May 4 ,2010: Poets Jared Smith and Michael Mack 4:30 to 5:30 PM

After serving in the US Air Force as an aircraft crew chief, Michael Mack worked a variety of factory and labor jobs before returning to school and graduating from the Writing Program at MIT.

Mack has performed at the US Library of Congress, Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, the Columbia Festival of the Arts, Philadelphia Fringe Festival, the Austin International Poetry Festival, and Off-Off-Broadway at the Times Square Arts Center.

His work has aired on NPR, and has been published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), America, the Beloit Poetry Journal, Cumberland Poetry Review, and is featured in Best Catholic Writing 2005.

Mack has also performed at scores of venues for consumers and providers of mental health services, including McLean Psychiatric Hospital, the national conference of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), and for faculty and students of the Harvard Medical School and Yale Medical School.

Awards include an Artist's Grant for new theater works from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, First Prize in the Writers Circle National Poetry Competition, and an Eloranta Fellowship, which funded a residency at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre for the Arts in Ireland.

Mack lives in the Boston area, supplementing his work as a poet and performer with assignments as a freelance writer.















Biographical Information: Jared R.W. Smith

Jared Smith is a prominent figure in contemporary poetry, technology research, and professional continuing education. Having earned his BA cum laude and his MA in English and American Literature from New York University, he spent many years in industry and research. Starting in 1976, he rose to Vice President of The Energy Bureau, Inc. in New York; relocated to Illinois, where he became Associate Director of both Education and Research for an international not-for-profit research laboratory (IGT); advised several White House Commissions on technology and policy under the Clinton Administration; and left industry in 2001, after serving as Special Appointee to Argonne National Laboratory.

He is the author of nine volumes of poetry: Looking Into the Machinery: The Selected Longer Poems of Jared Smith (1984-2008,) (Tamarack Editions, PA, 2010;) Grassroots (Wind Publications, KY, 2010;) The Graves Grow Bigger Between Generations (Higganum Hill Books, CT, 2008;) Where Images Become Imbued With Time (Puddin'head Press, IL, 2007;) Lake Michigan and Other Poems (Puddin'head Press, IL, 2005;) Walking the Perimeters of the Plate Glass Window Factory (Birch Brook Press, NY, 2001;) Keeping the Outlaw Alive (Erie Street Press, IL, 1988;) Dark Wing (Charred Norton Publishing, NY, 1984;) and Song of the Blood: An Epic (The Smith Press, 1983.) He has also released two CDs of his work: Seven Minutes Before the Bombs Drop (ArtVilla Records, TN, 2006;) and Controlled by Ghosts (Practical Music Studios, IL, 2007.)

Jared has had hundreds of publications in literary journals across the nation over the past 30 years, in addition to several foreign countries. He has published reviews of the works of such major contemporary poets as Ted Kooser, C.K. Williams, and W.S. Merwin, as well as several craft interviews, including one with Ted Kooser that was translated into Chinese for republication in Taiwan and Mainland China. Jared's work has also been adapted to stage in both New York and Chicago.

Jared Smith's poems, essays, and literary commentary have appeared in The New York Quarterly, Confrontation, Spoon River Quarterly, Kenyon Review, Bitter Oleander, Small Press Review, Greenfield Review, Vagabond, The Smith, Home Planet News, Bitterroot, Rhino, Ibbetson Street Press, Wilderness House Review, After Hours, Poet Lore, The Pedestal, Second Coming, The Partisan Review, Somerville News, Coe Review, U.T. Review, The Iconoclast, Trail & Timberline, and many others. He has also been on National Public Radio and Pacifica. He has given readings, workshops, and classes at colleges, schools, libraries, and coffee houses around the country.

