CHIRPS FROM THE SPARROW
POETRY
OUR NATIONAL TREASURE
Walking in the Woods, The Heater in the Old Car, Robert Bly
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Dad’s White Sneakers, E. F. Schraeder
Snowy Egret—Avery Island, Louisiana, Gloria Heffernan
Summer Nights, Mike Ambrose
The Things We Throw Away, Mark Danowsky
Untitled, Sabita Gautam Dahal
Scream for the Sun to Rise, My Statue, Jeffrey Loffman
Leominster, The Eyes of an Artist, I Didn’t Mind, James B. Nicola
Sfumato: Ars Pingendi, Crepuscular Flock, Aubude, Michael Bradburn-Ruster
I Will Never Be My Father, Doug Holder
Big Brother, Milton P. Ehrlich
Let’s Talk About Drones, Elegy for the Isle Royal Wolves, The Fourteen In Itasca State Park Historic Cemetery, Barbara Draper
Four Things, Eric Chandler
What Happened When Ted Wandered in the Field, Relic, Still Life: A Boy and his Dog, Angela Williamson Emmert
Leaf’s Folly, Joseph De Quattro
The Coast near Collioure, Byron Beynon
Engineer, Three Last Times I Saw You, The Good Father, Lynne Viti
Bay of Pigs, Marie Sheppard Williams
Silence, Perna Bakshi
Woman Redecorating Kitchen, 1959, Lori Lamothe
Winter Birds on the Kinnickinnic, Thomas R. Smith
There are Poems, Linda Pastan
SHORT STORY
Tiny Spaces, Ann Mallen
Friday Night, Riley H. Welcker
CONTRIBUTORS
Robert Bly was born in Madison, Minnesota in 1926. He attended Harvard University and received his M.A. from the University of Iowa in 1956. As a poet, editor, and translator, Bly has had a profound impact on the shape of American poetry. His many books of poems include, most recently, Like the New Moon I Will Live My Life (White Pine Press), Stealing Sugar from the Castle: Selected Poems (W. W. Norton) and Talking into the Ear of a Donkey (W. W. Norton). His book The Light Around the Body won the National Book Award in 1967. As the editor of The Fifties and The Sixties, he introduced many European and South American poets to readers in the United States. He is also the author of a number of nonfiction books, including The Sibling Society and the bestselling Iron John: A Book About Men. His honors include Guggenheim, Rockefeller, and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships as well as the Robert Frost Medal from the Poetry Society of America. He lives in Minneapolis with his wife Ruth.
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Mike Ambrose is an engineering executive at a New England aerospace company with degrees from the University of New Haven and MIT. He started publishing his work in 2010 and really enjoys the balance that writing provides in a life that is exacting. In the short time that he has been writing, his work has been published in over twenty publications including Lucid Rhythms, Corner Club Press, Boston Literary Magazine, and Literary Brushstrokes.
Prerna Bakshi is a sociolinguist, research scholar and writer of Indian origin, currently based in Macao. She is also a professional translator and an accredited interpreter (National Accreditation Authority for Translators and Interpreters, Australia). She has contributed essays and articles to a variety of publications including The Hindu, CounterCurrents, Amar Ujala, and Desh Bandhu to name a few. Her poetry has been published in Linden Avenue Literary Journal, Indiana Voice Journal,Red Fez, peer reviewed journals such as Muse India, Postcolonial Textand is forthcoming in Hysteria among others.
Byron Beynon lives in Swansea, Wales. His work has appeared in several publications including London Magazine, Poetry Wales, Warwick Review, Poetry Ireland and the human rights anthology In Protest (University of London and Keats House Poets). A Pushcart Prize nominee, his most recent collection is The Echoing Coastline (Agenda Editions.)
