POETRY
Our National Treasure
Waking Up, Windy Night in Summer, Robert Bly
For Kathmandu, John Roche
The Bronx 1965, Doug Holder
A Poem for Naipaul, Samartha Vashishtha
In the thin hour, Angele Ellis
Hey. Wait Til You Get Old…, Marie Sheppard Williams
Nothing Ever Dies, M.J. Iuppa
Of My Poetry Class, Keshab Sigdel
Before Making Decisions, Suman Pokhrel
Carpe Diem, Adiós, Tony Press
Want, Krishna P. Sharma
Door, Tanka Upreti
I don’t know much of Route 66, Timothy Stobierski
Popocatepetl, Eric Chandler
The Unbelievable, Rajkumar Shrestha
Transposition, Elaine Wong
About Me, Robin Stratton
Storm Island, Thomas R. Smith
Silent Truth, Gopal Lahiri
Niantic, Jules Nyquist
Irony, David Ishaya Osu
River, Bhisma Upreti
Untitled, Simon Perchik
Fiery Spikes, Sunil Sharma
Circular Logic, D.A. Gray
The Sun I Can’t See, Aileen Bassis
Aging, Rasaq Malik
A Meditation, Jenny Hockey
Moss-covered Tombstones, Pam Parker
At Your Cottage, William, L.B. Chhetri
CONTRIBUTORS
Robert Bly was born in Madison, Minnesota in 1926. He attended Harvard University and received his M.S. 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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Aileen Bassis is a visual artist in Jersey City working in book arts, printmaking, photography and installation. Her artwork can be viewed at http://www.aileenbassis.com She’s exploring another creative life as a poet. Her poems are published currently and upcoming in Blue River Review, Gravel Magazine, Haggard and Halloo, the Literary Bohemian, River Poets Journal, Milo Journal, Red Branch Journal, Specs Journal, Spillway, Still Point Arts Quarterly, and Amoskeag.
Eric Chandler is a husband, father, and pilot who cross-country skis as fast as he can in Duluth, Minnesota. Susan Solomon, editor of Sleet Magazine, nominated his creative non-fiction story “Chemical Warfare” for a 2016 Pushcart Prize. His work has appeared in The Talking Stick, O-Dark-Thirty, Aqueous Magazine, Great Lakes Review, and Northern Wilds, to name a few. Visit ericchandler.wordpress.com for links to his published fiction, non-fiction, books, and poetry.
L.B. Chhetri is the author of the poetry collection Bheed Ma Harayeko Manchhe and two short story collections Trishanku Ko Deshma and Indramaya Ko Deshmaa. A retired professor of Tribhuvan University, Chhetri is the president of Kavidada Literary Society Chitwan, and Chief Editor of Charaiveti Literary Fortnightly.
D.A. Gray spends his time as a full-time graduate student at Texas A&M in the spring and fall, and as an MFA candidate at Sewanee School of Letters in the summer. Gray originally hails from Western Kentucky but, after retiring from the U.S. Army, now resides in Central Texas.
Gray has published one book of poetry, Overwatch(Grey Sparrow Press, November 2011.)
His work can also be found in Grey Sparrow Journal, Appalachian Heritage, Poetry Salzburg, The Good Men Project, O’Dark Thirty, 94 Creations, Kentucky Review and Spark: A Creative Anthology. His work will also be found in upcoming issues of The Sewanee Review and War, Literature and the Arts.
Angele Ellis watched Buddhist monks dance under a theatre marquee featuring her haiku, after winning Pittsburgh Filmmakers’ G-20 Haiku Contest. Her poetry, fiction (including excerpts of novels in progress), and reviews have appeared in fifty publications and ten anthologies. She is author of Arab on Radar (Six Gallery Press); which poems won her an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and Spared (A Main Street Rag Editors’ Choice Chapbook). She lives in the Pittsburgh neighborhood of Friendship.
