CANCELLED: Poetry+ to feature Leah Mueller & Rikki Santer, 3/17 in Lakewood

UPDATE: Dear friends, due to concerns over the COVID-19 pandemic we have decided to cancel our March 17th Poetry+ featuring Leah Mueller and Rikki Santer at Art on Madison. We and our featured poets were very much looking forward to this. But we love you and want everyone to stay safe. Hopefully we can reschedule Rikki and Leah for a future Cleveland-area date.



Original post:

Poetry Plus at Art on Madison will triple your pleasure on Election/St. Patrick's Day with readings by two acclaimed featured poets - Leah Mueller and Rikki Santer - plus an open mic. Doors open at 7 pm. Show starts promptly at 7:30.

Leah Mueller is an indie writer and spoken word performer from Tacoma, Washington. She has published books with numerous small presses. Her most recent volumes, Misguided Behavior, Tales of Poor Life Choices (Czykmate Press), Death and Heartbreak (Weasel Press), and Cocktails at Denny's (Alien Buddha Press) were released in 2019. Leah’s work also appears in Blunderbuss, The Spectacle, Bad Pony, Outlook Springs, Atticus Review, Your Impossible Voice, and other publications. She won honorable mention in the 2012 Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry contest.

Rikki Santer’s poetry has appeared in numerous publications both nationally and abroad including Ms. Magazine, Poetry East, Margie, The Journal of American Poetry, Hotel Amerika, Crab Orchard Review, Grimm, Slipstream and The Main Street Rag. Her work has received many honors including five Pushcart and three Ohioana book award nominations as well as a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Her eighth collection, Drop Jaw, inspired by the art of ventriloquism, was just published by NightBallet Press. She lives in Columbus, Ohio. Please contact her through her website: www.rikkisanter.com.

Open mic to follow the features, emceed by John Burroughs, Ohio Beat Poet Laureate 2019-2021.

Please note: Poetry+ usually happens on the third Tuesday of each month. For more information, visit our website at https://poetrypluscleveland.weebly.com/. 

Our next Poetry+ event, on 4/21 (National Poetry Month) will feature:
Terry Provost (Lakewood, OH) &
Nick Gardner (Mansfield/Bowling Green OH).

Art on Madison
14203 Madison Avenue
Lakewood, Ohio 44107

Jessie Herzfeld Artist Talk & Rimbaud-Themed Open Mic on 2/29

Circling Beasts by Jessie Herzfeld
detail of one of the works in her exhibition

Join us at Art on Madison in Lakewood, Ohio, on Saturday, February 29th at 7 pm for an artist talk by Jessie Herzfeld about her current "Illuminations and Visions" exhibition and participate in our Arthur Rimbaud-themed open mic. Read your favorite Rimbaud poem, or share your own Rimbaud- or surrealist-inspired poem or song. Light refreshments will be provided.

Leap into Rimbaud: Jessie Herzfeld Artist Talk with Open Mic

Art on Madison
14203 Madison Avenue
Lakewood, Ohio 44107

Poetry+ to feature Bill Yarrow & Laura Grace Weldon, 2/18 in Lakewood

Bill Yarrow

Poetry Plus at Art on Madison will triple your pleasure in February with readings by two acclaimed featured poets - Bill Yarrow and Laura Grace Weldon - plus an open mic. See artist Jessie Herzfeld's fantastic Arthur Rimbaud-inspired exhibition, Illuminations and Visions, while you're there.

Bill Yarrow of Chicago is the author of five full-length books of poetry and five poetry chapbooks. His poems have been published in Confrontation, Gargoyle, PANK, Contrary, Diagram, Thrush, RHINO, Chiron Review, and many other journals. His most recent book is ACCELERANT from Nixes Mate Books. More info: billyarrow.wordpress.com

Laura Grace Weldon

Laura Grace Weldon has published two poetry collections, Blackbird (Grayson 2019) and Tending (Aldrich 2013). She was named Ohio Poet of the Year for 2019. She's written poems on the soles of children’s feet and painted poems on beehives but her work appears in more conventional places such as Verse Daily, One: Jacar Press, Neurology, J Journal, and Amsterdam Quarterly. Laura works as a book editor and teaches community-based writing workshops. More info: lauragraceweldon.com

Open mic to follow the features, emceed by John Burroughs, Ohio Beat Poet Laureate 2019-2021.

Please note: Poetry+ usually happens on the third Tuesday of each month. For more information, visit our website at https://poetrypluscleveland.weebly.com/.