While at NYU, Jared studied under poet/critic M.L. Rosenthal, Library of Congress Adviser Robert Hazel, and founder of The New York Quarterly William Packard. He has served as a member of the Screening Committee and on the Board of Directors of The New York Quarterly under founding Editor William Packard, as well as being a current member of its Advisory Board under Raymond Hammond; as coordinator of readings at two Greenwich Village coffee shops in the 70s; as a Guest Columnist for Poets magazine and Home Planet News under Editor Don Lev; as Guest Poetry Editor for two issues of The Pedestal under Editor John Amen; and as Poetry Editor of Trail & Timberline.

Jared Smith is a member of Colorado Poets Center, The Colorado Poets Association, The Academy of American Poets, Illinois State Poetry Society, and The Chicago Poets' Club, and past President of Poets & Patrons in Chicago. He is listed in Marquis Who's Who In America, among other reference works, and has been listed among the authors in Poets & Writers Directory since its inception.

Biographical Information: Jared R.W. Smith

Jared Smith is a prominent figure in contemporary poetry, technology research, and professional continuing education. Having earned his BA cum laude and his MA in English and American Literature from New York University, he spent many years in industry and research. Starting in 1976, he rose to Vice President of The Energy Bureau, Inc. in New York; relocated to Illinois, where he became Associate Director of both Education and Research for an international not-for-profit research laboratory (IGT); advised several White House Commissions on technology and policy under the Clinton Administration; and left industry in 2001, after serving as Special Appointee to Argonne National Laboratory.

He is the author of nine volumes of poetry: Looking Into the Machinery: The Selected Longer Poems of Jared Smith (1984-2008,) (Tamarack Editions, PA, 2010;) Grassroots (Wind Publications, KY, 2010;) The Graves Grow Bigger Between Generations (Higganum Hill Books, CT, 2008;) Where Images Become Imbued With Time (Puddin'head Press, IL, 2007;) Lake Michigan and Other Poems (Puddin'head Press, IL, 2005;) Walking the Perimeters of the Plate Glass Window Factory (Birch Brook Press, NY, 2001;) Keeping the Outlaw Alive (Erie Street Press, IL, 1988;) Dark Wing (Charred Norton Publishing, NY, 1984;) and Song of the Blood: An Epic (The Smith Press, 1983.) He has also released two CDs of his work: Seven Minutes Before the Bombs Drop (ArtVilla Records, TN, 2006;) and Controlled by Ghosts (Practical Music Studios, IL, 2007.)

Jared has had hundreds of publications in literary journals across the nation over the past 30 years, in addition to several foreign countries. He has published reviews of the works of such major contemporary poets as Ted Kooser, C.K. Williams, and W.S. Merwin, as well as several craft interviews, including one with Ted Kooser that was translated into Chinese for republication in Taiwan and Mainland China. Jared's work has also been adapted to stage in both New York and Chicago.

Jared Smith's poems, essays, and literary commentary have appeared in The New York Quarterly, Confrontation, Spoon River Quarterly, Kenyon Review, Bitter Oleander, Small Press Review, Greenfield Review, Vagabond, The Smith, Home Planet News, Bitterroot, Rhino, Ibbetson Street Press, Wilderness House Review, After Hours, Poet Lore, The Pedestal, Second Coming, The Partisan Review, Somerville News, Coe Review, U.T. Review, The Iconoclast, Trail & Timberline, and many others. He has also been on National Public Radio and Pacifica. He has given readings, workshops, and classes at colleges, schools, libraries, and coffee houses around the country.

While at NYU, Jared studied under poet/critic M.L. Rosenthal, Library of Congress Adviser Robert Hazel, and founder of The New York Quarterly William Packard. He has served as a member of the Screening Committee and on the Board of Directors of The New York Quarterly under founding Editor William Packard, as well as being a current member of its Advisory Board under Raymond Hammond; as coordinator of readings at two Greenwich Village coffee shops in the 70s; as a Guest Columnist for Poets magazine and Home Planet News under Editor Don Lev; as Guest Poetry Editor for two issues of The Pedestal under Editor John Amen; and as Poetry Editor of Trail & Timberline.

