Reading

Luna & LeHew @ Annie Bloom’s (Jan 11, 2022)

December 9, 2021 by The Poetry Box Leave a Comment

Due to the COVID-19 Pandemic, this event was via Zoom.

Annie Bloom’s Books host Laura LeHew and Christopher & Angelo Luna via ZOOM

Tues, Jan 8, 2022
at 7:00 pm (waiting room opens at 6:45)

Enjoy a video from the show!

You’ll find yourself deeply moved and inspired by its bold honesty.

Dear John— is a collection of poems that investigate and explore the multi-facets of love by using diverse points of view to reveal romantic love, loving friendships, and love that is complicated. The namesake poem for which this book was conceived, the final poem, “Dear John—,” is an epistolary poem in multiple stanzas ultimately on which the theme of this book is derived. “what happens between the notes // is the living.”

A collaboration and celebration of life.

Exchanging Wisdom features poems for and about Christopher’s son Angelo Luna, as well as a few pieces Angelo wrote for Christopher. The earliest poem was written when Angelo was three, and the most recent at age 21. Christopher endeavored to encourage his son to be an autonomous, freethinking individual. Angelo grew to become that and so much more. Taken as a whole, the poems in this collection track the development of Angelo’s personality and the strong bond between father and son.

The Poetry Box LIVE (Jan 8, 2022)

December 9, 2021 by The Poetry Box Leave a Comment

The Poetry Box LIVE – January Edition

January 8, 2022 @ 4:00 PM (Pacific) / 7:00 PM (Eastern)

January Featured Poets: Chapbook Contest Winners

Mary Warren Foulk (MA) – author of Erasures of My Coming Out (Letter)
Linda Ferguson (OR) – author of Of the Forest
Tricia Knoll (VT) – author of Let’s Hear It for the Horses

Enjoy a Video from the Show:

ABOUT THE POETS

Mary Warren Foulk_Headshot 2021(cr. Jay Miller-Foulk) — cr. Jay Miller-Foulk

Mary Warren Foulk is the first-place winner of The Poetry Box Chapbook Prize, 2021 for her chapbook, Erasures of My Coming Out (Letter). She has been published in VoiceCatcher, Cathexis Northwest Press, Yes Poetry, Arlington Literary Journal (Gival Press), Los Angeles Poet Society, Pine Hills Review, Palette Poetry, Visitant, Silkworm, and Steam Ticket among other publications. Her work also has appeared in (M)othering Anthology (Inanna Publications) and My Loves: A Digital Anthology of Queer Love Poems (Ghost City Press). Her chapbook, If I Could Write You a Happier Ending, is forthcoming from dancing girl press (2021).

Mary has attended several writing workshops and conferences, including The Writers Studio and AWP events, as well as received several artist and educator grants, including from the National Endowment of the Humanities. She recently won the “Teach! Write! Play!” fellowship to the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing and her poem “The Inventory of Fumbling” received first place honors. Her poem “portrait of a queer as a young boy” has been nominated for the 2021 Best of the Net Anthology. A graduate of the MFA Writing program at Vermont College of Fine Arts, Mary lives in western Massachusetts with her wife and two children. She is an educator, writer, and activist.

Instagram: @mwfoulk
www.facebook.com/mary.w.foulk
Twitter: @mwfoulk

You can order Mary’s winning chapbook HERE

photo of Linda Ferguson — cr. Fiona Ferguson

Linda Ferguson is the second-place winner of The Poetry Box Chapbook Prize, 2021 for her chapbook, Of the Forest. Linda started her career writing software how-to manuals before she even owned a computer. She also worked as a copywriter and journalist until she became hooked on reading, writing and performing poetry when she saw Naomi Shihab Nye, Lucille Clifton and Jimmy Santiago Baca in the Bill Moyers program The Language of Life. Here it was, she realized: a tool to say the unsayable while savoring the pleasure of piecing together intricate word puzzles.

As a passionate community-builder, she teaches affordable creative writing classes for adults and children. Based on her belief that artistic expression should be available to everyone regardless of income or experience, she creates a warm, friendly atmosphere where students are free to delve into imagination and memory to find their voice while relishing the camaraderie of their fellow writers.

