Video: Poets Building Bridges featuring poets from Cleveland, Wales and Červená Barva Press

On June 10th, I had the privilege of taking part in an event called Poets Building Bridges, hosted by George Wallace and the Walt Whitman Birthplace Association. The three Cleveland poets I chose to  feature are Doc Janning, Shelley Chernin and Christine Howey. Three poets from Wales (led by Ian Griffiths) and three poets from Červená Barva Press (led by Gloria Mindock) were also featured. Here's the video:

June 10th on Zoom: Poets Building Bridges

This Saturday, June 10th at noon Eastern: 

While I will be in Kentucky for the Country Fried Panda festival, I am also very much looking forward to being part of an ONLINE event called Poets Building Bridges, hosted by George Wallace and the Walt Whitman Birthplace Association, where I will have the pleasure of presenting three Cleveland poets who are dear to me (Shelley Chernin, Christine Howey and Doc Janning) in triangulation with several fine poet friends from Wales and from Červená Barva Press. 

For more information, including the Zoom link, please visit https://www.waltwhitman.org/events/poets-building-bridges-series-2-june-2023-cleveland-wales-somerville-ma-cervena-barva.

 

Crisis Chronicles Press publishes new book by Christine Howey

We at Crisis Chronicles Press are ecstatic to announce the publication of our first title of 2023, I Have a Poem About That by the amazing Christine Howey. It's always a joy and privilege to work with her.

I Have a Poem About That is 36 pp, 6 x 9", perfect bound, with cover art by Jessie Herzfeld. ISBN 979-8-88596-993-2. Available for $10 from Crisis Chronicles Press, 535 Parkside Boulevard, Cleveland, Ohio 44143 USA.

This volume features 23 poems, including "When We Die We Become Birds," "My Skiff," "Camus at Camp," "A Meeting of Suburban Deer," "Eternity on Elm Street," "Inside Out," "Invert at the Gem Saloon, Deadwood, South Dakota, 1876," "My Name Is John Doe," "Mount Everest," "Paul Desmond's Slot Machine," "Ten Ill-Conceived Kitchen Gadgets," "Maybe I Should Have Told Different Lies," "After I'm Gone," "Blueberries, Summer, 1944," "The Last One," "The Road Oft Taken," "Sign of the Cross," "A Bubble-Off Romance," "The Birds and the Bees," "The History of Television," "The Universal Usage Guide," "An Ode to Richard Howie," and "My Words Are Too Big Today."

 

Christine Howey is a performance poet and former executive director of Literary Cleveland. Her one-person play of poetry about her transgender journey, Exact Change, premiered at Cleveland Public Theatre and was selected by the New York International Fringe Festival. A film version of the play was an official selection of the Chagrin Documentary Film Festival. 

Christine has also been an award-winning theater critic in Cleveland for 25 years, currently with Cleveland Scene. She was named Transgender Leader of the Year in Northeast Ohio and received the Torch Award from the Human Rights Campaign for leadership on transgender issues. 

Crisis Chronicles at the 2019 Annual Poets House​ Showcase in NYC

11/30/2018 selfie at Poets House

All of our recent (2018-2019) Crisis Chronicles Press​ titles will be featured in the 27th Annual Poets House​ Showcase in New York City from June 27th through August 17th!

Crisis Chronicles Press titles they will feature this year include:

Serving by Kari Gunter-Seymour
Where Never Was Already Is by Steven B. Smith
Citizen of Metropolis by Christine Howey
The Strength of Flowers by Steve Thomas
Dodge, Tuck, Roll by Rikki Santer
Malformed Confetti by Juliet Cook
Drinking From What I Once Wore by Chris Stroffolino
Awaiting Time by Helen Shepard
Triple Threat by John Dorsey
The Law of Almosts by Mindi Kirchner
Our house on the sand by Elaine Schleiffer
Soul Picked Clean by Cat Russell
Gypsy Queen by Nicole Hennessy
and whatever else I might get done in time.

Most of our earlier titles are also in their permanent collection.

https://poetshouse.org/event/27th-annual-poets-house-showcase/

Special deal on our 10 most recent Crisis Chronicles books

Our ten latest Crisis Chronicles Press books! They are a $110 value (plus shipping) if bought individually. But PayPal $100 to jc@crisischronicles.com to get all ten postage free.

