Crisis Chronicles Press publishes Oct Tongue 2, feat. 8 more of my fave poets

Achtung! Crisis Chronicles Press is pleased to present the long-awaited Oct Tongue 2, our biggest book yet (it's like eight books in one!). See October (and so much more) through the eyes of eight of America’s finest poets: George Wallace, Lyn Lifshin, Mark Sebastian Jordan, Juliet Cook, Kathleen Cerveny, Dianne Borsenik, Margaret Bashaar and Eric Anderson.

Where Do You Want It?

United States $15.00 USD Elsewhere $20.00 USD

Each of these eight writers wrote and submitted at least 31 poems in response to editor John Burroughs' October 2014 poem-a-day invitation. Life intervened and it took awhile to get this fine collection into print, but we believe it is well worth the wait.  Oct Tongue 2 features 258 poems on 328 pages, and is 6"x9",  perfect bound, with cover photo by Chandra Alderman. ISBN: 978-1-940996-47-9. It will make you laugh, make you cry, make you angry and make you glad you read it.

Available for $15 from Crisis Chronicles Press, 3431 George Avenue, Parma, Ohio 44134 USA.

Please join us for a special book launch event Saturday, November 18, 2017 from 2 to 4 p.m. during the Borderlands: Poetry on the Edge series at Main Street Books, 104 N. Main Street, Mansfield, Ohio 44902.

About the authors:

Eric Anderson is a graduate of the Vermont College of Fine Arts. His poetry has appeared in The Sun, Connotation Press, Prairie Schooner and other journals. His novella, Isn't That Just Like You? (Cleveland State University Press) won the inaugural Ruthanne Wiley Memorial Novella Contest. His "A Couple of Scars on My Back" earned a Lantern Award for best poem from The Lit. And his first full-length collection, The Parable of the Room Spinning, is available from Kattywompus Press.

Margaret Bashaar’s first book, Stationed Near the Gateway, was released by Sundress Publications in 2015. Her poetry has also been collected in four chapbooks and dozens of literary journals and anthologies. She co-organizes the annual event FREE POEMS with Rachael Deacon. And she lives in Pittsburgh, PA, with her partner, her son, and her kitty cats, and edits Hyacinth Girl Press (hyacinthgirlpress.com).

Dianne Borsenik is active in the northern Ohio poetry scene and regional reading circuit. Her work has been widely published in journals and anthologies, including Pittsburgh Poetry Review, Rosebud, Slipstream, Lilliput Review, The Offbeat, Chiron Review, Poems-For-All, A Rustling and Waking Within (OPA, 2017), and Resist Much/Obey Little: Inaugural Poems for the Resistance (Spuyten Duyvil, 2017). Crisis Chronicles Press published her first full-length collection, Age of Aquarius, in 2016. She won first place in the Best Cleveland Poem Competition in 2013 and 2014, and Lit Youngstown put her poem “Disco” on their tee shirts, which makes her feel like a rock star. Founder/editor at NightBallet Press and producer of BeatStreet Cleveland, Borsenik lives in Elyria with husband James and dogs Bodhisattva and Michel-Angelo. Find her at dianneborsenik.com.

Kathleen Cerveny, has been a working artist, an award-winning producer for Cleveland Public Radio, and Director of Arts Initiatives for the Cleveland Foundation. Her poems have appeared in the Southern New Hampshire University journal Amoskeag, the e-journal Shaking Like a Mountain, and in several Pudding House anthologies, as well as in in Future Cycle Press’ international anthology Poems for Malala Yousafzai. In 2014 Kathleen received the Robert Bergman Award from the Cleveland Arts Prize and she served as the 2013-14 Poet Laureate of Cleveland Heights. Her first collection, Coming to Terms, was published by NightBallet Press in 2015. Kathleen’s blog, Pay Attention, can be found on her website, kathleencerveny.com. She currently teaches arts management in the Conservatory at Baldwin Wallace University.

