The Poetry Box LIVE – March Edition!

Saturday, March 8, 2025 @ 4:00 PM (Pacific)

3pm (Alaskan) / 5pm (Mountain) / 6pm (Central) / 7pm (Eastern)

Featuring:

• Carolyn Martin (OR) – author of Splitting Open the World
• David Belmont (NY) – author of Ob-la-di Ob-la-da
• LeAnn Bjerken (MN) – author of Ordinary Omens
• Luna Moore Latorre (CA) – author of Chrysalis

Enjoy a Video from the Show:

About the Featured Poets:

From Roman Catholic Sister of Mercy and English teacher in New Jersey to international management trainer; from author of business books to poetry collections; from work addict to devotee of the Spanish proverb, “It is beautiful to do nothing and rest afterwards,” Carolyn Martin is blissfully retired––and resting––in Clackamas, Oregon.

A lover of gardening and snorkeling, feral cats and backyard birds, Martin embraces poetry as her way of interacting with the world­­––in images, rhythms, sounds, and intensities of language. That is why she’s settled into the joyful task of translating experience into as few words as possible.

Her aesthetic is found in Galway Kinnell’s statement, “To me, poetry is somebody standing up…and saying, with as little concealment as possible, what it is for him or her to be on earth at this moment.” With little concealment, her poems grapple with this challenge.

Martin’s poems have appeared in more than 200 publications throughout North America, Australia, and the UK. The Poetry Box released her second collection, The Way a Woman Knows, in 2015; a chapbook, Nothing More to Lose, in 2020; and her fifth collection, The Catalog of Small Contentments, in 2021.

You can learn more about Carolyn’s book HERE

David Belmont is a mixed media artist and community organizer. He writes poetry, memoir and short fiction. World Gone Zoom: Notes from the American Epicenter, his debut poetry collection, was published by The Poetry Box in May 2021. Other writing has appeared in The Poeming Pigeon, Wildflower Muse and FishFood Magazine. David has been a professional musician for over 50 years, producing 26 albums of his own work. His CD WindWater Excursions spent 8 months on the New Age Voice Top 100 Airplay List (2000-2001)and was in heavy rotation on the syndicated radio program Echoes. He is vice president of Musicians for Musicians, a musicians’ rights organization based in NYC, and a member of the band SoSaLa (spoken word, dobro). David is on the faculty of the East Side Institute, an international center that promotes alternative and radically humanizing approaches to psychology, education and community building. He lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan with visual artist Kim Svoboda and their labradoodle Penelope.

You can learn more about David’s book HERE

Originally from Minnesota, LeAnn Bjerken holds an MFA in creative writing from Eastern Washington University. A former journalist, freelance writer and mermaid performer, she has temporarily traded her fins for legs in order to better keep up with her daughter. Her poetry has appeared in Miracle Magazine, The Pacific Northwest Inlander, Spokane Coeur d’Alene Living Magazine, and online publications including Devilfish Review, The Artistic Muse, The Lake, Fox Adoption Magazine, and Plants & Poetry Journal. When not out seeking inspiration, she can be found at home snuggling with her husband Steve, daughter Eowyn, and cat Tikki.

You can learn more about LeAnn’s book HERE

Luna Moore Latorre is a writer of fiction and poetry living in Southern California. Chrysalis is her first published book. Her second book, a novel, is soon to be published by Library Tales (and distributed by Simon & Schuster) in July 2025. Luna’s other work can be found in Literally Stories, Eunoia Review, Yellow Arrow, and other places. When she is not writing, she loves reading, dancing, hiking, and being with her cat, Da Vinci.

You can learn more about Luna’s book HERE

The Poetry Box LIVE – February Edition!