Titles you'll get:

CC#106 - The Law of Almosts by Mindi Kirchner
CC#105 - Triple Threat by John Dorsey
CC#104 - Awaiting Time by Helen Shepard
CC#103 - Drinking From What I Once Wore: Selected and Recent Poems by Chris Stroffolino
CC#102 - Malformed Confetti by Juliet Cook
CC#101 - Dodge, Tuck, Roll by Rikki Santer
CC#100 - The Strength of Flowers by Steve Thomas
CC#99 - Citizen of Metropolis by Christine Howey
CC#98 - Where Never Was Already Is by Steven B. Smith
CC#97 - Serving by Kari Gunter-Seymour

Ohioana Award Nominations

I am pleased to announce that five recent Crisis Chronicles Press titles have been nominated for 2019 Ohioana book awards. They are:

Serving by Kari Gunter-Seymour
Where Never Was Already Is by Steven Smith
Citizen of Metropolis by Christine Howey
Dodge, Tuck, Roll by Rikki Santer
Malformed Confetti by Juliet Cook

Fingers crossed! Good luck, you beacons of brilliance!

This Year's Crisis Chronicles Press Pushcart Prize Nominations

Crisis Chronicles Press has had the honor of publishing many excellent books by very talented poets this year. Alas, the Pushcart people only allow us to make six nominations. I would have preferred to have chosen twenty, as there were so many worthy candidates. But after some lengthy and very difficult deliberations, I finally narrowed down the field and submitted the following Pushcart Prize nominations:

"Serving"
by Kari Gunter-Seymour — from Serving (March 2018)

"Eclipse Myths"
by Steven B. Smith — from Where Never Was Already Is (April 2018)

"William Randolph Hearst, Diving Alone, San Simeon"
by Christine Howey — from Citizen of Metropolis (August 2018)

"Afterlife"
by Rikki Santer — from Dodge, Tuck, Roll (September 2018)

"assembly line doll head roach motel"
by Juliet Cook — from Malformed Confetti (October 2018)

"Questions for Google Home"
by Chris Stroffolino — from Drinking From What I Once Wore: Selected and Recent Poems (December 2018)

Best of luck to all of you!

Crisis Chronicles Press publishes Citizen of Metropolis by Christine Howey

Crisis Chronicles Press is thrilled to announce the highly anticipated publication of Christine Howey's newest poetry collection, Citizen of Metropolis.

"Christine Howey’s unique brand of conversational poetry blooms brightly in Citizen of Metropolis. Like a bee nuzzling flower after flower, I found myself buzzing from poem to poem, delighted to find tales of poems with wires showing, visitors from another world, reasons to sit, and babies in treetops. Howey asks questions we’d never think to ask, and then answers them, twinkle in her eye, with penetrating wit." 
—Dianne Borsenik, editor/publisher NightBallet Press, author of Age of Aquarius

Citizen of Metropolis is 32 pages, perfect bound, 6x9", featuring cover art by Steven B. Smith, and available beginning 2 August 2018 for $7 from Crisis Chronicles Press, 3431 George Avenue, Parma, Ohio 44134 USA.  Add $2 for domestic shipping

Where Do You Want It?

United States $7.00 USD Elsewhere $10.00 USD

This volume features 19 poems including "Citizen of Metropolis"; "I Don’t Like This Title"; "Things That Make Me Sit"; "Satisfaction"; "Rock-A-Bye Baby"; "One Second"; "My Muse Eats Cheetos"; "Destination Vacation"; "Meals"; "Losing It at Age 73"; "Edward Hopper, Motivational Speaker"; "An Evening Out"; "Beowulf at Breakfast"; "I Want to Write a Poem with the Wires Showing"; "My Grandson on a Sled"; "Taking Bryn, Age 7, to MOMA"; "There are Parts of My Body I No Longer Encourage People to Handle Freely"; Weather Report"; and "William Randolph Hearst, Diving Alone, San Simeon." ISBN: 978-1-64092-971-5.