A four-time Pushcart nominee, Ferguson is also a writer of fiction and essays. Her first chapbook, Baila Conmigo, was published by Dancing Girl Press, and her collection of feminist persona poetry, Not Me: Poems About Other Women, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press in fall 2022.

She’s also an amateur dancer who loves to draw, paint, and shoot the breeze with her husband and their grown children.

Website: https://bylindaferguson.blogspot.com

Instagram: @ljd.ferguson.1

You can order Linda’s winning chapbook HERE

Tricia Knoll is the third-place winner of The Poetry Box Chapbook Prize, 2021 for her chapbook, Let’s Hear It for the Horses.

“A horse. A horse. My kingdom for a horse!” cried King Richard the Third. Tricia Knoll’s father thought this as a child until his practical father detailed the costs and suggested he rent one. Which he did, at Colorado dude ranches. On weekends in suburban Chicago to ride hell bent on trails through cornfields. Her father did everything he could to make sure Knoll loved horses too. Summer horse camps. Riding with her dad in Rocky Mountain National Park summer after summer. Sometimes riding at mad gallops with the suburban men. Horse shows and rodeos. He was at his best in his cowboy boots and pearl snap-button Western shirts.

Knoll has degrees in literature from Stanford University (BA) and Yale University (MAT). She taught high school English. Edited a newspaper for elementary students. Served as Public Relations Director for Portland, Oregon’s Children’s Museum. Acted as the Public Information Officer at the Portland Water Bureau and went to New Orleans as an emergency responder following Hurricane Katrina.

Knoll retired in 2007 to write. Her poetry collections address interactions of wildlife and humans in urban habitat (Urban Wild); people and creatures on an organic farm in Washington State (Broadfork Farm); change in a small town on Oregon’s northern coast (Ocean’s Laughter); her understanding of white privilege (How I Learned To Be White); and relationships that sometimes go askew (Checkered Mates). How I Learned to Be White received the 2018 Human Rights Indie Book Award for Motivational Poetry. She is a contributing editor to the online journal Verse Virtual. For more information, visit triciaknoll.com.

Knoll lives in the woods of Vermont. Stables for dressage horses, a herd of pintos, and a one-horse family barn are less than a quarter mile in any direction. She smells them on warm days.

You can order Tricia’s winning chapbook HERE

The Poetry Box LIVE (Dec 11, 2021)

October 12, 2021 by The Poetry Box Leave a Comment

The Poetry Box LIVE – December Edition

December 11, 2021@ 4:00 PM (Pacific) / 7:00 PM (Eastern)

December Featured Poets:

Maddie Mitchell (Kentucky) – author of WE’RE NOT REAL ANYWAYS
Lanser Howard (California) – author of THE SCREAMING SILENCE
Rheanna Haaland (Minnesota) – author of CHASING NARCISSUS

Enjoy a Video from the Show:

ABOUT THE POETS

maddie mitchell is an 18-year-old poet and writer from paris, kentucky. she graduated from bourbon county high school in 2019, one year earlier than expected, and began attending georgetown college at age 17. she is currently a sophomore and plans to major in english and political science with a minor in spanish. she hopes to one day attend law school in order to become an immigration lawyer. she is also a part of the oxford honors program at her college and plans to spend a semester or two at oxford university in england in the coming years.

The young writer deferred a semester of college during her sophomore year to focus on treatment for several mental illnesses including borderline personality disorder, anxiety, major depressive disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and anorexia nervosa. she was at a residential treatment facility for her eating disorder for over 11 weeks, and she then went through several step-down stages of the recovery process over the span of several months. throughout this process, she wrote many of the poems included in we’re not real anyways. her book also speaks on topics of feminism and lgbtq+ romances. she has hopes that her poetry is relatable to others who deal with similar issues discussed in this, her first book, we’re not real anyways.

Order Maddie’s book HERE

Lanser Howard, Author Photo — Photo by Karen Dunbar

Lanser Howard began his career as a journalist and then transitioned into film where he wrote and produced an award-winning documentary film and other screenplays. His sole focus now is on poetry and literature with The Screaming Silence as his first full-length book of poetry.

