My Primacy in the Vending Machine

My new poem "Primacy" appears in the book Vending Machine: Poetry for Change Volume 5, to be released Saturday 11/22/2014 by the Poet's Haven. To get a free copy, take a food donation to the launch event at at Karma Cafe in Canton, Ohio, at 6 p.m.  Featured performers will be Akeem-Jamal Rollins, Mark Sebastian Jordan, Nikann Charney and Nikie Decay.  For more details, see the  Facebook event page.

Big Bang, Oh-my-wow - Bree's New Book Published by Crisis Chronicles Press

We are thrilled to publish a new chapbook-length poem by the inimitable Bree!  It's a big bang, multiverse, oh-my-wow of a work that blew me away. I bet it will you, too. 

Get I Don't for $7 US from Crisis Chronicles Press, 3344 W. 105th Street #4, Cleveland, Ohio 44111 USA.

Out 15 November 2014, 20+ pages, hand assembled, recycled paper, black end papers, saddle staple card stock bound, featuring cover art by Smith.

ISBN: 978-1-940996-12-7. 1st ed. 59 copies.

Bree vibes at the Lix & Kix Poetry Extravaganza
(photo by JC)

Bree's work has been published by Arthur Magazine, ArtCrimes, Big Bridge, Big Hammer, Bottle of Smoke, Bottom Dog, Cleveland State University, Deep Cleveland, Ecstatic Peace, Iniquity, Jawbone, Kirpan, Miser, Muse, Ronin Press, Split Whiskey, Temple, The City, The Literary Underground and countless precious mags. She is the author of Some Hiatus: Tucky Poems (2014); A Leg to Stand On (2013); The Rainbow Sweater & My Mother (2012); Let Cupid Know (Ronin Press 2012); Laying Pans (Ecstatic Peace 2009), Sleeping with the Sun In His Eyes with Akol Madut, the story of one Lost Boy of Sudan, and how he found his home in Cleveland, OH; (2009); was chicken trax amid sparrows tread (Temple 2009); Awol culinary poems (Ptrint /P2Begin, Cleveland 2009); and many titles thru her Green Panda Press, began in 2001, which puts out anthies, collections and ephemera, produces poetry fests and events assembling the small press community, getting poets who face each other on pages in the same room for a bit of company.

Loaner

I was quoted in reference to my student loan travails in this recent issue of the Lorain County Community College Collegian:

https://collegian.lorainccc.edu/2014/10/22/student-debt/

My next three poetry performances

Friday 11/28 (2 to 6 pm) - Amherst, Ohio
Cemetery Arts Productions presents: poetry and music by Ryan Sagert, Ruben Escandon, Jeremy Ryzhevski, John Burroughs and more TBA at the Arabica Coffee Bistro, 254 Park Avenue, Amherst.

Friday 12/5 (8 to 10 pm) - Erie, Pensylvania
Friday Night Writes featuring John Burroughs at Poet's Hall. Evening includes an open mic. Poets' Hall, 1136 E. Lake Rd. in Erie.

Friday 12/12 (7 to 10 pm) - Canton, Ohio
Writing Knights Apocalypse featuring John Burroughs, styles83, Andi Line and Zach.  $5 cover, catered event, proceeds go to the artists. Open mic included. Journey Art Gallery, 431 4th Street NW, Canton.

Coffeehouse Poetry featuring John Burroughs November 8th in Sandusky

Looking forward to this! The last time I read here was in March 2011, and I had a great time.

Crisis Chronicles Press releases brilliant new Elise Geither chapbook November 3rd during Monday at Mahall's featuring Writer's Root

cover photo by Steven B. Smith

Poet/playwright Elise Geither is one of my favorite Ohio writers, and has been for years. So I'm excited to announce the release of her new Crisis Chronicles Press chapbook, HOLDING STORIES in YOUR HANDS. This book is 25 pages, loving handbound with ivory cardstock cover and black endpapers.  Highlights include "The End of Once Upon," "How to Fold a Woman" and "Into the Woods We Go."

Get yours for $7 from Crisis Chronicles Press, 3344 W. 105th Street #4, Cleveland, Ohio 44111 USA.

ISBN 978-1-940996-11-0.  1st edition: 100 copies. 

 
Join us for the official release and meet Elise at 7:30 pm on 3 November 2014 during Monday at Mahall's featuring Writer's Root, 13200 Madison Avenue in Lakewood, Ohio.  

Elise Geither at the Lava Lounge in Cleveland, 2014 - photo by JB

My "Smoker" in the new Pressure Press anthology

My "Smoker" appears in this mighty fine book edited by Ron Androla of Pressure Press. 

Click here to get your copy while it's hot off the presses!

Contributors include Adrian C. Louis, Patrick Mckinnon, Cheryl Townsend, Bree, Jeff Weddle, John Korn, Sean Thomas Dougherty, Bart Solarcyzk, Dave Roskos, Tom Blessing, John Burroughs, Greg Brown, Jeremiah Walton, Joyce Chelmo, Liz Minette, Marisa Moks-Unger, Coleen Shin, Carter Monroe, Sheila Murphy, Peggy Eldridge-Love, Didi Menendez, Barbara Moore, Mike Boyle, Bud Backen, Joan Papalia-Eisert, Jim Chandler, Belinda Subraman, Andy Darlington, C.F. Roberts, Chuck Joy, Mark Hartenbach, Cee Williams, Matt Shaw, Danny Baker, Mike Castro and Jeff Filipski.

