The Poetry Box LIVE – October Edition
Oct 10, 2020@ 4:00 PM (Pacific) / 7:00 PM (Eastern)
Enjoy the video from October’s show:
October Featured Poets:
• Christopher Bogart, author of BREAKPOINT and THE EATER OF DREAMS (New Jersey)
• Kaja Weeks, author of MOUTH QUILL (Maryland)
• Wendy Colby, reading on behalf of Joan Colby author of THE KINGDOM OF BIRDS (Illinois)
ABOUT THE POETS
Christopher Bogart is a retired educator and a working poet and writer with an MA in Creative Writing from Monmouth University. His poetry has been published in Voices Rising from the Grove, Spindrift, WestWard Quarterly, Saggio Poetry Journal, The Howl of Sorrow and others. His chapbook 14: Antología del Sonoran, was awarded 3rd place in The Poetry Box Chapbook Prize in 2018. He is presently working on his first novel, tentatively titled The Beast, about the plight of two Honduran teenage migrants who flee poverty and crime of Central America in search of a better life in the United States of America.
Order Christopher’s books:
The Eater of Dreams | Breakpoint | 14: Antologia del Sonoran
Kaja Weeks is a poet, essayist and classically trained singer whose writing contemplates music and healing as well as identity through multiple generations. She is the American born daughter of World War Two refugees from Estonia. Moved by the pain and beauty of its history, she also loves the alliterative sounds, mythic lore and world views in that ancient Finno-Ugric culture. Many of these motifs, found in thousands of runic verses and long preserved by oral transmission, come alive in Kaja’s creative work. Nick-named a “little songbird” when she was five, she is a clinic-based music educator in Maryland who engages young children with autism to their earliest communications with playful singing. Kaja’s writing has appeared in The Sugar House Review; Ars Medica: A Journal of Medicine, Under the Gum Tree, The Potomac Review, and elsewhere.
Order Kaja’s book HERE
Joan Colby, was a masterful poet and avid bird lover, who suddenly learned she had stage-4 lung cancer and passed away in August 2020. Her daughter Wendy Colby will be reading from Joan’s latest book, The Kingdom of Birds, which was released by The Poetry Box in September. Joan Colby had published widely in journals such as Poetry, Atlanta Review, South Dakota Review, Spillway and others. Awards include two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Literature. She has published 22 books including Selected Poems which received the 2013 FutureCycle Book Prize and Ribcage which was awarded the 2015 Kithara Book Prize. Joan was a senior editor of FutureCycle Press and an associate editor of Good Works Review.
Order Joan’s book HERE
Joan’s daughter, Wendy Colby, will be reading from the collection to celebrate her mother’s poetry in The Kindgom of Bird, her last book.
Joanne Godley, author of Picking Scabs from the Body History (The Poetry Box, 2020) is a practicing physician, poet and writer whose work is informed by social injustices. She is a native of Detroit residing in Alexandria, Virginia. She is convinced she is a descendant of nomads because traveling is one of her great passions (along with art collecting, salsa dancing and cycling). She spent time working in Africa as a Peace Corps medical officer. Godley’s lyric memoir was a finalist for the Kore Press Memoir contest and the Sunshots Press Prose Contest, and it received honorable mentions in the National Woman’s Book Association Contest. She completed an online novel writing certification program through Stanford University. Her first novel was ranked finalist in Kimbilio’s annual novel writing contest. She is a member of the Women’s Fiction Writing Association, the Author’s Guild and the NWBA.
Pamela Anderson-Bartholet, author of Just the Girls (The Poetry Box, 2020) is a poet, lover of blues music, traveler, hiker, and yoga practitioner who grew up in Warren, Ohio, in an area once known as The Steel Valley. Much of her writing focuses on the Holocaust, reflecting stories her father recounted from his service as a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne during WWII. Her Holocaust poem “My Brother’s Coat” won the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Intro Journals Project Award. Her poetry also has appeared in Whurk, Mason’s Road, Atticus Review, Sky Island Journal, and elsewhere. She holds an MA in English Literature from Kent State University and an MFA from the Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts Program (NEOMFA), which awarded her a Bisbee (Arizona) Travel and Study Fellowship. She has been a ghostwriter, grants writer, and fundraiser for public radio. When she is not traveling with her husband to far-flung places to snap pictures of windows, doors, and lightbulbs, you can find her in Northeast Ohio; Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley; or Charlotte, North Carolina.
