New from Wick

...and the latest news from the Wick Poetry Center at Kent State:

Happy Holidays from the Wick Poetry Center, On behalf of the Wick Poetry Center staff and students, I want to wish you all a joyful holiday season with peace, love, and poetry. We are filled with gratitude for you, our remarkable community, for all of the support you have given us this year. Poetry, like community, does not exist in isolation—it is the means by which we connect with others, with the larger world, and with a deeper sense of ourselves. With your unwavering support and advocacy for our programs and outreach, we are thrilled to announce the opening of the Traveling Stanzas: Writing Across Borders exhibit, which will be be launched on a three-year national tour at Summit ArtSpace in Akron, Ohio, January 19-February 17 (Gallery Hours: Thursdays & Fridays, 12-7pm, Saturdays, 12-5pm). The exhibit and community workshops were made possible by a $250,000 matching grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, one of the largest grants for poetry in the country. The interactive exhibit is free and open to all, and we hope that you will visit and witness the work that we have done in the North Hill community with participants at the International Institute of Akron, Project Learn and Urban Vision, many of whom are refugee and immigrant newcomers to Akron. Again, we wish you all the very happiest of holidays, from our Wick family to yours.    In peace and poetry,        David Hassler    Director    Wick Poetry Center

New from CSU

The Cleveland State University Poetry Center sends along their most recent update on their activities this year:

END OF YEAR ROUND-UP We’ve had a wonderful year at the Cleveland State University Poetry Center, and as the days get shorter and the air gets chillier, we’d like to bring you some of our most exciting news and updates. If you’re inspired by what you see below and would like to donate to our cause of publishing 3-5 collections of contemporary poetry, prose, and translation a year in addition to running The Lighthouse Reading Series and providing pedagogical and outreach opportunities for CSU students please know that your support is what allows us to continue publishing and programming throughout the year. AUTHOR NEWS James Allen Hall’s collection of essays, I Liked You Better Before I Knew You So Well, appeared on SPD’s bestsellers list; QNotes’ “Ideas for the LGBTQ book lovers on your holiday gift list;” and Anomalous Press’ “Books to Watch Out For.” Hall was interviewed by Alex DiFrancesco at the CSU Poetry Center blog and appeared on Woodstock Book Talk in October. Colorado Review says Hall handles fraught topics “deftly, with a sly sense of humor;” Newpages writes that “a collection of essays has never been so utterly tragic and full of truth;” and Queen Mob’s Tea House says I Liked You Better “takes the cool, intellectual quality of conceptual writing and poetics and turns it in on the self, allowing for experimentation while maintaining intimacy.” More can be found at American Microreviews, Reviews by Amos Lassen, Hunger Mountain, and The Rumpus. In Entropy, Carrie Lorig writes of Jane Lewty’s second book, In One Form to Find Another, that “Lewty feels through the body’s ferocious, complex response to trauma while refusing to create a linearity and narrative arc which names or details the transgressive / traumatic event.” Lewty’s collection was named “Book of the Week” at the Volta and excerpts can be found at La Vague and Verse Daily. Sheila McMullin’s first book of poetry, daughterrarium has been beautifully reviewed at Forward Reviews, Southern Indiana Review, Heavy Feather Review, Galatea Resurrects, and So To Speak, where Kristen Brida writes that, “McMullin focuses and reveals the many ways the feminine body is exploited, is overpowered in the patriarchal schema of the world.” You can also find new books, poems, reviews, or interviews by Leora Fridman, Allison Titus, Lo Kwa Mei-en, Phil Metres, Dora Malech, Rebecca Gayle Howell, Zach Savich, Sandra Simonds, Elyse Fenton, Lee Upton, and Lily Hoang. Shane McCrae, author of Mule (CSU Poetry Center, 2010) ) was recently the winner of a Lannan Literary Award and a National Book Award finalist for his newest collection, In the Language of My Captor, published this year by Wesleyan. Congrats, Shane! CSU POETRY CENTER GRADUATE ASSISTANTSHIPS The CSU Poetry Center offers graduate assistantships in small press editing and publishing for CSU-based students in the NEOMFA (Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing). If you or anyone you know is researching MFA programs in creative writing you might consider Cleveland State where we’re lucky to host the Lighthouse Reading Series, Playwrights Festival, and Whiskey Island Magazine, among other exciting writing programing. The NEOMFA is the nation's only consortial MFA program in the nation and boasts four schools’ worth of creative writing faculty and a great visiting writers series (this year includes CAConrad, Kelly Link, Emily Mitchell, Rob Handel, and Adam Gopnick). Application deadline: January 15th.  TRANSLATION SUBMISSIONS  The CSU Poetry Center invites queries regarding book-length volumes of poetry in translation for a new occasional series. Please send 1) A cover letter describing the project and confirming any necessary permissions; and 2) a sample translation of at least 20 pages. Full manuscripts are welcome. Email materials to associate director Hilary Plum at h.plum [at] csuohio [dot] edu. Submissions will be open until December 31, 2017. LIGHTHOUSE READING SERIES This year’s Lighthouse Reading Series has hosted Abraham Smith, Hayan Charara, Sheila McMullin, and Eric Fair, all of whom absolutely blew our audiences (and us!) away. Spring readers include Yona Harvey and James Allen Hall (2/9/18), and Dave Lucas and Renee Gladman (3/30/18). If you live in Northeast Ohio, we hope to see you in the spring! Share Tweet Forward Copyright © 2017 Cleveland State University Poetry Center, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email as a lover of poetry, prose, and innovative literary publishing. Our mailing address is: Cleveland State University Poetry Center 2121 Euclid Avenue Rhodes Tower, Room 1841 Cleveland, OH  44115