Jared Smith is a member of Colorado Poets Center, The Colorado Poets Association, The Academy of American Poets, Illinois State Poetry Society, and The Chicago Poets' Club, and past President of Poets & Patrons in Chicago. He is listed in Marquis Who's Who In America, among other reference works, and has been listed among the authors in Poets & Writers Directory since its inception.

April 13, 2010 Poet Jade Sylvan

Jade Sylvan is a writer and performer living in Boston. Her first full-length collection of poetry, The Spark Singer, was published in 2009 by Spuyten Duyvil Press. Her first novel, Backstage at The Caribou, was published in 2009 by Ray Ontko & Co. She has performed across the country, appearing as the featured performer at The Cantab Lounge (Boston), The Green Mill (Chicago), and The Nuyorican Poets Cafe (New York City), among others. She has also lectured and facilitated writing workshops, most recently at Indiana University and The University of Cincinnati. In 2010, she began working as an Editor and Mentor for Books of Hope, a nonprofit that seeks to empower urban youth through writing, book production, performance, and social entrepreneurship. She is currently at work on a second novel, an album of songs, and more poetry. You can find her at www.jadesylvan.com.

APRIL 6, 2010 Poet Kathleen Spivack

APRIL 6 2010 Poet Kathleen Spivack



Kathleen Spivack is the author of The Break-Up Variations; The Beds We Lie In (nominated for a Pulitzer Prize); The Honeymoon; Swimmer in the Spreading Dawn; The Jane Poems; Flying Inland; Robert Lowell, A Personal Memoir; and a novel, Unspeakable Things (the latter two are currently with an agent). Published in over 300 magazines and anthologies, her work has also been translated into French. She reads her work throughout Europe and the United States, and gives theater performances and master classes. In Boston, Kathleen Spivack directs the Advanced Writing Workshop, an intensive coaching program for advanced writers. She is a permanent Visiting Professor of Creative Writing/ American Literature at the University of Paris, Sorbonne.

March 23 Poet Melissa Guillet

My guest will be poet Melissa Guillet. She writes,

"I have performed my work at libraries, coffee houses, and bars across the U.S. and Canada. I feel poetry should work on the page and aloud, and would describe it as narrative and often lyric. I have appeared on "Places", Youtube, CCTV, and other local access cable shows. My work has appeared or is forthcoming in Appleseeds, Ballard Street, Bloodroot Literary Magazine, Caduceus, The Cherry Blossom Review, GBSPA’s City Lights, Cyclamen & Sword, Dos Passos Review, Fearless Books, Imitation Fruit (winning poem), Lalitamba, Language and Culture, Lavanderia, Look! Up in the Sky!, New Muse, Nth Position, Public Republic, Sangam, Scrivener’s Pen, Seven Circle Press, Women. Period., six Poets’ Asylum anthologies, and several chapbooks. I am the chief editor and founder of Sacred Fools Press, which has produced three anthologies. I teach Interdisciplinary Arts in Rhode Island.


Aubade


There was no need

for Phoebus

to whisper in my ear when

the lark would do,

or the alarm, your way

of sighing as you turned,

the loudness of my dreams.


Rising, Phoebus wags his finger,

scolding our denial,

yet hopeful as a dog

sooner aware of day.


The dishes done,

the kids away,

our only charge was

to keep the sheets warm.


Nothing was to be done today.

We could just miss it entirely,

“X” it out on the calendar.


I reach for you blindly,

curled up and squinting.

The day has not begun yet.

We have all day to rise.



Sankofa


Sankofa:

Was that the metaphor looked for?

Almost a heart, divided

into two selves, medicinal snakes

spiraling in on themselves

for self-knowledge.


Then the triple-base, the three sides

to the story. The two facing snakes

that speak to each other

across the past.


High school was over,

and who would want to go back?

But in our busy, self-recoiling lives

the third wheel turns us back

and an internet spot pages old friends.


Cut off, your arm grew into its own

starfish, and you find, out

of that tiny sea, your friend

has become a starfish too.


