Laura Grace Weldon has published two poetry collections, Blackbird (Grayson 2019) and Tending (Aldrich 2013). She was named Ohio Poet of the Year for 2019. She's written poems on the soles of children’s feet and painted poems on beehives but her work appears in more conventional places such as Verse Daily, One: Jacar Press, Neurology,
J Journal, and Amsterdam Quarterly. Laura works as a book editor and teaches community-based writing workshops. lauragraceweldon.com
Bill Yarrow of Chicago is the author of five full-length books of poetry and five poetry chapbooks. His poems have been published in Confrontation, Gargoyle, PANK, Contrary, Diagram, Thrush, RHINO, Chiron Review, and many other journals. His most recent book is ACCELERANT from Nixes Mate Books.
J Journal, and Amsterdam Quarterly. Laura works as a book editor and teaches community-based writing workshops. lauragraceweldon.com
Bill Yarrow of Chicago is the author of five full-length books of poetry and five poetry chapbooks. His poems have been published in Confrontation, Gargoyle, PANK, Contrary, Diagram, Thrush, RHINO, Chiron Review, and many other journals. His most recent book is ACCELERANT from Nixes Mate Books.
February 18, 2020: Featured Poets - Bill Yarrow and Laura Grace Weldon
Doors open at 7:00 PM and reading starts at 7:30 PM.
Poetry+ is free and open to the public. https://poetrypluscleveland.
Doors open at 7:00 PM and reading starts at 7:30 PM.
Poetry+ is free and open to the public. https://poetrypluscleveland.
Chuck Salmons is President of Ohio Poetry Association. His poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Pudding Magazine, Evening Street Review, and Everything Stops and Listens. He has two chapbooks, Stargazer Suite [11th Hour Press] and Patch Job [NightBallet Press]. Chuck won the 2011 William Redding Memorial Poetry Contest, sponsored by The Poetry Forum of Columbus, and is recipient of a 2018 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award for poetry. Find him at www.chucksalmons.com.
S. Renay Sanders learned to love the spoken word amidst a family of storytellers. She began secretly writing her own stories as poems. She came out of the poetry closet in 2010 with a poem in the Hessler Street Poetry Anthology. She subsequently had poems published in a variety of anthologies. Her most recent accomplishment is the publication of her first chapbook, Dancing in Place.Coming full circle, she has ventured into storytelling and will proudly perform her story "Cemetery Run" in the Women of Appalachia Project, Spoken Word, 2019. Today she proudly lives the poetic lifestyle. Continuing to enjoy the local poetry scene as an open micer and occasional feature. A native Clevelander her poems are inspired by the characters she encounters in life and the beauty of the Cuyahoga Valley, where she now resides.
Ray McNiece is the author of 9 books of poetry and monologues, including New Haiku and Love Song for Cleveland, a collaboration with photographer Tim Lachina. He’s toured Italy twice with Lawrence Ferlinghetti. He toured Russia with Yevgeny Yevtushenko and performed at the Moscow Polytech, the Russian Poets’ Hall of Fame, where he was dubbed “the American Mayakovsky.” The Orlando Sentinel, reporting on his solo theater piece Us—Talking across America at the Fringe Festival, called him “a modern day descendant of Woody Guthrie.” www.raymcniece.com
Michelle R. Smith is a black femme feminist, media activist, and admitted Netflix addict that between fighting the good fight and watching copious stand-up specials, dark comedies, and music documentaries manages to write poems, tell stories, teach college and high school kids, and be a loving mother and wife. She is the author of the poetry collection Ariel in Black, and she is currently working on a new collection tentatively titled The Real Jazz Wives of 20th Century America and looking to publish a third collection, called The Vagina Analogues. Michelle has most recently presented her work at the Cleveland Museum of Art, Mac's Backs Books, Telos: A Reading of Purpose at Outlandish Press, and The Persisters at B-Side Liquor Lounge