Semifinal Slam

One Mic Open is having the first of the Semi-Final competitions for the Youth Poetry Slam Team at the Happy Dog at Euclid Tavern, Friday, December 1 from 8 to 11 PM. Donation to attend is $5/$3 students, but free to compete (if you're age 13 to 19)-- in fact, all youth of eligible age (13-19) will have no cover charge for the Semi Finals Pt. 1, 2 or Final stage, even if they don't compete. 

If you've never been to a poetry slam, this is something worth experiencing. Not for the aficionado of subtlety in poetry, a slam is in-your-face competitive poetry with a bad attitude. Miss this one? Look for the second Semi-Finals, January 5 at the Happy Dog.

The event is hosted by Twelve Literary and Performance Arts Incubator and One Mic Open.

Know any teenagers with a way with words and who wants to rumble?  Let them know! (Here are some tips.)

One Mic Open says:

One Mic Open is a grass roots youth literary arts education program geared towards bridging the gap between adults and youth, by having both share their work in a safe space at our open mic and slams. The ultimate goal of the slam series is to put together a four-six person team to compete at an international festival called Brave New Voices, sponsored by YouthSpeaks.

One Mic Open was created to reach the youth of not only Cleveland, but surrounding suburbs, in an effort to create a sense of community among the youth in North East Ohio. By sharing their talents, not limited only to poetry, at the open mic, we feel that they are creating a space in which they are free to be themselves in the most complete sense.

• One Mic Open on Facebook
• Youth Semifinals, Part 1 event page

Gordon Square Review!

Gordon Square

The Inaugural issue of Cleveland's new literary magazine, Gordon Square Review, just came out. Editor-in-chief Laura Maylene Walter writes about "the energy and sense of urgency that run throughout Gordon Square Review’s inaugural issue" in the editor's letter:

Whether it’s a poem like “Scrapbook” or a short story like “Beasts Headed Home from the Party” by Hannah Lackoff (“We are young, we are wild, we are richer than we know”), our first issue glimmers with artful language, startling content, and innovative form. Watching this issue take shape confirmed that there’s not only room for a new online journal like Gordon Square Review, but that the depth of talent, both here in Northeast Ohio and beyond, demands it.

The zine rates a feature review by Michael Barron in Culture Trip:

The launch of the Gordon Square Review is a sign that literary journals might not be dying out after all. Cleveland is a literary city and Cleveland knows it. It was here that the literary theorist Fredric Jameson was born, here that writer Adelle Waldman first cut her teeth as a journalist, and here the novelist Sherwood Anderson had the nervous breakdown that led him to become a writer...

--and also a review by Anne Nickoloff in Cool Cleveland:

"It's really fascinating what kind of bizarre aesthetics emerged from our selections. Things that really surprised me, that I never would have had in my head when I went to start reading submissions," said Walter. "I think there are a lot of exciting pieces."

The review received more than 800 submissions, from Northeast Ohio... but also places as far away as Canada, Malaysia, the U.K. and India.
The lit-zine is sponsored by Cleveland's newest lit organization, Literary Cleveland.

