OVS Vol. 2 Poetry Contributors:
Patricia Smith
2008 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST! Patricia Smith’s fifth book of poetry, Blood Dazzler (Coffee House Press) chronicles the human, physical and emotional toll exacted by Hurricane Katrina, a catastrophic natural event with lasting spiritual and political impact. This much-anticipated volume is also the focal point of a new dance/theater collaboration between Patricia and Urban Bush Women dancer Paloma McGregor.
Patricia is also the author of Teahouse of the Almighty (Coffee House Press), a National Poetry Series winner, the Best Poetry Book of 2006 on About.com, and a 2007 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and Paterson Poetry Prize winner; Close to Death (Zoland Books), Big Towns, Big Talk (Zoland) and Life According to Motown (Tia Chucha). Her poems have appeared in Poetry, The Paris Review, poemmemoirstory, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, the Chautauqua Literary Journal, TriQuarterly, and other journals, and in many groundbreaking anthologies--most recently Gathering Ground, The Spoken Word Revolution, The Oxford Anthology of African-American Poetry and Short Fuse: The Global Anthology of New Fusion Poetry. Her poem "The Way Pilots Walk" received a Pushcart Prize, and is featured in Pushcart Prize XXXII: Best of the Small Presses.
Recognized as one of the world’s most formidable performers, Patricia has read her work at venues round the world, including the Poets Stage in Stockholm, Rotterdam’s Poetry International Festival, the Aran Islands International Poetry and Prose Festival and on tour in Germany, Austria and Holland. In the U.S., she’s performed at Carnegie Hall, Bumbershoot, the Palm Beach Poetry Festival, the Folger Shakespeare Library and St. Mark’s Poetry Project, sharing the stage with noted writers such as Adrienne Rich, Sharon Olds, Rita Dove, Joyce Carol Oates, Allen Ginsberg, Walter Mosley, Gwendolyn Brooks, Billy Collins, Galway Kinnell and “Lord of the Rings” star Viggo Morgensen. She has worked with Boston stalwart Philip Pemberton and the blues band Bop Thunderous, and as an occasional vocalist with the stellar improvisational jazz group, Bill Cole’s Untempered Ensemble. Patricia is a four-time national individual champion of the notorious and wildly popular Poetry Slam, the most successful competitor in slam history. She was featured in the nationally-released film “Slamnation,” and appeared on the award-winning HBO series “Def Poetry Jam.”
Recordings of Patricia’s work can be found on the CD “Always in the Head” as well as in the compilations “Grand Slam,” “A Snake in the Heart” “By Someone’s Good Graces” and “Lip.” A short film of her performing the poem “Undertaker,” produced by Tied to the Tracks Films, won awards at the Sundance and San Francisco Film Festivals and earned a prestigious Cable Ace Award as part of the Lifetime Network’s first annual Women’s Film Festival. As a budding voiceover artist, she was the radio voice of the Oil of Olay Total Effects product line.
A selection of Patricia’s poetry was produced as a one-woman play by Nobel Prize winner Derek Walcott and performed at both Boston University Playwrights Theater and the historic Trinidad Theater Workshop. Another play, based on Life According to Motown, was staged by Company One Theater in Hartford, Ct., and reviewed favorably in The New York Times.
Patricia is currently at work on the verse memoir Shoulda Been Jimmie Savannah and the young adult novel The Journey of Willie J. Previously she authored Africans in America (Harcourt Brace), a companion volume to the groundbreaking four-part PBS history series. Her first children’s book, Janna and the Kings, was a Lee & Low Books New Voices Award winner.
An accomplished and sought-after instructor of poetry, performance and creative writing, Smith is proud to be a Cave Canem faculty member, as well as a professor of English at CUNY/College of Staten Island and a faculty member of the Stonecoast MFA program at the University of Southern Maine. She does workshops and residencies customized for all age groups, and is also available for intensive individual instruction.