Juliet Cook's poetry has appeared in a small multitude of magazines, including Arsenic Lobster, Diagram, Diode, FLAPPERHOUSE, Hermeneutic Chaos, Menacing Hedge and Reality Beach. She is the author of numerous poetry chapbooks, recently including Red Demolition (Shirt Pocket Press, 2014), a collaboration with Robert Cole called Mutant Neuron Codex Swarm (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2015), and a collaboration with j/j hastain called Dive Back Down (Dancing Girl Press, 2015), with more forthcoming. Cook's first full-length individual poetry book, Horrific Confection, was published by BlazeVOX and her second full-length individual poetry book, Malformed Confetti is forthcoming from Crisis Chronicles Press. Her most recent full-length poetry book, A Red Witch, Every Which Way, is a collaboration with j/j hastain published by Hysterical Books in 2016. Find her at JulietCook.weebly.com.

Mark Sebastian Jordan is a refugee of the corporate business world, where he spent a decade in packaging purchasing. Finding himself compulsively writing and creating to escape the unfulfilling day job, he fled when a corporate buyout ended his position. Since then, he has only worked jobs that offer personal fulfillment and creativity. He has written three full-length plays, several one-acts, and four books. He covers concerts of the Cleveland Orchestra for Seen & Heard International and performs widely as a director, actor, storyteller, and improv comedian. His humorous mystery Slammer, Private Dick was published by Sinister Hand Media in 2017.

Lyn Lifshin won the Jack Kerouac Award for her book Kiss the Skin Off, the Paterson Poetry Award for Before It’s Light, and the Texas Review Award for The Licorice Daughter: My Year with Ruffian. She’s been praised by Robert Frost, Ken Kesey, and Richard Eberhart, and is the subject of the award-winning documentary film Not Made of Glass. Lifshin earned the distinction “Queen of the Small Presses” for her dedication to the small presses which first published her, and for surviving on her own apart from any major publishing house or academic institution. Her most recent books include Femme Eterna (Glass Lyre, 2014), #AliveLikeALoadedGun (Transcendent Zero Press, 2016) and Little Dancer: The Degas Poems (NightBallet Press, 2017). Find her at lynlifshin.com.

George Wallace has been described as ‘a kind of Max Ernst stuck in the up-down elevator of America’ (A.D. Winans) and a poet who ‘navigates between high and low diction with generosity, elegance and power’ (Angelo Verga). “If you want to know what America feels like in your mouth, read his poems out loud,” writes Huffington Post’s Robert Peake. The editor of Poetrybay, co-editor of Great Weather for Media and author of 31 chapbooks, George is a fixture on the NYC scene and travels internationally to perform, lecture and teach workshops. Poet Laureate, Suffolk County, LI NY (2003-2005). Writer in residence, Walt Whitman Birthplace (2011-2017).

Oct Tongue 2 book release Saturday 11/18 in Mansfield (plus pre-order info)

This month, Crisis Chronicles Press will celebrate/release the long-awaited collaborative book Oct Tongue 2, featuring at least 31 poems each by Lyn Lifshin, George Wallace, Dianne Borsenik, Eric Anderson, Juliet Cook, Mark Sebastian Jordan, Margaret Bashaar and Kathleen Cerveny during Borderlands: Poetry on the Edge at Main Street Books in Mansfield, Ohio. At least five of the authors will read. Hope to see you there!

To pre-order Oct Tongue 2, send $10 (plus $3 for shipping) to Crisis Chronicles Press, 3431 George Avenue, Parma, Ohio 44134.

Where Do You Want It?

United States $10.00 USD Elsewhere $15.00 USD

My "In Due Season" Nominated for Pushcart

NightBallet Press has just nominated my poem "In Due Season" (from the chapbook Beat Attitude) for a Pushcart Prize. What a thrill, especially to be included in such fine company (they also nominated great poems by Margie Shaheed, Kathleen Cerveny, Geoffrey A. Landis, Connie Everett and Lyn Lifshin). "In Due Season" was written for an Ekphrastacy program at Heights Arts and inspired by a Melissa Jay Craig sculpture. Thank you!

Click here to read the NightBallet press release.
Click here to buy a copy of my Beat Attitude.

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.