Jan 10, 2012 Poet Linda Larson

Linda Larson was born and educated in the Midwest and spent childhood vacations and more than a decade of her adult life in Madison County, Mississippi. While in Mississippi, she worked as a feature writer for The Capitol Reporter and The Jackson Advocate. Larson relocated to the Boston/ Cambridge area where she has lived and worked for the past twenty years.

For five years she served as editor of and contributor to Spare Change News, a homeless newspaper based in Cambridge.

Over the years Larson has struggled with mental illness, homelessness and alcohol addiction.
She has been recognized by both houses of the Massachusetts Legislature for her advocacy work on behalf of people with mental illnesses.

As Larson’s life has become more manageable, she has been able to realize her long-term goal in putting together a collection of poetry, Washing the Stones, published by Ibbetson Press, August, 2007. These poems go a long way towards recapturing her promise as a graduate of the Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars in the Seventies and as a teaching fellow in the creative writing doctoral program at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Her second collection of poetry is titled Mississippi Poems (ISCS PRESS).

Her new work in progress is tentatively entitled Hard Rain Falling.

Poet Robert K. Johnson Tuesday Oct. 20, 2011

Robert K. Johnson was the original poetry editor for the Ibbetson Street Press. A retired Professor of English/Suffolk University-Boston, Johnson has had a number of collections of poetry out, most recently "Choir of Day" (Ibbetson Street Press). Johnson is a recipient of the Ibbetson Street Press Lifetime Achievement Award, and has been widely published.

Dec. 13, 2011 Poet/ Publisher Gloria Mindock

Gloria Mindock, author of the poetry collections, Blood Soaked Dresses (Ibbetson St. Press, 2007) and Nothing Divine Here (U Soku Stampa, 2010), is editor and publisher of Cervena Barva Press, and in 2007, became the editor of the Istanbul Literary Review, an online journal based in Turkey.

Mindock is also the author of two poetry chapbooks, Doppelganger (S. Press) and Oh Angel (U Soku Stampa), and her poems have been published in numerous journals, including River Styx, Phoebe, Poesia, and Poet Lore, to name a few, as well as appearing in several anthologies. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and was awarded a fellowship from the Massachusetts Cultural Council distributed by the Somerville Arts Council.

Gloria Mindock

From 1984-1994. Mindock edited the Boston Literary Review/Blur and was co-founder of Theatre S & S Press, Inc. During its existence, Theatre S. received grants from the Polaroid Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, The Globe Foundation, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Her poetry collection, Doppelganger, served as the text for theatre piece of the same name performed by Theatre S.

Over the years, Mindock has performed, acted, composed music, and sang in the theatre. Her most recent performance piece, Walking In El Salvador. is scheduled to debut this September.

Mindock lives in Somerville, MA, where she has worked as Social Worker, and also does freelance editing of manuscripts and conducts workshops for writers.

Nov. 15, 2011 Poet/Philosopher Jody Azzouni

Jody Azzouni was born in New York City, and returns there as often as possible. He is a Professor of Philosophy at Tufts University. He has published books in philosophy of mathematics and philosophy of science with Cambridge University Press, and Routledge (respectively), as well as a book of poetry, "The Lust for Blueprints," with The Poet's Press. He has published or will be publishing poems in places such as Artful Dodge, The Bitter Oleander, and Spillway. Samples of published poems and short stories of hers may be viewed at his website, http://www.azzouni.com/

Nov 8, 2011 5PM is poet, performer James Caroline

My Guest on Poet to Poet Nov 8, 2011 5PM is poet, performer James Caroline

Over the past 4 years, the award winning poet and performer Jme, also known as James Caroline, has made a name for himself nationally through slams and features. In February of 2006 he toured the West Coast with Def Poetry's Caroline Harvey on the highly successful I See Red tour. James is currently the front man for the band Miette with Matt Vears. His work is a rare mix of literary craft and vulnerability, and the intensity of his performances has garnered comparisons to Patti Smith.

James was voted Best Local Author in the 2006 Boston Phoenix poll. He is a multiple winner of Cambridge Poetry Awards for Best Erotic Male Performance Poet and Best Slam Poet Male. He has guest-lectured and performed at Mount Ida College, Hampshire College, Emerson College and Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey. In May of 2007 he taught and performed at The Saints and Sinners Literary Festival in New Orleans. He has studied with Anya Achtenberg, Patricia Smith, Regie Gibson, Sascha Feinstein, and Toni Amato. During the spring of 2004 he directed and performed in Musician and the Muse, a performance of poetry and music at The Cambridge Multicultural Arts Center featuring Nicole Terez, Tom Daley, Regie Gibson, and Iyeoka Okoawo.