Jenny Hockey was among the winners of a New Poets Award from Newcastle’s New Writing North in 2013 and has published poems in anthologies and magazines such as The North, Magma, Dreamcatcher, Iota and Orbis. She is also a long-term member of Sheffield’s Broomspring Writers and Tuesday Poets.
Doug Holder is the founder of the Ibbetson Street Press. He recently won the Allen Ginsberg Community Service Award from the Newton Writing and Publishing Center in Newton, Mass. In Sept. 2015 he received a citation from the House of Representatives of Massachusetts for his work as a poet, publisher, editor, and professor. Holder’s latest book of poetry is Portrait of an Artist as a Young Poseur (Big Table Publishing.) His work, both poetry and prose, has appeared in: The Boston Globe, Rattle, Café Review, the new renaissance, Poesy and others. He teaches writing at Endicott College in Beverly, Mass. and Bunker Hill Community College in Boston.
M.J. Iuppa lives on Red Rooster Farm near the shores of Lake Ontario. Most recent poems, lyric essays, and fictions have appeared in the following journals: Poppy Road Review Black Poppy Review,Digging to the Roots, 2015 Calendar, Ealain, Poetry Pacific Review, Grey Sparrow Press: Snow Jewel Anthology, 100 Word Story, Avocet, Eunoia Review, Festival Writer, Silver Birch Press: Where I Live Anthology,Turtle Island Quarterly, Wild Quarterly, Boyne Berries Magazine (Ireland), The Lake, (U.K.), Punchnel’s, Camroc Review, Tar Clementine Poetry, PostcardRiver Poetry, Corvus Review, Poetry &Prose, among others. She is the Director of the Visual and Performing Arts Minor Program at St. John Fisher College. You can follow her musings on art, writing and sustainability on mjiuppa.blogspot.com
Gopal Lahiri was born and grew up in Kolkata, India. He is a bilingual poet, writer, editor, critic, and translator and widely published in Bengali and the English language. His English volumes of poetry include Silent Steps, Living Inside, Tidal Interlude and four print on demand books at Lulu.com. His translation works, (English to Bengali) Not Just Milk and Honey, (published by NBT, India), is a collection of short stories of Israel and is widely acclaimed. He was an art and culture critic in The Telegraph, Kolkata.
Anthology appearances (among others) includes National Treasures, Indus Valley, A posy of poesy, Concerto, Poet’s paradise, My dazzling Bards, The Silence within, Indo-Australian Anthology, Homebound, The Dance of the Peacock, Illuminations, Inklink, Poets International. Jorasanko, and Epitaph. His works have been featured in many journals of Indian Literature, Taj Mahal Review, CLRI, Haiku Journal and electronic publications such as Arts and Letters, Underground Window, Muse India, Poetry Stop, Debug, and East lit. He has jointly edited the anthology Scaling Heights.
He currently lives in Mumbai, India and can be reached at glahiri@gmail.com and gopallahiri.blogspot.com.
Rasaq Malik is a graduate of the University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria. His poems have appeared in Connotation Press, Heart Online Journal, Jalada, Saraba, Kalahari Review, African Writers, New Black Magazine, Sentinel, and elsewhere. He is presently awaiting the publication of his debut poetry collection.
Jules Nyquist is the founder of Jules’ Poetry Playhouse in Albuquerque, NM where she leads writing classes and invites visiting poets to share their work. She received her MFA from Bennington College, VT and her two previous books of poems, Appetites (2012) and Behind the Volcanoes (2014) both from Beatlick Press, were finalists in the NM/AZ Book Awards. Her website is www. julesnyquist. com
David Ishaya Osu (b. 1991) is a Nigerian poet. He has had poems featured in literary publications such as: Atlas Poetica: A Journal of World Tanka, Birmingham Arts Journal, Tipton Poetry Journal, Watershed Review, The Missing Slate, Acumen Literary Journal, The Kalahari Review, Porter Gulch Review, Akitsu Quarterly, and elsewhere. David is a board member of the Babishai Niwe Poetry Foundation, and he is currently polishing his debut poetry book. He is obsessed with poems, pictures, and plays; and he is in love.
