Yes, Poetry

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Contributor’s Notes

Charles Bassey lives in Abuja, Nigeria, where he works full-time with a financial services regulatory agency and writes part-time. As a creative writer with the sociological imagination, he stares at life actively and reflects on human existence and emotions through poetry, essay and creative fiction. His poetry has appeared in an anthology and on the internet. As a life traveller as well as a path follower who believes in parenting as a child, he envisions a world of radiant people living their best. He is a member of Abuja Literary Society.

Kory Beach is an undergraduate student at Colgate University; he is 18 years old and previously unpublished. He writes and reads frequently and hopes to one day be a well-known poet.

Les Bernstein has been published in the California Poetry Society Quarterlies, The Marin Poetry Center Anthologies, and other small presses. His chapbook, Borderland, was published by Finishing Line Press. He lives in Mill Valley, California with his very large and boisterous family

Ann Cummings, who lives in Florida, has had work published previously in a few select religious magazines. This is her first attempt at submitting to a secular magazine.

For about a year, writing has come to her as poetry. Brevity appeals to her now, packing the most into a few words. Briefly, her life experience has included motorcycle riding, mountain climbing, and other sports. Married twice, now widowed, she has one daughter.

Andrew P. Dillon received his bachelor’s of arts in English from the University of Tennessee. He has been published in Phoenix Literary Arts Magazine of the University of Tennessee, and Siren and Tourist, both of Knoxville, Tennessee. He writes poetry and short fiction, but not as often as he discusses music with his father, attempts to become fluent in Korean, and plays soccer. He strongly supports the use of semi-colons, dashes, and the serial comma. He can be reached at andrewpdillon@gmail.com

Casey Francis is currently pursuing a graduate degree in English at New Mexico Highlands University, but he’s desperate to get back to the humid summers and frigid winters of the Midwest. He has published or has work forthcoming in Boston Literary Magazine, Red River Review, Verse Wisconsin, and the Blog for Rural America (www.cfra.org/blog).

Will Greenway’s tenth collection, Everywhere at Once, won the Poetry Book of the Year Award from the Ohio Library Association, as did his eighth collection Ascending Order. Both are from the University of Akron Press Poetry Series. His publications include Poetry, American Poetry Review, Southern Review, Georgia Review, Missouri Review, Southern Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, Poetry Northwest, and Shenandoah. He is currently Distinguished Professor of English at Youngstown State University.

John Grey is an Australian born poet, US resident since late seventies. Works as

financial systems analyst. Recently published in Poem. Kestrel and Writer’s Bloc with work upcoming in Caveat Lector, Prism International, and the Cider Press Review.

John Grochalski’s poems and stories have appeared in several journals including The Lilliput Review, Underground Voices, Zygote In My Coffee, The Big Stupid Review, and Bartleby Snopes. Grochalski is the author of two books of poems The Noose Doesn’t Get Any Looser After You Punch Out (Six Gallery Press 2008) and Glass City (Low Ghost Press, 2010). Grochalski currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, where he constantly worries about the high cost of everything.

Born in Windsor, Ontario in 1960,Gregory Gunn grew up in small towns before settling in London in 1970. A graduate of Fanshawe College in 1982 as an electronics technician, he has worked in that field ever since. Mr. Gunn began writing during his tenure at Fanshawe and has done so for over thirty years. He is most passionate about poetry.

Some of his credits include: Cyclamens & Swords, The Toronto Quarterly, Glimpse Magazine, Ascent Aspirations, Butterflies Are Free To Fly, Carcinogenic, Psychopoetica, Afterthoughts, Ditch Magazine, One Earth, and myriad others. His other interests comprise music, astronomy, foreign languages, psychology, gardening, photography, and philosophy.

Joe Massingham was born in the UK but has lived the second half of his life in Australia. Major employment has been as a Navy officer, university student from first degree to PhD, tutor, lecturer and Master of Wright College, University of New England, NSW. Has run his own writing and editing business but retired early because of cancer and heart problems and now spends time waiting to see medical practitioners, writing poetry and prose and smelling the roses.He has had work published in Australia, UK, Eire, USA ,NZ and India.