Christine Howey is an actor, director, theater critic and performance poet. She was the Poet Laureate of Cleveland Heights, Ohio for 2016-2018. Her one-person stage play of poetry about her transgender journey, Exact Change, was turned into a feature film. As a play, it premiered at Cleveland Public Theatre and was an official selection of the 2015 New York International Fringe Festival. The film was an official selection of the Chagrin Documentary Film Festival in 2018. Christine has had four books of poetry published. She is also a slam poet and competed in the National Poetry Slams, in 2013 and 2017, as a member of the four-person Cleveland team. Since 2002, Christine has been the theater critic for Cleveland Scene and she also posts reviews on her blog, Rave and Pan. She has been named Best Critic in Ohio by both the Press Club of Cleveland and the Society of Professional Journalists. Christine was awarded a Creative Workforce Fellowship in 2014 from the Community Partnership for Arts and Culture, and an Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council in 2016, which also granted her a 13-week residency at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA. She was honored to receive the Illumination Award as the transgender leader of the year in northeast Ohio for 2015, and the Torch Award for leadership on transgender issues from the Cleveland chapter of the Human Rights Campaign in 2017.

Reading new work at Heights Arts in Cleveland Heights tonight!

art by John Carlson, Dana Oldfather,
Suzanne Head & Tony Ingrisano

Tonight, Thursday 5 April, at Heights Arts! Poets Mwatabu S. Okantah, Mary E. Weems, Christine Howey and I will read new work inspired by the exhibition Drawn Together: Emotional Intelligence and the Vernacular of the Heart. We'll also hear a talk from curator Josh Werling, as well as exhibition artists Suzanne Head, Tony Ingrisano, and Dana Oldfather. More info.

Heights Arts
2175 Lee Road
Cleveland, OH 44118

Reading at the Morgan this Friday

My next reading is this Friday (7:30 p.m.) at The Morgan Conservatory (a wonderful venue) in the heart of Cleveland. But the best reasons for you to go will be a multi-media poetry presentation by Dan Smith and readings by (all the way from the Toledo area) Leonard Kress and the newly-named Poet Laureate of Cleveland Heights, Christine Howey, plus art, refreshments, books and community. Thanks to Christopher Bowen of Burning River for drawing together this soiree.

The Morgan Conservatory
1754 East 47th Street
Cleveland, Ohio 44103
http://morganconservatory.org

RSVP on Facebook.

April 13th Monday at Mahall's will feature Christine Howey and Lee Chilcote, guest hosted by Ray McNiece

Ray McNiece will be our guest host this month. Christine Howey and Lee Chilcote will be our featured poets. Open mic will follow.

Lee Chilcote is editor of Fresh Water Cleveland and a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in many publications. He has a master's in English and Creative Nonfiction from CSU, and his essays and poems have appeared in Whiskey Island, Paddlefish, Steamticket, Belt and other publications.

While studying at CSU, he won the Leonard Trawick Creative Writing Prize for nonfiction writing. He was also the second place winner in the 2014 Lakeland Community College poetry writing contest and a finalist in the 2014 Best Cleveland poem contest. He is a former board member of the late, great Poets and Writers League of Greater Cleveland and the Lit, and is interested in building community through writing and building a community of writers in Northeast Ohio.

Lee has taught writing at Cuyahoga Community College, Cleveland State University and through the Cuyahoga County Public Library. He created and leads a local author book club called Read Local. He hosts a Facebook page, Literary Cleveland, to market readings and literary events. Lee was a finalist in the 2015 Accelerate civic pitch competition, sponsored by the Cleveland Leadership Center. Together with Amy Rosenbluth of Lake Erie Ink, he aims to create a literary unconference in downtown Cleveland this summer. Contact him to get involved.  

Christine Howey is a performance poet and her one-person show of poetry, Exact Change, had its world premiere at Cleveland Public Theatre in January, 2014. Also, it is scheduled to have a two-weekend, four-performance run at Playhouse Square in downtown Cleveland on June 12-13 and June 26-27, 2015. Her chapbook, If You Find Yourself Submerged in a Pond Under Ice, was published in 2011, as was an art book of her poem Inside, Out. Her poems have appeared in Pudding Magazine, Star Line and Muse, and in the anthologies What I Knew Before I Knew, Mercury Retrograde, While You Were Sleeping I Dreamt a Poem, Open Earth and multiple Hessler Street Fair poetry anthologies.

Christine is the theater critic for Cleveland Scene, in addition to posting reviews on her blog, Rave and Pan. She has been named Best Critic in Ohio by both the Press Club of Cleveland and the Society of Professional Journalists. Christine has had numerous articles published in The Plain Dealer, Northern Ohio Live magazine, Cleveland Free Times, Newsweek/Daily Beast, NBC News, Dame and many other publications. She is a former stage actor and director, primarily at Dobama Theatre in Cleveland Heights.