Saturday, Feb 08, 2025 @ 4:00 PM (Pacific)

3pm (Alaskan) / 5pm (Mountain) / 6pm (Central) / 7pm (Eastern)

Featuring our 2024 Chapbook Prize Winners and Guest Judge:

• Flavian Mark Lupinetti – author of The Pronunciation Part  
• Laura Foley – author of Ice Cream for Lunch: A Grandparents Handbook
• Allison Thorpe – author of A Girl, a Slipper, and Yesterday’s Rainbow
• Donna Hilbert – Contest Judge & Special Guest

Enjoy the video from the show:

About the Featured Poets:

Flavian Mark Lupinetti, a Pushcart nominated poet, fiction writer, and cardiac surgeon, received his MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. He received first place awards in the 2023 Social Justice Poetry Contest sponsored by Sport Literate and the 2014 Betsy Sholl Poetry Award sponsored by Words and Images. His creative writing has appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, Cutthroat, december, Redivider, ZYZZYVA, and other publications, and his contributions to the scientific literature include more than 90 peer-reviewed papers, research studies, and monographs. A native of West Virginia, Mark now lives in New Mexico.

You can learn more about Mark’s chapbook HERE

Laura Foley is the author of ten previous poetry books, most recently, Sledding the Valley of the Shadow. Her book Why I Never Finished My Dissertation received a starred Kirkus Review and an Eric Hoffer Award. She has won a Narrative Magazine Poetry Prize, The Common Good Books Poetry Prize, Atlanta Review’s Grand Prize and others. Her work has been included in many journals including: Alaska Quarterly, Valparaiso, Poetry Society London, Atlanta Review, Poetry of Presence: An Anthology of Mindfulness Poems, and How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope. She lives on the steep banks of the Connecticut River in New Hampshire, and romps with the grandchildren as often as possible.

You can learn more about Laura’s chapbook HERE

Sylvia Ahrens (writing as Allison Thorpe) grew up on the shores of Lake Michigan. After adventuring around the country, she and her husband settled at the end of a lovely dirt road in Kentucky where they built their own home of natural stone and wood, raised a family and an organic garden, and reveled in bird song for almost four decades. Along the way, she earned degrees in English Literature, Creative Writing, and Women’s Studies. Her books include six collections of poetry and a series of cozy mysteries.

Inspirations include the growly screams of Janis Joplin, the enduring courage of Aung San Suu Kyi, the complex melodies of Bela Fleck, and the beautiful finality of the Oxford Comma. She works as a writing mentor at The Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning, loves lilacs, yearns to be a poker star, and lives in Lexington, Kentucky.

You can learn more about Allison’s chapbook HERE

Donna Hilbert’s latest book is Threnody, from Moon Tide Press, 2022. Earlier books include Gravity: New & Selected Poems, Tebot Bach, 2018. She is a monthly contributing writer to Verse-Virtual. Work has appeared in Braided Way, Cultural Daily, Chiron Review, Gyroscope, Sheila-Na-Gig, Rattle, Zocalo Public Square, ONE ART, The Los Angeles Times, and numerous anthologies including The Poetry of Presence volumes I & II, The Path to Kindness, The Wonder of Small Things, I Thought I Heard a Cardinal Sing, and featured on Writers on Writing, The Writer’s Almanac, and Lyric Life. She writes and leads private workshops in Southern California, where she makes her home.

You can learn more about Donna at https://www.donnahilbert.com/

The Poetry Box LIVE – January Edition!

Saturday, Jan. 11, 2025 @ 4:00 PM (Pacific)

3pm (Alaskan) / 5pm (Mountain) / 6pm (Central) / 7pm (Eastern)

Featuring:

• AMY BASKIN (OR) – author of SKULL
• PENNY JOHNSON (WA) – author of HAGS ON TRACTORS
• DAVID GOODRUM (OR) – author of VITALS & OTHER SIGNS OF LIFE
• SHAWN PITTARD (CA) – author of WITNESS

Enjoy a video from the show:

About the Featured Poets:

Amy Baskin is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, an Oregon Literary Arts Fellow, and an Oregon Poetry Association prizewinner. Her work can be found in anthologies and journals including the HOCUS Tarot, Pirene’s Fountain, Friends Journal, and SWWIM. When not writing, she works for the Departments of English and History at Lewis & Clark College and helps run literary arts programs including Fir Acres Writing Workshop. She is the author of Hysterical Cake (Dancing Girl Press, 2021), Night Hag (Unsolicited Press, 2023).