An Oakland, California native, now living in the Sacramento area, Howard travels the country selling food products by day, writer by night. He has worked extensively with combat veterans filtering their traumatic experiences through his eyes in much of his work to show you their world after the smoke clears, but the gripping pain remains.

Howard’s visceral, minimalistic style paints hard-hitting portraits of the dark and lonely process of fighting through tragedy and loss and how to heal oneself with words, hope and an unwavering strength of self.

Order Lanser’s book HERE

Rheanna Haaland (she/her/they/them) could say this book is about you. But it isn’t.

Haaland was raised by wolves on the prairie but relocated to Minneapolis, after finishing a bachelor’s degree in writing. Unsatisfied with writing alone, they considered several additional lines of work to compliment the necessary exorcism of poetry (including but not confined to copy editor, bookseller, web series producer, script writer, prep cook, pizza transportation specialist and actual batman). Haaland settled finally on pursuing a career as a surgeon.

While currently attending Northwestern Health Science University Haaland also works as a medical scribe in a local emergency room. (Countless HIPPA-compliant stories about will almost certainly prompt future collections. She loves it.) She will remain in school for the foreseeable future, while continuing to write.

Haaland was the 3rd place winner of the 2018 Erotica Grand SlaMN Championship for spoken word poetry. Their work has appeared most recently in Auk Contraire, and The Same. The poem “—Me, Everyday” was previously printed in the 2019 edition of Red Weather Magazine, alongside many of her other pieces not published in this book. Haaland’s first collection An Eyeful of Hennepin Neon (The Poetry Box, 2018) is available through The Poetry Box website. She lives in Minneapolis with her outspoken tabby cat, Brummell, whose input on molecular geometry and organic chemistry homework is less than helpful. Both of them thank you for reading this far.

Order their book HERE

The Poetry Box LIVE (Nov 13, 2021)

October 11, 2021 by The Poetry Box Leave a Comment

The Poetry Box LIVE – November Edition

November 13, 2021@ 4:00 PM (Pacific) / 7:00 PM (Eastern)

November Featured Poets:

Laura LeHew (Oregon) – author of DEAR JOHN—
Kristin J. Leonard (Maine) – author of THE NINETIETH DAY
Christopher & Angelo Luna (Washington) – author of EXCHANGING WISDOM

Enjoy a Video from the Show:

ABOUT THE POETS

cr: Dean Davis

Former girl scout Laura LeHew is enthralled by negative spaces. Her collections include: Buyer’s Remorse (Tiger’s Eye Press—Infinities) poems on abuse; Let Widows be Widows (Unsolicited Press—forthcoming) themed around the elegiac; Becoming (Another New Calligraphy) a non-linear discourse on alcoholism & dementia; Willingly Would I Burn, (MoonPath Press) math & science; It’s Always Night, It Always Rains (Winterhawk Press) murder/noir; and Beauty (Tiger’s Eye Press) fairy tales.

In her alternate life Laura has been active in the high-tech industry for over thirty-five years. Her company Deer Run Associates provides Computer Forensic investigations & Information Security consulting services working with law enforcement & commercial organizations on some of the largest and most high-profile cybercrime cases in recent years.

Laura received her MFA from the California College of the Arts. She is on the steering committee for the Lane Literary Guild and facilitates the 1^st & 3^rd critique group. Laura held various positions for the Oregon Poetry Association. She co-hosted a reading series, Poetry for the People. Recent residencies include Hypatia-in-the-Wood & PLAYA. Laura owns/edits Uttered Chaos, a small press which publishes books of poetry.

Order Laura’s book HERE

Kristin J. Leonard is an adjunct college instructor that resides in Maine. She is a proud mother (of both children and chihuahuas) and looks forward to summer vacation, when she’ll finally have the opportunity to dig in her garden. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing (Fiction) from University of Southern Maine, an MA in English (Literature), and a Graduate Certificate in Rhetoric, Writing, & Digital Media Studies from Northern Arizona University, where she is also completing doctoral studies in Education.