Michael Bradburn-Ruster has published poetry, fiction, translations, and scholarly works in international journals including Sacred Web, Able Muse, Cincinnati Review, Grey Sparrow Journal, Eastown Fiction, Damazine (Syria), Blue Lake Review and Prick of the Spindle, and is a frequent contributor to Poetry Salzburg Review (Austria). Since receiving his doctorate from UC Berkeley, he has taught literature, philosophy, comparative religions and mythology in California, Oregon, and Arizona. His book The Angel or the Beast (University Press of the South, 1998) explores the interplay of philosophy, mysticism, theology and literature in the Spanish Renaissance.
The editors at Sleet Magazine nominated Eric Chandler’s creative nonfiction story “Chemical Warfare” for a Pushcart Prize. He published a nonfiction e-book of his outdoor family adventures called Outside Duluth. He also published a short novel about a downed pilot in Afghanistan called Down In It. You can learn about his books and published fiction, nonfiction, and poetry at: http://ericchandler.wordpress.com/
Sabita Gautam Dahal’spoems have been collected in Neelo Simana (2010). A recipient of various national awards like Bimal Smriti Yuba Puraskar, Dhanbani Navaprativa Purasskar, and Narendra Chapagai Smriti Yuba Prativa Puraskar, she is a board member of the literary establishment Vaani Prakashan from her home town, Biratnagar. She has traveled extensively and participated in various writers conferences.
Mark Danowsky’s poetry has appeared in Apiary, Alba: A Journal of Short Poetry, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, Red River Review, Right Hand Pointing, Shot Glass Journal, Snow Monkey, The New Verse News, Word Soup, and other journals. His poem “5am Summer Storm” won Imitation Fruit’s “Animals and Their Human’s” Contest, in 2013. Originally from the Philadelphia area, Mark currently lives in a van down by the Susquehanna River. He works for a private detective agency and is assistant copy editor for the Schuylkill Valley Journal(svjlit.com).
Joseph De Quattro has worked as a lobsterman out of Boston Harbor, a waiter in Manhattan, a graveyard shift front desk operator in Maine, a shipping clerk in London, a used car salesman in Miami, as well as a carpenter’s assistant, a cab driver, a dot com email flogger, a dishwasher, an English Professor, an estate groundskeeper, and a valet parking attendant. His fiction has been published in a number of literary journals and has received a Pushcart Prize nomination. He is currently working on a new novel.
Barbara Draper, for fun, downhill skis and plays with her granddaughters. She’s a long time Michigander now living in Minneapolis. After a career in banking she tripped over poetry and thought, I love this! Her poems have been recently published or are forthcoming in Grey Sparrow, Passagers, Split Rock Review, Talking Stick, The Aurorean, Earth’s Daughters and Holy Cow! Press Anthology on Lake Superior.
Milton P. Ehrlich is an 83-year-old psychologist who has published numerous poems in periodicals such as the Wisconsin Review, The Red Wheelbarrow, Toronto Quarterly Review, Off The Coast, Antigonish Review, Shofar Literary Review, Christian Science Monitor, Huffington Post, and the New York Times.
Angela Williamson Emmert lives in rural Wisconsin with her husband and sons.
Gloria Heffernan’s poetry has appeared in Icarus, Pleiades, Radiance Magazine, The Comstock Review, Stone Canoe, and The Healing Muse, published by SUNY Upstate Medical University. She has also had articles published in numerous magazines and journals including The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Eugene O’Neill Review, Dramatist’s Guild Quarterly, and Showbill. She holds a Masters Degree in English from New York University and teaches part-time at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, NY.
Doug Holder is the founder of the Ibbetson Street Press. His work, both poetry and prose, has appeared in The Toronto Quarterly, Rattle, the new renaissance, Caesura, Sub-Terrain, Steamticket, Cafe Review, and many others. Holder teaches writing at Bunker Hill Community College in Boston and at Endicott College in Beverly, Mass. He is the Arts/Editor for The Somerville Times, and on the advisory board of the Boston National Poetry Festival. For the past 30 years he has run poetry groups for psychology patients at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass. He holds an M.A. in Literature from Harvard University.
Jeffrey Loffman lives in a village outside Sandwich in Kent and has been published in several print and web-zines as well as having poems recommended and credited in competitions. His dissertation on Robert Duncan in the early 1970’s at Hull University was one of the first on that poet in the UK. Since then he has survived sales, barking dogs when delivering letters, the politics of education and the odds of bookmakers.