You needed a Beowulf to slice off your arms,

to be faceless and bodiless and reach

past what everyone else had known,

only to grow everything back and reclaim

an identity to call your own.


In excavation, old photos define us,

yet we deny how we were.

We were never perfect.

We return to the source to fetch

the threads of our cocoons,

the molted shells of goofy haircuts

and all-important cliques.


High school was as far away as Africa,

as close as keys under your fingers.

Doors were closed on that life’s chapter,

but windows were open.


Friend, each of us is five parts of ourselves:

Future, Past, Present, Private, Public,

seeking same. Classified

by who we were, who we are, who we want to be.


Turn and take the egg off your back.

Neither one came first

when one needs the other to exist,

to exist one needs the other.

March 16, 2010: Poet Philip Hasouris

My Guest will be Philip Hasouris:

Philip Hasouris has been writing for many years. Like many poets, he began unsure of his words, kept them hidden in notebooks, draws, closets, always in the back of his mind. Started reading publicly, and eventually people started listening. Since then, he has taken every opportunity to share the words.

He has been featured at many local and national venues. He was a founder of the performance group "Spiritous" which combined poetry, music, and movement. He has performed with a variety of musicians in improvisational jazz/poetry, collaborated in the making of the C.D’s Dreams and Schemes, Cross The Double Line", Published Chapbook “Swimming Alone”. Anthologies: Poet Tribe Selected Poems and City Lights with fellow poet James G.H. Moore, Philip co-produced the poetry video series P.L.A.C.E.S. (Poetic Language Artful Communication Elemental Speech) filming poets in their homes, creative space, natural surroundings, giving the audience a virtual tour of the inner workings of poetry, Philip is the co-host of the Brockton Library Poetry Series www.gbspa.org

Linda his wife of 30 years decided to have knee replacement surgery to enhance her life and as sometimes happens bad things happen to good people. She became ill through a series of medical complications the last being Cardiac Arrest which led to an anoxic brain Injury. "Coping and trying to make sense of the madness that enveloped us like those old Oklahoma dust storms, of course poetry presented itself and saved my sanity and out of the insanity came this book" ( Blow Out the Moon)

"I am not a survivor of Brain Injury I was a caretaker of a Brain Injury and I lost which will haunt me for the rest of my life but if I can reach someone and give them comfort, hope, understanding then maybe a little of the pain will ease. So I believe it's important for the book to speak for me, I was a delivery driver that wrote/read/performed poetry caring for his wife his best friend whom he lost and now has to reinvent himself. I'm adjusting to her absence but her presence will always be with me".

Philip Hasouris

Feb 16 2010 Poet Ruth Lepson 5PM

Our guest Feb 16, 2010 5PM will be Ruth Lepson. Lepson tells us:


Hi. I'm a poet & poet-in-residence at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, MA. In recent years I've been collaborating with musicians, & previously I collaborated with visual artists & with other poets. I spend a lot of time at home doing paperwork. No one should have to do paperwork, but everyone should have some time for an art form. My latest book, I Went Looking for You, came out this year with blazeVOX.org. Artist Rusty Crump and I had a book of prose poems and photos, Morphology, published in 2007 by blazevox.org, which you can read as a free e-book or buy a copy of. Alice James Books published my other book of poems, Dreaming in Color, & in 2004 U of Illinois Press published Poetry from Sojourner: A Feminist Anthology, which I edited. My poems have been in many magazines, lately innovative ones, for example, Carve, EOAGH (where I'm now on the editorial board), Big Bridge, & Shampoo. I've given many readings, including ones in NY and Philadelphia.

Feb 2, 2010: Poet/Performer/Artist Li Min Mo

Li Min Mo is a professional storyteller and artist who was born in China and lived in many parts of the world, before settling in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Li Min has been teaching art, drama, storytelling and history to children and adults, winning praise and awards for her work for over 20 years. She has brought her exciting programs to schools, universities, and communities all over the country.