Her critical and creative work have appeared in The Explicator, The Atlantic, Postcolonial Text, The Ekphrastic Review, and more. She is the 2019 recipient of the Maine Literary Award for Drama, the 2019 recipient of Meetinghouse Theatre Lab’s Maine Playwright’s Award, and Lit Fest’s 2019 Dramatic Writing Fellow for Emerging Writers. She is currently working on yet another revision of her first novel, an historical fiction that takes place during the housing crash of 2007. On most mornings, she can be found typing away at her kitchen table, still struggling to find the right word.

Order Kristin’s new book HERE

Christopher Luna is a poet, editor, teacher, writing coach and collage artist. He served as the inaugural Poet Laureate of Clark County from 2013-2017. Luna has an MFA from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, and is the co-founder, with Toni Lumbrazo Luna, of Printed Matter Vancouver, an editing service and small press for Northwest writers. He founded the popular LGBTQ+ friendly, all ages and uncensored Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic in Vancouver, WA, in 2004. Christopher Luna’s books include Message from the Vessel in a Dream (Flowstone Press, 2018), Brutal Glints of Moonlight, and The Flame Is Ours: The Letters of Stan Brakhage and Michael McClure 1961-1978.

Christopher believes that the parent-child power dynamic is inherently fascist, so he endeavored to raise his son to think for himself, question authority, and make his own decisions. He respected his son’s humanity enough to trust him to be responsible, to “allow” him his autonomy. Despite what some saw as tragic indulgence, Angelo grew up to be a sweet, kind, polite, philosophical, compassionate young man who will surely accomplish things his father could not. Christopher could not imagine being more proud of the person Angelo became.

Angelo Luna is a poet, son, and LEGO connoisseur. Originally from New York, with a migration to Washington as a young child, he grew up with a fiery bloodline and cold weather. Currently employed as a teller for Wells Fargo, he loves writing, working, and finance and is interested in what every human has to offer.

Order their book HERE

The Poetry Box LIVE (Oct 9, 2021)

September 15, 2021 by The Poetry Box Leave a Comment

Book Launch Celebration

for

The Poeming Pigeon: From Pandemic to Protest

October 9, 2021 @ 4:00 PM (Pacific) / 7:00 PM (Eastern)

Enjoy Our Video from the Show:

Featuring 30 poets from across the country share their poems from this powerful issue:

- Dee Allen
- Tiel Aisha Ansari
- David Belmont
- J V Birch
- Joann Renee Boswell
- Erika B. Girard
- Joanne Godley
- Suzy Harris
- Hadley Hutton
- Marilyn Johnston
- J.I. Kleinberg
- Elizabeth Kuelbs
- Lynda La Rose
- Bethany Lee
- Rebecca K. Leet

- Sherri Hope Levine
- M. F. McAuliffe
- Eileen McGurn
- Carter McKenzie
- Angie Minkin
- Annie Klier Newcomer
- Alan Perry
- Jennifer Pratt-Walter
- Anne Rankin
- Sandra Rivers-Gill
- Joel Savishinsky
- JoAnna Scandiffio
- Deborah Bachels Schmidt
- Merna Dyer Skinner
- Phillip Wilson

THE POEMING PIGEON

FROM PANDEMIC TO PROTEST

When the world came to a stop, poets picked up their pens. From a global pandemic to the Black Lives Matter protests; from a highly contested election to murder hornets; and from devastating wildfires to deadly disasters, these poems not only share the truth of what we endured, they reveal the heartbreak, frustration, and anger, tempered by our resiliency and hope for a better tomorrow.

The Poeming Pigeon: From Pandemic to Protest is available to order HERE:

The Poetry Box LIVE (Sept 11, 2021)

August 16, 2021 by The Poetry Box Leave a Comment

The Poetry Box LIVE – September Edition

September 11, 2021@ 4:00 PM (Pacific) / 7:00 PM (Eastern)

Enjoy a Video from the Show:

September Featured Poets:

Elizabeth S.E. McBride (Michigan) – author of MOST BEAUTIFUL
Susan Coultrap-McQuin (Minnesota) – author of WHAT WE BRING HOME
Marcia B. Loughran (New York) – author of SONGS FROM THE BACK-IN-THE-BACK

ABOUT THE POETS

Elizabeth S.E. McBride’s poetry is often an experience of walking in this world as a careful and curious observer—the natural result of her reverence for the wonders of creation and those with whom it is shared. Her poetry can be seen in the following literary journals and publications: Dunes Review, Louisiana Literature, Third Wednesday, Red River Review, Seeding the Snow, Scintilla, Poetry Breakfast, and Peninsula Poets.