He has competed with two National Slam teams, and represented the Cantab Lounge in the first Individual World Poetry Slam. In 1997 he was commissioned to write the vocal text and act as artistic sound director for Naked Truths: Voices of Shame, Sexuality, and Eating Disorders in Women, which was performed at HERE multimedia center in Manhattan. He's been published in Quarry, Subliminal, Pinned Down by Pronouns (a Lambda Literary Award Finalist for 2004), The Shadow Sacrament, the Cascadia Review, and Painted Bride Quarterly.

Oct 4, 2011: Paul Steven Stone talks to "To You Who Are Different"

Paul Steven Stone bio:

Paul Steven Stone’s writings have appeared in Cricket Magazine, Point South, Wisdom Magazine, Bagel Bards Anthologies 4,5 & 6 and a boatload of newspapers and magazines. His comic novel, "Or So It Seems", has been called “A rollicking spiritual page-turner!” His story collection, “How to Train A Rock”, was culled from 25 years of genre- and mind-bending newspaper columns. Having written and produced over 100 TV commercials during his long advertising career, Stone most recently wrote and directed a video for teens entitled “To You Who Are Different” (viewable on YouTube) to encourage and support those youth who feel “different” or apart from the mainstream. Currently Director of Advertising for W.B. Mason, Stone lives in Cambridge with his lovely wife, Amy.

“To You Who Are Different” write-up:

"To You Who Are Different" is a powerful video, that features high school students from Randolph, Massachusetts, speaking directly to their peers (the viewers) to help them survive and surmount being different. The film is also a compelling plea for tolerance and respect amongst school-age peers, building on the premise "Everyone of us is different". Very powerful. Teens talking to teens. “To You Who Are Different” has been selected as a core element in Randolph High School’s anti-bullying program.

To view “To You Who Are Different” on Youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IJA-uxretY

Sept 13 2011 Writer, Publisher, Alan Ball founder of Happeningnow!everywhere magazine

Bio Sketch Alan Ball



Alan Ball is not the celebrated screenwriter, that’s someone else. Not the world cup soccer player either, that’s another one. Alan’s been writing since he was a kid, as he has told one of his favorite students, he started a novel one Saturday when he was about 11, wrote a page and never finished it (yet). He started a notebook which was a take-off on some of the funny stuff around at the time, and in junior high was writing this and that about politics which was pointless since he didn’t know what he was talking about. He started writing free verse at 16 and around 20 also got back to fiction.

His first 2 published poems (1969) were accepted by the East Harlem Writing Center for their Uptown Beat.

Not enrolled there as a student, he and a friend who was and the friend’s writing roommates organized and began creative writing sessions at Bensalem College of Fordham University on Sunday evenings. This soon resulted in their editing and publishing the journal Grub Street. After 4 issues the group dispersed, but Alan and new associates published a 5th through 10th issue during the mid to late 70’s.

Alan married New York City native Patricia Russell in 1974 and completed a degree in creative writing at Empire State College of the State University of New York in 1978 (it involved writing the degree program). Soon thereafter he and Pat relocated to Somerville, Massachusetts. He took a day job and eventually he and Pat started a family. Raising two children brought with its joy the motivation and opportunity to collaborate with kids in writing. Gratitude for the education daughter Emily and son James received in the Somerville public schools led to his working with school kids and receipt of compounding returns from that work. “The reward of hard work is more hard work,” he tells his students.

He has worked for over 25 years as a medical journalist primarily in the role of managing editor of the peer-review academic journals Lasers in Surgery and Medicine and Ophthalmic Surgery, Lasers & Imaging.

Having worked several years with 3rd and 4th graders in writing and poetry as a classroom volunteer, in 2003 Alan organized an afterschool creative writing group at the A.D. Healey School, a K-8 Somerville public school, and with the students in that group and with the support of other students throughout the school, he advised their establishment of a student newspaper that has been a laboratory for writing development utilizing correspondingly developing publishing projects. The magazines that this newspaper has spawned, although small in print circulation, nevertheless are of a national and international reach. Submission is web-based and editorial evaluation is done via email, and all writers under 20 from any part of the world are invited.

