Meet Our Poets ~ Profiles B
Pamela A. Babusci
Pamela A. Babusci is an internationally award winning haiku, tanka poet and haiga artist. Some of her awards include: Museum of Haiku Literature Award, International Tanka Splendor Awards, First Place Yellow Moon Tanka Competition (Aust), First Place Kokako Tanka Competition (NZ), and First Place Saigyo Tanka Awards (US). She is the founder and tanka editor of: Moonbathing: a journal of women's tanka. She lives and writes in western New York State. Read.
Valerie Bacharach
Valerie Bacharach lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and is a member of Carlow University's Madwomen in the Attic poetry workshops. She conducts weekly poetry workshops with the women at Power House, a halfway house for women in recovery from drug and alcohol addiction. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Voices from the Attic, Pittsburgh City Paper, Chapter and Verse, Uppagus, Pittsburgh Post Gazette, U. S. 1 Worksheets, Poetica, and Pittsburgh Poetry Review. Read.
Catherine Baker
Catherine Baker lives in West Oxfordshire, England, where she is an editor, consultant, and writer working in educational publishing. Just over a year ago, she started writing a short poem every day. She started doing this because she wanted to get better at noticing the world around her. She’s lucky enough to live in a place that is quietly beautiful in an undramatic way. She believes that when you look at any place with attention, you start to notice the beautiful, the extraordinary and the bizarre. So that’s what she does, in the place where she lives. VerseWrights is her first publishing experience. Read.
Mary Jo Balistreri
Mary Jo Balistreri has two full books of published poetry, Joy in the Morning and Gathering the Harvest, both published by Bellowing Ark Press, and a chapbook, Best Brothers, published by Tiger's Eye Press. She has recent work in The Kentucky Review, Whispers, Plainsongs, The Tiger's Eye, Avocet, Crab Creek Review, Quill and Parchment, The Heron's Nest, Acorn, and A Hundred Gourds. The Poetry Storehouse has offered videos and a sound scape of two of her poems. She has six Pushcart nominations and two Best of the Net selections. Mary Jo is one of the founders of Grace River Poets, an outreach for women's shelters, churches, and schools. She maintains a website, to which she invites your visit. Read.
Kendra Ballesteros
Kendra Ballesteros lives in a small town in southwestern Illinois, on the Mississippi River. She is a novice poet with a passion for life and all it entails. Kendra is a mother of one beautiful toddler who inspires her best poetic verses. She can best be described as a survivor—believing poetry sets the soul free. You may view more of her work on Twitter @divorcequeen. She maintains and updates three blog sites, two on Blogspot: KendraBallesteros and Poetickisses4u, and one on Wordpress. She also posts poetry at PoemPigeon.com and WritersCafe. Clearly, she is passionate about poetry and is working diligently at her art. VerseWrights is her first publishing experience. Read.
Charles Bane, Jr.
Charles Bane, Jr. is the author of The Chapbook (Curbside Splendor, 2011) and Love Poems (Aldrich Press, 2014). His work has appeared in print and online at The Indian Diary, The Criterion: An International Journal in English, Clutching at Straws, Durable Goods, Word Pond, and museumviews. com. The Huffington Post described his work as "not only standing on the shoulders of giants, but shrinking them." He is the creator of The Meaning Of Poetry series for The Gutenberg Project, and is a current nominee as Poet Laureate of Florida, where he lives with his wife and son. Read.
Danny Barbare
Danny P. Barbare works as a janitor at a local YMCA. He has been writing poetry for 34 years and attended Greenville Technical College. He has worked with various poet laureates including North Carolina's Fred Chappell and South Carolina's Bennie Lee Sinclair. Additionally, he has attended many workshops and readings by such poets as Maya Angelou, Seamus Heaney, James Dickey, William Stafford, Amy Clampitt, and others. His poetry has been nominated for Best of the Net and he has won The Jim Gitting's Award. His poetry has appeared in The Santa Clara Review, Huizache, Blood and Thunder, Dewpoint, Art Times, The Santa Barbara Review, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, and numerous others. He resides with his family in Greenville, SC. He has several self-published books available on amazon.com: Gathered Poems, Christmas Poems, Family, and Being a Janitor. Read.