"39 Planets (with Large Black Hand)" by Chris Pekoc

from Gordon Square Review, Nov. 2017

But, is there poetry in the issue?  But of course!  Poets featured include

• Scrapbook  |  Donna Hunt
• Self-Portrait as Eurydice   |  Jenelle Clausen
• Mob Justice  |  Bethany Brengan
• Internment  |  Jen Karetnick
• You Do Not Have Heaven in the Attic  |  Paula Persoleo
• Before She Stopped Living  |  William Soldan
• Almost Night  |  Bill Lythgoe
• Memory  |  Mary Weems

--not to mention the contest winner, "On the Anniversary of the Kent State Shootings" by Mimi Plevin-Foust

And Gordon Square itself just got featured in none other than the New York Times as the hottest new thing going in Cleveland, at least in the arts. If it's the reason Cleveland's star shines according to the venerable NYT, maybe Gordon Square is something you should check out (come for the theatre... stay for the poetry! So don't forget to go up the road another mile and drop in at the Bowled over by Poetry at Mahall's reading, every first Monday of the month).

---

Links:

• Gordon Square Review
• Lit Cleveland News

The City in Autumn

With the first hints of snow frosting the grass and asphalt of the city, the autumn issue of Kathy Smith's The City, a Cleveland 'zine of poetry and art, is out.
Worth a look!

image by Steven B. Smith for The City Autumn 2017

• The City: Autumn 2017
• Archives of earlier issues

Poets for Puerto Rico

More than 30 artists will take part in "Poets for Puerto Rico" 6-9 p.m., Sunday, Oct. 29, at The Happy Dog at 5801 Detroit Road, in Gordon Square.
Organized by Daniel Gray-Kontar and Twelve Literary Arts, the benefit is $5 for adults and $3 for students.

• More than 30 Cleveland writers and musicians will perform to raise money for Puerto Rico (Cleveland.com)
• Poets for Puerto Rico: A Benefit Reading (Facebook page)

44th Anniversary Reading of the Cyril A. Dostal Poetry Workshop

Wow, the Poets' League of Greater Cleveland poetry workshop-- recently renamed the "Cyril A. Dostal Poetry Workshop" in honor of its founder and long-time moderator, the poet-curmudgeon Cy Dostal ("I'm here to calm down trouble, if people make trouble, and to stir up trouble, if nobody makes trouble") is 44 years old! and the South Euclid-Lyndhurst Branch of the Cuyahoga County Public Library (the current home of the workshop) is celebrating on Sunday, October 22, from 2 to 3:30 pm.
They write:
Join us as we celebrate one of the oldest public writing workshops in the nation as well as its official renaming in honor of founder Cyril A. Dostal. Enjoy poetry readings by past workshop participants and stay afterward for refreshments and conversation.

So, come hear some poems, and celebrate Cleveland's oldest poetry workshop!

Now moderated by legendary Cleveland poet Bob McDunough, the workshop is still going strong, still free, and still open to the public, meeting every third Thursday of the month at 6:30 in the Porch meeting room of the South Euclid-Lyndhurst Library.  Bring 20 copies of a poem, and you'll be welcome too!

• 44th Anniversary Reading of the Cyril A. Dostal Poetry Workshop, Sunday Oct. 22, 2-3:30pm

44th Anniversary Reading:
 1 Marilyn Schraff Subbing 100%
2 Jill Lange Zinnias
3 Rebecca Ferlotti Short North
4 Geoffrey Landis Shout
5 Rob Farmer ON WALKING WITH HOUND THROUGH RAINY FOREST AFTER LEARNING OF A COLLEAGUES DEATH
6 Kathryn Brock Aunt Kittie's Silver
7 Fred Schraff Settling
8 Len Seyfrid Junipers
9 Roberta Jupin Stone
10 Rick Ferris Comrades
11 M.A.Shaheed Conclusions
12 Arlene Ring Karma and Grace
13 Mary Turzillo Earth, Wind, Air, Fire
14 Chris Franke Re t Con Volution
15 Adrian Schnall Conversation
16 Carolyn Ritchie Uncelebrated
17 Doc Janning Together
18 Jim Bolce September 1942
19 Dail Duncan Blessed Are the Slow of Speech
20 Bob McDonough People Who Live on Dirt Roads

Call for Applicants: City of Cleveland Heights Poet Laureate 2018-2020

Heights Arts Announces Search for Next Cleveland Heights Poet Laureate

Heights Arts has begun the process of selecting the Cleveland Heights Poet Laureate who will serve from April 2018, to March 2020. The term of Christine Howey, the current Cleveland Heights poet laureate, will end on March 31, 2018.

Poets across the northeast Ohio region are encouraged to apply. Candidates are not required to live in Cleveland Heights, but must demonstrate a strong connection to the city.

Applications will be accepted at the Heights Arts website (www. heightsarts.org) from mid-October, 2017 to December 31, 2017. Detailed information about the responsibilities of the Cleveland Heights Poet Laureate are available on the Heights Arts website. The Heights Writes Committee of Heights Arts will review applications and conduct interviews in January and February. They will make a final selection by March 2018.