Other upcoming Poetry+ features:

3/17 - Leah Mueller (Tacoma, WA) & Rikki Santer (Columbus, OH)
4/21 - Terry Provost (Lakewood, OH) & Nick Gardner (Mansfield/Bowling Green OH)

Art on Madison
14203 Madison Avenue
Lakewood, Ohio 44107

Jessie Herzfeld: Illuminations and Visions at Art on Madison

A fantastic Arthur Rimbaud-inspired exhibition by artist Jessie Herzfeld will open on February 7th from 6 to 9 pm at Art on Madison in Lakewood, Ohio. Refreshments provided. Hope to see you there! The show will run through March 7th. Check out Cool Cleveland's feature about it.

For more info, see Jessie Herzfeld: "Illuminations and Visions" Opening Reception on Facebook or visit the artist's website, JessieHerzfeld.com.

Art on Madison
14203 Madison Avenue
Lakewood, Ohio 44107

Also coming up at Art on Madison:

February 18th: Poetry+ featuring Bill Yarrow & Laura Grace Weldon
March 17th: Poetry+ featuring Leah Mueller & Rikki Santer
April 21st: Poetry+ featuring Terry Provost & Nick Gardner

Poetry+ to feature Chuck Salmons and Renay Sanders, 1/21 in Lakewood

Poetry Plus at Art on Madison will triple your pleasure in January with readings by two acclaimed featured poets - Chuck Salmons and Renay Sanders - plus an open mic. Doors open at 7 p.m.

A native of Columbus, Ohio, Chuck Salmons is a poet and currently President of the Ohio Poetry Association. He earned a B.A. from Otterbein College and a M.A. from Northern Michigan University.

Chuck's poems have appeared in several journals and anthologies, including Pudding Magazine, Evening Street Review, Olentangy Review, Common Threads, The Fib Review, Red Thread Gold Thread, Everything Stops and Listens, and Appleseeds. His chapbook, Stargazer Suite, was released in December 2016 and is available from 11th Hour Press. His second chapbook, Patch Job, was published by NightBallet Press in 2017.

He won the 2011 William Redding Memorial Poetry Contest, sponsored by The Poetry Forum of Columbus, and has garnered awards from Ohio Poetry Day. Most recently, he is a recipient of a 2018 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award for his poetry. Chuck regularly gives readings throughout Ohio, both solo and as part of the poetry trio Concrete Wink. He also leads workshops for various groups and audiences.

Chuck has worked in a variety of fields, including construction, education, and retail. He loves science, which often influences his poems, and is thrilled about the discovery of water on Mars and gravitational waves. He works as a science editor in Columbus.

S. Renay Sanders learned to love the spoken word amidst a family of storytellers. She began secretly writing her own stories as poems. She came out of the poetry closet in 2010 with a poem in the Hessler Street Fair Poetry Anthology. She subsequently had poems published in a variety of anthologies. Her most recent accomplishment is the publication of her first chapbook, Dancing in Place. Coming full circle, she has ventured into storytelling and proudly performed her story "Cemetery Run" in the Women of Appalachia Project, Spoken Word, 2019. Today she proudly lives the poetic lifestyle. Continuing to enjoy the local poetry scene as an open mic-er and occasional feature. A native Clevelander, her poems are inspired by the characters she encounters in life and the beauty of the Cuyahoga Valley, where she now resides.

Open mic to follow the features, emceed by Ohio Beat Poet Laureate John Burroughs.

Please note: Poetry+ usually happens on the third Tuesday of each month. For more information, visit our website at https://poetrypluscleveland.weebly.com.

Other upcoming Poetry+ features:

2/18 - Bill Yarrow (Chicago) & Laura Grace Weldon (Litchfield)
3/17 - Leah Mueller (Tacoma WA) & Rikki Santer (Columbus)

Art on Madison
14203 Madison Avenue
Lakewood, Ohio 44107

Poetry+ to feature Ray McNiece & Michelle R. Smith, 12/17 in Lakewood

Poetry Plus at Art on Madison will triple your pleasure on Tuesday, December 17th with readings by two acclaimed featured poets - Ray McNiece and Michelle R. Smith - plus an open mic. Doors open at 7 pm, with the show beginning promptly at 7:30.

Ray McNiece is the author of 9 books of poetry and monologues, including New Haiku and Love Song for Cleveland, a collaboration with photographer Tim Lachina. He’s toured Italy twice with Lawrence Ferlinghetti. He toured Russia with Yevgeny Yevtushenko and performed at the Moscow Polytech, the Russian Poets’ Hall of Fame, where he was dubbed “the American Mayakovsky.” The Orlando Sentinel, reporting on his solo theater piece Us—Talking across America at the Fringe Festival, called him “a modern day descendant of Woody Guthrie.”

Michelle R. Smith is a black femme feminist, media activist, and admitted Netflix addict that between fighting the good fight and watching copious stand-up specials, dark comedies, and music documentaries manages to write poems, tell stories, teach college and high school kids, and be a loving mother and wife. She is the author of the poetry collection Ariel in Black, and she is currently working on a new collection tentatively titled The Real Jazz Wives of 20th Century America and looking to publish a third collection, called The Vagina Analogues.