Columbus native Steve Abbott has been a community activist, alternative newspaper writer and editor, criminal defendant, delivery truck driver, courtroom bailiff, private investigator, PR flack, and college professor. He was a founding member in 1984 of The Poetry Forum, now Ohio’s longest-running poetry series, and continues to co-host the weekly event. He is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus in English of Columbus State Community College. His poems have appeared in dozens of literary journals as well as in several anthologies. He received an Ohio Arts Council Excellence Award in Poetry in 1993 and an OAC residency the following year at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA. He has six poetry collections: five chapbooks, A Short History of the Word (1996) and Greatest Hits (2004), both from Pudding House; The Incoherent Pull of Want (NightBallet Press) and Why Not Be Here Now? (11thour Press) in 2016; and Kicking Mileposts in the Video Age (Moria Poetry, 2017). He has also recorded a live reading on CD titled Stardust in Franklin Park. He edited the anthologies Cap City Poets (Pudding House, 2008), a collection of 74 central Ohio poets, and Everything Stops and Listens (OPA Press, 2013), containing work by members of Ohio Poetry Association. His full-length collection A Green Line Between Green Fields was published in 2018, and a collection of ekphrastic poems, A Language the Image Speaks, was released in September. He also edits Ohio Poetry Association's annual journal Common Threads, and in 2015 he represented the OPA on the Ohio Arts Council panel selecting Ohio’s first Poet Laureate
Leonard Kress has published poetry and fiction in Missouri Review, Massachusetts Review, Iowa Review, American Poetry Review, Harvard Review, etc. His recent collections are The Orpheus Complex, and Walk Like Bo Diddley. Living in the Candy Store and Other Poems and his new verse translation of the Polish Romantic epic, Pan Tadeusz by Adam Mickiewicz were both published in 2018. Craniotomy will appear this summer. He teaches philosophy and religion at Owens Community College in Ohio
POETRY + Presents: MATT HART and NICOLE HENNESSY
*OCTOBER 15, 2019*
Doors open 7 PM. Reading starts at 7:30
Free and open to the public
*OCTOBER 15, 2019*
Doors open 7 PM. Reading starts at 7:30
Free and open to the public
Matt Hart is the author of nine books of poems, including most recently Everything Breaking/for Good (YesYes Books, 2019) and The Obliterations (Pickpocket Books, 2019). Additionally, his poems, reviews, and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in numerous print and online journals, including The Academy of American Poets online, Big Bell, Cincinnati Review, Coldfront, Columbia Poetry Review, Harvard Review, Jam Tarts Magazine, jubilat, Kenyon Review online, Lungfull!, POETRY, and Waxwing, among others. His awards include a Pushcart Prize, a 2013 individual artist grant from The Shifting Foundation, and fellowships from both the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers. A co-founder and the editor-in-chief of Forklift, Ohio: A Journal of Poetry, Cooking & Light Industrial Safety, he lives in Cincinnati where he teaches at the Art Academy of Cincinnati and plays in the band NEVERNEW: www.nevernew.net.
Nicole Hennessy is a poet and journalist from Cleveland, Ohio. Gypsy Queen [2019, Crisis Chronicles Press] is her debut poetry collection, though she has been chasing poetry for more than twenty years. Her previous publications include Black Rabbit, a nonfiction profile of poet and artist Tom Kryss. Nicole also co-founded the underground art and literary bimonthly, Miser Magazine; and she will eventually launch her art and outreach effort, Universal Eccentrics, with some incredible, like-minded weirdoes. Her work has appeared in local and regional publications, and she was recently recognized as a Wild Wmn by the LA-based women’s artistic and wellness collective of the same name. Nicole is also mom to a spirited four-year-old boy. She’s probably cuddled up at home watching cartoons. You can stalk her on Instagram @nicohenness.