Ms. Mo holds an M.A. in Theater and Education from Goddard College in Vermont and an M.F.A. from Emerson College in Creative Writing. In the sixties, she worked with Peter Schuman's Bread and Puppet Theatre and studied with Reality Theatre-Gurdinieze, Japanese Kyogen Players and with Joan Halifax on Shamanism, Buddhism and the Sun Dance Teachings of the Native Americans.

Ms. Mo has received awards and support from local arts councils, the Cultural Education Collaborative, Chapter 636 Grants, Friends of Boston Libraries, and Channel 4's "You Gotta Have Arts." Ms. Mo is listed in the Cultural Resource Directory for programs funded by Mass. Cultural Council.

My guest Jan 12 5PM will be poet/artist Celia Gilbert

My guest on Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer will be poet/artist Celia Gilbert


CELIA GILBERT

Books:
Something to Exchange, BlazeVOX[books] 09; An Ark of Sorts, Alice
James Books, 1998; Bonfire,Alice James Books, 1983, Queen of
Darkness, Viking, 1976.

published in The New Yorker, Ploughshares, Southwest Review, Poetry,
Field, among other places; forthcoming in Fulcrum and in numerous
anthologies.

Studied with Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton, Robert Fitzgerald...

Work:
Was Poetry and Fiction Editor of the Boston Phoenix did feature
articles for them among others an interview with Mary Daly and one
with Robert Creeley that Ruth Lepson and I did together. Wrote drama
reviews as well.

Taught workshops at Cambridge and Boston Adult Education Centers

Lived and studied abroad, Paris and then two years in Cambridge, England
married, three children(one deceased)longtime resident of Cambridge.

A visual artist: monotypes and oil painting.(I created the cover for
my latest book) with a studio in the Brickbottom Artists' Building

Awards
first Jane Kenyon Chapbook Award for , An Ark of Sorts,
Discovery Award from the 92nd St Y
From the Poetry Society of America:
Consuelo Ford Award, Emily Dickinson Award

Jan 5, 2010 Sonia Meyer

My guest will be Sonia Meyer--refugee from Nazi Germany--Gypsy Cultural Scholar--author of the novel "Dosha."

Dec 22, 2009: Kevin Gallagher

Kevin Gallagher is the author of three books of poetry, Gringo Guadalupe
(Ibbetson Street, 2009), Isolate Flecks (Cervena Barva, 2008), and
Looking for Lake Texcoco (Cy Gist, 2008). His poetry and reviews have
appeared in such publications as The Boston Review, Emergency Almanac,
Green Mountains Review, Harvard Review, Jacket, Peacework, the Partisan
Review and elsewhere. He is a frequent guest editor for Jacket, in 2004
editing a feature on Kenneth Rexroth, in 2008 on Denise Levertov, and in
2010 on Massachusetts poets that changed the world (of poetry). In 2004
he edited a chapbook titled Nevertheless: Some Gloucester Writers and
Artists. From 1992 to 2002 he was a publisher and editor of compost
magazine. A retrospective anthology of compost, co-edited with Margaret
Bezucha, is titled There’s No Place on Earth Like the World (Zephyr,
2006). He lives with his wife Kelly, and son Theo, in Newton, Massachusetts

Dec 15 Poet Chad Parenteau

Chad Parenteau was born in Woonsocket Rhode Island in 1973 and grew up in Bellingham, Massachusetts. Graduating high school in 1991, he entered Framingham State College and majored in English, learning poetry and prose writing from authors such as Alan Feldman and Miriam Levine and studying journalism under Desmond McCarthy. While volunteering for the college newspaper The Gatepost, he wrote articles, columns, and comic strips, serving his Junior and Senior years as the Comics Editor and Living/Arts Editor respectively.

A finalist for the Framingham State College Marjorie Sparrow Literary Award in 1993, Chad was active in campus literary groups, contributing to The Onyx, Framingham State College's literary journal (where he also served as a reader), and Life Underwater, an early literary effort by Boston-based writer, musician and journalist James O'Brien.