You can learn more about Amy’s book HERE

Penny Johnson lives at the base of a mountain with a horde of animals in Central Washington. She and her horse run the farm. Johnson provides glimpses of extraordinary lives that have lost some scaffolding but radiate genuine and quixotic vulnerability. Johnson’s writing is visual and tactile. She has been featured poet in literary reviews and a contender in Seattle Poetry Slams.  Johnson was the recipient of the Kirkwood Award for Short Fiction through UCLA Extension. She was a resident of Devereux, received her BA from The Evergreen State College, MFA from Goddard College. Both Johnson’s novels, Memories of a Female Truck Driver and Double Back, are available from Amazon. She is a contributor in the WA129 anthology with poems previously published in Bellowing Ark, Pawn to Infinity, Spectacles, City Primevil, and Spillway. Johnson has most recently been published in Yakima Coffee House Poets where she won the Tom Pier Prize, Shrub-Steppe Review, and Cirque, A Literary Journal for the North Pacific Rim, with a Pushcart Prize nomination, Cleaver Fall 2023, Honorable Mention judged by Diane Suess and Quartet Journal.

You can learn more about Penny’s book HERE

David A. Goodrum, writer/photographer, was born, raised, and educated in Indiana and currently lives in Oregon in the Willamette Valley. As an undergrad he studied at Indiana University and graduated with a creative writing thesis of poems. He holds degrees in English and German and a doctorate in instructional systems technology. David has been a high school teacher, a developer of instructional software, a fine arts photographer exhibiting at juried art fairs, and a director of educational technology across two different universities. Vitals and Other Signs of Life (The Poetry Box, 2024) is his first book-length collection of poetry. His poems have been published in Tar River Poetry, The Inflectionist Review, Passengers Journal, Cathexis Northwest Press, Fireweed: Poetry of Oregon, Willawaw Journal, Spillway, Eclectica Magazine, Scapegoat Journal, Triggerfish Critical Review, among others. A chapb

You can learn more about David’s chapbook HERE

Shawn Pittard is the author of two slender volumes of poetry: Standing in the River, which was the winner of Tebot Bach’s 2010 Clockwise Chapbook Competition, and These Rivers from Rattlesnake Press. He’s been a coach for Poetry Out Loud and a California Poet in the Schools. Shawn taught recitation and writing in middle schools and high schools, including juvenile hall (yep, they’re good kids), as well as with veterans and the men in Folsom Prison. By day, he labored in the field of environmental protection, planning, and public policy, focusing on energy.

You can learn more about Shawn’s chapbook HERE

The Poetry Box LIVE – October Edition!

Saturday, Oct. 12, 2024 @ 4:00 PM (Pacific)

3pm (Alaskan) / 5pm (Mountain) / 6pm (Central) / 7pm (Eastern)

Featuring:

• Lois Levinson (CO) – author of Field Notes from an Illusion
• Ginny Lowe Connors (CT) – author of White Sail at Midnight
• Fred Zirm (MD) – author of Rescue Dogs

Enjoy the Video from the Show:

About the Featured Poets:

Lois Levinson has had several careers: as a middle school teacher of French and English, as an attorney practicing commercial litigation in Denver, and, more recently, as a poet.  While she pursued each profession with passion and commitment, she has found true delight in writing poetry. A graduate of the Poetry Book Project, a two-year advanced program at Lighthouse Writers Workshop, she published a chapbook, Crane Dance, followed by a full-length book, Before it All Vanishes.  For the past nine years, she has met with her poetry group, the Wyrd Sisters, to study poetry and to workshop and rejoice in one another’s poems and publication successes. She lives in a suburb of Denver with her husband Mark, their adult son Daniel, a Goldendoodle named Molly, and an African Grey parrot who answers to Kiri.