In October of 2006, during the Gwendolyn Brooks Creative Writing Conference at Chicago State University, Patricia was inducted into the International Literary Hall of Fame for Writers of African Descent.
Serena Tome
Serena Tome launched an international reading series for African children to connect, learn, and participate in literary activity with students from around the world via video conferencing. She has literary work published and/or forthcoming in The Litchfield Review, Foundling Review, The Legendary, Breadcrumb Scabs, Word Riot, Calliope Nerve, Counterexample Poetics, Full of Crow, Boston Literary Magazine, The Stray Branch, and other publications. She is currently working on her first chapbook. You can find out more about Serena at www.serenatome.blogspot.com.
Annmarie Lockhart
Annmarie Lockhart is the founding editor of vox poetica, an online poetry salon dedicated to bringing poetry into the everyday. She has been reading and writing poetry since she could read and write. A lifelong Bergen County, New Jersey resident, she lives and writes two miles east of the hospital where she was born.
Robert Lietz
Robert has had 500 poems appear in more than one hundred journals in the U.S. and Canada, in Sweden and U.K, including Agni Review, Antioch Review, Carolina Quarterly, Colorado Review, Epoch, The Georgia Review, Kansas Quarterly, Mid-American Review, Mississippi Review, The Missouri Review, The North American Review, The Ontario Review, Poetry, Poetry Northwest, Prairie Schooner, Shenandoah, Southern Humanities Review, and Willow Springs. Seven collections of poems have been published, including Running in Place (L’Epervier Press,). At Park and East Division ( L’Epervier Press,) The Lindbergh Half-century (L’Epervier Press,) The Inheritance (Sandhills Press,) and Storm Service (Basfal Books). Basfal also published After Business in the West: New and Selected Poems .
Kat Sanchez
Kat Sanchez is a Southern California poet making her way in the City of Wind. Her poems are published or forthcoming in Mosaic: Art and Literary Journal and Columbia Poetry Review. She is an M.F.A. candidate at Columbia College Chicago.
Andrea Potos
Jessica Dyer
Jessica Dyer is an MFA student at Columbia College Chicago and a former journalist. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Exact Change Only, Ariel, IMAGES, Snow*Vigate and WordSalad.
Stephan Delbos
Stephan Delbos is a New England-born poet living in Prague, where he teaches at Charles University and Anglo-American University, and edits several literary publications, including The Rakish Angel Poetry Pamphlet Series. His poetry and essays have appeared most recently or are forthcoming in Agni, Atlanta Review, Poetry International, Poetry Salzburg Review and Zoland Poetry.
Kristin Ravel
Kristin Ravel's work has appeared in publications, including Temenos, elimae, Susquehanna Review, and Poets and Artist (O&S). She is currently earning an MFA at Columbia College Chicago.
Carol Lynn Grellas
Carol Lynn Grellas is a three-time Pushcart nominee and the author of A Thousand Tiny Sorrows, soon to be released from March Street Press and two chapbooks: Litany of Finger Prayers, Pudding House Press and Object of Desire, Finishing Line Press. She is widely published in magazines and online journals including most recently, The Centrifugal Eye, Oak Bend Review and deComp, with work upcoming in OVS and Saw Palm Florida Literature and Art. She lives with her husband, five children and a little blind dog who sleeps in the bathtub.
Stephen Danos
Stephen Danos is pursuing his MFA in Creative Writing - Poetry at Columbia College Chicago. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Columbia Poetry Review, LEVELER, and Contrary Magazine.
Jeffrey Allen
Jeffrey Allen student in the M.F.A. program at Columbia College Chicago, where he also serves on the editorial board for Columbia Poetry Review. His chapbook, Simple Universal, was published by Bronze Man Books in 2007.
Rhiannon Richardson
Rhiannon Richardson is a performance poet, singer/songwriter and mother. She is a full time student from southern New Hampshire.
