Sept. 3, 2013 Poet, Editor Ralph Pennel

Ralph Pennel

Ralph Pennel received his BA in Creative Writing from Knox College and his MFA in Creative Writing from Hamline University. Ralph's writing has appeared in Common Ground Review, Ropes, The Cape Rock, Apercus Quarterly, Open to Interpretation, Ibbetson Street, The Smoking Poet, Unbound Press, Right Hand Pointing, Monologues From the Road, and various other journals. He has also published reviews with Cervena Barva Press, Wilderness House Literary Review, and Rain Taxi Review of Books. His poetry collection, Any World Less Perfect for Dying In, will be published by Cervena Barva press in the fall of 2014. Ralph teaches literature at Bunker Hill Community College in Boston, Massachusetts, and is the fiction editor for Midway Journal (www.midwayjournal.com), an online literary journal publishing out of St. Paul, Minnesota.

Novelist Elizabeth Graver Aug 13, 2013

Elizabeth Graver’s new novel is The End of the Point. She is the author of three other novels: Awake, The Honey Thief, and Unravelling. Her short story collection, Have You Seen Me?, won the 1991 Drue Heinz Literature Prize. Her work has been anthologized in Best American Short Stories (1991, 2001); Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards (1994, 1996, 2001), The Pushcart Prize Anthology (2001), and Best American Essays (1998). Her story “The Mourning Door” received the Cohen Award from Ploughshares Magazine. The mother of two daughters, she teaches English and Creative Writing at Boston College.

Guest: Sheree Pollock: A Psychiatric Nurse with a Creative Flair. Aug 6. 5PM

Sheree Pollock

In my 30 plus years working at a major psychiatric hospital just outside of Boston, I have worked with countless patients and staff on both locked and unlocked settings. One of the most creative of these people is Sheree Pollock, a veteran psychiatric nurse. Pollock is a dramatic personality, and uses her knowledge of theater, literature, gardening and other creative passions to engage the patients on a more human level. The minute she walks through the door her presence is known, and she is not too shy to quote Bette Davis, or Joan Crawford--or belt out a few lyrics from a Judy Garland song to make her point. She is a natural storyteller and thespian--and makes what can often be a purely clinical experience into a richer milieu.  I had the pleasure of interviewing Pollock on my Somerville Community Access TV show Poet to Poet Writer to Writer.

"My goal is to engage every client in an authentic way. I learned long ago that we may not be able to change the clients lives but we can control what happens on a  daily basis while they are with us. So my goal is to improve their lives while they are in the hospital. That may be with Karaoke, Movies, Food, Gardening, Fashion or whatever their personal interests may be. The goal is to engage them. I am dramatic because it is engaging. They may love me or hate me but I hope to get them engaged in the present."

July 16 5PM Poet Dan Sklar author of new poetry collection Flying Cats (actually swooping)

Professor/Poet/Playwright Dan Sklar of Endicott College

    New poetry collection:  Flying Cats ( actually swooping) ( Ibbetson Street Press) by Dan Sklar


"Fans of European 19th century verse, thick with symbolism and multi-syllabic, will find little to love in Dan Sklar’s work. Sklar’s poetry could be characterized as American Primitive, clean and bracing as creek water. Like Whitman, Sklar celebrates the mystery and profundity of the everyday. This is “guy” poetry, muscularly chronicling the days and to-do list of the contemporary American male, helplessly and joyfully committed to the challenges of raising a houseful of boys, teaching sleepy-eyed college students, and handling the ignominies of manuscript rejection letters. Sklar’s poems tumble and sing with enormously universal appeal."

 --Lisa Beatman, Author of Manufacturing America

July 9th Poet/Legislator Denise Provost

Poet/State Rep.--Denise Provost

"I started writing – mainly, but not exclusively poetry – as a child. I got a full scholarship to Bennington College during my sophomore year of high school, based in large part on a manuscript of poetry. In my senior year, I decided to go to law school, after having decided that I was not suited for a graduate degree in English literature.

I graduated from Bennington in 1971, started law school in 1972, graduated from law school in 1982. I worked as a lawyer for the City of Newton, then was recruited by the City of Somerville, to work for reform mayor Eugene Brune. Working in local government gave me ideas about how government could become more transparent and responsive. In 1993, I ran for Ward Alderman in Ward 5, coming very close against a long-time incumbent.