Lori Lamothe’s first book, Trace Elements, is forthcoming from Aldrich Press. She’s published several chapbooks, the latest of which, Ouija in Suburbia, is due out in 2015 from dancing girl press. Her poems have appeared in Blackbird, Bacopa Literary Journal and Blue Lyra Review, which nominated her for a Pushcart Prize in 2014.
Ann Mallen graduated magna cum laude from the University of Connecticut and earned a master of arts from Quinnipiac University. After eleven years of teaching, she opened her own tutoring business. In 2009, she left tutoring to devote more time to writing. She studied at the Writers Academy, Kravis Center, in West Palm Beach, Florida and received fellowships and scholarships for writing conferences including: Summer Literary Seminars, Eckerd College, and Wesleyan University. In 2012, she attended Bread Loaf as a contributor. Her fiction was read on NPR, performed publicly in West Palm Beach, has appeared in The Cortland Review, and is forthcoming in CALYX: A Journal of Art and Literature by Women. Her nonfiction has appeared in The Palm Beach Post, the Hartford Courant, and is forthcoming in Reed Magazine. The essay to be published in Reed was a top 5 finalist for the Gabriele Rico Nonfiction Challenge.
Artemis Michailidou holds a BA in English Language and Literature from the University of Athens, an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Western Macedonia, Greece, an MA in English Literature from the University of Warwick, and a PhD in American Cultural Studies from the University of Exeter. She is Assistant Professor of English at the Hellenic Military Academy. Her publications and research interests focus on modern and contemporary poetry, feminist theory, comparative literature, the fiction of the American South, creative writing and literary translation. Her first collection of poetry was published in Athens in 2013.
With his first collection of poetry, Manhattan Plaza, James B. Nicola joins poets Frank O’Hara and Stanley Kunitz and humorist Robert Benchley as a New York author hailing from Worcester, Massachusetts. James has been widely published in periodicals including Tar River, Lyric, Nimrod,Blue Unicorn and the Southwest,Atlanta, Lullwater, and TexasReviews, stateside, and overseas in journals as exotic as The Istanbul Review and Poetry Salzburg. He also won the Dana Literary Award, a People’s Choice award (from Storyteller) and a Willow Reviewaward; was nom¬inated twice for a Pushcart Prize and once for a Rhysling Award; and was featured poet at New Formalist. A Yale grad and stage director by profession, his nonfiction book Playing the Audience won a Choiceaward. Also a composer, lyricist, and playwright, his children’s musical Chimes: A Christ¬mas Vaude¬ville premiered in Fairbanks, Alaska, with Santa Claus in attendance on opening night. See sites.google.com/site/jamesbnicola.
Linda Pastan grew up in New York City, graduated from Radcliffe College in 1954, and received an MA from Brandeis University. She has published 13 volumes of poetry, most recently Traveling Light. Two of these books have been finalists for the National Book Award, one for The Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Her 14th book, Insomnia, is due from W.W. Norton in the fall of 2015. Pastan was Poet Laureate of Maryland from 1991 to 1995. She taught for several years at American University and was on the staff of the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference for 20 years. She has won numerous awards, including The Radcliffe Distinguished Alumni Award and The Maurice English Award. In 2003 she won the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize for lifetime achievement. Pastan lives with her husband in Potomac, Maryland. They have 3 children and 7 grandchildren.
Linda Pastan est née à New York en 1932. Elle vit à Potomac, dans le Maryland.
Elle a publié de nombreux recueils de poèmes, parmi lesquels figurent :”A perfect circle of sun” (1972), “On the way to the zoo” (1975), “Aspects of eve” (1975), “The five stages of grief” (1978), “Waiting for my life” (1982), “PM/AM” (1982), “A fraction of darkness” (1985), “The imperfect paradise” (1988) et , plus récemment “Carnival Evenings : New and Selected Poems”( W.W Norton, New York-Londres , 1999), “The Last Uncle : Poems”( New York, Norton, 2002), “Queen of a Rainy Country : Poems”( New York, Norton, 2006), “Traveling Light” (New York, Norton, 2011), “A daughter leaving home” (New York, Norton, 2011).
