2:00 PM EST
Cost: Free
Event Description:
George Wallace and Walt Whitman Birthplace proudly present season three of POETS BUILDING BRIDGES: A TRIANGULATION PROJECT, inaugurated in March 2022 with the purpose of enhancing dialogue between communities of writers across the US and internationally. Based on a shared small-group experience, these Saturday zoom sessions engage three distinct and well defined communities of poets with each other to share work and foster further interaction. In Season Three, POETS BUILDING BRIDGES will build on that experience, triangulating national and international groups based not only on location but additionally offering key small press publications an opportunity to form a participating group.
THIS IS A ZOOM ONLY EVENT.
Find Zoom Information Below.
Live on zoom. archived on Youtube. For Season 2 visit our YouTube Channel >>
Flower Litter Poets: Mimi German | Karlostheunhappy | Pankhuri Sinha
Mimi German is an American poet who resides in the Steens Mountain wilderness of Oregon listening to the songs of Coyote coming down from the hills. She is Oregon’s first Beat Poet Laureate and the author of Beneath the Gravel Weight of Stars, Where Grasses Bend, and Flowers of the Litter.
Pankhuri Sinha Bilingual poet, story writer and translator from India. Two poetry collections published in English, two story collections published in Hindi, six poetry collections published in Hindi, and many more are lined up. Has been published in many journals, anthologies, home and abroad. Has won many prestigious, national-international awards, like the Girija Kumar Mathur Award, Chitra Kumar Shailesh Matiyani Award, Seemapuri Times Rajeev Gandhi Excellence Award, First prize for poetry by Rajasthan Patrika, awards in Chekhov festival in Yalta and in Premio Besio Poetry competition in Italy, Sahitto award in Bangladesh, and Premio Galateo in Italy for poetry in mother tongue. Has been translated in over twenty seven languages.
Karlostheunhappy hails from the dark Forest of Dean, England. His work has featured in International Times, Beatdom and numerous anthologies. His first collection was published by Gloomy for Pleasure in 2021, entitled OBLIVION: 200 Seasons (of pain and magic) and collects 30 years of writing. His second collection is called FLUX: the turning leaves.
Bolton UK: Dave Morgan | Linda Downs | David Wigmore | Laura Taylor
Dave Morgan is a writer and specialist in community learning. He has recently produced a series of radio plays for Bolton FM inspired by the work of local community groups. He is addicted to organising things and is responsible for open mic nights, jazz events, cultural cabarets, workshops and anthologies as part of his executive role with Bolton voluntary organisation Live from Worktown. He is currently editing his second poetry collection for Flapjack Press.
Linda Downs is a housing officer from Manchester who supports the homeless. Linda found her voice after leaving a relationship in lockdown. She has been sharing her work ever since at open mics and is a regular contributor to North West publications and anthologies. A champion of the under-dog, her writing explores love, trauma and a woman’s place in society.
Dave Wigmore uses imagined tales of washed-up minor celebrities, half-heard stories passed down through his family, and brief encounters with strangers, to create a surreal and peculiar world, attempting to examine who we are behind our facade of pride and affectation. We live small, mundane lives that are richly dressed with subtle acts of kindness, humour and humanity. Dave is from Bolton, northern England. He wants his poems to inspire a sense of laughter and fun, warmth and love, and just a tiny amount of menace.
Obsessed with words and language since her early childhood, Laura Taylor believes in the power of poetry as a means by which silent voices speak and hidden ears listen. She is a regular performer at festivals, gigs and fundraisers. Now in her prime, she understands fully the potency of kindness in a world intent on creating division. Her drabble pamphlet, Dear Audrey (and other drabbles) was published in February 2022. Her third poetry collection was published by Flapjack Press in August 2021. ‘Speaking in Tongues’ is a rallying call for action and challenges inequality, oppression and division with passion, objectivity, empathy and humour. It explores the slippery and inconclusive condition of language, the power of ideology, and the process of myth-making.
Cleveland Poets: John Burroughs | Judith Mansour | Dianne Borsenik
John Burroughs of Cleveland is the 2022-2023 U.S. National Beat Poet Laureate. He previously served as the 2019-2021 Ohio Beat Poet Laureate. He is a dynamic performer who has wowed audiences from Oakland to New York City and myriad points in between. His dozen plus books include, most recently, The Wrest of the Worthwhile (2023, Far Queue Press) and Rattle and Numb: Selected and New Poems, 1992-2019 (2019, Venetian Spider Press). He currently maintains the Cleveland Poetics blog and Northeast Ohio literary calendar and has served since 2008 as the founding editor for Crisis Chronicles Press, publishing over one hundred books by esteemed writers from around the world. Find him at www.crisischronicles.com.
Judith Mansour taught English at Cleveland State University, worked as editor and associate publisher for Northern Ohio Live Magazine, senior editor for Angle Magazine, and publisher for Fresh Water Cleveland. During her tenure as executive director at The LIT: Cleveland’s Literary Center, which sadly closed in 2011, she conceived of MUSE magazine which spotlighted the interplay of words and images, with art director Tim Lachina. She has worked in the academic, nonprofit, and arts community for too long to acknowledge. Her life is ruled by love of her family, words, food, and a pack of unruly cats who barely tolerate her, her husband, and daughter living in their home. She currently works as Chief Advancement Officer at Beaumont School in Cleveland Heights. Kan Zaman, published by Crisis Chronicles Press, is her first full collection of poetry and prose.
Dianne Borsenik is active in the northern and mid-Ohio poetry communities. Recent work has appeared in I Thought I Heard a Cardinal Sing: Ohio’s Appalachian Voices (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, 2022), Songs of Wild Ohio (Last Exit Press, 2023), and Poem for Cleveland (Red Giant Books, 2023). Raga for What Comes Next, a full-length collection of Borsenik’s poems, was featured in the 2023 Modern and Contemporary American Poetry course at Muskingum University. A new collection, Flight of Honey, was published earlier this year by Luchador Press. Speak of the Devil, an award-winning cocktail bar in Lorain, Ohio, named a cocktail after her (“Borsenik’s Law”), and Lit Youngstown printed her poem “Disco” on their tee shirts, both of which make her feel like a rock star. Find her on Facebook and at www.dianneborsenik.com.
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POETS BUILDING BRIDGES is produced by Poetrybay Productions for the Walt Whitman Birthplace.