POETRY + Presents: MATT HART and NICOLE HENNESSY
*OCTOBER 15, 2019*
Doors open 7 PM. Reading starts at 7:30
Free and open to the public
*OCTOBER 15, 2019*
Doors open 7 PM. Reading starts at 7:30
Free and open to the public
Dianne Borsenik is active in the northern Ohio poetry scene and regional reading circuit. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Chiron Review, Main Street Rag, Resurrection River Poems (Wick Poetry Center, 2019) and A Rustling and Waking Within (Ohio Poetry Association, 2017); recent books include Raga for What Comes Next (Stubborn Mule Press, 2019), and Age of Aquarius (Crisis Chronicles Press, 2017). Earlier this year, she featured in “We’re No Angels” at Speak of the Devil in Lorain, Ohio and “2 Chefs & a Beat: Poetic Justice Edition” at the Porco Lounge and Tiki Room in Cleveland, Ohio. Lit Youngstown printed her poem “Disco” on their tee shirts, which makes her feel like a rock star. Borsenik is editor/publisher at NightBallet Press, and lives in Elyria, Ohio. Find her on Facebook and at dianneborsenik.com.
Jeanette Powers is a working-class queer anarchist and artist based in Kansas City, Missouri. They are primary architect of Stubborn Mule Press and Logistics Guru at FountainVerse: KC Small Press Poetry Fest. Powers has been published widely and often by online and print magazines but also has a dark side as a visual artist and their work has graced the cover of numerous literary magazines. They have seven full length books of poetry, and a forthcoming 4-way split with some tremendous women and their first novel, Victimless Crime, releases soon from Outlandish Press. Powers can most often be found in a river, swimming in a reverie. Find more at jeanettepowers.com.
Philip Terman is the author of five full-length and four chapbook collections of poems, including, most recently, Our Portion: New and Selected Poems (Autumn House Press) and Like a Bird Entering a Window and Leaving Through Another Window, a hand-sewn collaboration with the artist James Stewart and bookbinder Susan Frakes. His poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Poetry Magazine, The Kenyon Review, The Georgia Review, The Sun Magazine, Extraordinary Rendition: American Writers on Palestine, and 99 Poems for the 99 Percent. A selection of his poems, My Dear Friend Kafka, has been translated into Arabic and published by Ninwa Press in Damascus, Syria. He’s a professor of English at Clarion University, where he directs the Spoken Art Reading Series. He is founder of the Chautauqua Writers’ Festival and coordinator of The Bridge Literary and Arts Center in Franklin, PA. Terman’s poems provided the text for three song cycles composed by Dr. Brent Register and, on occasion, performs his poetry with the jazz band, The Barkeyville Triangle. Though he now resides in Clarion, Terman was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. More information can be found at www.philipterman.com.
Sandra Feen, the author of Fragile Capacites (2018, NightBallet Press), is a former associate editor of Pudding Magazine and currently works as an independent poetry and urban fiction editor. A member of the poetry troupe Concrete Wink, she has a BFA in Creative Writing and a BS in English Education from Bowling Green State University, and an MA in Literature from Wright State University. She was one of twelve teachers selected for the National Endowment of the Arts' first "Change Course" program, through W.S.U.'s Institute on Writing and Its Teaching. Publications include Poetry Motel, Elastic Ekphrastic, and The Pudding House Gang. Her work has been commissioned as part of Thin Places: Poetry and Art Exhibits and Installations at Columbus, Ohio's Jung Haus, and for the Cap City Poets: Columbus and Central Ohio's Best Known, Read, and Requested Poets anthology. She lives in Grove City, Ohio. http://nightballetpress.blogspot.com/2018/10/sandra-feen-has-fragile-capacities.html.
Jeremy Jusak July 16, 2019
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Kari Gunter-Seymour
Three times a pushcart nominee, Kari Gunter-Seymour’s chapbook Serving (Crisis Chronicles Press 2018) was recently nominated for an Ohioana Award. Her work is included in the 2019 Visible Poetry Project and won top honors from Still: The Journal, BlackBerry Peach and the Hocking Hills Poetry Festival poetry contests. Her poems can be found in many fine journals – Rattle, Crab Orchard Review, CALYX, Stirring, Main Street Rag, The LA Times and on her website www.karigunterseymourpoet.com/. She is an instructor in the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University and Poet Laureate for Athens, OH.