Jeffrey Park is a native of Baltimore, Maryland. He has been a movie theater manager, an IT specialist and a middle school English teacher. He currently lives in Munich, Germany where he works as an educator in a private secondary school and teaches business English to adults.

Vincent Renstrom lives with his wife and daughter in Middletown, Ohio. He received his Ph.D. in Hispanic Literature from Indiana University in 1996 and spent a decade chasing that elusive tenure-track position before packing it in in 2006 to become a full-time househusband and stay-at-home Dad. He is one lucky son-of-a-gun. Since 2008 his poems have appeared in MARGIE/The American Journal of Poetry, Vol. 7, as well as in the online journals Alba, The Centrifugal Eye, Silenced Press, Slow Trains, and Tertulia.

Doris Shores, a New Yorker, has been a college-level English teacher, a pharmaceutical-advertising copywriter, and a freelance editor. Her earlier publications were feature articles, mostly in newspapers. More recently, a poem and an essay of hers appeared in 14th Street Gold.

Alyssa Grace Sorresso is a post grad student in London, studying for an MA in Applied Theatre. She ran away from her home in Chicago only to discover that she likes writing and making videos much more, and laughs about it sometimes. You can find more of her writing and videos at www.tactlessgrace.com, and follow her on twitter at tactless_grace.

M. G. Stephens has published eighteen books, including the novel The Brooklyn Book of the Dead (“a great, great book,” says Roddy Doyle) and the essay collection Green Dreams, which Joyce Carol Oates picked as one of the notable nonfiction books of the 20th century in Best American Essays of the Century.

Patrice M. Wilson’s poetry has been published by the Journal of New Jersey Poets, Nimrod, Barbaric Yawp , Hawai‘i Review, Hawai‘i Pacific Review, Byline, and Common Ground among others, and is forthcoming in Eclipse. She has three chapbooks by Finishing Line Press, On Neither Side (2009), When All Else Falters (2003) and A Different Current (2011). Her ancestors are African-American, Tsalagi (Cherokee), and Irish. She is an assistant professor of English at Hawai‘i Pacific University.

Amos Jasper Wright is a native of Birmingham, Alabama. After two years drifting hand-to-mouth in Boston, he returned to Birmingham and recently completed a master’s in English at the University of Alabama, Birmingham. Upon realization that he must work for a living, and after acquiring experience in architecture and planning, he applied and was accepted to Tufts University, where he will enroll in the fall of 2011 to begin a master’s degree in urban planning. He has high hopes that two master’s degrees will equal a PhD.

Editor Biographies

Joanna C. Valente is a MFA candidate in Poetry Writing at Sarah Lawrence College. She is also a part-time mermaid. More can be found at her website: http://joannavalente.com

Stephanie Valente lives and writes in New York. Her work has appeared in Italics Mine and other journals. She is currently working on a collection of short stories and as always, poetry. She enjoys candlelit smiles and diamond cut laughter. One day, she would like to become a silent film star. Her favorite desserts are crème brûlée and strawberry-rhubarb pie. She can be found at: kitschy.tumblr.com.

G. Taylor Davis, Jr is from the Milky Way. 

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Contributor’s Notes

Megan Coxe, an amateur poet in the truest sense, has just returned from a sabbatical year in Almería, Spain as an assistant English teacher, to be plunged back into American life. Now she splits her time preparing to pursue a MA in Hispanic Literature at the University of Texas, coping with the return to her birthplace, and plotting her next international escape.

Joseph Farley edited Axe Factory for 24 years. His books and chapbooks include Suckers, For the Birds, and Longing for the Mother Tongue (March Street Press). His novel, Labor Day, about a dismal future world without unions, is currently seeking a publisher.

Carol Lynn Grellas is a six-time Pushcart nominee and a 2010 Best of the Net nominee. She is the author of seven chapbooks with her latest collection of poems: Epistemology of an Odd Girl, forthcoming from March Street Press. She lives El Dorado Hills, California.

