Meet Our Poets ~ Profiles C
Ana Caballero
Ana Caballero is a former workaholic turned mother. The transition is not perfect. As such, she started a blog at www.thedrugstorenotebook.co where she posts her poetry and thoughts on books like it was her job. She was raised in Bogotá, Colombia where, as a child, she was addicted to the game “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego.” In fact, she caught Carmen, and, at that very moment, a large bomb went off in a nearby shopping mall. For one magical second, she thought the boom applauded her conquest. But no. She soon found herself safe in the USA. She lived in Miami, Boston and New York, mostly Miami. There, her eager, older neighbor forced her off her feet till she got swept. Now Ana is back in Bogotá with daddy and baby Lorenzo, glad that there is no Carmen to catch. Ana is debuting her work on VerseWrights. Read.
Samantha Campbell
Samantha Campbell, also known as "virginpoet" elsewhere on the Web, is a native of Ohio, and started writing poetry in her teens. Her work can be found mainly on WritersCafe and Facebook, and now on VerseWrights. These words from Samantha say it all: "I love poetry. It is the only thing that can fix me when I'm broken, break me when I'm fixed, remind me when I've forgotten, distract me when I'm too far in, wake me when I'm tired, relax me when I'm too alive, love me when I'm feeling unloved, and holds me when I am sad." Read.
Thomas Canull
Thomas Canull grew up in a number of locations in the United states, including Indiana, North Carolina, New York, Virginia, and Alabama. After graduation, Thomas was overseas as an 'Intel-op' for three years in the Far East and Middle East. He started writing Haiku and lives life by a Japanese philosophy "ichi-go ichi-e,” which translates to "one moment, one opportunity," the essence of which is to always live in the moment. He publishes periodically with The Asahi Haikuist Network, and VerseWrights is his first major publication outside of that network. Thomas is divorced and enjoys working on his house and in his yard. Read.
Rowena Carenen
Rowena Carenen is a graduate of Salem College and the University of Southern Mississippi. If asked, she'd say that poetry has been her passion ever since she realized that words could convey more than just the facts. Her poems have appeared in various literary journals and magazines, including The Revenant Culture and GERM, and her first collection, In the Meantime, was published by Neverland Publishing in September, 2014. She is currently living in Greenville, South Carolina, and while she agrees that pumpkin spice is pretty great, she prefers gingerbread in her chai lattes. Read.
Bob Carlton
Bob Carlton lives in Leander, Texas. The objectively verifiable facts concerning his life are so boring as to make them of no interest to anyone but himself. His poems and stories have been published over the years in numerous places, most of which no longer exist. His most important contributions to the history of American letters are a chapbook, The Laughter of Stones, published by Good SAMARitan Press (which also presumably no longer exists) and an e-book published by WordTechs Press, Dim Lanes, Open Space, which is no longer available from the publisher. His lone Pushcart Prize nomination in 2012 has convinced him of his international literary fame, and he patiently waits for the money and Pulitzers to start rolling in. Bob maintains a website for his work and invites your visit. Read.
Phillip Carriere
Phil Carriere was born in the territory of Alaska to a military family that quickly moved to Maine and then to Morocco and finally Italy, before returning to the US. He states: “My time in Morocco during the rebellion against French colonialists has had a dramatic effect on my understanding of life and the human experience. I saw first-hand the dance of life and death all around me.” He began writing poems at eleven after encountering the work of Sylvia Plath and Ann Sexton. Before returning to school in 2001 his work appeared in publications such as One Trick Pony, Aura Literary Arts Review, Shades of December and The Blind Man’s Rainbow. During his school days at the University of South Carolina he was selected to write a series of poems reflecting on the life and work of James Dickey for the conference held by the university in honor of Dickey’s work. He performed those poems along with other selected South Carolina poets in front of the surviving members of Dickey’s family. He was also published in Visions International and Yemassee. He received his MFA in 2007 and teaches writing at a local college. He has been married for forty five years to the same woman, has two fine sons, eight grandchildren and three great grandchildren. Read.
Dunstan Carter
Dunstan Carter is a writer and poet based in Manchester, England. Over the past 15 years he's had poetry published in a number of magazines across the UK but now publishes all of his work on his Wordpress blog. As well as writing poetry he also writes a modern culture blog called Slacker Shack, heads up business development for a social technology agency called Modern-English and helps manage a number of music acts as part of fledgling music management company, 1612 Management. He also writes and records music as part of The Abodes and Foilface .You can contact him on Twitter @dunstancarter. Read.
David Caruso
David Caruso began writing haiku and tanka after taking a course in Japanese poetry under the late Professor William LaFleur at the University of Pennsylvania. His work has appeared in many journals and anthologies including Modern Haiku, Frogpond, bottle rockets, Ribbons, red lights, The Saturday Evening Post and A New Resonance 8: Emerging Voices in English-Language Haiku from Red Moon Press. Awards include the 2007 Ronald J. Caridi Award presented by the University of Pennsylvania for “uncompromising commitment to scholarship, hard work, and the life of the mind.” David lives in Haddonfield, New Jersey with his wife Maggy and their three children. He maintains a website at DavidHaiku.com, where he invites you to browse. Read.