Kristina England
Kristina England lives in Worcester, MA. She runs a poetry workshop for local poets and recently joined the editorial staff at the Ballard Street Poetry Journal. Her poetry has most recently appeared in Ballard Street Poetry Journal, Breadcrumb Scabs, San Pedro River Review, and The Blotter Magazine.
Derek JG Williams
Derek JG Williams is a Boston based writer and performer. His work has been featured at bars, colleges, coffee shops, and house parties throughout New England and New York. He’s also a regular performer at the world famous Boston Poetry Slam at the Cantab Lounge in Cambridge. In the spring of 2009 he released an album of poetry and music titled A Chorus of Cities. He has poems appearing in the new issues of The November 3rd Club and the White Whale Review. During the fall he was a featured performer at the Last Supper Festival in New York City, a multimedia, project-based collaborative festival that addressed the act of consumption. He is currently shopping his first full length book of poems to publishers.
Annie Brechin
Annie Brechin was awarded a Jerwood/Arvon Young Poets Apprenticeship in 2003 and studied with Carol Rumens, George Szirtes & Christopher Reid. Published in The Wolf, Magma, Stand, Rising & The Liberal, until recently she lived and performed in London. She now resides in Prague. Niall O'Sullivan has described her poetry as 'dark and delicious'.
Bernice Lewis
Bernice Lewis has been a singer/songwriter and national touring artist for almost 30 years, as well as a published poet, producer and recording artist. She's worked with Dar Williams, Bobby McFerrin, Rosanne Cash, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Odetta, the Dixie Chicks, Christine Lavin, Patty Griffin, and Patty Larkin. In 2009, she was selected to be Artist in Residence for the National Park Service. She currently teaches Songwriting at Williams College and Colorado College, as well as at schools and retreat centers. Lewis has had a thirty-year daily yoga practice, loves good coffee, and her religion is the Grand Canyon.
Donna Vorreyer
Donna is the author of three chapbooks of poetry. How to Dream (1992) and The Spirit Can Crest (2003) were both published by Amherst Writers & Artists Press. Postcard from P-town was selected as runner-up for the inaugural Robin Becker Chapbook Prize and was published in 2009 by Seven Kitchens Press. In 2005, Christopher Bursk named her the Robert Fraser Distinguished Visiting Poet at Bucks County (PA) Community College. She served as poetry editor of RFD between 1987 and 1995. She graduated with an MFA in Poetry from New England College in 2008. I received a grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council in 1992.
Eric Arnold
Eric Arnold lives in Dallas, where he studies medicine. Two of his poems recently appeared in The Labletter and others are pending publication at New York Quarterly. His short fiction has appeared in Elimae, Pindeldyboz and Monkey Bicycle.
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. She has performed, lectured and facilitated workshops across the country. Her favorite yoga position is Crane Pose, and she never learned how to whistle. She is currently at work on a second novel, an album of songs, and more poetry. You can find her at www.jadesylvan.com.
Janet Engle
Janet Engle was raised in the foothills of southern West Virginia. She tries to write poems that take readers past the stereotypes of the Appalachian hillbilly and capture the magic and frustrations of life in a coal town.
Ryan Holden
Ryan Holden is a graduate student in Creative Writing at Arizona State University. He has been published most recently in The Blue Guitar and received an Honorable Mention for The Katharine C. Turner Prize of The Academy of American Poets in 2009. As part of an international travel fellowship, he will be teaching creative writing at Sichuan University in Chengdu, China, this summer.
Sergio A. Ortiz
Ortiz has a B.A. in English literature from Inter-American University, and a M.A. in philosophy from World University. His poetry has appeared in over 200 online and print journals He has been recently published, or his poems are forthcoming in: The Battered Suitcase, Zygote in my Coffee, Right Hand Pointing, Poui: Cave Hill Journal of Creative Writing, Writers’ Bloc and Temenos: Central Michigan University’s Literary Journal. Flutter Press published his chapbook, At the Tail End of Dusk (2009).