Robin Kalinich currently lives in Albuquerque, and has enjoyed a myriad of careers including clown, roofer, waitress, retail manager, and many others too numerous (or embarrassing) to mention. She fled a staid existence as a homemaker and religious zealot to begin an arduous process of self-actualization. Along the way, she found true love, and a penchant for expensive cheese. She currently works as a chemist and is pursuing a degree in Nanoscience, but her true passions lie in the creative realm. After completing her master’s degree, she plans on switching gears to pursue an MFA. Her blog can be found at: http://sparklysugardragon.blogspot.com/

Peycho Kanev is the Editor In Chief of Kanev Books. His poems have appeared in more than 400 literary magazines, such as: Poetry Quarterly, The Monongahela Review, Steam Ticket, Ann Arbor Review, Midwest Literary Review, Third Wednesday, Burnt Bridge, Istanbul Literary Review, Loch Raven Review, In Posse Review, The Penwood Review, Mascara Literary Review, The Mayo Review and many others. He is nominated for the Pushcart Award and lives in Chicago. In 2009 his short story collection “Walking Through Walls” (Ciela), and in April 2010 his poetry collection “American Notebooks” (Ciela) both were published in Bulgaria. His new poetry collection “Bone Silence” was released in September 2010 by Desperanto, NY. http://www.kanevbooks.com

Tracy Leddy is a poet and writer who has published Alison’s Shadow and The Song of Everything. She has lived on Nantucket Island for 30 years.

John McKernan – who grew up in Omaha Nebraska – is now a retired comma herder after teaching a long time at Marshall University. He lives – mostly – in West Virginia where he edits ABZ Press. His most recent book is Resurrection of the Dust. He has published poems in Atlantic Monthly, Paris Review, New Yorker, Virginia Quarterly Review and elsewhere.

Joseph Pentangelo majors in Linguistics at the Macaulay Honors College at the College of Staten Island, Class of 2012. He is a cofounder of Wigwam Press, a very tiny publishing house. His writing has previously been published in Weird N.J. and Operation: Three-Legged Dolphin (for which he, under an alias, wrote an ornithological linguistics joke). Other works of his are slated to appear in the Fall, 2011 issue of Caesura. In addition to writing poetry and short fiction, he spends his time traveling, studying, and playing music. You can find him here: truthofmasks.tumblr.com, wigwampress.webs.com

Carson Pierpont is a writer writing in the Pacific Northwest. He enjoys coffee, re-reading his favorite authors, going to the theatre alone, and, especially, as he is a Pisces, the ocean. When he’s not writing he’s worrying about not writing.

Phillip R. Polefrone is a young poet and essayist living in Brooklyn, near the river, trying to figure out how to get out of school immediately and stay in it indefinitely. This has so far landed him on the verge of a B.A. His poems have been published in The Broome Street Review, his essays in Mercer Street. He also edits West 10th, and undergraduate literary magazine, and is on the editorial team of Mercer Street, an annual collection of student essays. He hopes that his status as an undergraduate will not be leveled against him; as Marianne Moore put it (taken gleefully out of context), “I, too, dislike it.”

Melissa Sewell lives in Topeka, Kansas, where she makes a living slinging coffee and spends her free time constructing cardboard cities with her four year-old. Her work has appeared in seveneightfive magazine, Inscape, Susquehanna Review and others.

Craig Shay has had poems published or forthcoming in The Camel Saloon,

Clockwise Cat, PigeonBike, Catapult to Mars, Calliope Nerve, and Skidrow Penthouse. Samples of his work can be found on his webpage: www.craigshay.wordpress.com

Stacy Skolnik’s poems are never slight. Playful and deceptively simple, they nonetheless take on the big questions of human existence—life, love, time, God. Even when their subject is the self, her poems fulfill what Rilke names as the task of the poet: they “maintain contact with the farthest distance,” and thereby “link us with it.”