Julie Brooks Barbour
Julie Brooks Barbour is the author of the chapbook Come To Me and Drink (Finishing Line Press, 2012). She received an MFA in Creative Writing from UNC-Greensboro and is a recipient of an Artist Enrichment Grant from Kentucky Foundation for Women. Her poems have appeared in Waccamaw, Kestrel, diode, Connotation Press: An Online Artifact, The Rumpus, storySouth, and on Verse Daily, and anthologized in Bigger Than They Appear: Anthology of Very Short Poems, and The Way North: Collected Upper Peninsula New Works. She lives in Michigan where she teaches at Lake Superior State University and co-edits the journal Border Crossing. Her website can be found at juliebrooksbarbour.weebly.com. Read.
L.L. Barkat
L.L. Barkat lives outside of New York City, near the beautiful Hudson River. Author of six books, including Love, Etc: Poems of Love, Laughter, Longing & Loss; an experimental fiction and poetry title, The Novelist: A Novella; and Rumors of Water: Thoughts on Creativity & Writing (twice named a Best Book of 2011). She has appeared at Best American Poetry, VQR, NPR, Every Day Poems, and Scratch Magazine. Staff Writer for The Curator and Managing Editor of Tweetspeak Poetry, Barkat can be found at llbarkat.com. Read.
Gary Beck
Gary Beck has spent most of his adult life as a theater director, and as an art dealer when he couldn’t make a living in theater. He has 11 published chapbooks. His poetry collections include: Days of Destruction (Skive Press), Expectations (Rogue Scholars Press), Dawn in Cities, Assault on Nature, Songs of a Clerk, Civilized Ways, and Displays (Winter Goose Publishing), Fault Lines, Perceptions, and Tremors and Perturbations (to be published by Winter Goose Publishing), Conditioned Response (Nazar Look), and Resonance (Dreaming Big Press). His novels include: Extreme Change (Cogwheel Press), Acts of Defiance (Artema Press), and Flawed Connections (Black Rose Writing). Call to Valor will soon be published by Gnome on Pigs Productions. His short story collection is entitled, A Glimpse of Youth (Sweatshoppe Publications), and Now I Accuse and Other Stories will be published soon by Winter Goose Publishing. His original plays and translations of Moliere, Aristophanes and Sophocles have been produced Off Broadway. His poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in hundreds of literary magazines. He currently lives in New York City. Read.
DeMisty D. Bellinger
DeMisty D. Bellinger teaches creative writing, women's studies, and African-American studies at Fitchburg State University in Massachusetts. She has an MFA from Southampton College and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Nebraska. Her writing has appeared in The Big Smoke, Necessary Fiction, and Boston Accent Lit. Her chapbook, Rubbing Elbows, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. To view other publications in both fiction and poetry, she invites you to visit her website, here. A Milwaukee native, she now lives in Massachusetts with her husband and twin daughters. Read.
Andrea Beltran
Andrea Beltran lives in El Paso, Texas and moonlights as a poet. Her poems have recently appeared in Acentos Review, Blood Lotus, Pyrta, and caesura. Together with Nora Luongo, she’s working on an anthology about infertility, miscarriage, and alternative ways of starting a family. She's the web editor for Referential Magazine and she also blogs on her site at wordpress. Read.
Stefanie Bennett
Stefanie Bennett has published eighteen books of poetry, a libretto (performed by The SeymourGroup), and a novel. Over forty years she has acted as a publishing editor, tutored in The Institute of Modern Languages at James Cook University, and worked with Arts Action for Peace. Judith Wright (1915-2000), one of only two Australian poets considered for The Nobel Prize for Literature has written of Stefanie, "Her poetry is full of light and music. Thank goodness somebody thinks poems are forever. [She] goes back to Dickinson." Bennett has been: an artist (one solo exhibition when time was still young); a blues and folk singer, and a guitar player of some note; a mother, grandmother and great grandmother; an environmentalist and a Writer in the Community. By choice she lives on a mountain that is part of Australia's Blackall Range—population, 4000. Of mixed ancestry (Italian, Irish, and Paugussett-Shawnee], she was born in Townsville, Queensland in 1945. Stefanie's latest poetry title, The Vanishing (Walleah Press), is due at year's end. Read.
