Alice James Books - 50th Anniversary with Carey Salerno and Stacy Spencer

Planet Poet-Words in Space – NEW PODCAST!  LISTEN to my WIOX broadcast (aired February 13th, 2024) featuring award-winning poets Carey Salerno and Stacy L. Spencer, who are on the show to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Alice James Books, an important Press solely dedicated to poetry.
Visit: Sharonisraelpoet.com. Visit Alice James Books

 Carey Salerno is the executive director and publisher of Alice James Books. She is the author of Shelter (2009) and Tributary (2021), and her poems, essays, and articles about her work as a publisher can be found in places like American Poetry Review, NPR, The New York Times. She has poems forthcoming in the Alaska Quarterly Review, Los Angeles Review, and ONLY POEMS. Salerno serves as the co-chair for LitNet: The Literary Network and occasionally teaches poetry and publishing arts at the University of Maine at Farmington. In 2021, she received the Golden Colophon Award for Independent Paradigm Publishing from CLMP for the leadership and contributions of Alice James Books in indie literature.

 Stacy L. Spencer is a poet, fiction writer, and nonprofit consultant. After attending the Interlochen Arts Academy where she studied with Jack Driscoll, she graduated from Amherst College and received her doctorate from the University of Michigan in American Studies. At Amherst she won the Collin Armstrong Poetry Prize. Her positions in New York City nonprofits, where she focused on fundraising, include Barnard College, The Public Theater, the Apollo Theater, and the Museum of the City of New York. She has also taught arts management at the Lubin School of Business at Pace University. Since 2016 Stacy has served on the board of Alice James Books. Her poems have appeared in Thimble Literary Magazine, Topical Poetry, and Detroit Lit Mag. Stacy is currently writing a novel. 

Planet Poet-Words in Space – NEW PODCAST!  LISTEN to my WIOX show (originally aired December 19th, 2023) featuring award-winning poet and activist MARY GILLILAND, who discusses and reads from her latest poetry collection The Devil’s Fools and from her forthcoming collection Ember Days. Pamela Manché Pearce, Planet Poet’s erudite and entertaining Poet-at-Large, also joins us on the show.  Visit: Sharonisraelpoet.com. Visit: marygilliland.com.

 Mary Gilliland is the author of two award-winning poetry collections: The Ruined Walled Castle Garden (2020) and The Devil’s Fools (2022). Her latest collection Ember Days is forthcoming from Codhill Press in 2024. Mary’s poems are widely published in print and online literary journals and most recently anthologized in Wild Gods: The Ecstatic in Contemporary Poetry and Prose, and Nuclear Impact: Broken Atoms In Our Hands. After college she apprenticed to Gary Snyder in the Sierra foothills where she studied Buddhism and helped to build a wood- framed public school. Mary retired early from teaching at Cornell in order to devote herself to poetry. 

 “Mary Gilliland’s magisterial new collection, The Devil’s Fools, opens in myth and magic, but its vast reach is deeply rooted in her reverence for earth and all earthly creations…. At once eco-sensual and erudite, Gilliland writes a nuanced poetry that richly investigates humanity’s contradictory capacities to destroy and to love…. From first to last, I am spellbound by the largesse of vision and the beauty of this wondrous collection.” -- Cynthia Hogue

 “Mary Gilliland brings to her work the rich flavors of the natural world, yet her destination is clearly news of the inner self, its perceptions, its relationships with others.  She is not afraid of delight, neither does she shirk the hard tasks of anger, pain, and deep caring.” —Mary Oliver

Planet Poet-Words in Space – NEW PODCAST!  LISTEN to my WIOX show (originally aired November 21st, 2023) featuring Maureen Buchanan Jones, poet, writer and Amherst Writers and Artists (AWA) Training Director, who discusses and reads from her books blessed are the menial chores and Maud & Addie. Pamela Manché Pearce, Planet Poet’s Poet-at-Large also joins us on the show. Visit: Sharonisraelpoet.com. Visit Maureen Buchanan Jones.

 Maureen Buchanan Jones is Training Director and former Executive Director of Amherst Writers & Artists. Maureen has led workshops with diverse writers including people who have experienced domestic violence, high school students, the bereaved, those who are in recovery, veterans, sexual assault survivors, and members of the LGBTQIA2S+ community. She leads writing workshops and retreats online and in Massachusetts and California. With a PhD in English Literature and a Phi Beta Kappa, Maureen has taught at, Holyoke Community College, Westfield State College, the University of Massachusetts, The Conway School of Environmental Design, and the Pre-College Writing Program at Smith College. Her poetry has appeared in Woman in Natural Resources, 13th Moon, Peregrine, North Dakota Quarterlyamong others. Her prose has appeared in Every Day Fiction, and Orion. Her poetry book, blessed are the menial chores was published by Amherst Writers & Artists Press. Her novel, Maud & Addie, was published by Regal Publishing House. Visit Maureen Buchanan Jones

 About blessed are the menial chores:   “…Jones’ poems teach us the ways to hold close and how we must learn to let go.  Should anyone ask what poetry is, hand them a copy of this book.”  --Sue Brannan Walker, Poet Laureate of Alabama 2003-2012, her author of Blood Will Bear Your Name won Book of the Year from Alabama State Poetry Society.