Maggie Smith Author of Good Bones (Tupelo Press) says, “Kari Gunter-Seymour’s poems are so tender, reading them hurts—but it’s a sweet ache, the kind worth enduring. The poems in her chapbook Serving are so much about place—about home—whether Appalachia or Kandahar. As Gunter-Seymour shows us, poem after masterful poem, serving is not only about sacrifice, what those in the military do for our country. Serving is also what we do for one another, for the people we call home, no matter where they are. Athens–and all of Ohio–is so lucky to have Kari Gunter-Seymour.
Maggie Smith Author of Good Bones (Tupelo Press) says, “Kari Gunter-Seymour’s poems are so tender, reading them hurts—but it’s a sweet ache, the kind worth enduring. The poems in her chapbook Serving are so much about place—about home—whether Appalachia or Kandahar. As Gunter-Seymour shows us, poem after masterful poem, serving is not only about sacrifice, what those in the military do for our country. Serving is also what we do for one another, for the people we call home, no matter where they are. Athens–and all of Ohio–is so lucky to have Kari Gunter-Seymour.
Steven B. Smith published Artcrimes (1986-2006), featuring 517 poets/artists, including Bukowski and Harvey Pekar; per the Plain Dealer: "with the publication of 21 issues of ArtCrimes, Smith has made a vital and indelible mark on this city's history." In 2012, his memoir "Stations of the Lost & Found, a True Tale of Armed Robbery, Stolen Cars, Outsider Art, Mutant Poetry, Underground Publishing, Robbing the Cradle, and Leaving the Country" was published by The City. In 2018, Crisis Chronicles Press put out "Where Never Was Already Is" - 244 poems and 29 collages from over 54 years. Steven and his wife, Lady K, spent 2006-9 living in 10 countries on 3 continents recharging their word wells.
Lee Chilcote is founder and executive director of Literary Cleveland, whose mission is to “help create and nurture a vibrant literary arts community in Northeast Ohio.” Chilcote is a journalist, essayist and poet. His articles have appeared in Vanity Fair, Next City, Belt, Planning, Land and People and other publications. His poetry and creative nonfiction have been published by Great Lakes Review, Pacific Review, Oyez Review and others. His essays have appeared in the books Rust Belt Chic: A Cleveland Anthology, The Cleveland Neighborhood Guidebook, and A Race Anthology: Dispatches and Artifacts from a Segregated City. He previously served as editor of Fresh Water Cleveland and Editorial Director for Issue Media Group. In 2017, his chapbook of poems, The Shape of Home, was published by Finishing Line Press. His poem “Catching Sunfish” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and The Shape of Home was nominated for the Society of Midland Authors Award in Poetry. In 2018, his second chapbook, How to Live in Ruins, is slated to appear from Finishing Line Press. He attended Middlebury College, Lincoln College at Oxford University, and Cleveland State University, where he obtained master’s degrees in English/Creative Nonfiction and Public Administration and was awarded the Leonard Trawick Prize for Creative Writing.
Lee Chilcote is founder and executive director of Literary Cleveland, whose mission is to “help create and nurture a vibrant literary arts community in Northeast Ohio.” Chilcote is a journalist, essayist and poet. His articles have appeared in Vanity Fair, Next City, Belt, Planning, Land and People and other publications. His poetry and creative nonfiction have been published by Great Lakes Review, Pacific Review, Oyez Review and others. His essays have appeared in the books Rust Belt Chic: A Cleveland Anthology, The Cleveland Neighborhood Guidebook, and A Race Anthology: Dispatches and Artifacts from a Segregated City. He previously served as editor of Fresh Water Cleveland and Editorial Director for Issue Media Group. In 2017, his chapbook of poems, The Shape of Home, was published by Finishing Line Press. His poem “Catching Sunfish” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and The Shape of Home was nominated for the Society of Midland Authors Award in Poetry. In 2018, his second chapbook, How to Live in Ruins, is slated to appear from Finishing Line Press. He attended Middlebury College, Lincoln College at Oxford University, and Cleveland State University, where he obtained master’s degrees in English/Creative Nonfiction and Public Administration and was awarded the Leonard Trawick Prize for Creative Writing.