Moving to Boston in 1995, he obtained his MFA in Boston, studying with Bill Knott, Gail Mazur and John Skoyles. His involvement in the small press continued, publishing poetry in Meanie and Shampoo and profile pieces for Lollipop, Comics Interpreter and Whats Up. He was also an early contributor to Boston's Weekly Dig, becoming the only print journalist to be present during the 2000 protests before and after the presidential debates at UMass Boston.

In 2003, Chad self-published his first chapbook, Self-Portrait In Fire (based on his MFA thesis) and won a Cambridge Poetry Award. He continures to appear in numerous print and online publications, including anthologies such as French Connections: A Gathering of Franco-American Poets. In 2007, his poem "Moonlighting" was on display at Boston City Hall as part of The Mayor's Prose and Poetry Program. 2008 saw the publication of his third chapbook, Discarded: Poems for My Apartments from Cervena Barva Press.

Chad has featured in several venues, including The Nantucket Poetry Slam, the Fox Chase Reading Series in Philadelphia, the 17 Poets! Reading Series in New Orleans, and the Out of The Blue Art Gallery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he is the current host and organizer of Stone Soup Poetry, one of the longest-running weekly poetry venues in the state. His recent contribution to the reading series is creating and editing its online tribute journal Spoonful.

Chad continues to live and work in the Boston area. His current place of employment is the VA Hospital in Jamaica Plain. In addition to being a retinal imager for the Optometry department, he serves as Senior Imager for the Care Coordination Services Store and Forward Training Center, a national telemedicine program, and edits its bimonthly newsletter, Artifacts.

Nov. 3 Poet Kim Triedman

Kim Triedman began writing poetry after working in fiction for several years. In the past year, she's been named winner of the 2008 Main Street Rag Chapbook Competition, finalist for the 2007 Philbrick Poetry Award, finalist for the 2008 James Jones First Novel Fellowship, semi-finalist for the 2008 Black River Chapbook Competition and, most recently, semifinalist for the 2008 Parthenon Prize for Fiction. Her poems have been published widely in literary journals and anthologies here and abroad, including Main Street Rag, Poetry International, Appalachia, The Aurorean, Avocet, The New Writer, Byline Magazine, Poet's Ink, Poetry Salzburg Review, The Journal (U.K.), Asinine Poetry, Poetry Monthly, Current Accounts, Ghoti Magazine, IF Poetry Journal, Great Kills Review, Trespass Magazine, Mature Years, ART TIMES, Literary Bird Journal, and FRiGG Magazine.

Additionally, one of her recent poems was selected by John Ashbery to be included in the Ashbery Resource Center’s online catalogue, which serves as a comprehensive bibliography of both Ashbery's work and work by artists directly influenced by Ashbery. This poem has also been included in the John Cage Trust archives at Bard College. Ms. Triedman has been nominated for the anthologies Best New Poets 2009 and Best of the Web 2010. She is a graduate of Brown University and lives in the Boston area with her husband and three daughters. Her first poetry collection -- "bathe in it or sleep" -- was published by Main Street Rag Publishing Company in October of 2008.

Poet Len Solo Oct 27, 2009

LEN SOLO has been an educator for most of his professional work life: a public high school teacher of English, Math and Social Studies; founder of a small, private alternative school in Atlantic City; founder and department chairperson of the Teacher Development Program, Stockton State College, Pomona, NJ; principal for 27 years of the famous Graham & Parks Alternative Public School, Cambridge + Interim Principal, Cambridge Rindge and Latin High Schools for 1.5 years. For the past seven years he has been an education consultant.
I've had 3 volumes of poetry published: Landscape of the Misty Eye, with Steve Weitzman (2004); Rooted in Place (2006) and The Magic of Light (2008). All are available on Amazon.com.
INFLUENCES: e.e. cummings, Wallace Stevens, T. S. Eliot, William Blake, William Carlos Williams, Allen Ginsberg, Walt Whitman and, oddly Ernest Hemingway.

