Borsenik, Burroughs & Minicucci this Wednesday in Youngstown

I'm looking forward to reading with Dianne Borsenik (whose Age of Aquarius: Collected Poems 1981-2016 Crisis Chronicles Press just published) and Matthew Minicucci (whose Translation was chosen by Jane Hirshfield for the 2014 Wick Poetry Prize and published by Kent State University Press) on Wednesday May 4th 2016 at Suzie's Dogs & Drafts, 34 N. Phelps Street in Youngstown, Ohio. This event is part of an ongoing series hosted by Lit Youngstown at Suzie's the first Wednesday of every month.

RSVP on Facebook.

My Late 2015 Events

Crisis Chronicles Press and I are only officially involved in three more events this year. Hope to see you at one of these:

10/31 - The Poet's Haven Halloween Jubilee in Massillon, OH.
11/7 (2 pm) - Meet the Presses in Toledo, OH.
11/7 (8 pm) - SCCA Presents: Ultimate Artist Extravaganza in Farmington, MI.

Happy to have the opportunity to edit and publish the 2015 Street Fair Hessler Poetry Anthology

Crisis Chronicles Press is pleased to present the 2015 Hessler Street Fair Poetry Anthology, featuring work by 104 poets from around the world. Join us for the official release 13 May 2015, 7pm, at Ensemble Theatre, 2843 Washington Heights Blvd. in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. This book is perfect bound, 129 pages, edited by John Burroughs and available for $14, exclusively from Mac's Backs or on May 16-17th at the Hessler Street Fair itself. 

Click here to buy.  Contributors may show up at either event or contact Suzanne at Mac's to procure a copy for half price.

Mac's Backs - Books on Coventry
1820 Coventry Road
Cleveland Heights, Ohio
(216) 321-2665
info@macsbacks.com

This edition of the annual Hessler Street Fair anthology is the biggest yet, featuring work by word artists including Alexis-Rueal, Michael Joseph Arcangelini, Dana Aritonovich, Thandiwe Augustin-Glave, Stephen Benefit, Cyndi Birkmeier, Kim Boccia, Rose Mary Boehm, Dianne Borsenik, Jeffrey Bowen, Steve Brightman, Christina M. Brooks, Patricia Brodsky, Skylark Bruce, Chad Burrall, Michael Ceraolo, Kathleen Cerveny, Shelley Chernin, Charles Cicirella, Caitlin Cogar, Roger Craik, Subhankar Das, Natalie Dickerson, Christine Donofrio, John Dorsey, Sean Thomas Dougherty, Robin Wyatt Dunn, Poetessa Leixyl Kaye Emmerson, Michael Fiala, Giselle Fleming, Diane Vogel Ferri, Ethan Fittro, Luba Gawur, Ken Gradomski, Dana Grant, Susan Grimm, Zachary Scott Hamilton, Austin Heath, Charles Hice, Veronica Hopkins, Christine Howey, Preston & Paul Hrisko, Clarissa Jakobsons, Azriel Johnson, Krysia Jopek, Jeremy Jusek, Janne Karlsson, Diane Kendig, Kim theBwordpoet, Ian Koenig, Leonard Kress, Tom Kryss, Craig Kurtz, Lori Ann Kusterbeck, Geoffrey A. Landis, Jim Lang, Jessica D. Lewis, Lennart Lundh, Caitlyn Lux, Susan Mallarnee, Marc Mannheimer, J.W. Mark, Molly McCann, Bob McNeil, Ray McNiece, Lila McRainey, Philip Metres, Marisa Moks-Unger, Patrick O’Keeffe, Mary O’Malley, Ashley Pacholewski, Renee Pendleton, Tanya Pilumeli, David S. Pointer, Sally Queen, Ben Rader, Valentina Ranaldi-Adams, Georgia Reash, Poetess REDD, Elizabeth Rees, rjs, Amy Rosenbluth, Elizabeth Rudibaugh, S. Renay Sanders, Heather Ann Schmidt, Erika Schoeps, Dennis Shanaberg, Kevin Frederick Smith, Larry Smith, Steven B. Smith, Vladimir Swirynsky, Brian Taylor, Joseph Testa, Steve Thomas, Jonathan Thorn, Kerry Trautman, Nick Traenkner, Mary A. Turzillo, D.R. Wagner, Mary Weems, Batya Weinbaum, Laura Grace Weldon, Eva Xanthopoulos & Shkehlaht Yisrael.  ISBN: 978-1-940996-20-2

May 4th Monday at Mahall's will feature Stephen Haven & Kathleen Cerveny, plus the final 2015 Lake Effect Poetry team selection slam

On 5/4/2015 at 7:30 pm, the Monday at Mahall's poetry series will present readings by featured authors Stephen Haven and Kathleen Cerveny.

Stephen Haven [photo by Celia Olsen]

Stephen Haven is the author of The Last Sacred Place in North America, selected by T.R. Hummer as winner of the 2010 New American Press Poetry Prize. He has published two previous collections of poetry, Dust and Bread (Turning Point, 2008), for which he was named 2009 Ohio Poet of the Year, and The Long Silence of the Mohawk Carpet Smokestacks (University of New Mexico/West End Press, 2004). He is also the author of the memoir, The River Lock: One Boy’s Life along the Mohawk (Syracuse University Press, 2008). He spent two years as a Fulbright Professor of American literature at universities in Beijing and has published many collaborative translations of contemporary Chinese poetry. Haven's poems have appeared in Salmagundi, Parnassus, American Poetry Review, Guernica, The Southern Review, The Common, Poetry New Zealand, Literary Imagination, World Literature (Beijing), Image, Crazyhorse and in many other journals. He has a Ph.D. in American civilization (literature, intellectual history and American painting) from New York University, where he wrote his dissertation under the direction of Harold Bloom, and a Master of Fine Arts in poetry from the University of Iowa. He is Professor of English and director of the Ashland University MFA Program, where he also directs the Ashland Poetry Press.