 About Maud & Addie:  "An absorbing tale of two young sisters from Halifax, Nova Scotia, who are swept out to sea and their trials and risk-taking as castaways. [...] With confident pacing that rises and falls like the waves, the book charts the girls’ progress as they enter survival mode, growing more resilient and resourceful with each test." —Kirkus Reviews 

Planet Poet-Words in Space – NEW PODCAST!  LISTEN to my WIOX show (originally aired Oct. 10, 2023) featuring poet Pui Ying Wong and her new collection Fanling In October, and co-host poet Lee Slonimsky. 

 Poet Pui Ying Wong’s new collection, Fanling In October has just been published by Barrow Street Press. She’s also the author of three other collections: The Feast, An Emigrant’s Winter and Yellow Plum Season along with two chapbooks: Sonnet For a New Country and Mementos. She has received a Pushcart Prize. Her poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Plume, Chicago Quarterly Review, New Letters, Zone 3 among many others. Born in Hong Kong she now lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with her husband, the poet Tim Suermondt.

Lee Slonimsky’s latest books are Pythagoras and the Animals in Greece, translated by Stamatis Polenakis and Caterina Marikoupou, Pythagoras in Love in Italy, translated by Enrico Bernard, and Bright Yellow Buzz in the United States.  On November 2, he will lecture at the Keats/Shelley House Museum in Rome on the historical connections among Pythagroras, Petrarch, Shakespeare, and John Keats.  His wife, Carol Goodman, two time winner of the Mary Higgins Clark Award, is just out with her latest literary thriller, The Bones of the Story.

Planet Poet-Words in Space – NEW PODCAST!  LISTEN to my WIOX show (originally aired September 26th, 2023) featuring the wonderful poet, writer and visual artist, Anique Sara Taylor who reads from and talks about her new, award-winning Chapbook Civil Twilight. Pamela Manché Pearce, Planet Poet’s Poet-at-Large is also on the show, bringing us her unique insights into poetry and poets. 

Anique Sara Taylor’s chapbook Civil Twilight won the 2022 Blue Light Poetry Prize. Her full-length poetry book Where Space Bends was published in May 2020 by Finishing Line Press.  Anique’s other chapbooks include When Black Opalescent Birds Still Circled the Globe, chosen Finalist by Harbor Review’s Inaugural 2023 Jewish Women’s Prize; Feathered Strips of Prayer Before Morning, chosen Finalist by Minerva Rising Chapbook Competition 2023 and Cobblestone Mist, Longlisted Finalist for the 2023 Harbor Editions’ Marginalia Series. Her Holocaust poem “The Train” was a 2019 Charter Oak Award Finalist for Best Historical Poem. https://aniquesarataylor.com

Anique Sara Taylor's award-winning collection is mesmerizing. Thirty poems, thirty words each, shimmer with a refined intensity at once both taut and expansive. Within this tight form, her emotional richness is as lyric as it is restrained. Grief's shadow, loss-yet love of the stubborn, simple glories of existence, emerge as gifts of her inner iconography. These resonate with Taylor's organic allusions to the natural world, her outer landscape. Starfish, eagles, crickets, thunderstorms, a sycamore tree-all conspirators in her survival story. "Half daughter, half swallow," she writes, "if only I could tie down the corners of the air." In Civil Twilight, she has done just that.- Leslie T. Sharpe, Author of The Quarry Fox and Other Critters of the Wild Catskills

 …these brief poems filled, line by line, with such rich diction. [Her] formal gestures--30 words, five lines--keep the poems taut, & with stresses, the insistent spondees throughout, emphasize the emotional resonance underlying the book: shy mouth nailed shut / sheets creased white / cockroach shells / quill-shaped mist / bones break naked / beaks crave rain / …so many lovely phrasings, all toward expressing & containing the undercurrent of grief. "Bittersweet," [she] says, yes. - Michael Waters, innerman (Etruscan Press, 2023), Border Lines: Poems of Migration (Knopf, 2020)

 Civil Twilight is a stunningly crafted sequence of small poems that deliver both an architecture and music reminiscent of the stanza. Here, the reader…enters room after room of discovery…These poems, like little vestibules, exist between…moments that illuminate the inner life…between daylight and darkness, past and present, between the living and the dead, between a daughter and the memory of a father. Taylor's poems are keenly attuned to the language of the natural world and to all the mysteries that come with it. - Sean Nevin, Author of Oblivio Gate

Planet Poet-Words in Space – NEW PODCAST!  If you missed yesterday’s broadcast (September 12th), LISTEN to my WIOX show featuring the founding members of PRP (Poets Read Poetry) who have gathered together to read and discuss the poetry of Carl Sandburg.