MY GUEST: OCT 20, 2009 Lise Haines author of "Girl in the Arena"

LISE HAINES is the author of three novels, Girl in the Arena, published in the US and the UK (Bloomsbury) and in Turkey (Alfa-Artemis Yayınevi); Small Acts of Sex and Electricity (Unbridled Books), a Book Sense Pick in 2006 and one of ten “Best Book Picks for 2006” by the NPR station in San Diego ; and In My Sister’s Country, (Penguin/Putnam), a finalist for the 2003 Paterson Fiction Prize. Her short stories and essays have appeared in a number of literary journals and she was a finalist for the PEN Nelson Algren Award.

Haines is Writer in Residence at Emerson College. She has been Briggs-Copeland Lecturer at Harvard, and her other teaching credits include UCLA, UCSB, and Stonecoast at the University of Southern Maine. She grew up in Chicago, lived in Southern California for many years, and now resides in the Boston area. She holds a B.A. from Syracuse University and an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars.

Oct 13 Poet Valerie Lawson

Valerie Lawson is the co-editor of Off the Coast magazine, and has published work in literary journals, anthologies, and websites. Twice nominated for Pushcart Prizes, Lawson wom awards for Best Narrative Poem, Female Spoken Word, and shared the award for Best Poetry Troupe with Doc Brown's Traveling Poetry Show at the Cambridge Poetry Awards. Lawson was the slammaster of the Bridgewater Poetry Slam at the Daily Grind Coffeehouse and a co-host of the Boston Poetry Slam. Lawson’s involvement in Boston area youth slams included the New England Scores slam and coaching an all-girl team that went to the YouthSpeaks National Slam. Lawson has traveled to Europe and the UK to perform poetry and helped host the Swedish Slam Nationals in 2002. Lawson was a participant in Optimal Avenues, a mixed-media cultural exchange between Massachusetts and Ireland, celebrating the United Nation's International Decade for the Culture of Peace. Dog Watch, a book of poems was released in 2007.

OCT 6, 2009: Poet Barbara Trachtenberg

Barbara Trachtenberg writes:



30 years as teacher and school psychologist have fed my writing. Lately I teach—prisoners (PEN’s Prison Writing Program), immigrants and literacy teachers, elders and students at Boston U and Harvard. I play with visual art, chamber music and travel and am fluent in Spanish learned from students and combi drivers. My best writing experience was at MacDowell Colony. My writing has appeared at Boston City Hall, in Words and Images, Multicultural Review, ArtsEditor, Latin American Anthropology Review, and The NewEnglander (a Yankee publication). My earliest writing—a 19-year-old hitchhiker’s travel memoir, set in early 60s Western Europe and Hungary—was pushed by my wanting to meet Hungarian relatives. I am a member of PEN New England and past member of Boston’s Writers’ Room. My memoir-in-progress of my mother's life in 1938, connects to my first trip to Hungary. My doctorate in literacy, language and cultural studies and masters in counseling psychology, and in English and special education influence my writing too. My favorite nonfiction characters are Ari and Dov and Noa, my sons and granddaughter.

Sept 22 Fiction writer Susan Tepper author of "Deer"

Sept 8 Poet, Journalist Djelloul Marbrook 5PM

Djelloul Marbrook
Literary, cultural and political dialogue


Djelloul Marbrook’s book of poems, Far From Algiers, is the 2007 winner of Kent State University’s Stan and Tom Wick First Book Prize in poetry. It was selected by Prof. Toi Derricotte of the University of Pittsburgh and was released in August 2008, His short story, Artists Hill, won the Literal Latté K. Margaret Grossman Fiction Award in the spring of 2008.