To date the discovery of effective and practical publishing methods that address the challenges and employ opportunities afforded by electronic media has resulted from this collaboration. It has successfully derived ways to identify, develop and distribute literature for free while enhancing its intrinsic value, and to maintain a major print component, for the artistic and practical worth of the old medium.

Happeningnow!everywhere (aka Happening Publications) is a loosely organized collective of young writers coordinated and advised by adult mentors to publish multimedia, non-commercial periodicals that serve as teaching tools and quality offerings for young readers.

Guided largely by the interests and direction of the students working with them we now have 3 magazines, all written by young people-- by kids and young adult students-- and advised by peer editors. Happeningnow!everywhere is for writers under 20 and a reading audience age 12 through adult, 12! is for 10agers through young teens and Snowflake! is for age 10 and under. They all are general interest magazines that include informative articles, reviews, personal essays, opinion, fiction, humor and poetry. Art and popular culture are major focuses. All three are published in print and online. The project is informed by our contributing writers and responsive to their needs and points of view. These publications are selective and edited. The editors are recruited from among the contributing writers. The selections are made on the basis of reader interest, originality and quality of craft. The young writers and editors participate in the critical evaluation of innovative approaches and experimentation in seeking solutions to real-life challenges that are faced by writers and publishers.

Recent developments at Happening Publications include print collections of poetry sold for special purpose fundraising (Poetry for Haiti, Poetry for the Species and Poetry for the Healey School & fiction stories). New to the online component of Happeningnow!everywhere is a “self-print” poetry feature where visitors to the website may select and print poems for inclusion in their own loose-leaf collections. Also in view is a magazine for kids containing contributions by kids, young adults and older mentors writing for kids, and direct collaborations between kids and grownup writers.

Submissions for all the magazines are welcome via email or the websites www.happeningnoweverywhere.com and http://12zine.com .

Sept 20, 2011 DEWITT HENRY-- Founding Editor of PLOUGHSHARES and author of " SWEET DREAMS"

July 19, 2011 5PM Poet Margaret Young

Margaret Young, winner of Bright Hill Press's Poetry Book Competition for ALMOND TOWN, grew up in Oberlin, Ohio. After graduating from Yale, she helped found the Open Door Theater Company, performing Shakespeare and children's plays in small Pennsylvania communities. She earned an MA in creative writing at the University of California, Davis, and her first poetry collection, Willow from the Willow, was published by Cleveland State University Press in 2002. She teaches at Endicott College and lives in Beverly, Massachusetts, with her husband and son.

July 12, 2011 5PM Kitty Beers author of " Human Scale."

About Kitty Beers

Kitty is a member of the Society of Environmental Journalists, the National Writers Union, and Grub Street. She has a B.A. from Harvard University and an M.A. from Cornell University. Her articles and stories have appeared in, for example, the Amicus Journal, the Ithaca Journal, Facets magazine, the HILR Review, and Harvard Magazine. Her futuristic screenplay, Home, placed in the 2004 PAGE International Screenwriting Awards contest. Human Scale won honorable mention in the 2010 Hollywood Book Festival contest.

June 14 5PM Poet Linda Lerner

June 14 5PM Poet Linda Lerner





Takes Guts and Years some time, (NYQ) a poetry book by Linda Lerner has been released. Linda has been previously published by Ibbetson Street "Koan from Samsara." She will be having a book signing at the Grolier Poetry Book Shop in Harvard Square from 2 to 3PM ( June 14)--hope you can attend!




The New York Quarterly Foundation, Inc.
™
New York, New York

www.nyqbooks.org/author/lindalerner • PO Box 2015 • Old Chelsea Station • New York, NY 10113
For Release: Immediately Contact: Raymond Hammond, Editor; 917.843.8825; rhammond@nyquarterly.org
Publication Information: 5.5 x 8.5 in.; 280 Pages; ISBN: 978-1-935520-31-3
Library of Congress Control Number: 2011926466 Publication Date: June 1, 2011


Website: http://www.nyqbooks.org/author/lindalerner

NYQ Books™ announces the publication of Takes Guts and Years Sometimes
by Linda Lerner



May 1, 2011 - New York, NY - NYQ Books™ is proud to announce the release of Takes Guts and Years Sometimes: New and Selected Poems by Linda Lerner. Linda Lerner’s latest book is a collection ofpoems dating from the early 80’s to the present. An immigrant daughter’s courageous search forher identity, her refusal to compromise who she is for a paycheck or for love is viewed in the backdrop of major public events. Upheavals in her personal life are paralleled by those in the larger world. There’s the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993 and the subsequent attack in 2001 six blocks from her home. This latter event triggers memories of stories her estranged father told about his escape from Russia. There are the hardships caused by gentrification. The locale is primarily New York City, but it could be any place, where the fault lines of vulnerability in individual lives suddenly give way to tremors outside, and the earth shifts beneath them.



