read for poets and artists alike.”
— Stephanie M. Wyotovich, Bram Stoker Award® winner
Lyrical and melancholy, Schraeder's Judy Garland is Not a Sunrise is an unfiltered Norma Jean tribute to songstress Amy Winehouse. A small volume with 'velvet insides', this collection comprises exquisite 'fire-kiss' poems that 'sing from the veins' on ashtray-regret themes of self-destruction and addiction. An unsettling and compelling offering from an exceptional voice in horror poetry."
— Lee Murray, USA Today Bestselling author and double Bram Stoker Award® winner
Lit Youngstown Fall Literary Festival: October 20th through 22nd
Supported by Ohio Humanities, the conference aims to sustain and enhance discussion on real and imagined literary places that shape our memory, experience and identity.
This year’s featured presenters are film scholar & screenwriter
Laura Beadling, fiction writer Kelly Fordon, filmmaker Karla Murthy,
children’s author Candace Fleming & poet Joy Priest.
For more information, to register, and to view the full schedule, click here.
Sunday, October 16, 2022
Two Area Poets Pair up in New Book of Tanka and Haiku Poetry
two area poets pair up in new book
of tanka and haiku poetry
CONNECTIONS
Morning Dew: Tanka by Larry Smith
and
core & all: haiku by Barbara Sabol
Tuesday, September 20, 2022
Congratulations to our new Ohio Poet of the Year, Erica Manto Paulson
Registration closes October 14, 2022.
Thursday, September 15, 2022
Timothy Russell
Here is a poem and tribute to Ohio
Working-Class poet Timothy Russell.
Rustbelt Girl Blog
Tuesday, September 13, 2022
This week in Kent, Ohio
From our friends at the Wick Poetry Center:
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Monday, September 12, 2022
Monday, August 29, 2022
Thoreau's Journal
Thoreau's Journal - August 29, 1859
Thoreau's Journal - August 29, 1859
It is so cool a morning thatfor the first time I move into
the entry to sit in the sun. But
in this cooler weather I feel
as if the fruit of my summer were
hardening and maturing a little,
acquiring color and flavor like the
corn and other fruits in the field.
When the very earliest ripe grapes
begin to be scented in the cool nights,
then, too, the first cooler airs of autumn
begin to waft my sweetness on the
desert airs of summer. Now, too, poets
nib their pens afresh. I scent theirfirst-fruits in the cool evening air of the year.
By the coolness the experience of the summeris condensed and matured, whether our fruits
be pumpkins or grapes. Man, too,
ripens with the grapes and apples.