Shelby Bevins
Shelby Bevins is a young poet living in Kentucky locked between the urban sprawl and the countryside. She has been writing poetry since she was nine years old. Anything can strike her as a muse; her poems are usually love poems written to her beloved, the cookie jar, and everything in between, but also confront regrets, her lack of faith, and the struggles of youthful confusion among other things. She is an English and History double major at the University of Kentucky. Not only a poet, she is also a writer for the college humor magazine, The Black Sheep. Her poetry has been published on The Blue Hour and the literary journal The Bluegrass Accolade. Her blog, A Champion for Delusion, features more poems. Read.
Richard Biddle
Richard Biddle (aka "bid") has an MA in Performance Writing. He lives in Chichester, UK, where he continues to experiment with writing using the Twitter accounts @littledeaths68, @chimeragroup0, @echovirus12, and @cosmologgorhea. He has published most recently at several online venues, including Urthona, Brittle Star Magazine, poemspleaseme, and The Puffin Review. He also received a first prize award for a poem at The Big Lake Project. You can find more evidence of his work at his blog, Writings 43, and on his YouTube channel. Read.
Amy Billone
Amy Billone is a poet and a scholar who has published widely in both creative and academic journals and books. She holds a B.A. in General Studies in the Humanities from the University of Chicago and an M.A. and Ph.D in Comparative Literature from Princeton University. Billone’s recent poetry collection The Light Changes (2013) earned a Starred Kirkus Review and was chosen by Kirkus as one of the Best Books of 2013. The book won the IndieReader Discovery Award in Poetry in 2014. Billone is currently an Associate Professor of English at the University of Tennessee where she teaches courses on 19th Century Literature, Children’s and Young Adult Literature and World Literature. Her areas of expertise include Romanticism, Children’s and Young Adult Literature, Victorian Poetry, Gothic Studies, Creative Writing, Women Writers and Continental Poetry. Her scholarly book Little Songs: Women, Silence, and the Nineteenth-Century Sonnet (2007) is informed by her unique perspective as a woman poet. As the only extended study of nineteenth-century female sonneteers, Little Songs sheds light on the overwhelming impact that silence makes, not only on British women’s poetry, but also on the development of modern poetry and thought. She maintains a website, AmyBillone.com, and invites your visit. She lives with her two sons in Knoxville, Tennessee. Read.
Johannes Bjerg
Johannes Bjerg was born in 1957 in Denmark, which he still calls home. He writes, however, in both Danish and English, which is an important element of his work--mainly haiku and related forms. He is a founder and co-editor of Bones - a journal for contemporary haiku (visit here), and is anthologized in New Resonanse 8 (Red Moon Press, 2013). He has authored several books, including Penguins / Pingviner - 122 bilingual haiku, English and Danish, (Cyberwit, India, 2011); Parallels, English, (Yet To Be Named Free Press, England, 2013); Threads / Tråde, bilingual haiku, (Createspace 2013); Notes 10 11 -12 / Noter 10 11 -12, bilingual linked verse, (Yet To Be Named Free Press, England, 2013); Paper Bell Lessons / Papirklokkebelæringerne, bilingual haiku, (Createspace, 2013); and, Like a Plane / Som et fly, image and haiku, (ebook). Most of these books have a free e-book version here for reading and/or downloading. 2tongues, january-stones, and 5mountains are his three websites, which he invites you to visit. Read.
John Blair
John Blair was born in Denver, Colorado, and now lives in Fort Collins, where his work has appeared in several local anthologies. Writing for John is the "fulfillment of a lifetime dream." He has belonged to two writing groups for more than ten years, and has studied in writing classes even longer, "encouraging professors and risk-averse students." As a Colorado poet, he remarks that "those fleeting moments before sunrise along Colorado's northern Front Range are as necessary as orange juice and exercise." Read.
Phil Boiarski
Phil Boiarski has published poems and stories for nearly fifty years in small magazines and literary journals. His work has appeared in The Paris Review, The California Quarterly, The Rocky Mountain Review, Aspen Anthology, Indiana Writes, The Ohio Journal, The Minnesota Review, Green House, Handbook, and in numerous online publications as well as several anthologies. Most recently, his work was translated and featured in performance by Teatr Polski, and in Nowa Okolica Poetow, a Polish literary journal; in OFF_Anthologie, an international journal published in London and Warsaw; and in The Tangled Bank, Love, and Wonder & Evolution, an Australian Anthology honoring Darwin’s Bicentennial. Read.