Pam Parker lives in suburban Milwaukee, WI while her heart bounces around the world to many favorite places: New England, Scotland, Paris, and Prague among them. Her stories and essays have appeared in numerous literary journals and received awards from the WI Broadcasters Association, the WI Academy of Sciences & Letters, and the WI Writers Association. Links to some of her publications can be found at pamwrites.net. She is co-editor with Kathy Lanzarotti of Done Darkness, an anthology of writing about life beyond sadness, forthcoming in 2015 from Orange Hat Publishing.
Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, The Nation, Poetry, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. His most recent collection is Almost Rain, published by River Otter Press (2013). For more information, free e-books, and his essay titled “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities,” please visit his website at http://www.simonperchik.com
Suman Pokhrel is the author of two poetry collections, Mutuko Dhadkanbhitra (Within the Beats of Beat-less Heart) and Jeevanko Chheubaata (From the Bank of Life), and a collection of songs, Hazaar Aankha Yee Aankhama (Thousands of Eyes onto These Eyes). Pokhrel’s poems are published in various poetry journals and anthologies nationally and internationally. He was awarded the prestigious SAARC Literary Award in 2013 and 2015.
Tony Press lives near San Francisco, tries to pay attention, and walks the old streets of Oaxaca, Mexico, as often as he can. His short story collection, Crossing the Line, will be published by Big Table Publishing in early 2016.
John Roche is an Associate Professor of English at Rochester Institute of Technology. He earned his PhD from SUNY Buffalo, studying with Robert Creeley and John C. Clarke. His first two full-length poetry collections were On Conesus (2005) and Topicalities(2008), both from FootHills Publishing, Kanona, NY. His 2011 poetic memoir, Road Ghosts, is available from theenk Books through http://www.spdbooks.org/ Albuquerque’s Beatlick Press published an anthology of 120 poets called Mo’ Joe (2014), inspired by his Joe Poems: The Continuing Saga of Joe the Poet (FootHills, 2012.) Mo’ Joe was a finalist in the 2014 Arizona/New Mexico Book Awards and was nominated for the 2015 Pushcart Prize. Roche also edited the collection Uncensored Songs for Sam Abrams (Spuyten Duyvil, 2008), co-edited an anthology of poetry by inmates at Auburn Prison, and edited Martha Rittenhouse Treichler’s Black Mountain to Crooked Lake: Poems 1948-2010, with a Memoir of Black Mountain College (FootHills, 2010.)
Rajkumar Shrestha is a Nepali and Hindi poet, born in 1987 in New Delhi, India where he lives. He graduated in Arts from Delhi University and has been published in various journals, newspapers, and anthologies in India and Nepal. He has translated and published a poetry book from Nepali to Hindi.
Krishna P. Sharma was born and raised near Lumbini, the birthplace of Lord Buddha, in Nepal. He began his professional career as a journalist from The Rising Nepal where he worked for eight years before joining The Washington Post in March 2006. He also reported to the BBC Nepali Service from Washington D.C. during the formative years of the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal.
While continuing his non-profit think-tank “Vision for Nepal Foundation” (VIFON), Sharma also served as a language expert for the U.S. government. Sharma hosts a weekly TV talk show “American Conversations.” While in Nepal, Sharma also co-edited Of Nepalese Clay, a scholarly literary journal of the Society of Nepali Writers in English (N-WEN) of which he was the vice-president. His works are published in national and international newspapers and journals across the world, including The Financial Times.