Sasha Van Hoven originally hales from Syracuse, New York, and is now located in Denver, Colorado. She graduated from SUNY Purchase with a BA in Lit, and would probably even leave her lovely, bearded boyfriend for Mr. William Faulkner if he was still alive today. She pays her bills by writing copy for a furniture company based out of Denver. In her non-triangle hours, she is a published poet and cereal connoisseur. She is also the co-founder of The Golden Triangle, which can be found here: http://www.thegoldentriangle.org/

Clinton Van Inman is a high school teacher in Hillsborough County, Florida, am 65 and a graduate of San Diego StateUniversity. I was born in Walton on Thames, England. My recent publications include: Warwick Unbound, Down in the Dirt, May, June, July, The Inquisition, The Journal, the New Writing, The Hudson Review, Essence, Forge, Houston Literary Review, Greensilk Journal Northwest Spirits Magazine, to name a few.

Timothy Volpert is a poet and musician from Topeka, KS, where he also co-manages a fledgling vegan-friendly cafe. His poems have appeared in Coal City Review, Inscape, Blue Island Review, andseveneightfive magazine. He loves you and wants the best for you.

Editor’s Biography

Joanna C. Valente is a native New Yorker. She has been featured in various publications, such as You Say. Say. (Uphook Press), The Westchester Review, The Houston Literary Review, Side B Magazine, among others. She is currently attending Sarah Lawrence College as an MFA candidate in poetry. In the future, she would like to live by the ocean.

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Contributor’s Notes

Andrea Beltran lives in El Paso, Texas and moonlights as a poet. She studied poetry under Jack Myers at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas and has recently had poems appear in The Café Review and Flashquake. Her ramblings about poetry, food, and her journey as she learns to operate and bond with her Diana Mini camera can be found at http://andreakristen.blogspot.com.

Jim Davis is a graduate of Knox College and now lives, writes and paints in Chicago. Jim edits the North Chicago Review, and will be appearing as the feature artist for the upcoming issue of Palooka Magazine. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in After Hours, Blue Mesa Review, Poetry Quarterly, The Ante Review, Chiron Review, and Contemporary American Voices, among others. www.jimdavispoetry.com

Justin Henry Fallon is from Western Mass. Now he is an English teacher in Uganda. He is also a contributor to The Free George.

Kevin M. Hibshman has had his poetry published in numerous small magazines and journals in several countries for the past twenty-one years. He edited his own poetry magazine, Fearless, which featured the work of both established and up and coming writers for sixteen years. In addition, he is author or co-author of fourteen chapbooks of poetry. He received a BA in Liberal Arts from Union Institute and University/Vermont College in 2010.

N.W. Hicks is a mild-mannered dirt sniffer by day & a crime fighting poet by night. For 2011, he served as Poetry Editor for Manhattanville’s literary journal, INKWELL, and has since then begun a quest for money. If any have discovered the secret location of said money, he urges you to help a brother out.

Nathan Hunt grew up on a farm near Eugene, Oregon. I received a Bachelor’s Degree in Writing and Literature (with a minor in Spanish language) from George Fox University in the fall of 2009. I work at a winery in Newberg, Oregon. My poems have been published in The Iconoclast, Mudfish, Perceptions, and The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review.

Tyrel Kessinger lives in Louisville, Kentucky where he toils away the barbarous hours of the day as a Braille Transcriber. There’s the soon-to-be wife, the two dogs, the cat and all the other ingredients of a fairly normal life. He is the recipient of the 2011 Literary LEO Short Fiction award and his work has been published in LEO Magazine. Several of his poems are forthcoming in Grey Sparrow, MILK SUGAR and Flywheel Magazine.