Sherry Chandler
Sherry Chandler lives on a small farm in Kentucky with her woodcarver husband and assorted small mammals and birds. Her work, twice nominated for both the Pushcart Prize and the Best of the Web, has been widely published in print and online journals and anthologies, including The Cortland Review, the William and Mary Review, Qarrtsiluni, and Kestrel. She has published two full-length collections, Weaving a New Eden and The Woodcarver’s Wife, both from Wind Publications. It is in the latter book, just released, that the poems here first appeared. Read.
Yuan Changming
Yuan Changming, eight-time Pushcart nominee and author of five chapbooks--including The Origin of Letters (2015)—is the world's most widely published poetry author who speaks Chinese but writes in English. Growing up in a remote village, Yuan began to learn the English alphabet at 19, and published several monographs on translation before moving to Canada as an international student. With a PhD in English, Yuan currently co-edits Poetry Pacific and runs PP Press with Allen Qing Yuan in Vancouver. Since mid-2005, Changming has been published in over 1,000 literary publications across 34 countries, including Best Canadian Poetry (2009,12,14), BestNewPoemsOnline, Cincinnati Review and Threepenny Review. Read.
David Chorlton
David Chorlton has lived in Phoenix since 1978 when he moved from Vienna, Austria, with his wife. Born in Austria, he grew up in Manchester, close to rain and the northern English industrial zone. In his early 20s he went to live in Vienna and from there enjoyed many trips around Europe. In Arizona, he has grown ever more fascinated by the desert and its wildlife, and especially enjoys the mountain ranges of southern Arizona, a region that appears frequently in his writing, including The Lost River (Rain Mountain Press), and two Slipstream chapbook competition winners; also full length books, including A Normal Day Amazes Us (Kings Estate Press), Waiting for the Quetzal (March Street Press), and The Devil’s Sonata (FutureCycle Press). As much as he loves the Southwest, he has strong memories of Vienna, and that city is the setting for his first work of fiction, The Taste of Fog (Rain Mountain Press). His newest collection of poetry is Bird on a Wire, from Presa Press. Read.
Martin Christmas
Martin Christmas graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts (Melbourne) as their first graduate director; holds an Hons. B.A. in Theatre Studies from Adelaide University; and an M.A. in Australian Studies from Flinders University (Adelaide). He was inaugural Artistic Director of the state funded Riverland Youth Theatre (country South Australia), and has directed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. He has directed more than one hundred plays. In 2012 he was a Friendly Street mentored poet and since then has been published in several anthologies, as well as Red River Review (USA), and soon, Illya’s Honey (USA). His poetry collection Immediate Reflections (Ginninderra Press) was published in late 2016. Read.
Christopher Clark
Christopher Clark is a London based poet currently entering the final stages of study at Goldsmiths, University of London. He has previously been featured in various publications such as Astronaut Zine and has worked on commissions, including The Royal Philharmonic Society. He enjoys mediocre 90's television and has a penchant for cheese. His website can be found at neveraboutyou.com and you can follow him @chriswillclark on Twitter. Read.
Brandy Clark
Brandy Clark credits Robert Frost as her inspiration to start writing poetry. She wrote her first poem when she was 14 and hasn't looked back. At the undergraduate level, she had work published in the Moon City Review, and you can see some of her more current work at The Camel Saloon. Brandy calls Missouri her home state, and between writing and submitting poems, she is presently working on her MA in Creative Writing at Missouri State University. She keeps a blog at brandydawnclark.blogspot.com, and invites your visit. Read.
Dennis A. Clark
Dennis A. Clark has been writing stories and poems since grade school. For prose, he likes magical realism, surrealism and slipstream; for poetry, he likes imagism. On occasion, Dennis also writes screenplays and creative nonfiction. He lives in Santa Monica, CA, where he teaches academic writing. Read.
Dane Cobain
Dane Cobain lives in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, in the UK. He is an independent poet, musician and storyteller with a passion for language and learning. When he’s not in front of a screen writing stories and poetry, he can be found working on his book review blog or developing his website, www.danecobain.com. His debut novella, No Rest for the Wicked, was released by Booktrope in the Summer of 2015. Read.
Ellen Conserva
Ellen Conserva was Born and raised in Massachusetts. She has spent most of her adult life, however, living in Thailand with her husband and five children, where she works in orphanages for children with HIV/AIDS. Read.
Caleb Coy
Caleb Coy holds an MA in English from Virginia Tech. He presently lives in Christiansburg, VA with his wife and son. He teaches college English to high schoolers in the nearby town of Narrows. He has previously been published in Brain of Forgetting, Haiku, and No, Achilles, and has poems forthcoming in Contemporary American Voices. His debut novel, An Authentic Derivative, was published in 2015 and is available here on Amazon. Read.
Jacqueline Czel
Jacqueline Czel is a poet/aspiring author who currently resides in Boston, MA. Originally from a rough and tumble part of NYC, and having lived in different cities in the Northeast, she often writes about her urban experience. She has written hundreds of long poems, if not thousands. She also writes short stories and on occasion light fantasy novellas for Kindle readers which keeps her from getting trapped in one literary genre. She can also be found sharing micro-poetry on Twitter @Jacqueline_Czel, and she publishes freshly penned poetry daily on her blog Iambic Utterances and Other Wayward Words. Professionally, Jacqueline works in communications, where she produces videos, magazines and other printed publications for a prestigious cancer clinic. Although she majored the classics in the past, she is currently pursuing a degree in communications and media studies. Read.