“As one of Whitman’s children, Linda Lerner’s poems are breathless and pulsing, alive with a hunger to taste, devour, smell, witness and embrace. She is insatiable, open, doesn’t want to miss anything.


The poems have an urgency. She is famished for life, is starved for what is hot and spicy, real and she takes risks, refusing to settle. Fascinated by people, she writes movingly not just about her self and her lovers but about her family with its Russian immigrant roots and background and conflict and pain but also about ordinary people in the Bowery, old men and ruined women, the woman in a box, the young with their hormones bursting. She makes the city shimmer with its smells—pastrami and rye and cream soda, smoke, tar, sewer smells, garbage—the beauties and terrors—the World Trade Center attacks, the dangerous streets she refuses to let scare her away. Even the poems of the blues and rawness of life celebrate in
the way the blues celebrate.” —Lyn Lifshin


Linda Lerner is a New York City Poet, born and raised in Brooklyn where she now lives. She is the author of thirteen poetry collections and has been twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her most recent collections are: Something Is Burning In Brooklyn, (Iniquity Press / Vendetta books, 2009), Living In Dangerous Times (Presa Press, 2007) & City Woman, (March Street Press,2006 ; (The last two
were Small Press Reviews’ Pick of the Month) In 1995, she and Andrew Gettler founded POETS on the line (http://www.echonyc.com/~poets) the first poetry anthology available on the internet.

May 24,2011: Kim Triedman/Patrick Sylvain /Marilene Phipps-Kettlewell,

Kim Triedman Editor of Poets For Haiti (Anthology) and contributors Patrick Sylvain /Marilene Phipps-Ketwell







On February 23, 2010 — six weeks after the city of Port-au-Prince was brought to its knees by one of the most destructive earthquakes on record — 18 remarkable writers joined together on the Harvard University campus and demonstrated just what poetry could achieve. (…)

The poets assembled for the reading represented a remarkable and diverse group. Given the time imperative it became a very democratic and almost incidental kind of assemblage, which was one of the things I most appreciated about the experience. Everyone owned the evening : the poet laureate shared the stage with the high school senior ; the university professors introduced the workaday poets ; the Haitian-born writers were there to speak for themselves. There was no grandstanding. Poets were introduced by name only. People were there to do something as sometimes only a group can — to make themselves heard.

As we were organizing this event, I keep thinking back to a children's book I used to read to my daughters called Miss Rumphius about a little girl named Alice. Alice's grandfather was a retired sea captain living out his old age on the coast of Maine. He tells her about all the wonderful places he has seen on his journeys. When Alice announces that she, too, will travel the world and then find a place by the sea, he replies : « That is all very well, little Alice, but you must also find a way to make the world more beautiful ».

I often think of that line, even after so many years. It's something I take very personally — the imperative, and the privilege. On February 23rd, poets of the greater Boston community came together to read some breathtaking poetry, to a huge audience that had assembled to support a stunning and critically important cause. Like little Alice, who grew old scattering lupine seeds over the hillside of Maine, we had all found a small way, that night, to make the world more beautiful.

Steven Luria Ablon/ Poet--- May 10 2011

Steven Luria Ablon, MD, is an adult and child training and supervising analyst and associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard University Medical School. He is a recipient of an Academy of American Poets Award. Dr. Ablon just published his fourth collection of poetry Night Call, in which he explores the experience of doctors from schooling through training to practice. He has three previous collections of poetry: Tornado Weather, Flying Over Tasmania, and Blue Damsels. His poetry has been included in many literary magazines.