The incumbent resigned a year and two weeks later, and the Board of Alderman appointed a replacement. I ran against the appointee in 1995, again coming close. After that second defeat, I figured my political career was over. Then, in 1999, the ward 5 incumbent did not run for re-election, and one of the at-large aldermen made the same decision. I ran for the latter seat, and won.

I served on the Board of Aldermen for almost seven years, running for state representative in a special election. I won that election in February, 2006, and have since represented Somerville’s 27^th Middlesex District.

As my children got older, I found I was writing more poetry again, and decided that I needed a teacher. I was accepted into Susan Donnelly’s poetry writing workshop in 2010. Since then, I’ve had poetry published in a number of print and on-line journals."

June 25 Poet, Writer, Professor J.D. Scrimgeour

J.D. Scrimgeour

 Scrimgeour teaches at Salem State University. He recently published the poetry collection Territories (Last Automat Press). He has published another book of poetry, The Last Miles, and two books of creative nonfiction, Spin Moves and Themes For English B: A Professor’s Education In and Out of Class. With musician Philip Swanson he formed the performance group, Confluence, and released a CD of poetry and music, Ogunquit & Other Works.

Poet Charles Coe author of " All Sins Forgiven" 6/4/2013 Poet to Poet 5PM

Charles Coe is the author of two collections of poems published by Leapfrog Press: “Picnic on the Moon” (1999) and “All Sins Forgiven: Poems for my Parents” (2013). An accomplished jazz vocalist, Coe is known for his powerful readings and warm and compassionate voice. He is featured on numerous spoken word CDs, including “Get Ready for Boston,” a collection of stories and songs about Boston neighborhoods, and “One Side of the River,” an anthology of Cambridge and Somerville poets.


In “All Sins Forgiven,” Coe writes as a way to understand his own mother and father, and to connect readers with their own parents

.
Marge Piercy describes the collection as “at once an extremely clear-sighted and unsentimental portrait of Coe’s mother and father, and a book written with great tenderness. It’s rare we can come to see our parents in themselves, and even rarer to see all their faults and yet express love and understanding, as these poems do.”
“My Mother Cut My Hair” begins: “As she stood behind me / dressed in motherhood’s ill-fitting robe / I wonder what messages she read / in the hair that settled around her feet / like snow from some private winter.”
Coe is a program officer for the Massachusetts Cultural Council and a long-time activist with the National Writers Union, a labor union of freelance writers. He lives in Boston.

May 21, 2013 Poet Philip E. Burnham, Jr

Philip E. Burnham, Jr

Philip E. Burnham, Jr. lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was born in Rochester, New York, and grew up in New England. He attended Groton School, the University of Edinburgh, and Harvard College. A former member of the United States Foreign Service, he served as American Vice Consul in Marseille, France, from 1962 through 1964. For the next 35 years he taught history in both public and private secondary schools and colleges in the Boston area. He holds a PhD in Medieval History from Tufts University. He has traveled extensively in Europe and spent two sabbatical years abroad, one at Cambridge University and another in Paris. He was married to Louise Hassel for 42 years and has three children and four grandchildren, all of whom live in California

Poet to Poet Writer to Writer May 14 Poet Tim Suermondt

   

 BIO

Tim Suermondt is the author of two full-length collections: TRYING TO HELP THE

ELEPHANT MAN DANCE ( The Backwaters Press, 2007 ) and JUST BEAUTIFUL from

New York Quarterly Books, 2010. He has published poems in Poetry, The Georgia Review,

Blackbird, Able Muse, Prairie Schooner, PANK, Bellevue Literary Review and Stand Magazine

(U.K.) and has poems forthcoming in Gargoyle, A Narrow Fellow and DMQ Review among others. After many years in Queens and Brooklyn, he has moved to Cambridge with his wife, the poet Pui Ying Wong.

Apirl 2, 2013-- 5PM-- Poet Sassan Tabatabai

Born in Tehran, Iran, Sassan Tabatabai has lived in the United States since 1980. As a poet and scholar of medieval Persian poetry, he is the author of Father of Persian Verse: Rudaki and His Poetry (Leiden University Press, 2010). He teaches humanities and Persian literature at Boston University and Boston College, and is Poetry Editor of the literary journal News from the Republic of Letters.