Brendan Bonsack
Brendan Bonsack is an Australian poet and songwriter. His written work appears in print and online, has been translated into Russian and Polish, and has been featured in Australian and European festivals. Brendan is also a regular at spoken word events. His original songs have been released over ten albums and may be heard in the many cafes and bars dotted around his home city. He lives in Melbourne, amidst the rumble of buses and the ancient burble of the Merri Creek. His poetry and music is available at his website, to which he invites your visit. Read.
Dave Borland
Dave Borland, A native of Pittsburgh, graduated from West Virginia University as an English Major. He worked for 40 years and during that time wrote poetry and short stories as often as he could. Once retired, he began his lifetime passion of writing in earnest, publishing three novels and three books of poetry (all available on Amazon). His novels are 2050 ( Elderberry Press, 2007), In A Moment's Time (Friesen Press, 2012), and Hellespont (Word Association Publishers, 2014). His works of poetry include Rivulets (Luther Publishing, 2000), Reflections (Elderberry Press, 2009) and 'Burgh Ku, (self-published, 2016). His latest book is a take on haiku which he calls "'Burgh Ku,” because the poems are about people and scenes he sees on his daily journeys around his hometown of Pittsburgh. His poetry, then, largely comes from his observations of life, people, and the world around him. He participated in various local reading projects at the Carnegie Library, Pittsburgh, and the Mt. Lebanon (PA) Library, which highlights local poets. Read.
Ashley Bovan
Ashley Bovan lives and writes in Cardiff, UK and has recently completed his MA studies. He has been widely published and has a website at www.ashley-bovan.co.uk. When asked why he writes, he replies "I love the place where poetry becomes an act of discovery, an experiment in self-expression." Read.
Stephanie Brennan
Stephanie Brennan has settled, at least for now, amidst redwoods and fog in northern California. She has a B.S. in Education, but never taught anyone anything. Instead she roamed the world, returning to the U.S. to work at a wide range of jobs, and then hurried off again to another far-flung destination. She’s been writing fiction for many years, some of which may be found at her blog: People Do Things With Their Lives. Only recently has she ventured into poetry where to her great surprise she finds calm, and now can’t stop, doesn’t want to stop. She started a poetry blog, restraint unfettered, where she hopes to expand her micropoetry into longer pieces. Read.
Charlie Brice
Charlie Brice is a psychoanalyst and freelance writer living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is the author of Flashcuts Out of Chaos (WordTech Editions, 2016). His poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in over forty publications including The Kentucky Review, The Atlanta Review, Hawaii Review, Chiron Review, The Dunes Review, Fifth Wednesday Journal, Sport Literate, The Paterson Literary Review, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Pittsburgh Poetry Review, Spitball, Barbaric Yawp, VerseWrights, The Writing Disorder, and elsewhere. Read.
Judith Brice
Judith Brice is a retired Pittsburgh psychiatrist. Her love of nature and her experiences with illness, both her own and that of her patients, has informed much of her work. She has published over 30 poems, appearing in publications such as The Paterson Literary Review, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and other national publications. One of her poems has been made part of the permanent collection of the Holocaust Memorial Center in Famington Hills, MI. Judy’s collected poems appeared in Renditions in a Palette, published in 2013 by David Robert Books. Read.
Meghan Bright
There's nothing subtle about Meghan Bright, an intuitive and fearless writer. She's traversed the world alone and lives almost entirely off the grid in Colorado. She is an economist, and a professional writer/editor at Thomson Reuters, and poetry is her favorite song. Read.
Rhonda L. Brockmeyer
Rhonda L. Brockmeyer lives in Alberta Canada, but grew up in rural South Western Ontario, a childhood that inspires much of her writing. Some time ago, often using the pen name Lady Day, she ran a very successful poetry blog, Lyrical Love, featuring mostly free verse. She took time away from poetry for awhile when moving to Alberta and recently became active again. She now has a new poetry blog, tweets @VespersAria, and recently had three works accepted for the Dverse Anthology of Modern Poetry due out later this year. She is also working on her first volume of poetry. Read.