Open mic to follow the features, emceed by Ohio Beat Poet Laureate John Burroughs.

Please note: Poetry+ happens on the third Tuesday of each month. For more information, please visit our website at https://poetrypluscleveland.weebly.com.

Other upcoming Poetry+ features:

1/21 - Chuck Salmons (Columbus) & Renay Sanders (Peninsula)
2/18 - Bill Yarrow (Chicago) & Laura Grace Weldon (Litchfield)
3/17 - Leah Mueller (Tacoma WA) & Rikki Santer (Columbus)

Art on Madison
14203 Madison Avenue
Lakewood, Ohio 44107

Poetry Plus to Feature Steve Abbott & Leonard Kress on 11/19 in Lakewood

Acclaimed poets Steve Abbott and Leonard Kress

Poetry Plus at Art on Madison will triple your pleasure on November 19th with readings by two acclaimed featured poets - Steve Abbott (Columbus, OH) and Leonard Kress (Toledo, OH) - plus an open mic. Doors open at 7 pm, with poetry to begin promptly at 7:30.

Leonard Kress has published poetry and fiction in Missouri Review, Massachusetts Review, Iowa Review, American Poetry Review, Harvard Review, etc. His recent collections are The Orpheus Complex, and Walk Like Bo Diddley. Living in the Candy Store and Other Poems and his new verse translation of the Polish Romantic epic, Pan Tadeusz by Adam Mickiewicz were both published in 2018. His latest book, Craniotomy, will appear soon (if it hasn't already). He teaches philosophy and religion at Owens Community College in Ohio.

Columbus native Steve Abbott has been a community activist, alternative newspaper writer and editor, criminal defendant, delivery truck driver, courtroom bailiff, private investigator, PR flack, and college professor. He was a founding member in 1984 of The Poetry Forum, now Ohio’s longest-running poetry series, and continues to co-host the weekly event. He is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus in English of Columbus State Community College. His poems have appeared in dozens of literary journals as well as in several anthologies. He received an Ohio Arts Council Excellence Award in Poetry in 1993 and an OAC residency the following year at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA. 

He has six poetry collections: five chapbooks, A Short History of the Word (1996) and Greatest Hits (2004), both from Pudding House; The Incoherent Pull of Want (NightBallet Press) and Why Not Be Here Now? (11thour Press) in 2016; and Kicking Mileposts in the Video Age (Moria Poetry, 2017). He has also recorded a live reading on CD titled Stardust in Franklin Park. He edited the anthologies Cap City Poets (Pudding House, 2008), a collection of 74 central Ohio poets, and Everything Stops and Listens (OPA Press, 2013), containing work by members of Ohio Poetry Association. His full-length collection A Green Line Between Green Fields was published in 2018, and a collection of ekphrastic poems, A Language the Image Speaks, was released in September. He also edits Ohio Poetry Association's annual journal Common Threads, and in 2015 he represented the OPA on the Ohio Arts Council panel selecting Ohio’s first Poet Laureate.

Open mic to follow the features, emceed by Ohio Beat Poet Laureate John Burroughs.

Poetry+ happens on the third Tuesday of each month. For more information, please visit: https://poetrypluscleveland.weebly.com.


Upcoming Poetry+ features:

11/19 - Steve Abbott (Columbus) & Leonard Kress (Toledo)
12/17 - Ray McNiece (Cleveland) & Michelle R. Smith (Cleveland)
1/21 - Chuck Salmons (Columbus) & Renay Sanders (Peninsula)
2/18 - Bill Yarrow (Chicago) & Laura Grace Weldon (Litchfield)
3/17 - Leah Mueller (Tacoma WA) & Rikki Santer (Columbus)

Art on Madison
14203 Madison Avenue
Lakewood, Ohio 44107
 

Eight Events Coming Up Quick

Lots of great poetry happenings in northeast Ohio in the next 10 days or so! Here's where I'll be:

11/14 - Broadsides & Ephemera feat. Dianne Borsenik at Loganberry Books in Cleveland.

11/16, 2pm - Borderlands Poetry Reading feat. Dianne Borsenik & me at Main Street Books in Mansfield.

11/16, 7pm - Concrete Wink Poetry Reading, Mac's Backs-Books on Coventry in Cleveland Heights.

11/17 - Tongue In Groove Poetry Music Jam featuring Steve Abbott in Cleveland.

11/19 - Poetry+ featuring Steve Abbott & Leonard Kress at Art on Madison in Lakewood.

11/21 - Ohio Beat Poet Laureate John Burroughs, plus Mic-Less Open Mic at Roxy's Emporium in Elyria.

11/23 - Streetlight Imaginations with Crisis Chronicles & NightBallet at the South Euclid-Lyndhurst branch of the Cuyahoga County Public Library. Crisis Chronicles Press will officially debut Nick Gardner's So Marvelously Far at this event.