Most recently, Tabatabai is the author of Uzunburun, a collection of poetry and translations published in 2011 by Pen & Anvil Press --

March 26 2013 5PM Meikle Paschal

Meikle Paschal   author of the memoir  

The Black Buddhist 

The Black Buddhist by Meikle Paschal (Ibbetson Street Press) http://ibbetsonpress.com  $15

Review by Afaa Michael Weaver

In sentences that are as sincere as they are nostalgic, Meikle Paschal gives us a valuable portrait of the journey of his life from the poor neighborhoods of Boston to the comfort of a consciousness furnished by the loving kindness of his Buddhist principles, principles that save him from the bitterness and resentment that can occupy the mind of someone who has fought adversity for his entire life. An African American man gifted with unusual intelligence and a keen intuition, he is lifted also by a penchant for forgiveness. As a reader, I am especially endeared to his portraits of a Boston I could never have known, the old Boston of the mid twentieth century. Paschal seems remarkably adept at recognizing and seizing the chance in life, even when he was not aware of the fuller meanings of his actions at the time. He implies repeatedly that something saved him, and it is that hope he offers the reader, namely that if we would just believe there is a way, the way will reveal itself to us. He is not blind to the tragedies of life, as he notes the people who did not have or see the chance, people who fell victim to things we would rather not imagine, but he offers his own encounters with those chances. He explores the vicissitudes of upward mobility in stories that are insightful and inspiring. In admitting the perfection possible in life, he admits the imperfections, the double binds, the impasses, and he continues on with life, even as the apparent paradise proves itself over and over to be only that and not something ultimately real. Paschal lets us see only the journey is real.
To order:
http://tinyurl.com/cxgxdhh

March 12 Author Ira Wood

Ira Wood is an author, a teacher, a former publisher, and the host of a weekly radio program called The Lowdown on WOMR-FM, Cape Cod’s Community Radio Station, a Pacifica affiliate with studios in Provincetown, Massachusetts. You’re Married to HER? his new book of autobiographical essays was released in August, 2012.
Ira’s three novels are The Kitchen Man, Going Public, and Storm Tide, co-authored by Marge Piercy, with whom he has also written So You Want to Write, an award-winning book about the craft of writing fiction and memoirs which is based on their popular course. His short pieces have been published in ‘Ploughshares,’ ‘Tikkun,’ ‘Fifth Wednesday,’ ‘The St. Petersburg Review,’ and the ‘Utne Reader’ among many literary magazines. In 1996 he and Marge Piercy established the Leapfrog Press, an internationally distributed ‘boutique’ publishing company, which the Boston Globe called “the pulse of what’s hot in the publishing world.” Although they sold it in 2007 it has continued their mission of publishing cutting edge literature and has more than tripled in size.
Ira has been praised for his ability to work with writing students to overcome the inner censor, his darkly funny and wildly confessional readingss from his own work, and his lectures on everything from the publishing industry, to obsessional gardening to using the Tao Te Ching as guide to governing a small New England town. For over a decade he has taught regularly at the Omega Institute for Holistic Studies, the Rowe Conference Center, and more recently Kripalu.
While an editor at Leapfrog he specialized in the resurrection of near misses: books that had come close to being published by mainstream New York publishers but lacked certain elements, sometimes just big numbers for the author’s previous books, but that notwithstanding, a compelling beginning, a tighter plot, a selling title, or simply a great marketing campaign—as wll as the patience to keep a book in print until it found its audience. With a hand in the marketing of every one of Leapfrog’s books, his small press titles received national media attention, some becoming regional best sellers, BookSense and best-of-the-year picks.
For over 30 years Ira has made his home in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, a small fishing village celebrated for its oysters, art galleries, and the colony of well known writers, architects, painters and intellectuals who have settled in this rugged outpost near the tip of Cape Cod. Indulging his interest in public affairs, he has spent over twenty years in town government, serving for twelve years as a selectman—one of a board of five women and men elected the principal administrative officers of the town.
Zazen meditation is an important practice for him as is organic gardening, which he indulges with far too much passion resulting in way too many tomatoes. In 2010 he began hosting a series of bi-monthly political debates on public radio which morphed into a weekly interview show called The Lowdown, which airs on WOMR/WFMR-FM (broadcasting the length of Cape Cod and the North and South shores of Boston). Interviewing authors, politicians, activists, and newsmakers, enables him to indulge a lifelong compulsion to pester people with questions. His essays and book reviews are often aired on the station’s Friday news magazine.
Ira’s writing tends to reflect his life experience. His first novel, The Kitchen Man, details the secret life of a gourmet waiter. His second, Going Public, is set in the early years of the burgeoning dot.com industry, while Storm Tide considers politics in a New England town. You’re Married to HER?, a collection of essays is a compendium of tales about sex, drugs, teaching, politics, publishing, and everything he did instead of writing.