Sonnet Mondal is the author of six books of poetry including a poetry bestseller and is the pioneer of the 21 line fusion sonnet form of poetry. His works have been published in several International literary magazines and have been translated into Macedonian, Italian, Arabic, Hindi, Telugu and Bengali. He was awarded Poet Laureate from Bombadil Publishing in 2009, Doctor of Literature from United Writers’ Association in 2010, Azsacra International Poetry award in 2011 and was inducted in the prestigious Significant Achievements Plaque in the museum of Bengal Engineering an Science University, Shibpur. He has also been a featured poet at World Poetry Reading Series, Canada and Asian American Poetry project, U.S.A. At present he is the managing editor of the Enchanting Verses Journal of Poetry. Website: www.sonnetmondal.co.cc

Donia Mounsef grew up in Lebanon, lived in Connecticut and in every major city in Canada. She is a bilingual poet (French, English), dramaturge and performance theorist. Her work has been published in The Toronto Quarterly, The Labor of Love, Spitting Image; her performance poetry has been performed on stages in Toronto, Vancouver, Edmonton, Paris, and New Haven. She lives in Edmonton, and teaches poetry, drama and performance studies at the University of Alberta.

Michael O’Connor was born in Hartford, CT and graduated from the University of Connecticut. After spending some time in Ireland and Prince Edward Island, he returned to New York City to pursue screenwriting. After several successes in the film industry as a writer and independent film producer, Michael turned his writing to non-fiction historical works on the Second World War, publishing articles for the Centre de Recherches et d’Informations sur la Bataille des Ardennes. He has maintained deep interest for poetry, being influenced by Robert Frost, William Butler Yeats, and James Joyce. Michael was most recently published in the Birmingham Arts Journal. He currently resides in the Boston area.

Ivy Page’s love of poetry stemmed from listening to her Grandmother reading poetry aloud to her as a child. It took shape as lyrics in the music she wrote during her late teens and early twenties, and turned to poems on the page and experimentation with performance poetry over the years. Ivy’s work has appeared in journals nationally such as, Poetry Quarterly, Grey Sparrow Press, andNight Train, and anthologized in Knocking at the Door Poems About Approaching the Other. Her first book, Any Other Branch, will be available through Salmon Poetry of Ireland in March 2012. Her second book, Elemental, will be out with Salmon Poetry in 2014. She is the editor and founder of Organs of Vision and Speech Magazine. For more about Ivy visit,www.poeticentanglement.com

Sebastian Paramo is a native Texan and has taught essay writing and creative writing to high school students in Yonkers, New York and is the current Managing Director of the annual Sarah Lawrence College Poetry Festival. His translations and poetry have been featured in Babel: a student translation magazine, The Nashville Review and forthcoming in The Houston Literary Review.

Justin Robinson has recently been awarded 1st place in a Robert Emmons poetry competition. He currently lives with his girlfriend in Santa Barbara, CA, where he studies creative writing at California State University Channel Islands.

Diana Salier is the author of Wikipedia Says It Will Pass (Red Ceilings Press, 2011). Her poems have recently appeared in Every Day Genius, Robot Melon, 3:AM Magazine, and Red Lightbulbs, among other places. She thinks a lot about space travel but has never been to outerspace. She lives and writes in San Francisco.

Hallie Steiner is a Senior studying creative writing at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego. She was born in New York and moved to California when she was nine; she considers herself bicoastal. Her work has been featured in her campus literary magazine, The Driftwood. She enjoys poetry slams, crossword puzzles, and arranging word magnets on refrigerators.

Felino A. Soriano (b. 1974) is a case manager and advocate for adults with developmental and physical disabilities. In 2010, he was chosen for the Gertrude Stein “rose” prize for creativity in poetry from Wilderness House Literary Review. Philosophical studies collocated with his connection to various idioms of jazz explains motivation for poetic occurrences. For information, including his 44 print and electronic collections of poetry, over 2,700 published poems, interviews, and editorships, please visit his website: www.felinoasoriano.info.

Editor’s Biography

Joanna C. Valente is a native New Yorker. She has been featured in various publications, such as You Say. Say. (Uphook Press), The Westchester Review, The Houston Literary Review, Side B Magazine, among others. She is also the founder and editor of the online literary publication, Yes, Poetry. In the fall of 2011, she will begin attending Sarah Lawrence College as an MFA candidate in poetry. In the future, she would like to live by the ocean.