Poetry Back in the Woods

Poetry Back in the Woods 
Thursday November 19, 2009
7:00 PM - 8:30 PM
Bertram Woods Branch

Sammy Greenspan is a former waitress, lab tech, painter, pediatrician and homeschool teacher. Her 2009 chapbook, Step Back from the Closing Doors, was a Pushcart nominee. Her work appears in two 2009 anthologies, The Pudding House Gang, and Love Poems and Other Messages for Bruce Springsteen. She is the director of the Pudding House Salon monthly poetry workshop in Cleveland.

Fran Immerman is a native of Northeast Ohio, now living in Moreland Hills with her husband and three teenage children and two dogs. She began writing poetry several years ago as a way to hold and manage her grief in the wake of the deaths of both her parents, within nine months, both to cancer. Fran writes poetry with an ear toward melody.

Terry Provost is a metaphysico-political poet writing from the political perspective of Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn and Arundhati Roy, and the philosophical perspective of Richard Rorty. He was born around the corner from Herman Melville’s home in Troy, New York, and graduated with degrees in physics from St. Bonaventure and medical physics from the University of Colorado. His first book of poems, Compassionate Imperialism (and its links to terrorism), was published in 2004. He currently teaches math at Cuyahoga Community College’s Metropolitan Campus, and lives in Lakewood with his wife, Karen Cook, and their son, Jackson. 

Major poetry reading – literally.

Poetry Back in the Woods
Thursday October 29, 2009
7:00 PM - 8:30 PM
Bertram Woods Branch

An Autumn Evening with Maj Ragain & Tim Joyce

Maj Ragain has taught creative writing at Kent State University for more than twenty years. During that time, he has hosted a monthly series of open poetry readings at Brady’s Cafe in Kent. He has published four books of poetry, most recently Twist the Axe: A Horseplayer’s Story, a collection of poems, journals and illustrations. A recipient of three fellowships from the Ohio Arts Council, Ragain held a fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts during the summer of 2001. He hosts a monthly open poetry reading at the North Water Street Gallery in Kent, Ohio.

Tim Joyce graduated from Cleveland State University and began a career interweaving journalism and teaching with the fine arts of painting, poetry, and music. He earned a Masters Degree in Anglo-Irish literature from University College Dublin, and spent seven years in Hollywood with the Motion Picture Association of America. In 1992, Joyce was a visiting lecturer in American poetry at the John F. Kennedy School in Berlin. He has published three volumes of poetry: Those Lucky Days, Flowerthief and Language Animal: New and Collected Poems. As a recipient of a NEH Grant Joyce studied as a Harvard Fellow with poetry critic Helen Vendler. His most recent work, Himself, is a collection of songs. A painter and musician, Joyce lives on Cape Cod where he teaches high school English.

Poetry back in the Woods – Estrogen Edition

Poetry Back in the Woods
Thursday September 24, 2009
7:00 PM - 8:30 PM
Bertram Woods Branch 

10 Women: A Conversation in Poetry
Poetry Back in the Woods begins its season with a presentation by ten women poets.
 

Mary Biddinger is the editor of the Akron Series in Poetry, and the director of the NEOMFA. She is also co-editor-in-chief of Barn Owl Review.

Susan Grimm`s poems have appeared in The Journal, Poetry East, Crab Orchard Review, and others. Her book of poems, Lake Erie Blue, was published by BkMk Press. She edited Ordering the Storm: How to Put Together a Book of Poems which was published by Cleveland State University Poetry Center.

Bonnie Jacobson is Whiskey Island’s creative non-fiction editor and author of two poetry collections, Stopping for Time (GreenTower Press) and In Joanna’s House (Cleveland State University Poetry Center); and two chapbooks, On Being Served Apples (Bits Press) and Greatest Hits (Pudding House invitational). Her poems have appeared in The Gettysburg Review, The Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, Rattle.

Laura Kennelly, associate editor of BACH: Journal of the Riemenschneider Bach Institute at the Baldwin-Wallace Conservatory of Music, is an arts columnist in the Cleveland area.

Amy Kesegich teaches English at Notre Dame College of Ohio. She has published poetry in Whiskey Island, California Quarterly, Frost Notes, Poetry Motel, White Pelican Review and Rubbertop Review. She has a chapbook, Spare Change, published by Bits Press.

Lynn Powell has published two books of poetry, Old & New Testaments and The Zones of Paradise. Her poems have been included in 180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Every Day and The Norton Introduction to Literature (forthcoming) and have won recent awards from the Ohio Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Jessica Schantz teaches composition and creative writing at Cleveland State University.

Karen Schubert is the author of The Geography of Lost Houses, and her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in 42opus, Fifth Wednesday, Zoland Poetry, Redactions, Reconfigurations and others. She received nominations for a Pushcart Prize and awards from American Academy of Poets and dA Center for the Arts.

Amy Sparks,editor at the Cleveland Museum of Art, is the author of serious red (Cleveland State University Poetry Center) and queen of cups (Burning Press), and has published in Barn Owl Review, DMQ Review, Hobble Creek Press, Harpur Palate, and more.

Jennifer Sullivan, Department Head of English at Barberton High School, is a poet from Akron, Ohio. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in American Poetry Journal, Barn Owl Review, DIAGRAM, The Laurel Review, New York Quarterly, and Nimrod.

Bertram Woods Reading 12-10-08

R.A. Washington and Terry Provost
Poetry Back in The Woods
Shaker Heights Public Library
12-10-08

It was like a surreal newscast - in a good way.