 Pamela Manché Pearce, Planet Poet’s own Poet-At-Large, began PRP in her Garrison, New York living room in 2010 with a simple idea: to have poets   gather and discuss the poems of other poets based on a pre-determined theme followed by a shop talk discussion of the members’ own writing lives. Poets Jo Pitkin, Andrew Acciaro and Frank Ortega joined Pamela to form the original group which disbanded in 2014, and was revived on Zoom in the summer of 2021, when I was invited to become the fifth member.

 
Here's a bit about the members of PRP:

 
Andrew Acciaro
 Li Po sailed the Yangzi
Shelley had his Spezia
Blake his Felpham
Cyrano the Moon
Andrew supine
On the supple banks of the river that flows both ways…
Has his poet’s panache and Blarney kissed plume…
Andrew lives in Peekskill, N.Y.

Sharon Israel's chapbook Voice Lesson was published in 2017 by Post Traumatic Press. She won Brooklyn College’s Leonard B. Hecht Poetry Explication Award, was nominated for “Best of the Net” 2016 and won Four Lines’ 2020 winter poetry challenge. Sharon hosts Planet Poet-Words in Space and lives in the Catskills with her husband Robert Cucinotta.  For more information: https://linktr.ee/sharonisraelpoet.


Frank Ortega
“As a seeker of wisdom and peace, following those paths in life and art,my work is often about race, poverty and oppression--until we have erased them.What I take in becomes my work, those messages we send to each other, always trying to make this a better world”.   Frank now resides near Boulder, Colorado.  https://artlitlab.org/artists/frank-ortega

 Pamela Manché Pearce
Pushcart Prize nominee, Pamela Manché Pearce is the author of the poetry chapbook, WIDOWLAND (Green Bottle Press, London) and the co-author of THE CHARLES STREET TRIO: A Novel in Three Voices (Daisy H Productions) both of which are available on Amazon. The Poet-at-Large on WIOX’s Planet Poet-Words in Space is on Instagram at #pamelamanchepearceNYC.  Pamela lives in Manhattan.

 Jo Pitkin
A Hudson Valley native, Jo Pitkin is the author of a chapbook and four full-length poetry collections. She works as a freelance educational writer creating English language arts materials for K through 12 students and is a teaching artist with The Poetry Barn.  Jo lives in Cold Spring N.Y. www.jopitkin.com

Planet Poet-Words in Space – NEW PODCAST!  LISTEN to my WIOX show (originally aired July 18th, 2023) featuringpoet, writer and historian Bill Birns who will discuss and read from his latest book Fleischmanns in Verse and other works.  Planet Poet’s Poet-at-Large, writer and visual artist Pamela Manché Pearce also joins us on the program to bring us her unique poetic insights and the latest in poetry news

 Bill Birns was honored to be named one of 50 Stewards of the Catskills by the Catskill Center for Conservation and Development, on the occasion of the Center’s 50th birthday. A citizen of Delaware County, for over 50 years, Bill has long been active in the community. 

 Bill is the author of the recently re-released A Catskill Catalog, available from Purple Mountain Press (nysbooks.com); I Was Corning a Beaver Like You Do: Joe Hewitt, John Burroughs, Mountain Culture (John Burroughs Woodchuck Lodge & Mountain Arts Media); and two books of locally-focused verse: The Myth in the Mountain and Fleischmanns in Verse.

            A Ph.D. in Rhetoric & Linguistics, Bill taught a couple generations of Catskill Mountain kids at Margaretville Central School and Onteora High School. He lives in Fleischmanns with wife, Gayla, and dog, Murray Wagner.

Planet Poet-Words in Space – NEW PODCAST!  LISTEN to my WIOX show (originally aired May 9th, 2023) featuring longtime guest and erudite occasional co-host, poet and writer Lee Slonimsky who will talk about and read from his latest collection, the beautifully intriguing Pythagoras and the Animals.

 Lee Slonimsky has published eleven books of poetry (including his latest, Pythagoras and the Animals). In addition, his sonnet sequence Pythagoras in Love has been translated into French, Greek, Polish and, most recently, into Italian.  He manages a hedge fund that advocates for the rights of animals.