You can learn more about Lois’s book HERE

Ginny Lowe Connors is the author of five previous poetry collections, the most recent of which is Without Goodbyes: From Puritan Deerfield to Mohawk Kahnawake (Turning Point, 2021). Among her awards are the Sunken Garden Poetry Prize, Atlanta Review’s Grand Prize, and the Founders Award, sponsored by the National Federation of State Poetry Societies. She was named “Poet of the Year” by NEATE (New England Association of Teachers of English). In 2018 she was named the winner of Passager’s annual Poetry Contest.  Essays and book reviews she’s written have appeared in such publications as the Hartford Courant, Baltimore Review, New York Journal of Books, Switchback, and North American Review. In 2023 Connors was Writer in Residence at Trail Wood, former home of naturalist Edwin Way Teale. She holds an MFA in poetry from Vermont College of Fine Arts. As publisher of her own press, Grayson Books, Connors has edited a number of poetry anthologies, including Forgotten Women: A Tribute in Poetry. A Board Member of the Connecticut Poetry Society, she is co-editor of Connecticut River Review.

You can learn more about Ginny’s book HERE

After earning a B.A. and M.A. in English from Michigan State and an M.F.A. from the Playwrights Workshop at the University of Iowa, Fred Zirm spent nearly 40 years teaching English and drama at an independent boys’ school in Maryland. Since his retirement, he has continued to direct plays at community theaters but has also focused on writing poetry and has become deeply involved with the Writers’ Center at the Chautauqua Institution. His work has been published in over a dozen small literary magazines and anthologies, including The Café Review, Still Crazy, cahoodadoodaling (Pushcart Prize nominee), Greek Fire, Poeming Pigeons, and Objects in the Rearview Mirror. His first poetry chapbook, Object Lessons (Main Street Rag), was published in January 2021.

You can learn more about Fred’s chapbook HERE

The Poetry Box LIVE – September Edition!

Saturday, Sept. 14, 2024 @ 4:00 PM (Pacific)

3pm (Alaskan) / 5pm (Mountain) / 6pm (Central) / 7pm (Eastern)

Featuring:

• Sheila Sondik (WA) – author of Lighting Up the Duff
• Kim Peter Kovac (VA) – author of A Bit Left of Straight Ahead
• Sher Schwartz (OR) – author of The Beautiful One’s Ark

Enjoy the Video from the Show:

About the Featured Poets:

Sheila Sondik, poet and printmaker, explores moments in time and space that the casual observer might overlook. Both artforms are opportunities for her to work with the unexpected. Prints are always mirror images of the drawings on the printing plates and, in writing Golden Shovels, the poet knows the last word of a line before the rest of it is written. Sheila has always enjoyed word puzzles and has been a member of the National Puzzlers’ League since 2000. She lived in Berkeley, CA, with its lively literary scene centered in its world-famous bookstores, for over 30 years after graduating from Harvard. In 2008, she moved to Bellingham, Washington in search of new landscapes and was happy to find a welcoming community of prolific poets. Her first chapbook, Fishing a Familiar Pond: Found Poems from The Yearling, was published by Egress Studio Press in 2013. Her Western and Japanese style poetry appear in many journals and anthologies.

You can learn more about Sheila’s chapbook HERE

Kim Peter Kovac began writing poetry in 2012, toward the end of his career in national and international theater for young audiences (TYA), starting work on his first Poetry Barn asynchronous online workshop on the plane home from a festival in Okinawa, just barely beating a typhoon.

He has commissioned and produced 100+ new TYA plays and musicals as Artistic Director of Kennedy Center Theater for Young Audiences, including from Pulitzer Prize and Tony award winning playwrights and composers.

Kim co-founded and co-produced (with Deirdre Kelly Lavrakas) the Kennedy Center’s New Visions/New Voices, an award-winning program that assisted in the development of 111 new plays, musicals, and operas from 97 playwrights and 38 composers, working with 61 U.S. and 12 international theater companies. He spent 12 years on the governing board of ASSITEJ, the international TYA association, with national centers in 80+ countries, and currently works as part of the leadership team and webmaster for Write Local Play Global, the international network for writers of new work for young audiences, with members in 50+ countries.