11/25 - Timothy J Richards and I will be Writers in the Window at Appletree Books in Cleveland Heights.

Then I'm off until mid-December. Well, not off exactly because I'll still be working on poetry, since Crisis Chronicles Press intends to publish another two books by the end of this year.

We couldn't do this without you! So thank you, and I hope to see you soon.

What's Up with Crisis Chronicles Press?

People keep asking me what's up with Crisis Chronicles Press. Here's the short answer:

Our 2019 titles so far

1) EVENTS: A) We'll be in Kansas City this weekend (October 11-13) for Fountainverse: KC Small Press Poetry Fest. B) On November 23rd, we will team up with NightBallet Press to present readings by our Class of 2019 authors during Streetlight Imaginations with Crisis Chronicles & NightBallet at the South Euclid-Lyndhurst branch of the Cuyahoga County Public Library. C) I am also hosting (at least through March 2020) the Poetry+ reading series on the 3rd Tuesday of each month at Art on Madison in Lakewood, Ohio.

2) BOOKS: It's hard to believe we published 5 wonderful books (by John Dorsey, Mindi Kirchner-Greenway, Elaine Schleiffer, Cat Russell and Nicole Hennessy) in the first four months of 2019 and we haven't published a new one since (I've been too busy with a million things). But over the summer several of our recent titles did go into second printings. We still have eight books in our committed-to-publishing queue. We intend to publish three of them (So Marvelously Far by Nick Gardner, Ode to Horatio and Other Saviors by Carolyn Srygley-Moore and Alex in Movieland by Alex Gildzen) by the end of 2019. We'll space the final five out over the course of 2020.

3) SUBMISSIONS: In the past week I've written to dozens of people declining their unsolicited submissions. Technically we haven't even been open for submissions in years, though I sometimes bent that policy for a project I just couldn't pass up. For a while (years?) I flirted with (and at times seriously considered) the idea of reopening submissions after I got caught up. But I never caught up. Now I'm becoming more and more inclined just to wrap up the press for good after I complete my current commitments.

It's been an incredible ride. I've had the honor and privilege of working with some fantastic writers and people. And it's not over yet. Eight phenomenal books are coming. I hope you love them as much as I do.

Meanwhile, there's still time to complete your collection at http://ccpress.blogspot.com/.

Gratefully yours,
John

From Here (to Denver to Long Island) to Eternity

My Maine reading this month is being rescheduled. But there are still lots of events featuring Crisis Chronicles Press authors and friends coming up this month. Just off the top of my head:

5/10 in Toledo, OH - Naked Toes Couch Concert at Glass City Roasters.

5/11 in Norwalk, OH - Grey Skies & Blue Hearts: A Poetry Workshop (with Nicole Hennessy, Dianne Borsenik, Claire McMahon & more).

5/12 in South Euclid, OH - Second Sunday Poets at the Cuyahoga County Public Library.

5/14 in Cleveland Heights, OH - CLE Uncorked: Voices and Vines on Lee featuring Sara Minges and more.

5/18 in Kent, OH - Concrete Wink Poetry Reading (Rikki Santer, Sandra Feen & Chuck Salmons)

5/19 in Cleveland, OH - Tongue in Groove Poetry Jam featuring Nicole Hennessy at The Millard Fillmore Presidential Library.

5/21 in Lakewood, OH - Poetry Plus Featuring Kari Gunter-Seymour at Art on Madison.

5/24 in Denver, CO - A very burger weekend: night one hosted by Cheeseburger Nebula Galactic Press at BookBar.

5/25 in Denver, CO - A very burger weekend: night two at Hooked on Colfax.

5/31 thru 6/2 in Long Island, NY - the Walt Whitman Bicentennial Convention (http://www.waltwhitman200.com/).

Looking Forward to the Following October Lit Events

Very much looking forward to the following October lit events! At some I'll be reading. At some I'll be manning the Crisis Chronicles Press book fair table. At some I'll just be present in support of great poets whose books I recently a hand in publishing:

10/4-5 in Frostburg, MD - Western Maryland Indie Lit Festival at Frostburg State University Center for Literary Arts.

10/10 in Cleveland Heights, OH - Steve Thomas' The Strength of Flowers, Terry Provost & more! at Mac's Backs-Books On Coventry.

10/12-14 in Kansas City, MO - Fountainverse: KC Small Press Poetry Fest.

10/16 in Lakewood, OH - Poetry Plus Featuring Juliet Cook (Malformed Confetti release) at Art on Madison.

10/20 in Mansfield, OH - Borderlands feat. Concrete Wink at Main Street Books.

10/26 in Bexley, OH - Poetry Night with John Burroughs and Anna Soter at Gramercy Books Bexley.