Planet Poet-Words in Space – NEW PODCAST!  LISTEN to my WIOX show (originally aired April 11th, 2023) featuring award-winning poet Christopher Brean Murray whose debut collection Black Observatory, published by Milkweed Editions, was selected by Dana Levin as the winner of the 2021-22 Jake Adam York Prize.   Planet Poet’s Poet-at-Large, writer and visual artist Pamela Manché Pearce also joins us on the program to bring us her unique poetic insights and the latest in poetry news

 Christopher Brean Murray has received awards from the Academy of American Poets and Inprint Houston and he served as online poetry editor of Gulf Coast.  His poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Colorado Review, Copper Nickel, New Ohio Review, Washington Square Review and other journals. He lives in Houston, Texas.

 “Its very strangeness, its eccentric lenses on cis masculinity, and its simple, formal elegance called me to Black Observatory.  Reading these poems is like embarking on a Twilight Zone episode where Franz Kafka bumps into Salvador Dali in a hardware store, and dark, absurdist adventures ensue; where ‘Crimes of the Future’ involve ‘Quitting a job everyone agrees you should keep’ and ‘Kissing a foreigner in a time of war.”  There’s sweetness here, too, and deep thought and feeling – this is a singular debut by a singular sensibility:  no one else sounds like Murray.”  -- Dana Levin

 “In Christopher Brean Murray’s Black Observatory, characters set out on adventures in a world not quite like our own.  They enter museums of impossible objects, venture down forest paths to strangely abandoned settlements, or wander along the industrial outskirts of eerie cities.  All at once, the new American painters – all of them? everywhere? – act in unison, as if their simultaneous cooperation had some specific, perhaps insidious intent. Here, everything is off-kilter and mysterious.  Speakers move thorough unnerving landscapes with a mixture of curiosity, ambivalence, and moments of startling insight.  This is a brilliant first book, one I will return to with pleasure.” – Kevin Prufer

Planet Poet-Words in Space – NEW PODCAST!  LISTEN to my WIOX show (originally aired March 14th, 2023) featuring two remarkable guests:  visionary humanitarian, musician and poet Elissa Montanti and writer, producer and director Michael McKinley, both here to discuss their documentary “Our Lady of Staten Island” which focuses in great part on Elissa’s work helping African children with Albinism, victims of mutilation, get needed protheses.  For more information on the documentary and to view the trailer go to:  www.ourladystatenisland.com.  Michael will also discuss his book project Meta War and his recent travels to Iraq and Syria. 

 Elissa Montanti, visionary founder and executive director of the Staten Island-based Global Medical Relief Fund (GMRF), has brought more than 500 children of 57 countries to the U.S. for treatment, including surgery, limb prosthetics and other medical necessities. Injured children come from countries or regions able to offer only minimal medical care, poorly fitted prostheses, or none at all.

 Elissa’s appearance on “60 Minutes” and her book “I’ll Stand By You” One Woman’s Mission to Heal the Children of the World” (written with Jennifer Haupt, Penguin Books, 2012) have helped spread the word about this remarkable woman and her work.  The New York Times and The Washington Post, among many print venues, have heralded her extraordinary work.  Elissa was featured in “CNN Heroes,” BBC World News, “Democracy Now” WorldVision Radio, and Voice of America.  People Magazine voted their story “the Saint of Staten Island”, as one of the five best stories of the year.  Elissa received Amnesty International ‘s Modern Day Saints Award and recognition from the Humanitarian Operating center in Kuwait for her bravery and humanitarian work in Iraq and the Shriners Humanitarian Award.  “To Walk Without Fear”, a documentary produced by Miracle Mile Films and sponsored by the UN Correspondence Association and the Prince of Jordan, premiered at the United Nations on November 16, 2006.   

 Elissa lives in Staten Island with her adopted son Ahmed who was blinded and lost his arm at 7 years old in Iraq while walking into crossfire.   Elissa’s passions also include music, poetry and painting. Her poetry has won recognition from the American Poetry Society.

 Michael McKinley’s first novel, The Penalty Killing, was shortlisted for an Arthur Ellis Award as best debut crime novel. His subsequent page-turners include, among others,  international bestseller Facetime and Willie: The Game Changing Story of the NHL's First Black Player, nominated for an NAACP Image Award as best biography and one of the top twenty books of 2021. Michael‘s writing credits include the screenplay for the 1992 feature film Impolite, starring Christopher Plummer; a number of Discovery Channel docu-drama series including Perfect Disasters, Solar Storm and I Shouldn’t Be Alive.  He wrote and produced award-winning films for CNN on the Vatican and on biblical archaeology in the Middle East, and The Jesus Strand for History TV. His most recent show is the 2021 three-part documentary series Epstein’s Shadow: Ghislaine Maxwell, which he co-created and Executive Produced for Peacock and SKY UK. Michael traveled to Iraq and Syria for projects with US Special Forces operators and Syrian Democratic Forces. Michael, educated at Oxford University, lives in New York City. He is currently directing, writing and producing, with Nancy Bell and Alice Barrett Mitchell, Our Lady of Staten Island.