Aug 2, 2011 Poet Jennifer Jean

Jennifer Jean is the author of the poetry chapbook In the War (Big Table Publishing Co., 2010). Her poetry, essays, literary interviews, and reviews have been published in numerous journals, including North Dakota Quarterly, Denver Quarterly, Awakenings Review, Santa Clara Review, Southern California Review, Caketrain, Relief Quarterly, The Wilderness House Review, The MOM Egg Journal, Art Throb and Megaera; as well, she is a feature writer for the arts and lifestyle magazine Art Throb and has received an Agnes Butler Award from the Academy of American Poets. Jennifer directs Thursday’s Theatre of Words & Music artist’s performance series and is the librettist for the Fishwife Music Project; she's an active member of the committee producing the 2011 Massachusetts Poetry Festival and she teaches writing and literature at Salem State University

March 29, 2011 Michelle Hoover author of "The Quickening"

(Photo by Sanjay Subbanna)


Michelle Hoover


Michelle Hoover teaches writing at Boston University and Grub Street.

She has published fiction in Confrontation, The Massachusetts Review, Prairie Schooner, and Best New American Voices, among others. She has been a Bread Loaf Writer's Conference scholar, the Philip Roth Writer-in-Residence at Bucknell University, a MacDowell fellow, a Pushcart Prize nominee, and in 2005 the winner of the PEN/New England Discovery Award for Fiction. The Quickening was shortlisted for the Center for Fiction's Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize and is a finalist for the 2010 Indies Choice Debut of the Year.

She was born in Ames, Iowa, the granddaughter of four longtime farming families.

March 1, 2011 Poet Ruth Kramer Baden author of "East of the Moon"

Review of EAST OF THE MOON by Ruth Kramer Baden, Ibbetson Street Press, 25 School Street, Somerville, MA 02143, 2010.
Book design by Steve Glines (ISCSPress.com)

Review By Barbara Bialick

The poetry collection, East of the Moon, is at once mythic, narrative, story telling and bursting with flavor beads of some great stand-alone poems. As she takes the reader through the lifecycles of a mature woman, age 70, we see the span of a full first collection, which has obviously been writing itself in the back of her mind for a long time. It may be a first book, but not a first-time writer. The work echoes with the awful meanings behind fairy tales, the things that the original tellers didn’t dare to say but to imply. It also seems influenced by William Blake’s voices of innocence and experience.

The cover design and inside black and white ink drawings add a lot to the fairy tale theme. But the royal blue cover and its own painting quoting “Schoen ve de le vune”—you are lovely like the moon.—makes its own stamp on the collection as it literally feels like nubuck leather boots, which mimic the boots of the Cossacks and others roaring through history, using and abusing women and everyone else.

Some examples from the book:

“She was the clever one,/Hansel had always been slow./She knew they could not go back/their stepmother would break them/their father would betray them…”(“Gretel Ever After”).“She told the prince, If I married you/I would become a frostbitter woman/who could not hear my children/sing or cry/…Touch me and I will kill you…He ran… /She made her lonely way over roots and rocks…(to where) a rosewood piano stood/Her hands spanned octaves./She played a Bach prelude.” (“The Sleeping Princess”)Compare this narrative style to poetry later into the life cycle—a grandmother’s poetry:In “Consider the Trees,” she writes sheer lyric poetry: “how I have grown like the cypress/crouched on a cliff/sentinel searching/the inhospitable sea/…all that grows/…must find a way to live.” Or “Rachel’s Birthday Poem”: “You sail into your second year/wobbling and yawing in front/I in your wake/You are the music language makes,/you are the golden heart of the plum.”


Ruth Kramer Baden has been a 1950s married mother, a creator of a local chapter of the National Organization of Women, a journalist, a consultant on children for Wellesley College, and at age 50, she graduated law school! (She practiced elder law). She’s currently working on her retirement dream of becoming a poet. Give her book a try.

Mike Ansara and January O'Neil of the Mass. Poetry Festival

My guest Tuesday Feb. 15, 2011 will be Mike Ansara founder of the Mass. Poetry Festival, and January O'Neil award-winning poet and board member of MPF.





MassPoetry.org is a new program to connect poets and poetry with larger audiences. The project grew out of roundtables with poets in every part of the state to explore that condition of poetry in Massachusetts. Those roundtables were a collaborative effort between MassPoetry.org, the Mass Cultural Council and MassHumanities.