Kathleen Cerveny [photo by John Burroughs]

Kathleen Cerveny is a poet and visual artist, a graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Art (BFA) and of the University of Southern Maine Stonecoast Creative Writing Program (MFA). During the 1970s and ‘80s Kathleen exhibited her ceramics locally and nationally. From 1987-90 she was Cleveland Public Radio’s first producer and broadcast journalist for the arts, winning more than 15 top awards and producing many features for National Public Radio. Since 1991 Kathleen has been the Director of Arts Initiatives for the Cleveland Foundation, the country’s first community foundation. Her poems have appeared in the Southern New Hampshire University journal Amoskeag, the e-journal Shaking Like a Mountain, and in journals published by Pudding House Press, among others. A poem of Kathleen’s was selected for inclusion in an anthology published by Future Cycle Press, Poems for Malala Yousafzai, and NightBallet Press published a chapbook of her poems, Coming to Terms. in April 2015. Kathleen is the 2014 recipient of the Robert Bergman Award from the Cleveland Arts Prize and served as the 2013-15 Poet Laureate of Cleveland Heights.

After the features, there will be an open mic emceed by John Burroughs. Beer, bowling, and balderdash optional, as always.

Concluding the show, a slam will be held in which the winner will claim a spot on Lake Effect Poetry's 2015 team and compete at the Rustbelt Regional Poetry Slam in Rockford, Illinois, over Summer Solstice weekend. Vertigo Xavier will emcee this portion of the evening. This is the FINAL of four slams scheduled to determine LEP's 2015 team roster. Poets may compete in as many of these slams as they wish, however a NO REPEAT rule will be in effect. Repeating a poem used in a previous slam will result in an automatic score of 0. Once a poet has won a slam, they can still compete at later events but will not be in contention for a second spot on the team. (There's only one of you and we need four poets to fill the team roster.) Each slam will have a 3 minute rule, with a 10 second grace period and then one-half point deducted from the score every 10 seconds. No props, no costumes, no musical instruments, and must be your own material. All the regular rules. Every effort will be made to have five judges for each slam, but if unbiased judges are in short supply we will make due with just three. For more details on Lake Effect Poetry and information about the other three Team Selection Slams, visit www.lakeeffectpoetry.com.  

Happy birthday to Alex Gildzen! His complete Ohio Triangle published!

Crisis Chronicles Press is thrilled to present a new masterwork by the legendary Alex Gildzen, inspired by his rich experiences in three Ohio cities: Elyria, Cleveland and Kent.  Ohio Triangle is 75 pages, perfect bound, featuring many of his best poems and a handful of color photographs.  Officially published on 25 April 2015 to celebrate National Poetry Month and Gildzen's 72nd birthday, Ohio Triangle is now available for $10.99 from Crisis Chronicles, 3344 W. 105th Street #4, Cleveland, Ohio 44111 USA.  ISBN: 9781940996196.

Choose US or International

US Orders $10.99 USD International $15.99 USD

Love for Ohio Triangle:

"Alex Gildzen rushes to the heart with the clearest of memories, tacking them to our own with perfectly wrought images from his own life and calling out real people from the shadows of the past.  His work glows with the power of a master poet.  There is not one word in this book that doesn't ring true.  Be glad.  You can share a remarkable vision in this book that echoes through time every time Gildzen fixes his focus on his Ohio Triangle."

—D.R. Wagner, author of The Night Market

"Just as any 3 non-collinear points determine a unique plane, so Alex Gildzen's 3-part book of chiseled poems defines and explores the unique plane that is Gildzen's life in three different cities in Ohio. Here is a triangle considered in the context of the space-time continuum, where people, places and things combine to bring the past into the present and the present into the past. It is in the dimension of time, the loving remembrances and the sad recognition of the inevitable future of each person, place and thing within Gildzen's triangular plane, and by extension, within the reader's own unique plane, that brings warmth and heart to this multifaceted diamond of a book."

—Shelley Chernin, author of The Vigil

"I was first introduced to the work of Alex Gildzen a few years back now and out of everything I've read, this latest collection, Ohio Triangle, is without a doubt the most touching look into the memories that make up his highly colorful life, so much so that I almost teared up at several points, because this is the way we all want to be able to look back on things, on a life well lived, only, Alex has been able to put it into words in a way that feels immediately relatable and effortless, as the passing of time should be."

—John Dorsey, author of Imaginary Foxholes

Deluxe Package [no longer available]:

For a mere $5 extra a lucky 15 people received two great Gildzen books: Ohio Triangle and the rare New Notes: Poems 1971-76 (Kent, OH: Shelly's Press, 1978).  New Notes features paper wraps and a hand sewn binding.  While supplies last. [UPDATE: We have no more copies of New Notes, but you can still order Ohio Triangle for $10.99.]

Alex in front of Loomis Camera in Elyria, Ohio

He was born in California, first walked in Texas and now lives in New Mexico but Alex Gildzen spent the majority of his life as a resident of Ohio.  He was two weeks old when he arrived in Lorain.  When his father returned from the war in Europe the family moved to Elyria. He began visiting Cleveland as a child. Following graduation from Elyria High School he went to Kent State University where he was student, teacher and librarian.  In 1993 Kent presented him with the President’s Medal for “extraordinary and unique service” to the university.  The same year the Ohio Arts Council honored him with the Ohioana Citation in the field of humanities and education.

To learn more about Alex, visit the Literary Underground wiki and follow his Arroyo Chamisa blog.