Ses poèmes ont été accueillis dans les plus prestigieuses revues américaines – « The New Yorker », « The Nation », « The Atlantic Monthly »…
Elle a obtenu notamment le Prix Bess Hokin, décerné par « Poetry Magazine », le Prix Thomas Dylan, et elle a été finaliste du National Book Award.
Tony Acarasiddhi Press, Guest Copy Editor, lives near San Francisco and tries to pay attention. Sometimes he does. You can find many of his stories, not as many of his poems, and a few of his photographs, in print, online, and on the floor next to his desk. Some of the journals are Boston Literary Magazine, Digging Through the Fat, Foundling Review, Grey Sparrow, JMWW, Literary Orphans, Menda City, Penmen Review, Poetry Storehouse, Right Hand Pointing, Rio Grande Review, Riverbabble, SFWP Journal, Switchback, and Toasted Cheese.
E. F. Schraeder’s creative work has recently appeared in Hoax, Voluted Tales, Siren’s Call, Clare Literary Journal, Lavender Review, and a number of other journals. Schraeder’s recent anthology contributions include “Lavender Review: Poems from the First Five Years;” “Switch (the Difference),” “Kicked Out,” and others, as well as in the poetry chapbook, The Hunger Tree. Schraeder holds an interdisciplinary doctoral degree and is currently at work on a full-length manuscript of poems. Visit http://www.efschraeder.com for updates.
Thomas R. Smith is the author of seven books of poetry, Keeping the Star, Horse of Earth, The Dark Indigo Current, Winter Hours, Waking Before Dawn, The Foot of the Rainbow, and The Glory (out spring 2015 from Red Dragonfly Press). He has edited several books, including What Happened When He Went to the Store for Bread: Poems by Alden Nowlan and, most recently, Airmail: The Letters of Robert Bly and Tomas Tranströmer. He is a poetry instructor at the Loft Literary Center and lives in River Falls, Wisconsin with his wife Krista. He posts essays and poems on his web site at http://www.thomasrsmithpoet.com
Timothy Stobierski, Guest Layout Editor, is an alumnus of the University of Connecticut and lives in Ansonia, CT. A freelance writer and editor, he has interned for three summers with Yale University Press in the acquisitions department and is currently an Assistant Editor of books at The Taunton Press. His poetry, essays, reviews, and fiction have appeared in a number of journals and magazines, including The Good Men Project Magazine, The Hartford Courant, Grey Sparrow, and H_NGM_N.
Lynne Viti teaches in the Writing Program at Wellesley College. Her work has appeared in Star 82 Review, Poetry Pacific, UK Yoga Magazine, Connections Magazine, WILLA, Moondance, Sojourner, Meat for Tea: The Valley Review, Barefoot Review, The Wire: Urban Decay and American Television and at Boston City Hall. She blogs at stillinschool.wordpress.com
Riley H. Welcker holds a B.S. in Business Management from Utah Valley University, a B.A. in English from the University of Idaho, and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Texas at El Paso. His work has appeared in publications including the Montréal Review, Passages North, Blast Furnace, Menacing Hedge, BlazeVOX, Grey Sparrow Journal, Mindful Word, Mandala Journal, Kansas City Voices, and SNReview, to name a few.
Marie Sheppard Williams has lived and worked in Minnesota all her life. Currently she cohabits with a very large orange cat named Albert Einstein, and is at work on a new poetry collection. She has won many awards for her writing, including two Pushcart Prizes and a Bush Artist Fellowship. Among her publications are The Worldwide Church of the Handicapped, The Weekend Girl, The Soap Game, Stories from the Child, Us, and The Best Cat: a book of poems by Sheppard Williams with illustrations by her daughter, Megan Williams. All her works may be obtained at Amazon.com.
Grey Sparrow Journal 