Crisis Chronicles Press Publishes City of Tents: Poems About the Occupy Movement and Other Items Taken From the News (CC#57)

Cover photo by Steven B. Smith

Crisis Chronicles Press is thrilled to publish Martin Willitts, Jr.'s latest chapbook, City of Tents: Poems About the Occupy Movement and Other Items Taken From the News, in October 2014.  According to the author, "This is a collection of poems based on protest and social issue concerns. The poems start with the Occupy Movement, and include forced slavery, forced migrations, disenfranchised people, and other subjects. I question a lot in this book. As a Quaker, I find many things troubling in this world. I scold my own generation who had protested war, for women and minorities. Where are they? They should have joined Occupy, not the Tea Party."

City of Tents is a 38 page, handmade, 8.5 x 5.5", saddle-stapled chapbook featuring 22 poems including "Occupy This," "Hell for Plants," "If Pull Down the Empty Sky, "The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti" and much more.  ISBN 978-1-940996-10-3.  Available for only $7 from Crisis Chronicles Press, 3344 W. 105th Street #4, Cleveland, Ohio 44111 USA.

"Willitts calls out the irrationality of the put-on soundbite, of cruelty and greed. He asks of us and society to do the uncomfortable work of self-examination.

"At times he's in anguish at the scale, ledgers a litany of injustice with the grief of an exhausted exhale. Some of Willitts's lines are like skipping ahead steps in a math problem: 'smoking cigarettes of last chances.' He recognizes the nebulous: 'the type of nothingness nobody understands.'

"After we're wrung wet, he offers sparing notes like plates of sunlight: 'joy as temperamental as a geyser' and 'a cautionary song of Amazing Grace.'"
— Kathy Smith, co-author of Oct Tongue -1 and founding editor at The City Poetry

"There are two pervading themes braided throughout City of Tents: 'He could have been any of us' and 'Words can…be an unlit match.' Willitts confronts oppression and imprisonment in its many varied guises, including poverty, bullying, ignorance, and war.  He also offers hope:  'I open envelopes of promises—heritage seeds…small changes begin.' City of Tents is a demand for political and socio-economic awareness.  Heed its call!"
—Dianne Borsenik, author of Blue Graffiti and founding editor at NightBallet Press 

“'Like many things it had no beginning'—yet, even a trauma, a seeking, a quest with no beginning can be brought to some wholesome end. However, this Picardy-third-like sound alighting the grid, causing fractals to sing across Indra’s net, would only ever take place by way of the body. 'Where is the body going?' ('sinkholes of a woman’s sorrow,' into 'the disquieted spirit')—

"This is a grief book, a human emotions book, a book-length rhetorical question capable of leading the body into an activist martial stance in the street, among a gathering of tents. Willitts gives us a long hard look at 'the type of nothingness nobody understands.' As the 'floating world' sink[s] it is an excess of belief that keeps us afloat. Will we be able to tow its weight? Can we adjust these norms by taking the sinking weight of a world on our shoulders?

"What is being modeled for us—what it is that we inherit: 'to take things apart and not necessarily put them back together.' Yet, through these poems, these proposals, the pulse being pumped into a desire for peace and rightness, he (we) are willing to stand up for this! We are actually how the things get put back together."
— j/j hastain, author of xyr and secret letters

Martin Willitts, Jr. receiving the Dylan Thomas
International Poetry Award in Swansea, Wales

Martin Willitts, Jr. is a retired librarian living in Syracuse, New York. He currently evaluates Prior Learning for SUNY Empire State College. He is a Quaker. He is a visual artist of Victorian and Chinese paper cutouts. He was nominated for 5 Pushcart and 4 Best of the Net awards. He provided his hands-on workshop “How to Make Origami Haiku Jumping Frogs” at the 2012 Massachusetts Poetry Festival.

Martin has 5 full-length books and over 20 chapbooks including Art Is Always an Impression of What an Artist Sees (Edgar and Lenore's Publishing House) and Swimming In the Ladle of Stars (Kattywompus Press).  He is the winner of the inaugural Wild Earth Poetry Contest for his full length collection Searching for What is Not There (Hiraeth Press).  He won the William K. Hathaway Award for Poem of the Year 2012 and he won the Dylan Thomas International Poetry Award in 2014.

Crisis Chronicles Press at LevyFest 2014

"LevyFest is a poetry festival and conference celebrating Cleveland poet, publisher, and artist d.a. levy (1942-1968) and his influence upon small press publishing, print and book arts, and the poetry communities of Cleveland, Ohio, and beyond" [quotation from the Cleveland State University website].

Crisis Chronicles Press is happy to be participating in LevyFest 2014 as the celebration returns to Cleveland on October 24th through 26th. We'll be one of several small presses with a table set up at CSU's  Michael Schwartz Library, 1st Floor East Wing, from 12:30 to 4:45 p.m. on Saturday.

Among the many legendary poets and publishers coming into town for this event will be D.R. Wagner, whose new book The Night Market was recently published by Crisis Chronicles.  I hope you'll come out and meet him at some point.  D.R. will be reading Friday night at the Spotted Owl, participating in a historic panel Saturday morning at the Schwartz Library and reading again Saturday evening at the Literary Cafe.  Other CC Press authors will be making appearances at other times and places during LevyFest 2014, including Saturday evening at the Lava Lounge.  For a complete listing of on-campus events (Saturday) click here.  For a complete listing of off-campus events (Friday through Sunday), click here.

Lord Lucky Maximus Burroughs, a.k.a. Mr. Lucky Strike, 2006-2014

14 February 2006 - 3 October 2014

We will always love you, sweet boy.