POETRY
OUR NATIONAL TREASURE
Chalk Dust on the Air, Gregory Pardlo
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Mother Water, Kajal Deeghi, Kiriti Sengupta
Cairo Scenes: Detour, Like Emerson, On the Terrace, These Cairo Girls, Joyce Wilson
The Goose, Stuart A. Paterson
The Coroner for the Amish School Murders, Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, 2006, Jo-Anne Cappeluti
Like Snakes on Hot Asphalt, Holly Day
Full Moon over the City, Sometimes White Wings, Alixa Doom
Train Station, Robert Garwood
Point of Order, John Ashley
Visitations from Magical Birds, Things I Didn’t Notice Because I Was Looking at You, Carol Hamilton
Arson, The Crossing Guard, The Flying Dutchman, Ed Meek
At the Edge of the Lake, Half Asleep with a Full Cup, Paul Nelson
First Memory, Myra Pearson
When I was Prey, Meggie Royer
The Rain, Raj Sharma
Unusual, even Anomalous, Ron Singer
CONTRIBUTORS
“Gregory Pardlo’s first book, Totem, received the American Poetry Review/ Honickman Prize in 2007. His poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Boston Review, The Nation, Ploughshares, Tin House, as well as anthologies including Angles of Ascent, the Norton Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry, and two editions of Best American Poetry. He is the recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship and a fellowship for translation from the National Endowment for the Arts. An associate editor of Callaloo, he is currently a teaching fellow in Undergraduate Writing at Columbia University.” [This biography is reprinted with permission from Four Way Books, the publisher of Pardlo’s Pulitzer Prize winning Book, Digest.]
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John Ashley was born in Bristol, England. He qualified in psychology from Cambridge and has worked as planning adviser to governments in more than twenty emerging economy countries. As well as publishing in his technical fields, he has had poems accepted by Ambit, Orbis and Carillon in England, and magazines in Dublin, Jerusalem and California.
Jo-Anne Cappeluti has poems forthcoming in Common Ground and poems recently published in Alaska Quarterly Review, Lyric, Spiritus, New Plains Review, and Summerset Review. Her Ph.D. in English comes from the University of California at Riverside.
Holly Day was born in Hereford, Texas, “The Town Without a Toothache.” She and her family currently live in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where she teaches writing classes at the Loft Literary Center. Her published books include the nonfiction books Music Theory for Dummies, Music Composition for Dummies, Guitar All-in-One for Dummies, Piano All-in-One for Dummies, A Brief History of Nordeast Minneapolis; the poetry books Late-Night Reading for Hardworking Construction Men (The Moon Publishing) and The Smell of Snow (ELJ Publications); and a novel, The Book Of (Damnation Books).
Alixa Doom has published in numerous magazines. Her poems have also been published in anthologies such as This Sporting Life, and County Lines. Her chapbook manuscript, titled “Cedar Crossings” was awarded the 2009 Blue Light Poetry Prize and published in the spring of 2010. Her first full length book of poems, A Slow Dissolve of Egrets, was published by Red Dragonfly Press in 2014. She moved in 2011 from her home of many years in the Minnesota River Valley to the Uptown area of South Minneapolis.
Allen Forrest, graphic artist and painter, was born in Canada and bred in the U.S. He has created cover art and illustrations for literary publications and books. He is the winner of the Leslie Jacoby Honor for Art at San Jose State University’s Reed Magazine and his Bel Red painting series is part of the Bellevue College Foundation’s permanent art collection. Forrest’s expressive drawing and painting style is a mix of avant-garde expressionism and post-Impressionist elements reminiscent of van Gogh, creating emotion on canvas.
Robert Garwood’s academic training has been in geology and medicine, leading to a career in psychiatry. Now retired, he has turned his attention to what have been continued interests, poetry and watercolor painting.
Carol Hamilton has recent and upcoming publications in Louisiana Review, Boston Literary Review, Hubbub, Blue Unicorn, Broad River Review, Caveat Lector, New Delta Review, Narrow Fellow, Bluestem, Sow’s Ear Poetry, Tar River Review, Flint Hills Review, Main Street Rag, I-70 Review, U.S.1 Worksheet, Reed, Poem, Cold Mountain Review, Albatross, and Hash. She has published 17 books: children’s novels, legends and poetry, most recently, Such Deaths. Hamilton is the former Poet Laureate of Oklahoma and has been nominated five times for a Pushcart Prize.
Ed Meek has published articles, fiction and poetry in The North American Review, The Paris Review, The Sun, Cream City Review, North Dakota Quarterly, The Boston Globe, among others. His new book of poems Spy Pond has just come out with Prolific Press. He lives with his wife in Somerville, MA.