 

Since 1982 he has been married to the poet/novelist Marge Piercy. They live on four hilly acres of land surrounded by pine and oak forest, midway between the Atlantic Ocean and Cape Cod Bay. They share their space with six cats (again, way too many).

Feb 26, 2013 5PM Poet Donna Johnson

Donna Johnson grew up in Tennessee, but now lives with her family outside of Boston. Her poems and reviews have been published in Birmingham Poetry Review, Blue Unicorn, Café Review, Green Mountains Review, Ibbetson Street, Marco Polo, Perihelion, Tulane Review, Two Rivers Review, and others. In 2010 she won Cutbank magazine’s annual poetry contest and was a finalist for the Patricia Dobler Award. In 2011 her full-length manuscript, Selvage, was chosen by Carnegie Mellon during its open reading period and will be published in February 2013. Ms. Johnson currently works in the educational software publishing field.

Feb 12, 2013 5PM Novelist Perry Glasser

Perry Glasser is the author of five books. In 2012, he was named a Fellow of the Massachusetts Cultural Council.
Riverton Noir, a novel, was winner of the Gival Press Novel Award for 2011 (forthcoming in late 2012);
metamemoirs, a collection of creative nonfiction( Outpost 19, New York and SanFrancisco (forthcoming  in 2013);
Dangerous Places, a short story collection, received the 2008 G.S. Sharat Chandra Prize from BkMk Press at the University of Missouri-Kansas City,  recipient of the2009 National Best Books Award from USA Book News;
Singing on the Titanic (Urbana and Chicago: The University of Illinois Press, 1987), recorded by the Library of Congress for the blind.
Suspicious Origins (St. Paul: New Rivers Press, 1985), the Winner of the Minnesota Voices Competition.
Other work has appeared in numerous anthologies, including two novellas featured in Next Stop Hollywood (St. Martin’s Press, 2007).

More than 50 short stories, memoirs, and essays in a variety of journals including Utne, Northwest Review, The Antioch Review, Confrontation, Salamander, The North American Review, Hanging Loose, Flint Hills Review, Passages North,  ACM, GSU Review, and Portland Review.
Freelance magazine journalism has appeared in such venues as The Chronicle of Higher Education, Poets & Writers, Phi Delta Kappan, and Dads;
Book reviews  and critical essays have been featured in The New York Times Book Review and The Chicago Tribune's Sunday Review of Books.

Jan 8, 2013 5PM Poet, novelist, teacher, publisher, Robin Stratton

Robin Stratton
 Robin Stratton has been a writing coach in the Boston area for almost 20 years. She is the author of The Revision Process, A Guide for Those Months or Years Between Your First Draft and Your Last, and two chapbooks, Dealing with Men and Interference from an Unwitting Species. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, she's been published in Word Riot, 63 Channels, Antithesis Common, Poor Richards Almanac(k), Blink-Ink, Pig in a Poke, Chick Flicks, Up the Staircase, Shoots and Vines and many others. Her novel, On Air, (Blue Mustang Press, 2011) was a National  Indie Excellence Book Award finalist. A second novel, Of Zen and Men, is now available from Big Table Publishing Company. She’d love to have you visit her at robinstratton.com

    

       

                                                  

Dec 4, 2012 Judy Katz-Levine

Poet Judith Katz Levine

Judy Katz-Levine is the author of two full-length collections of poetry, "When The Arms Of Our Dreams Embrace" (Saru 1991) and "Ocarina" (Saru/Tarsier 2006). Her most recent chapbook is "When Performers Swim, The Dice Are Cast" (Ahadada 2009).  She is the recipient in 1988 of a Massachusetts Cultural Councel Grant and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.  Her poems have been published extensively in the USA, Japan, England, Turkey and distributed in Mexico and Canada as well. Over the years her poems have appeared in "The Sun", "Fence", "Istanbul Literary Review", "Muddy River Poetry Review", "Blue Unicorn", "The Plaza" (Japan), "Voices Israel" (Israel), "The Delinquent" (UK), "Mother Jones", and many other magazines.  She has been anthologized in "The Dreamlife of Johnny Baseball" and "Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend" -women writers on baseball.

Nov. 20, 2012 5PM: South Shore Poetry Czars: Jack Scully/ Rene Schwiesow

Jack Scully

Jack Scully-- was the co-founder with the late Mike Amado of two ongoing poetry venues in Plymouth, Massachusetts , Poetry: The Art of Words a monthly poetry series and The Poetry Showcase a yearly poetry reading held in conjunction with the Plymouth Guild for the Arts yearly juried art show.In 2012 Scully organized Visual Inverse a join effort between poets' and visual artists at the Plymouth Center for the Arts.  