Order Beth’s book HERE

Susan Coultrap-McQuin loves the challenge of writing poems that invite readers to see the world in new ways —from the smallest leaf to the largest cities. Her poems have appeared in journals such as Talking Stick, The Moccasin, Songs of Eretz Poetry Review, and in recent pandemic anthologies, including Capsule Stories Isolation Edition, The ACCC Pandemic Arts Journal, and This Was 2020. She has also exhibited poems in libraries, art galleries, and parks in Minnesota where she now lives. What We Bring Home is her first chapbook.

Susan grew up in a Chicago suburb, has lived in the Philippines, England, and Germany, and has traveled throughout the US as well as to almost fifty countries. As a professor and administrator at universities in Minnesota and New York, Susan published two books on women writers, co-edited an anthology on feminist ethics, and wrote articles on women’s studies and higher education. She has served on a variety of regional and national boards related to literacy and higher education. Currently she volunteers with a local arts organization and coordinates their annual poetry contest. Susan is married with two grown children and three grandchildren, who inspire her to see the world in ever-new ways.

Order Susan’s new book HERE

Marcia B. Loughran received an MFA in Creative Writing from the Bennington Writing Seminars in 2013. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Verdad, Spoon River Poetry Review and elsewhere. Marcia’s two prize-winning chapbooks, Still Life with Weather and “My Mother Never Died Before” and Other Poems are available either at her website, through The Poetry Box or on a huge conglomerate website whose name shall remain nameless. Marcia reads her work in bars, bookstores and black-box theaters in New York City and the Catskills. She is a nurse practitioner and proud resident of Queens, NY.

Order Marcia’s book HERE

The Poetry Box LIVE (Aug 14, 2021)

July 13, 2021 by The Poetry Box 2 Comments

The Poetry Box LIVE – August Edition

August 14, 2021@ 4:00 PM (Pacific) / 7:00 PM (Eastern)

Enjoy a Video from the Show:

August Featured Poets:

Gary Percesepe (New York) – author of GASLIGHT OPERA
Don Badgley (New York) – author of WHAT IS NOT A MIRACLE
Carolyn Martin (Oregon) – author of CATALOG OF SMALL CONTENTMENTS

ABOUT THE POETS

Don Badgley is a lifetime resident of the Hudson Valley in New York State. Raised in a rural setting in a Quaker family Don is married and the father of two grown daughters. He remains active with the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) and is the presiding clerk of his local Quaker meeting in Poughkeepsie, NY. He continues his now 35-year career as an insurance agent.

Don was encouraged to write poetry by his father and has been writing since his youth. What Is Not a Miracle is his first published collection.

Order Don’s book HERE

Carolyn Martin photo — Photo by Robert R. Sanders

From associate professor of English to management trainer to retiree, Carolyn Martin has journeyed from New Jersey to Oregon to discover Douglas firs, months of rain, and dry summers. After years of writing academic papers and business books, she discovered that poetry is the way her mind interacts with the world—in images, rhythms, sounds, and intensities of language. So she’s settled into the joyful challenge of translating experience into as few words as possible and making those experiences accessible to her readers.

Martin prides herself on flashes of humor that light up her poems. Her intention is to begin and end poems with delight and throw in splashes of wisdom along the way. Add her penchant for musicality and obsession with unusual words, she crafts poems that are surprising and satisfying.

Her poems have appeared in more than 130 journals and anthologies throughout North America, Australia, and the UK. Her fourth poetry collection, A Penchant for Masquerades, was released by Unsolicited Press in 2019, and her first chapbook, Nothing More to Lose, by The Poetry Box in 2020.

She currently serves as poetry editor of Kosmos Quarterly: journal for global transformation. Find out more at carolynmartinpoet.com.