Truth Thomas
Truth Thomas is a singer and poet, born in Knoxville, Tennessee, and raised in Washington, DC. He is the former poet in residence for the Howard County Poetry and Literary Society. He currently serves on the editorial board of Little Patuxent Review and the Tidal Basin Review. Some of his work has appeared in: African Voices, Alehouse, Fingernails Across the Chalkboard: Poetry and Prose on HIV/AIDS From the Black Diaspora, The Houston Literary Review, Quiddity Literary Journal, Little Patuxent Review, Mosaic Magazine, Mythium Literary Journal, Naugatuck River Review, Pluck!, Poet Lore, The Progressive, The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South, Welter Literary Journal, and The 100 Best African American Poems (Edited by Nikki Giovanni). He is the author of two collections of poetry, Party of Black (Flipped Eye/Mouthmark Press, 2006), and A Day of Presence (Flipped Eye Publications, 2008). His third book, Bottle of Life, is scheduled for publication in the fall of 2010.
Tamara J. Madison
Tamara J. Madison is a writer, poet, and performer currently living and working in New Jersey. Her literary work has been published in a number of journals and anthologies including: Temba Tupu! (2009, Red Sea Press), Check The Rhyme, An anthology of female poets and emcees (nominated for a 2007 NAACP Image Award in Poetry/Literature) and Tea Party Magazine. (2009). Tamara is the author and performer of Naked Voice and was featured as bilingual poet and songstress on the self-titled CD, JUBA Collective (Premonition Records). Currently, Tamara is completing a poetry manuscript in search of a publisher with plans to return to the studio for a new literary solo recording. As of May 2010, she will be a Master of Fine Arts graduate of New England College specializing in poetry.
Susan Vespoli
Susan is still a student at Antioch University L.A. studying poetry as well a sliver of creative non-fiction and will receive her MFA in December 2010. She's been mentored, so far, by Richard Garcia, David Hernandez and Sharman Russell. Her work has been published both online and in print and she's been happily expanding her poetry reading horizons more often than her public speaking phobia could ever have imagined.
George Moore
George Moore published poetry in The Atlantic, Poetry, Colorado Review, North American Review, Orion, and internationally of late with The Queen's Quarterly, Dublin Quarterly, Antigonish Review, and elsewhere. Nominated twice last year for a Pushcart Prize, he has had six nominations, this year and last, for "Best of the Web" as well. He was also nominated this year for The Rhysling Poetry Award, and earlier, as a finalist, for The National Poetry Series, The Richard Synder Memorial Prize, The Brittingham Poetry Award, and The Anhinga Poetry Prize. Recent collections include, All Night Card Game in the Back Room of Time (Pulpbits 2007) and Headhunting (Mellen, 2002). He teaches literature with the University of Colorado, Boulder.
Steve Schreiner
Steven Schreiner is associate professor of English at University of Missouri-St Louis. He is the author of Too Soon To Leave and the founding editor of Natural Bridge, a journal of contemporary literature. His recent work has appeared in Gulf Coast, Margie, Tar River Poetry, and Stosvet: Cardinal Points.
OVS Vol. 1 Poetry Contributors:
Terry Lucas
Terry Lucas was born in the Midwest, grew up in New Mexico, and has lived in the San Francisco bay area for several years. Three times nominated for a Pushcart Prize, his work has been published in several on line and print journals including MiPOesias, Ocho, Poets & Artists, Columbia Poetry Review, Solo, Buffalo Carp, Fifth Wednesday Journal and Grain Magazine, among others. He received his poetry MFA from New England College in 2008, and currently serves as an assistant editor for Fifth Wednesday Journal.
Jana Wilson
Jana Wilson is a student at the Fine Arts Center in Greenville, South Carolina.
Tayve Neese
Tayve Neese's poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in the following journals: caesura, The Comstock Review, Fourteen Hills, The Paris Review, The Pedestal Magazine, Sow’s Ear and other journals.She also has essays and a book review appearing in Web Del Sol’s Review of Books. Currently, she lives on Amelia Island, a small barrier island off the coast of north Florida, with her husband and two daughters, and teachs poetry at the University of North Florida.
