The Poetry Box LIVE – February Edition
Feb 13, 2021@ 4:00 PM (Pacific) / 7:00 PM (Eastern)
RESCHEDULED DUE TO ICE STORM
Feb 20, 2021@ 4:00 PM (Pacific) / 7:00 PM (Eastern)
Enjoy the video from February’s show:
February Featured Poets:
• Carolyn Martin (Oregon), author of NOTHING MORE TO LOSE
• C.W. Emerson (California), author of OFF COLDWATER CANYON—3rd Place Winner of The Poetry Box Chapbook Prize, 2020 (CW will be rescheduled later this summer)
• Deborah Meltvedt (California) author of BUILDING A WOMAN
ABOUT THE POETS
From associate professor of English to management trainer to retiree, Carolyn Martin is a lover of gardening and snorkeling, feral cats and backyard birds, writing and photography. After years of producing academic papers and business books, she discovered that poetry is the way her heart and mind interact with the world —in images, rhythms, sounds, and intensities of language. So, she has settled into the joyful challenge of translating experience into as few words as possible.
Martin’s aesthetic is embodied in Jack Kerouac’s comment in Dharma Bums: “One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple,” and in Sting’s statement, “All my life I have tried to find the truth and make it beautiful.” Her poems attempt to use simple words to embrace truths wherever she finds them, and to turn them into something approximating the beautiful.
Her poems have appeared in journals throughout North America, Australia, and the UK, and her fifth poetry collection, The Catalog of Small Contentments, will be released by The Poetry Box® in 2021. She is the book review editor for the Oregon Poetry Association and the poetry editor of Kosmos Quarterly: journal for global transformation.
Order Carolyn’s book HERE
NOTE: C.W. had to cancel due to a personal emergency. We will reschedule a reading for him this summer.
Poet and psychologist C.W. Emerson, raised in western New York’s Finger Lakes region, now lives and works in Palm Springs, California. Following a varied, non-traditional career path as musician, celebrity assistant, and fundraising executive for The American Foundation for AIDS Research (Amfar), Emerson received his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Fielding Graduate Institute in 2007.
C.W. Emerson is the recipient of the C. P. Cavafy Poetry Prize, as well as awards and honors from The Atlanta Review, The Comstock Review, New Letters Press, and others. His work has appeared in journals including Crab Orchard Review, Greensboro Review, december, New Ohio Review, and The New Guard. Off Coldwater Canyon is his first published chapbook.
Order CW’s book HERE
Deborah Meltvedt is a high school teacher who loves to blend medical science and art in both the classroom and in her own writing. Deborah grew up in the suburbs and fields of the San Joaquin Valley whose landscapes and culture form a backbone to her poetry. As a doctor’s daughter and feminist, she feels strongly about women’s health and reproductive rights and respecting the traditional and non-traditional paths women take in their lives.
Her poems and stories have been published in the American River Literary Review, Susurrus, Under the Gum Tree, Tule Review, The Poeming Pigeon, and the Creative Non-Fiction Anthology What I Didn’t Know: True Stories of Becoming a Teacher.
Deborah lives in Sacramento with her funny and supportive husband, Rick Kushman, and their cat, Anchovy Jack, who in his former life used to be a pirate.
Order Deborah’s book HERE
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.
A poignant portrayal of love and forgiveness.
The #metoo story that took over 30 years to reveal.
