Subscriber News: March 2017
Recent Honors
Congratulations to Duane L. Hermann. His mini-chapbook, In Praise of Prairies, was published by Origami Poems. It is free for anyone to download at their website, in color or black and white. There is also a video showing how to fold and cut to make the book.
Congratulations to John Reinhart. His mini-chapbook, Horrific Punctuation, was published in January by Tiger's Eye Press in their Infinities series. The author calls this eight-poem collection "the convergence of science fiction and high school English." His full-length collection, invert the helix, described as "experimental/visual and unusual poetry in the vein of Aram Saroyan and Rob Stuart," was published in February by Pski's Porch Publishing. Two of his poems have been nominated for the Science Fiction Poetry Association Rhysling Award for best short and long poems published in 2016: "The Butterflies of Traxl IV", first published in The Pedestal Magazine, and "Exotic Heads Trimmed Neatly", first published in Eye to the Telescope.
Congratulations to Patrick T. Reardon. His poetry collection Requiem for David was published in February by Silver Birch Press. He kindly shares a sample poem here. Poet Achy Obejas calls this book "a tribute to a younger brother who died by his own hand, a balm to heal the hurt of loss and a return, however difficult, to beauty."
Congratulations to Terri Kirby Erickson. Her poetry collection Becoming the Blue Heron will be published at the end of March by Press 53, with a cover painting by Stephen White. She kindly shares a sample poem here. The book launch party will be held at 7:00 p.m. on Monday, March 27, 2017, at The Barn at Reynolda Village, 106 Reynolda Village, Winston-Salem, NC. Erickson will donate 10% of every copy of Becoming the Blue Heron sold that evening to The Centers for Exceptional Children, which cares for and strives to prepare children with developmental delays, orthopedic disabilities, and/or other long-term chronic health impairments for productive and fulfilling futures. Visit the author's website for more information.
Recent Publications
Diane Lockward, editor of Terrapin Books, and other contributors to the press's 2016 anthology The Doll Collection will be reading at the Albert Wisner Public Library, 1 McFarland Drive, Warwick, NY, on Saturday, March 25, at 1:30 p.m. Featured readers include Jessica de Koninck, Charlotte Mandel, Hayden Saunier, Kim Bridgford, Susanna Rich, and Mary Makofske. Antique dolls will be on display.
Mike Tuohy's story "A Dog By Any Other Name" was published in the anthology To Unsnare Time's Warp: Stories and Poems About Dogs (Main Street Rag, 2016), edited by Dennis F. Bormann and Gaynell Gavin. This is Mike's 16th published story. Visit his website at Bunker93a.com.
Rev. Robert P. Mitchell's memoir Sodium Balls is now available on Amazon in print and e-book editions. From the book blurb: "Sodium Balls chronicles Rev. Robert P. Mitchell's Jonah-like odyssey to the pulpit. From the cradle on, music drove Rev. Mitchell's life—both to Christ and away from Him. Someone once told him that he is 'existentially tied into his singing.' Torn between opera and faith, Christianity and Judaism, Sodium Balls takes the reader on a wild journey from dangerous Halloween (sodium balls) pranks to the opera stage to corporate board rooms to his first pulpit."
Robert Walton's poem "Reprise" was published on the website Your Daily Poem.
Darrell Lindsey's recent publication poetry credits include Wax Poetry and Art, Page & Spine, Poetic Hustles: Volume 2, Life Matters (Black Freighter Productions, 2016), and Stories of Music, Volume 2 (Timbre Press, 2017).
Bracha Nechama Bomze will be featured at PEN Women's Literary Workshop reading at WOW Café, 59-61 E. 4th Street, New York City, NY, at 7:00 p.m. on March 23. She will read the section of her book-length poem Love Justice (3Ring Press, 2015) commemorating the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire.
R.T. Castleberry's poems "Waiting on the Insurrection" and "Risking Phantoms" were published in February in Roanoke Review.
Carolyn Howard-Johnson's latest book, How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically, was favorably reviewed at Bassocantor, the blog of Amazon "Hall of Fame" top reviewer Chris Lawson. "I can see that the author is a very wise person, who also understands marketing and the review process...How to Get Great Book Reviews is the BEST material I have seen on this subject—by far."
Des Mannay had three poems published in a new anthology by Shabda Press, an independent press in California, whose mission is "to bring forth the diverse, luminous words and sounds of new, emerging, and established of voices." Nuclear Impact: Broken Atoms in Our Hands, edited by Teresa Mei Chuc, is the symphonic voices of 163 poets living throughout the world, in places such as India, Britain, Ireland, Canada, United States, Philippines, Japan, South Africa, Guam, Singapore, Poland, Australia, France, Vietnam, Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, Germany, China and Pakistan, on the impact of nuclear power and warfare on human life and the planet. The poems in the anthology take us through Navajo-Hopi reservations, the Nevada desert, Los Alamos, Hiroshima & Nagasaki, Three Mile Island, Trinity, air raid drills, Chernobyl, Pripyat, Ogoturuk Valley, Alaska, Fukushima, nuclear testing in India and Pakistan, and more. In the poems, we experience the legacy of nuclear power created by human hands and its effects on human life and all life on Mother Earth. Des describes his poems as follows: "'My Last Journey' is based on a line drawing, which bears the caption 'Two feet of a victim whose body vanished in a single puff; they stood upright, stuck to the concrete road', in Kenzaburo Oe's Hiroshima Notes (Tokyo, YMCA Press, 1981). I used both the picture and caption as a prompt. 'Dead Dolphins' is based on a news story of dolphins' bodies being washed up on the beach near Fukushima, found with radiation on their lungs. 'The Ruination' is based loosely on the concept S.A.J. Bradley's translation of the Anglo-Saxon poem 'The Ruin' from 'The Exeter Book' in Anglo-Saxon Poetry (London, J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1991 edn.). Mine is based on the hypothetical discovery of post-apocalyptic ruins."
Published: March 8, 2017