His poetry appeared in Solstice (UK) and Beyond Baroque (California) in 1969. While continuing a lifelong study of poetry, he stopped writing poems until Sept. 11, 2001, when he began walking in Manhattan and writing in an effort to come to terms with the nihilism of the terrorist attacks. Recent poems have been published by The American Poetry Review, Oberon and The Ledge (New York), Perpetuum Mobile and Attic (Maryland), The Country and Abroad (New York) and Arabesques Literary and Cultural Review (Algeria), in which the title poem of his book, Far From Algiers, was first published, and Istanbul Literary Review.

His novella, Alice Miller’s Room, is available at OnlineOriginals.com (UK). A small number of copies of his novella, Saraceno, were printed in 2006 by a Canadian publisher that failed before the book was distributed. A lively trade in used copies of Saraceno continues on the Internet. His fiction has also been published by Prima Materia (New York), Breakfast All Day (UK), and Potomac Review (DC).

He has had a distinguished career as a newspaper reporter and editor. He began studying journalism while in the Navy. When he was discharged he went to work for The Providence Journal in Rhode Island and began writing under the byline Del Marbrook.

He managed a regional bureau for The Journal before moving on to become the metropolitan editor of The Elmira (NY) Star-Gazette, the paper where the Gannett newspaper organization was born. Marbrook ran the Star-Gazette newsroom and began to acquire the production and design experience that would later propel his career.

He moved to The Baltimore Sun as a copy editor, specializing both in makeup and production and Middle Eastern correspondence, an unusual combination that grew from his Arab history studies at Columbia. He was soon offered a job as the Sunday editor of The Winston-Salem (NC) Journal & Sentinel, where he was in charge of features, book reviews and Sunday production.

At The Washington (DC) Star, an evening newspaper, during the Watergate period when The Star and The Washington Post contended for dominance, Marbrook was the Saturday front page editor, specialized in foreign news and edited such syndicated columnists as Mary McGrory.

He was a co-founder of Education Funding News, a biweekly Washington report on federal education news.

In the 1980s Marbrook worked for MediaNews, helping to revitalize six ailing daily newspapers in Ohio and New Jersey.

He has won a number of awards for writing, newspaper design and photography. His career has spanned all the major transitions in modern journalism—from typewriters and teletypes to computers, from hot lead typography to photo-offset and then to the Internet. He writes frequently about Internet journalism (www.djelloulmarbrook.com) and produces a daily blog about literary and cultural affairs. He mentors journalism students around the world for the Student Operated Press.

He retired in 1987 to write poetry and fiction and now lives in the mid-Hudson Valley and Manhattan with his wife, Marilyn

Aug 18, 2009 Poet Fred Marchant

My guest Aug 18, 2009 5PM poet FRED MARCHANT


Fred Marchant is editor of the Another World Instead: The Early Poems of William Stafford, 1937-1947, from Graywolf Press. He is also the author of four books of poetry, most recently The Looking House from Graywolf Press. His other collections include: Tipping Point winner of the 1993 Washington Prize from The Word Works, Full Moon Boat (Graywolf Press, 2000) and House on Water, House in Air: New and Selected Poems (Dedalus Press (Dublin, Ireland), 2002). He is also the co-translator (with Nguyen Ba Chung) of From a Corner of My Yard a collection of poetry by the contemporary Vietnamese poet Tran Dang Khoa. This collection—an important historical document in itself—will be published by the Ho Chi Minh Museum in Ha Noi, Viet Nam.

Dr. Marchant teaches at Suffolk University, in Boston, Massachusetts, where he is Professor of English and Director of the Creative Writing Program as well as the founder of the Suffolk University Poetry Center. He is also a longtime teaching affiliate of the William Joiner Center for the Study of War and Social Consequences at UMass-Boston, and teaches in its annual Writer's Conference. He has been a member of the Executive Board of PEN New England, where he was the Chair of the Freedom to Write Committee, where he founded, among other activities, the PEN New England writing workshop at Northampton County House of Correction. He also teaches in the Colrain Poetry Manuscript Conferences. Dr. Marchant has been a recipient of fellowships from the Ucross Foundation, the Yaddo Foundation, and the McDowell Colony. (/P)