Order Carolyn’s new book HERE

Gary Percesepe is the author of a new poetry book, Gaslight Opera (The Poetry Box, 2021) plus eleven books, including Moratorium, a short story collection forthcoming from Atmosphere Press. He is Associate Editor at New World Writing (formerly Mississippi Review). Prior to that, he was an assistant fiction editor at Antioch Review. His work has appeared in Brevity, Story Quarterly, N + 1, The Greensboro Review, Wigleaf, Christian Century, Mississippi Review, New World Writing, Salon, Camera Obscura, Westchester Review, PANK, The Millions, Atticus Review, BULL, The Good Man Project, Word Riot, Necessary Fiction, Solstice, The Maine Review, Mercurius, and other places. He resides in White Plains, New York, and teaches philosophy at Fordham University in the Bronx.

Order Gary’s book HERE

The Poetry Box LIVE (July 10, 2021)

May 27, 2021 by The Poetry Box Leave a Comment

The Poetry Box LIVE – July Edition

July 10, 2021@ 4:00 PM (Pacific) / 7:00 PM (Eastern)

Enjoy a Video from the Show:

July Featured Poets:

Mary C. Florio (Florida) – author of THE FOG
Cynthia Gallaher (Illinois) – author of EPICUREAN ECSTASY
Meg Lindsay (Massachusetts) – author of NOTES FROM A CAREGIVER

ABOUT THE POETS

Cynthia Gallaher is author of three other full poetry collections: Earth Elegance, Swimmer’s Prayer and Night Ribbons, and three poetry chapbooks: Drenched: Poems About Liquids; Omnivore Odes: Poems About Food, Herbs and Spices; and Private, On Purpose. She also published the nonfiction memoir and reference Frugal Poets’ Guide to Life: How to Live a Poetic Life, Even If You Aren’t a Poet, which won a National Indie Excellence Award.

Gallaher appears on Chicago Public Library’s list of “Top Ten Requested Chicago Poets,” and was named one of “100 Women Making a Difference” by Today’s Chicago Woman magazine for her writing and ecological work. She has also received numerous grants from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and the Illinois Arts Council.

Committed to the organic and sustainable foods movement, and a proponent of clean drinking water, Gallaher is a former officer on the board of directors of Illinois Consumers for Safe Food (a local affiliate of The Center for Science in the Public Interest) and has also served as a volunteer for Lake Michigan Federation’s (now the Alliance for the Great Lakes) Shorekeepers initiative and the Green Team of the Chicago Park District. She is also a certified yoga instructor and aromatherapist.

Order Cynthia’s book HERE

A semi-finalist in two “Discovery”/The Nation Contests and a finalist in an Inkwell competition, Meg Lindsay has had poems published in Tricycle, Pivot, Salamander, Alimentum, Connecticut River Review, etc. and earned an MFA in poetry from Sarah Lawrence College.

Because she is also an established painter showing for decades in galleries and museums, her chapbook about the emotions and difficulties of painting, A Painter’s Night Journal, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2016. Writers love to write about paintings, but most writers confine themselves to the subject matter of a painting, not the process, since after all most do not paint.

In her second chapbook, Notes from a Caregiver, the subject of her writing dramatically changed direction when her husband, an athlete never ill before, collapsed with cancer in his bones, multiple myeloma, that same year. She gained direct knowledge of what it means to be a caregiver, a different and extraordinarily difficult learning process from anything she had ever known before.

<www.meglindsayartist.com>

Order Meg’s book HERE

Mary C. Florio, author of The Fog, has been writing poetry for over 20 years. Early successes include second place in the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Competition. In 2017, she was featured in Nasty Woman Poets: An Unapologetic Anthology of Subversive Verse. She has collaborated on two books with award-winning book artist Miriam Schaer: Cinderella, Ever After and The Posture Queen, and most recently was a finalist in the 2019 Palm Beach Poetry Festival’s ekphrastic poetry contest.

Order Mary’s book HERE

Luna & LeHew @ Annie Bloom’s (Jan 11, 2022)

Due to the COVID-19 Pandemic, this event was via Zoom.

Annie Bloom’s Books host Laura LeHew and Christopher & Angelo Luna via ZOOM

Tues, Jan 8, 2022
at 7:00 pm (waiting room opens at 6:45)