Mike Amado published three books of poetry during his short time on this earth. Scully and poet Nancy Brady Cunningham have edited , his fourth book. Scully, who currently serves as the literary executor of Mike’s work has read Mike's poetry as a feature reader at Greater Brockton Poetry and Arts Society, Boston National Poetry Month Festival, Main Street Café, Poetry in the Village, Stone Soup Poetry, Poets Pathway, Poetry at O'Sheas' and Salem Literary Festival 2010. He also serves as the unofficial photographer of numerous poetry venues.

Rene Schwiesow is the co-host for the South Shore Poetry venue The Art of Words.  A Somerville Bagel Bard, her publishing credits include Muddy River Poetry Review, the Waterhouse Review, and Ibbetson Street Press.  Rene’s work has been aired on the Talking Information Network, a non-profit service for the visually impaired.  April, 2012, she was a guest on WGDH, Vermont, along with New York/Vermont poet Michael Palma.  In recent news, her work, “Shades,” has been chosen as Poem of the Week by the Massachusetts Poetry Festival and will appear beginning January 25, 2013.  Rene is a reviewer for Boston Area Small Press, writes a column for the arts in The Old Colony Memorial newspaper, Plymouth, MA, and is currently working on a third poetry manuscript slated for a 2014 publication date by Cervena Barva Press.

Nov 16, 2012 Jenny Hudson

                                                   





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Poet Dennis Daly Oct 2, 2012

Dennis Daly was born in Salem Massachusetts. He graduated from Boston College with a B.S. degree and earned a Master of Arts degree at Northeastern University. At Northeastern he studied poetry under Samuel French Morse.

For ten years Dennis worked for the General Electric Company. He became a union activist and was elected into the leadership of the 9000 member Local 201 of the International Union of Electrical Workers. During this period he published and edited The Union Activist and the North Shore Union Leader. He also was the managing editor of the Electrical Union News.

Dennis has been published in numerous magazines and small poetry journals such as The Sou’wester, The Lyric, Boston Today Magazine, Soundings East, Tendril, Poetry &, Dark Horse, Green House, Lyrical Somerville, Muddy River Poetry Review, Istanbul Literary Review,Wilderness House Literary Review and is included with two other poets in a chapbook entitled 10 X 3, published by Northeastern University Press. He also has completed a verse translation of Sophocles' Ajax, which was published in a recent issue of Wilderness House Literary Review.  Dennis reads his poems regularly at Stone Soup Poetry in Cambridge MA and the Walnut Street Coffee Cafe in Lynn and has featured at a number of venues. He is a member of the Bagel Bards, a group of poets and artists, who meet weekly in Somerville. He also regularly writes literary reviews for the Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene.

His first book of poems, The Custom House, was published by Ibbetson Street Press in June of 2012.
His translation of Sophocles' Ajax was  published as a paperback in July of 2012 by Wilderness House Press.
In addition Dennis has published travel articles and many op-ed pieces in the Salem Evening News. He is currently working on another book of poetry.

Dennis lives in Salem Massachusetts with his wife, Joanne. They have four adult children.

Sept 11, 2012 Jim Vrabel -- Playwright/Performer-Homage to Henry: A Dramatization of John Berryman’s The Dream Songs

            Jim Vrabel is a local historian and the author of When In Boston: A Timeline & Almanac (Northeastern University Press).  He is co-author of John Paul II: A Personal Portrait of the Pope and the Man (St. Martin’s Press).

            A long-time neighborhood activist and former city official in Boston, he now lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.

            Jim attended the Graduate School of English at the University of Iowa, which is where he first encountered John Berryman’s Dream Songs.  After expecting others to do it, he composed Homage to Henry: A Dramatization of John Berryman’s The Dream Songs, an 80-minute one-man play by taking some 90 of the most brilliant and autobiographical of the songs - in whole or in part - re-ordering them  and adding a very few lines of connecting text. 

            The play received a staged reading at the Charlestown Working Theater, and has been performed for the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics and Writers at Boston University and at the Oberon Theater as a benefit for the Grolier Poetry Book Shop in Cambridge.

            Paul Mariani, Berryman’s biographer and a poet himself, calls Homage to Henry “a sad and very human story, as stark in its way as anything in Samuel Beckett.”

            Jim is looking for additional opportunities to perform the play and can be contacted at jimvrabel@gmail.com