Kim’s first poetry collection, Border Sounds: Poem & Dispatches from Other Timezones, was published in January 2021. He also has 150+ pieces in print and online in journals from Australia, Bangladesh, England, India, Ireland, Korea, Poland, Scotland, Singapore, South Africa, United Arab Emirates, and the USA.  He has a BA in Theatre from Whitman College in Walla Walla, WA, an MFA in Theatre Directing from the University of Texas at Austin and is a Fellow of the College of Fellows of the American Theatre.

You can learn more about Kim’s book HERE

Sher A. Schwartz is a published essayist, poet, old time fiddle musician, singer, and retired professor. She was born in Georgia, raised in Virginia, and spent many summers in rural West Virginia with her mother’s family. Her vocal training, beginning at twelve, and later rhythm guitar playing in an old-time string band laid the foundation for the musicality in Schwartz’s poetry. Schwartz has written country and mountain folk songs and composed classical hymns. She lived for many years in a cabin on the beach in Alaska while teaching in the humanities department at the University of Alaska in Ketchikan. Her band Red Hoochie and the Tomcods played at festivals and events around Southeast Alaska.

In 2011, she retired from academic life and moved to Eastern Oregon, where she’s trained and competed with her hunting dogs, and helped restore two hundred acres on an old farm to native grasslands and pollinator plants. Schwartz has continued to perform with the old-timey Sugar Hill Band throughout the Columbia River Gorge though she writes more poetry these days than songs and essays.

You can learn more about Sher’s chapbook HERE

The Poetry Box LIVE – May Edition!

Saturday, May 11, 2024 @ 4:00 PM (Pacific)

3pm (Alaskan) / 5pm (Mountain) / 6pm (Central) / 7pm (Eastern)

Featuring:

• Laura Esther Sciortino (OR) – author of Remote Control
• Susan Landgraf (WA) – author of Journey of Trees
• Anara Guard (CA) – author of Kansas, Reimagined

Enjoy the Video from the Show:

About the Featured Poets:

At the age of nine, Anara Guard was hired to mind a corner news stand, where she read all the tabloid papers. Later, she worked as a small-town librarian, textbook fact-checker, and editor, among other jobs. A Midwesterner at heart, she writes from her home in northern California.

Anara’s poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and, improbably enough, won both a John Crowe Ransom prize and a Jack Kerouac prize. Kansas, Reimagined is her second poetry collection. She and her sister perform poetry and offer writing workshops together as Sibling Revelry. Anara’s novel, Like a Complete Unknown, won Book of the Year Honorable Mention from the Chicago Writers Association, as well as other accolades. It draws upon her memories of that city and the music that provided a soundtrack to the late 1960s.

You can learn more about Anara’s chapbook HERE

Laura Esther Sciortino writes poetry, fiction, and lyric essay. Her work has appeared in The Comstock Review, Muse/A Journal, great weather for MEDIA’s Escape Wheel Anthology, Dadakuku, The Flying Dodo, and Unleash Lit. Along with her husband, son, and their three affable cats, Laura lives in Portland, Oregon.

You can learn more about Laura’s chapbook HERE

Susan Landgraf received an Academy of American Poet Laureates grant, resulting in A Muckleshoot Poetry Anthology: At the Confluence of the Green and White Rivers, which she curated; Washington State University Press published it in early 2024. Her other books include Crossings (Ravenna Press), The Inspired Poet (Two Sylvias Press), What We Bury Changes the Ground (Tebot Bach), and Other Voices. More than 400 poems have appeared in Nimrod, Prairie Schooner, Poet Lore, Third Wednesday, and others. Landgraf served as Auburn’s Poet Laureate from 2018-2020. She has given more than 150 workshops in the US and abroad and is the recipient of a Theodore Morrison Scholar Poetry Award for Breadloaf and Artist Trust, Jack Straw, and King County Arts Commission grants. A former journalist, she taught at Highline College for 30 years and at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. She loves epiphanies and believes poetry can save you.

You can learn more about Susan’s chapbook HERE