Susan Vespoli
Is a student at Antioch University Los Angeles, enrolled in their low residency MFA program studying poetry. She mentored with Richard Garcia during her first semester and is currently studying with poet, David Hernandez. Her work also appears in Monsoon Voices. She lives happily in Prescott, Arizona in a rehabbed cabin in the forest.
Steven Riel
Steven Riel is the author of three chapbooks of poetry. How to Dream (1992) and The Spirit Can Crest (2003) were both published by Amherst Writers & Artists Press. Postcard from P-town was selected as runner-up for the inaugural Robin Becker Chapbook Prize and was published in 2009 by Seven Kitchens Press. In 2005, Christopher Bursk named him the Robert Fraser Distinguished Visiting Poet at Bucks County (PA) Community College. He served as poetry editor of RFD between 1987 and 1995. Steven graduated with an MFA in Poetry from New England College in 2008. He also received a grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council in 1992.
Sarah Luczaj
Sarah Luczaj is a British poet, translator and therapist living and working in Poland. Her chapbook, An Urgent Request, was published in May 2009 by Fortunate Daughter Press. Poems have appeared widely in journals such as, the American Poetry Review, Cider Press Review, online in, Pedestal Magazine, and the Other Voices International Poetry Project.
Beverly Walker
Beverly Walker received an AA in Studio Art from Rivier College, Nashua, NH, and in addition studied painting with James Aponovich and drawing with Patricia Elliot Schappler. She is a juried member of the New Hampshire Art Association, and was a juried member of Artistic Roots Art Gallery and Education Center in Campton, NH where she exhibited and taught drawing for two years. She also teach drawing and painting at D Acres Organic Farm and Teaching Center in Dorchester, NH. Her work has been exhibited in several juried shows in Portsmouth, Manchester and Concord, NH, and is in several private collections in New Hampshire to Florida. She is also a member of the D Acres Writer’s Group.
Alan King
A fixture on the D.C. MD VA scene since 1999, Alan has at one time blessed every Open Mic spot throughout the area. Mangoes, he was there; Brookland Cup Of Dreams, he was there. The “first” Java Head Cafe in College Park, he was there. The first Mocha Hut on 14th St, he was there. Yogi’s Records, he was there; Harambe’s in Adams Morgan, he was there. Teaism, he was there; and Bar Nun, he was there. This cat is a walking history book of D.C. poetry. Not only that, he’s a dynamic performer and prolific writer” — Derrick Weston Brown, poet-in-resident at the 14th and V streets Busboys and Poets.
Ryan McLellan
The author of three collections of poetry, Ryan McLellan is a performance poet, singer/songwriter and English teacher from New Hampshire. His work has most recently been published in the "2010 Poets' Guide to New Hampshire", "OVS Magazine", "Bird's Eye reView", "Essence" and "Concise Delight". The recipient of the 2009 Esther Buffler Memorial Fellowship and member of the 2009 Slam Free or Die team, he has spent the last year touring and presenting workshops on slam and spoken word to high school students around New England.
Peter Schwartz
Peter Schwartz's poetry has been featured in The Columbia Review, Diagram, and Opium Magazine. When not dreaming of literary conferences he’s writing or taking photos or thinking of who he should get for the next issue of DOGZPLOT, where he is art editor. His third chapbook 'ghost diet' will be out at the end of 2009. Learn more about his work at: www.sitrahahra.com
Paul Fisher
Paul Fisher's first book, Rumors of Shore, is the winner of the 2009 Blue Light Press Book Award, and is forthcoming in 2010. Recent poems appear in Cave Wall, DMQ Review, Kakalak 2009 Anthology of Carolina Poets, Mannequin Envy, Pedestal, 2010 Poets' Guide to New Hampshire, Slow Trains, Snow Monkey, Waccamaw, and various other publications. Paul is the recipient of an Individual Artist's Fellowship in Poetry from the Oregon Arts Commission, and is a graduate of the MFA program at New England College. He recently moved from Nags Head, North Carolina to his home turf in western Washington State.