Sharon Brogan
Sharon Brogan is a poet, digital artist, and art journaler who lives in western Montana, but who "feels an abiding connection to southeast Alaska." Her professional life was focused in the field of social services, where she she was everything from a social worker to program director for a number of organizations. She spends time now at home, a place she shares with abundant wildlife. "Montana," she states, "taught me roots; Alaska taught me light, and dark; rain, and breathlessness." She has been published in a variety of Web venues, including Postal Poetry, MatriFocus, MiPOesias Magazine, Masthead, The New Verse News, MiPoradio, and Abolone Moon. She maintains a delightful and eclectic website of her work at Watermark: a poet's notebook. Read.
Adam Levon Brown
Adam Levon Brown is a published author, poet, amateur photographer, and cat lover, who hails from the Pacific Northwest. He has published some 150 times in eleven countries. He enjoys long walks through the inner insanity of his psyche, and he is an anti-imperialist peacenik with a love for books. He believes that you should turn your societal education into a living transgressive art piece, and parade it around for all to witness. When not tripping on his own musings, he enjoys reading fiction. He has been published recently in venues such as Burningword Literary Journal, Harbinger Asylum, The Stray Branch, Poetry Pacific, and Yellow Chair Review. Adam also maintains a website to which he invites your visit. Read.
Laura Lynn Brown
Laura Lynn Brown has been writing poetry since sixth grade. Her poems have been published in Two Rivers Review, Every Day Poems and Tweetspeak Poetry, and have won awards in statewide contests. She's primarily a nonfiction writer, with work in the Iowa Review, Slate, Cimarron Review, Art House America, The Curator, and elsewhere. She is the author of Everything That Makes You Mom: A Bouquet of Memories (Abingdon Press 2013), and owner and publisher of MakesYouMom.com, a new multi-author website. She works for a daily newspaper. More of her writing can be found at lauralynnbrown.com, and she invites your visit. Read.
Tim Buck
Tim Buck, now retired from "hardware and lumber type jobs," lives in a small, secluded house on a gravel road in Jonesboro, Arkansas. He writes poems and essays. His poems have appeared in the online journal Calliope Nerve and in the online and print versions of Edgar Allan Poet Journal #1. An essay -- "The Art of Conversation" -- appeared in the anthology Vocabula Bound (Marion Street Press). Tim is a co-editor of the emerging poetry journal Spectral Lyre. He also maintains a personal blog at My Dripping Brain, and invites your visit. Read.
Doc Burkard
Doc Burkard is a recent MFA graduate from Hamline University. He works as a delivery driver in the twin cities. When he's not working he enjoys listening to the Twins on the radio, cooking Hunan food, drinking Old Style and playing his guitar in open D. His poetry is influenced by Phil Levine, Chuck Bukowski, Charles Simic and Katrina Vandenberg; as well as musicians such as Bob Dylan, R L Burnside, Jerry Lee Lewis and Jason Isbell. He has a book of poetry finished that has yet to be accepted by a publisher and is working on a sci-fi novel. Read.
Wayne F. Burke
Wayne F. Burke was born in northern Berkshire County in Massachusetts, "during the year of hurricane Edna." His mother and father died before he was three, and he was raised by his grandparents. His grandfather, "Gramp" was a millionaire who lost all his money to hospitals and died during Wayne's tenth year. He wanted to become major league ball player, but instead went to Goddard College. After he graduated, he "Went to work, worked." He wrote largely prose until a year ago and now writes mostly poetry. He has published poetry in in FORGE, Industry Night, Sassafras, Boston Poetry Magazine, The Commonline Journal, and elsewhere. He has a book of poems due out this December entitled, Words That Burn (Bareback Press), Wayne has lived in the central Vermont area for the past 25 years. Read.
Emily Burns
Emily Burns is a graduate of the University of Kentucky and author of several very different genres. "The Children's Civil War Alphabet Book" is a children's picture book that gives a glimpse into life during the civil war. Next came an anthology of poetry, "Dalliance," published by Old Seventy Creek Press as part of their 2010 poetry series. Most recently, a 19th century cookbook titled, "Our Receipts". Emily and her family are involved in living history and historic preservation. When she isn't sewing or studying 19th century material culture, you might find her at one of her favorite local historic sites. Read.
Jeff Bussey
Jeff Bussey grew up in Oklahoma where he still resides with his three children. A fifteen year military veteran with twelve medals of commendation and achievement, he now works as an aircraft mechanic on Gulfstream private jets. He has also published under the name Cool Handless Luke. With over twenty works published in various anthologies he is currently working on his first book entitled Shadows in Bloom. Read.