The purpose of MassPoetry.org is to create resources to aid and support the Massachusetts poetry community, to reconnect poetry to more mainstream culture, to create new audiences for poetry and to organize the poetry community throughout the state. MassPoetry.org works to support poets and poetry in a number of ways:

•The Massachusetts Poetry Festival – a unique 2 day gathering of poets and poetry lovers from across the Commonwealth for readings, workshops, panels, concerts, a small press fair and more
•Taking poetry to people: we sponsor poets to work in schools, senior centers, prisons and communities.
•Assisting more readers to read and reconnect with poetry
•Working with teachers to assist them to work with poetry in the classroom
•Creating a central information center for poets and poetry readers and lovers to find reading series, workshops, MFA programs, and other resources
•Building a robust website to support all of these activities
•Linking together all the dispirit strands of the Massachusetts poetry community to promote more collaboration, respect and communication
MassPoetry.org also has a few core principles that inform and guide our work. First, we insist on supporting and giving voice to the full range of poetry across the Commonwealth. This means we work with and support poets of all different styles, schools and approaches, from academic poets at major universities to performance poets in clubs. We work with the full range of ethnic, cultural and linguistic diversity, from poets writing exclusively in English to those writing in Creole, Portuguese, and Cambodian. It means we are committed to working with poets from the Berkshires to Cape Cod, from Newburyport to Fall River, in Worcester and the Merrimack Valley, in Chelsea as well as Cambridge. We are committed to expanding the audience for poetry in all those communities and not just in the universities and private prep schools.

Finally we are committed whenever and wherever possible to actually pay our poets for their creative time. Far, far too often poets are asked to donate their time and the results of hours and hours of hard creative work. We value poetry and we value poets. And so whenever possible we pay them for their work.

MassPoetry.org is proud of the start we have made. The Festival has been created and two successful Festivals have been held. We have started pilot programs in schools, in the community and with teachers. We have 59 partner organizations, schools, and institutions across the state. We have a broad, diverse and talented Advisory Board. But as much as we have been able to do, far more remains to be done.

Feb 1, 2011 5PM Kim Triedman, Marilene Phipps-Kettlewell, Patrick Sylvain: Poets For Haiti

Kim Triedman editor for the acclaimed anthology "Poets for Haiti," as well as contributing poets Patrick Sylvain and Marilene Phipps-Kettlewell will appear on "Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer."

Jan 25, 2011 W.E. Butts New Hampshire Poet Laureate

W.E.Butts


New Hampshire Poet Laureate 2009-2014
Welcome

W.E. Butts is the author of several poetry collections, including Sunday Evening at the Stardust Café, which was chosen as a finalist for the 2005 Philip Levine Prize in Poetry and selected winner of the 2006 Iowa Source Poetry Book Prize, and the chapbooks What to Say if the Birds Ask (Pudding House Publications, 2007) Sunday Factory (Finishing Line Press, 2006), White Bees (Oyster River Press, 2001), and A Season of Crows (Igneus Press, 2000). He has received two Pushcart Prize nominations and a Massachusetts Artists Foundation Award, and has taught in poetry workshops at the University of New Hampshire and has been a featured presenter at several community events and conferences. In 2007, he was a visiting writer at Cornell College, Iowa. He is a member of the faculty of the BFA in Writing Program at Goddard College, and is listed in two editions of Who's Who Among America's Teachers. His poems appear frequently in such magazines as Atlanta Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, Cider Press Review, Cimarron Review, Mid-American Review, and Poetry East, and have been anthologized in The Anthology of Magazine Verse (Monitor Books), Under the Legislature of Stars: 62 New Hampshire Poets (Oyster River Press, 1999), Open Door: A Poet Lore Anthology, 1980 – 1996, (Writer’s Center Editions, 1996), Heartbeat of New England: Contemporary Nature Poetry (Tiger Moon Press, 2000), Leaves by Night, Flowers by Day (Iowa Source, 2006), and elsewhere.

Jan 11, 2011 Poet Mignon Ariel King

Mignon Ariel King is an urban womanist writer who was born in Boston’s City Hospital in 1964. An alumna of Simmons College and a former English instructor, she created MAPS-ONE (the Memoir and Poetry Sisterhood of New England) through which she edits the online journal MoJo! and its sister site Extra MoJo!; organizes A Century of Black Voices annual poetry readings to honor Black History Month; and plans future workshops and book contests. She has been reading at open mics since 1998. Her autobio- graphical trilogy (in three genres–memoir, poetry trilogy, novella) is based on a lifetime spent in Greater Boston.


Ms. King’s first published poetry collection is The Woods Have Words (Ibbetson Street Press, 2009). The third volume of her poetry trilogy, Words of Flight, is a series of dramatic monologues of New Englanders, dedicated to her late mother who grew up in New Hampshire. Currently revising and submitting the memoir and novella components of the trilogy, Ms. King is also writing a second novella, set in her childhood neighborhood in Roxbury, Massachuse