Matthew Ostapchuk
Matthew Ostapchuk is a senior at Chester College of New England. He has been previously published at Soundzine.org and in Collective Fallout. He is the editor of Two-Bit Magazine, and operates several online writing projects, including the collaborative, stream-of-consciousness blog "arumpahpah:gardyloo."
Jenn Monroe
Jenn Monroe holds a bachelor’s degree from St. Bonaventure University, a master’s degree from The College of Saint Rose, and a master’s of fine art degree in poetry from New England College. She currently lives in Manchester, NH and teaches at Chester College of new England.
Jeff Friedman
Jeff Friedman's fifth collection of poems, Working in Flour, is coming out with Carnegie Mellon University Press in fall 2010. His poems and translations have appeared in American Poetry Review, Poetry, Prairie Schooner, Margie, 5 AM, Ontario Review, Poetry International, Rattle and The New Republic. His book of translations, Modern Hebrew Poems of the Bible has been accepted by Wolfson Press.
Janice Krasselt Mendin
Janice Krasselt Mendin has an M.A. in English with Emphasis in Creative Writing from Ohio University. Her publications include two books of poetry: Remembering the Truth (Temenos Publishing Company, 2006) and Communion of Voices (Big Table Publishing Company, April 2009), a chapbook. Her poems have appeared in several journals such as Southern Hum, Alimentum (as menu poem), Gander Press Review, Boston Literary Magazine, Up the Staircase, and many others. Please note that the books and poems above have been published under the name Janice Krasselt Tatter.
Christopher Crawford
Christopher Crawford was born in Glasgow in 1974. He studied Mechanical and Offshore Engineering, and has worked on various oil rigs and seismic vessels in the Gulf of Mexico. His poems, fiction, essays and reviews have recently been published, or are forthcoming, in Evergreen Review, Blatt, The Prague Revue, Grasp, The Clare Market Review and Gently Read Literature. He has lived in the Czech Republic since 2002.
Kathleen Vibbert
Kathleen Vibbert is retired, married with three grown children and one grandchild. She studies creative writing and is visually impaired. Her main interest is narrative and nature pooetry. Previous credits include a chapbook D-N Publishing, Remembering Faces Anthology, Muscadine Lines Anthology, Facets, Breadcrumb Scabs, and various other zines.
Carol Lynn Grellas
Carol Lynn Grellas is a two-time Pushcart nominee and the author of two chapbooks: Litany of Finger Prayers, from Pudding House Press and Object of Desire newly released from Finishing Line Press. She is widely published in magazines and online journals including most recently, The Smoking Poet, Oak Bend Review and Flutter, with work upcoming in decomP, Thick with Conviction and Poetry Midwest and Best of Boston Literary Magazine. She lives with her husband, five children and a blind dog named Ginger.
Eric Crapo
Eric Crapo teaches poetry, playwriting and erotica at Chester College of New England, where is also director of the college’s Wadleigh Library. He is the chief editor and co-founder of Collective Fallout magazine. His work has previously appeared in Sensations Magazine, Verse, BUTT, Origami Condom, and Moonshot.
Heidi Therrien
Heidi Therrien is a performance poet, singer, actor/director and painter from Manchester, NH. Her poems have appeared in journals such as, The 2010 Poets’ Guide to New Hampshire, Blood on the Floor Vol: II, Centripetal, Angelic Dynamo and her chapbook, High Point of My Day, was published by Sargent Press. A finalist for the 2009 NH slam team, her writing group, Blood on the Floor, won the 2008 New England Invitational Slam in Portland, ME. She was one of the featured poets at the 2009 Jazzmouth Poetry Festival and has featured around the seacoast at venues such as The Northstar Café, Beat Night at the Press Room, The Bridge Café and The Stone Pigeon, which she currently co-hosts.