. POETRY + Presents: E. F. Schraeder December 18, 2018
Shelley Chernin is a freelance writer of legal reference books, an environmental activist and a ukulele enthusiast. She is the author of The Vigil, published by Crisis Chronicles Press in 2012. Her poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Great Lakes Review, Scrivener Creative Review, Guide to Kulchur Creative Journal, Rhapsoidia, Durable Goods, Big Bridge, and Oct Tongue-1. She has also been published in What I Knew Before I Knew: Poems from the Pudding House Salon, While You Were Sleeping, I Dreamt a Poem (a Cleveland Pudding House Salon Anthology), The Cleveland Heights Observer, and in at least four of the annual Hessler Street Fair Poetry anthologies. She was awarded 2nd Place in the 2011 Hessler Street Fair Poetry Contest and received Honorable Mentions twice in the Akron Art Museum’s New Words Poetry Contest.
POETRY + Presents: Juliet Cook October 16, 2018
Juliet Cook's poetry has appeared in a small multitude of magazines, including Arsenic Lobster, DIAGRAM, Diode, FLAPPERHOUSE, and Menacing Hedge. She is the author of numerous poetry chapbooks, recently including Poisonous Beautyskull Lollipop (Grey Book Press, 2013), RED DEMOLITION (Shirt Pocket Press, 2014), a collaboration with Robert Cole called MUTANT NEURON CODEX SWARM (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2015), and a collaboration with j/j hastain called Dive Back Down (Dancing Girl Press, 2015).Cook's first full-length individual poetry book, “Horrific Confection”, was published by BlazeVOX and her second full-length individual poetry book, "Malformed Confetti" is forthcoming from Crisis Chronicles Press. Her most recent full-length poetry book, "A Red Witch, Every Which Way", is a collaboration with j/j hastain published by Hysterical Books in 2016. In addition to poetry, Cook creates visual art (especially painting textural hybrid creatures) and publishes creative work by others, through her online blog style lit mag, Thirteen Myna Birds and her itty bitty indie print chapbook poetry press, Blood Pudding Press. Find out more at www.JulietCook.weebly.com.edit.
Poetry+ Presents: John Burroughs September 18, 2018
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John Burroughs is a nationally-touring poet and performer from the Cleveland area and the author over a dozen books including Water Works, Electric Company, Beat Attitude and The Eater of the Absurd. His latest, Loss and Foundering, will be published in Spring 2018 by NightBallet Press. In various past lives, John served as playwright-in-residence for the Ministry of Theatre at Marion Correctional Institution, his blog was ranked #1 on MySpace, he won the first poetry slam he ever competed in, and he co-founded (with Dianne Borsenik) the infamous Lix and Kix Poetry Extravaganza and almost-annual Snoetry: A Winter Wordfest. John has edited numerous volumes, including the Oct Tongue poetry series, Cheap and Easy Magazine and the anti-censorship anthology Fuck Poetry, and he is probably most proud of his work since 2008 as the founding editor of Crisis Chronicles Press. Find him at www.crisischronicles.com |
Poetry+ Presents Kevin A. Risner July 17, 2018
Kevin A. Risner is ESL Coordinator at the Cleveland Institute of Art, where he also teaches writing, narrative, and philosophy. His work can be found online in many locations: Rise Up Review, Rising Phoenix Review, the murmur house, Noble/Gas Quarterly, The Wire’s Dream, Ghost City Review, The Bookends Review, and elsewhere. His first chapbook — My Ear is a Sieve— was published by Bottlecap Press in 2017. A second collection of poems about his dreams, Lucid, was just released by The Poetry Annals. He also writes about beer from time to time at www.porchdrinking.com.
Poetry + Presents Alex DiFrancesco, June 19, 2018
Poetry + Presents: Mitch James, May 15, 2018
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Poetry + Presents: Dan Smith and the Deep Cleveland Trio, March 20, 2018
Timothy Gaewsky: Castles In Air February 2, 2018 - March 2, 2018
Poetry + Presents: Jonie Mcintire, January 16, 2018
Poetry + Presents: Evan St. Jasthane's Astounding Sideshow- Steven Athanas, December 12, 2017
