POETS BUILDING BRIDGES Series 2, January 2023 – New Mexico, Romania, South Florida

Season One triangulated groups by location — from the US, UK, Italy, South America, the Balkans, the Near East and India.

Live on zoom. archived on Youtube.

New Mexico:  John Roche  |  John Macker |  Catherine Strisik |  Anna Martinez

John Roche edits Poetry Playhouse Publications with Jules Nyquist and hosts the Poetry Playhouse reading series via Zoom, as well as live poetry events in Placitas, New Mexico. After studying at SUNY/Buffalo and University College Dublin, he taught English for four decades, retiring from Rochester Institute of Technology in 2019. His latest is Joe Rides Again: Further Adventures of Joe the Poet (FootHills Publishing, 2020). 

John Macker, poet, playwright and essayist, grew up in Colorado and has lived in northern New Mexico for 25 years. He has published 14 full-length books and chapbooks of poetry, 2 audio recordings, an anthology of fiction and essays, and several broadsides over 35 years. His most recent are Belated Mornings, Atlas of Wolves, The Blues Drink Your Dreams Away, SelectedPoems 1983-2018, (a 2019 New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards finalist), Desert Threnody, essays and short fiction, (winner of the 2021 New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards fiction anthology prize), El Rialto, a short prose memoir and Chaco Sojourn, short stories, (both illustrated by Leon Loughridge and published in limited edition by Dry Creek Art Press.) For several years, he was contributor to Albuquerque’s Malpais Review. His one-act play, “Coyote Acid” was produced by Teatro Paraguas in Santa Fe in early 2022. He has just completed a trilogy of one-acts entitled “The Black Range.” He lives in Santa Fe with his wife Annie and two dogs.

Catherine Strisik, poet, teacher, editor, Taos, New Mexico’s Poet Laureate 2020-2021; recipient of 2020 Taoseña Award as Woman of Impact based on literary contribution; is author of Insectum Gravitis (finalist New Mexico/AZ Book Award in Poetry 2020); The Mistress (awarded New Mexico/AZ Book Award for Poetry 2017); Thousand-Cricket Song; manuscript Aikaterina,(semi-finalist, Philip Levine Prize in Poetry, 2020); and manuscript- in- progress, Dear Unholy. She is co-founder and co-editor of Taos Journal of International Poetry & Art, on advisory board of Pocket Samovar, is a Pushcart nominee, and has over 30 years of publications with poetry translated into Greek, Persian, and Bulgarian. https://www.cathystrisik.com

Anna Martinez is a mother, grandmother, performance/competitive/slam poet, and civil rights attorney. Born in Los Angeles at the height of its civil rights movements, she was then raised from school age in Española, New Mexico. Anna Martinez has been named the 2022-2023 Poet Laureate of Albuquerque, NM. She is also the in-house poet at Las Pistoleras Instituto Cultural de Arte in Taos and has held titles as ABQ Chicano/a City Slam Champ, XXX Haiku City Champ, and 2019 City Slam Champ for team Mindwell Slam. She is also on the board of directors for Burque Revolt Poetry Slam and opens her home for free to touring poets. She lives in Albuquerque.

 

Romania:  Claudia Serea  |  Andrei Codrescu |  Carment Firan

Claudia Serea is a Romanian-born poet with poems and translations published in Field, New Letters, Prairie Schooner, The Malahat Review, The Puritan, Oxford Poetry, Asymptote, and elsewhere. She is the author of six poetry collections and four chapbooks, most recently Writing on the Walls at Night (Unsolicited Press, 2022). Serea won the Joanne Scott Kennedy Memorial Prize from the Poetry Society of Virginia and the New Letters Readers Award. Her poems have been translated in French, Italian, Russian, Arabic, and Farsi, and featured on The Writer’s Almanac. Her collection of selected poems translated into Arabic, Tonight I’ll Become a Lake into which You’ll Sink, was published in Cairo, Egypt, in 2021. She is a founding editor of National Translation Month, serves on the board of The Red Wheelbarrow Poets, and co-hosts their monthly readings.

Andrei Codrescuwas born in Sibiu, Transylvania, Romania, and emigrated to the United States in 1966. He is the author of over fifty books of poetry, fiction, critical essays, and commentary on art, life, and literature. Codrescu’s latest poetry collection, Too Late for Nightmares, was published by Black Widow Press in September 2022. A fantasy fiction novel, Meat from the Goldrush, is also slated for Fall of 2022. He is a recipient of the Ovid Prize for poetry, the Heritage Award from the American Immigration Council, a National Book Award Finalist, and two-time winner of the Pushcart Prize. His poetry, stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Harper’s, and The Paris Review. More at www.codrescu.com.

Carmen Firan, born in Romania, has published twenty eight books in her native country and in the United States. Since 2000 she has been living in New York. Among her recent books are The Lost Shadow (New Meridian Arts), Changing Your Sign, Changing your Destiny – An Immigrant’s Horoscope (New Meridian Arts, 2019), Interviews and Encounters (Poems and Dialogue with Nina Cassian, Sheep Meadow Press, 2016),  Rock and Dew (poems, Sheep Meadow Press, 2013), and other collections of poetry: Afternoon With An Angel, The First Moment After Death, and Accomplished Error.  Her work appears in translation in France, Israel, Sweden, Germany, Italy, Poland. Firan is a member of the Poetry Society of America. The Romanian Academy published her collection One Hundred and One Poems (with a Preface by Andrei Codrescu, 2020). www.carmenfiran.com

 

South Florida:  Lenny Dellarocca  |  Michael Mackin O’Mara |  Denise Duhamel  |  Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello

Lenny Dellaroccais founding editor and co-publisher of South Florida Poetry Journal. His collections include the winner of the Yellowjacket Press chapbook contest- Things I See in the Fire, a full-length- Festival of Dangerous Ideas and a new chapbook online at 2River.org– One Hundred Moving Parts of Love.His poems have appeared in Poetrybay, Long Island Quarterly, Fairy Tale Review, and others.

Michael Mackin O’Mara, queer, POZ, born in Brooklyn, lives in West Palm Beach & is managing editor and co-publisher of SoFloPoJo (South Florida Poetry Journal) with work published in The Body, The Complete HIV/AIDS Resource, and Indolent Book’s HIV Here and Now Project among others. www.michaelmackinomara.com

Denise Duhamel’s most recent books of poetry are Second Story (Pittsburgh, 2021) and Scald (2017). Blowout (2013) was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. A recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, she teaches at Florida International University in Miami.

Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bellois the author of Hour of the Ox, winner of the Donald Hall Prize, and co-translator of The World’s Lightest Motorcycle by Yi Won. A Kundiman fellow and NEA fellowship recipient, she is a program manager for Miami Book Fair. Visit www.MarciCalabretta.com.