Sunil Sharma, a college principal from Mumbai, is also a widely published Indian critic, poet, literary interviewer, editor, translator, essayist, and fiction writer. He has already published three collections of poetry, one collection of short fiction, and one novel, and co-edited five books. His six short stories and the novel, Minotaur, were recently prescribed for the undergraduate classes under the Post-colonial Studies, Clayton University, Georgia, in the U.S. He is a recipient of the UK-based Destiny Poets’ inaugural Poet of the Year award, 2012. Sharma edits the online journal, Episteme: http://www.episteme.net.in
Keshab Sigdel is a poet, essayist and a literary translator. He has to his credit two poetry collections Samaya Bighatan (2007), and Six Strings (co-authored anthology, 2011). He is a lecturer at Central Department of English, Tribhuvan University. He is also the vice-president of the Society of Nepali Writers in English, founding member of Asia Pacific Writers and Translators, Hong Kong, and an editor of a literary journal Of Nepalese Clay. His poems are published in literary journals Snow Jewel (USA), Sijo Saing’hwal (South Korea), Naya Gyanodaya (India), Sanskritc Khabar (India), The Art of Being Human (Canada), The Independent(Bangladesh), Kampala Poetry Anthology (Uganda) among others. He is also the recipient of literary awards Bhanubhakta Gold Medal (2014) and Srijanshil Pratibha Puraskar (2015).
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 (forthcoming in 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
Tim Stobierski is a freelance writer and editor and is currently an Associate Editor of books at The Taunton Press. His poetry, essays, reviews, and fiction have appeared in a number of journals and magazines, including The Hartford Courant, Grey Sparrow, and H_NGM_N. His first book of poetry, Chronicles of a Bee Whisperer, was published by River Otter Press in 2012.
Robin Stratton is a writing coach in the Boston area, director of Newton Writing & Publishing Center, Acquisitions Editor at Big Table Publishing Company, and Managing Editor of Boston Literary Magazine.
Bhisma Upreti is a poet and essayist. He has published six books of poems and eight books of essays. He won first prize from the National Poetry Competition organized by the Nepal Academy. His works have been translated into English, Korean, Japanese, Hindi, Serbian, Slovenian, and German and have appeared in various international journals and anthologies such asGrey Sparrow (USA), Skeleton (USA), Bridge of Fate (USA), The Art of Being Human, volume 5, 9 and 10 (Canada), Bouquet (Japan), Our Voices (India), The Nepalese Verses (Bangladesh), Kathmandu Kathmandu (Germany), The Enthusiast (England) and others. He is a joint secretary of the Nepal Chapter of PEN International. He works at Central Bank of Nepal (Nepal Rastra Bank); and lives in Kathmandu with his family.
Tanka Upreti is a prominent poet from Nepal. He has four volumes of poetry to his credit: Anubhutika Aksharharu, Sabdaharuko Nepathya, Gajur Pagliera, and Niguroko Kharani. A Senior Producer at the Nepal Television, Upreti has been awarded with the Best Documentary Producer in the Asia Pacific region by ABU, UNDP, and MTV Asia and Best Documentary Director in MTCP-2010. He has also been nominated as an International Scholar by London Metropolitan University. He is also a recipient of National Fine Art Journalism Award.
Samartha Vashishtha(b. 1983) has published two poetry volumes in English—Anhadnãd (2000) and Shadows Don’t Live In Walls(2004), besides poems in leading literary magazines, both in Hindi and English. His first volume of poems in Hindi, titled Sapne Mein Piya Pãni (सपनेमेंपियापानी), is due for publication soon.
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
Elaine Wong lives and teaches in San Antonio, Texas. While the Alamo City is her fourth home after Taipei, Hong Kong, and Vancouver, B.C., it is the original home of her poetry writing—it all started there. In addition to formal matters, she is interested in exploring cross-linguistic creativity between English and Chinese. Her poems and translations have appeared in Modern Poetry in Translation, TAB, The Taipei Chinese Pen (forthcoming), Voices de la Luna, and other publications.
Grey Sparrow Journal 