Paul Nelson’s eighth book, Burning The Furniture, Guernica Editions, 2014 is in the world. He has won the AWP Award for Poetry, a University of Alabama Press Series selection, and is an NEA Fellow. For years he has been the Prof/Director of the Creative Writing Program for the Department of English, Ohio University. A Downeaster from Machiasport, ME by nature and imagery, he writes now from the North Shore of O’ahu. At 80, why not?
Stuart A. Paterson was born in 1966 & raised in Ayrshire, Scotland. He is currently living by the Solway coast in Galloway. In 1992 Paterson received an E.C. Gregory Award from the UK Society of Authors &, in 2014, a Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship from the Scottish Book Trust, enabling him to spend a month writing at the international artists’ retreat Hotel Chevillon in Grez-sur-Loing, France. His poetry has appeared in anthologies, magazines, and newspapers worldwide and Border Lines, a collection of Galloway poems, has been published by Indigo Dreams this year. Paterson writes in English and Scots. His facebook poetry page is at https://www.facebook.com/patersonpoetry
Myra Pearson is an American poet from Blacksburg, Virginia. Her poems often incorporate feminist themes through the use of persona poetry. Her work has appeared in Boston Poetry Magazine, Chiron Review, and Maudlin House. She was nominated for the 2015 Pushcart Prize and is completing her first book of poems, Inheritance. Pearson’s influences include Sylvia Plath, Louise Glück, and T. S. Eliot. She currently teaches English in Seoul, Korea, at Duksung Women’s University. Her first chapbook, Inheritance, is available at http://www.myrapearson.com
Meggie Royer is a writer and photographer from the Midwest who is currently majoring in Psychology at Macalester College. Her poems have previously appeared in Words Dance Magazine, Winter Tangerine Review, Electric Cereal, and more. In March 2013 she won a National Gold Medal for her poetry collection and a National Silver Medal for her writing portfolio in the 2013 National Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. Her work can be found at writingsforwinter.tumblr.com
Kiriti Sengupta is a bilingual poet and translator in both Bengali and English. He is the author of the bestselling titles, My Glass Of Wine, a novelette based on autobiographic poetry, and The Reverse Tree, a nonfictional memoir. Kiriti’s other works include: Healing Waters Floating Lamps [poetry], My Dazzling Bards [literary critique], The Reciting Pens [interviews of three published Bengali poets along with translations of a few of their poems], The Unheard I [literary nonfiction], Desirous Water [poems by Sumita Nandy, contributed as the translator], and Poem Continuous – Reincarnated Expressions [poems by Bibhas Roy Chowdhury, contributed as the translator]. Reviews of his works can be read on The Fox Chase Review and Reading Series, Muse India, Red Fez Magazine, Word Riot, and in The Hindu Literary Review, among other places. Kiriti has also co-edited three anthologies: Scaling Heights, Jora Sanko – The Joined Bridge, and Epitaphs. Sengupta’s website is http://www.kiritisengupta.com
Raj Sharma’s published work includes a collection of short stories, In My Arms, and a chapbook of poems published by RED OCHRE LiTERATURE, titled April in the Alleghenies. In addition, forty poems and stories have appeared in magazines like The Monarch Review, Grey Sparrow, Folly, South Jersey Underground, Sn Review, Jd Review, The Fine Line, Twj Magazine, The Missing Slate, Exercise Bowler, Ascent Aspirations, Red Ochre Literature, Dr Tj Eckleburg Review, and Sun Oases. Sharma is a retired professor of English, He’s worked at universities in India, the Middle East, and the USA.
Poetry by Ron Singer (www.ronsinger.net) has appeared in many publications. His collection of Maine poems, Look to Mountains, Look to Sea (River Otter Press, August 2013) garnered a Pushcart nomination and was named “best chapbook” by The Aurorean. His eighth book, Uhuru Revisited: Interviews with Pro-Democracy Leaders was published Feb. 1, 2015 (Africa World Press/Red Sea Press), and can be found in many college and university libraries. “Unusual, even Anomalous” is the latest in a series of loose sonnets that Singer has written over the last five or six years.
Joyce Wilson has taught English at Suffolk University and Boston University. Her first poetry collection The Etymology of Spruce and a chapbook The Springhouse both appeared in 2010. She is creator and editor of the magazine on the Internet, The Poetry Porch (www.poetryporch. com), which has been on-line since 1997. Her poems have appeared in many literary journals, among them Poetry Ireland, Ibbetson Street Magazine, and Mezzo Cammin (www.mezzocammin. com). She writes book reviews regularly for The Poetry Porch, and occasionally for Harvard Review where she was managing editor during the 1990s, and The Drunken Boat (www.thedrunkenboat.com).
Grey Sparrow Journal 