My “Positively Poetry Reading Series” performance for the Hoboken Public Library’s National Library Week!

Animals, Comedy, Death, doubt, Existence, Fantasy, Father, Food, Future, Happiness, Hell, Home, Humor, Inspiration, Japan, Life, Love, Marriage, Metaphor, metaphysics, Mourning, Nature, New York City, Night, Parenthood, philosophy, Poetry, Poets, Reality, Reincarnation, Science, Sun, Thoughts, Tragedy, Travel, Trees, Winter, World, Writing

Yes, here are those promised cows, daffodils, and the absence of Holocaust poems:

You can almost smell that I-78 highway extension through the thin gloss of YouTube.

And here’s a friendly guide to jump straight to your favorite poems:

00:00 Introduction

01:02 The origin of life

02:28 A small dot appears.  A genesis.  A thing out of nothing

05:45 Thanks a lot, Shakespeare, for the Starling

07.46 Departing from Sengen Jinja

10:00 Naming Things

11:46 Why My Kid Sobs at the Ice Cream Parlor

14:18 Not a Holocaust Poem

15:53 Cows & Daffodils

17:58 Lakawa a Stat on

20:05 A Single Swallow Doesn’t Signal Spring

20:39 Animal House

22:09 A poem written in my past life as a 15th century Georgian monk

23:32 From Out of the Darkness

26:47 Beacons of Light

28:02 Post 11

29:17 Epilogue

Check out the “Positively Poetry Reading Series” through the Hoboken Public Library!

Humor, Life, Metaphor, Nature, Poetry, Poets, Writing

In honor of National Poetry Month, the Hoboken Public Library is hosting the “Positively Poetry Reading Series” through its Facebook page. Hoboken’s reference librarian, Ethan Galvin, reached out to me and 8 other New Jerseyans who live and breathe poetry (and several cancer-causing chemicals), and he will be uploading our videos every Tuesday and Thursday of this month.

If you love backdrops featuring the I-78 extension, you’ll love my reading, which will be viewable anytime after 7pm on Tuesday April 20th. It’s got cows, daffodils, and definitely no Holocaust poems. Welcome to Spring!

https://www.facebook.com/events/hoboken-public-library/positively-poetry-reading-series-in-honor-of-national-poetry-month/516364116396180/

“Exit the Town Drunk”, finalist for The New Guard’s Knightville Poetry Contest

Comedy, Death, Existence, Humor, Life, Metaphor, metaphysics, philosophy, Poetry, Poets, Thoughts, Writing

Many thanks to Shanna McNair and Scott Wolven for selecting my poem “Exit the Town Drunk” as a finalist in The New Guard Knightville Poetry Contest 🙂 And special congratulations to the winner, Amy Tibbetts, for her poem “Smooth Rock Tripe”. You can read Amy’s poem and mine in the print edition of Volume X , which will be published early next year; here’s a link to the contest announcements page and information on how to pre-order Volume X:

https://www.newguardreview.com/tng-contests

“Combustible”, appearing online at “The Adriatic”

Fantasy, Life, Metaphor, metaphysics, philosophy, Poetry, Poets, Science, Thoughts, Writing

Check out my poem “Combustible” in the newest issue of The Adriatic, a wonderful poetry quarterly established last year in Great Britain. The following link will take you to Issue 3, themed “Mind & Body”:

https://www.theadriaticmag.co/copy-of-issue-two-home

And thank you again to The Adriatic‘s fantastic team of editors 🙂

“How to Raise a Young Child”, finalist for the 2020 Codhill Press Pauline Uchmanowicz Poetry Award

Life, Metaphor, Poetry, Poets, Thoughts, Writing

Many thanks to Codhill Press for selecting my manuscript as a finalist for the 2020 Codhill Press Pauline Uchmanowicz Poetry Award!  And congratulations to the winner, Barry Sternlieb, for his collection “Sole Impression”!  Please check out more regarding Mr. Sternlieb’s upcoming book and Codhill Press’s other publications by clicking the following:

Codhill Poetry Winners 2020

“Dear Mom”, from Paterson Literary Review’s Zoom reading on March 6th, 2021

Death, Home, Humor, Life, Parenthood, Poetry, Time, Tradition

Thank you, Ms. Mazziotti Gillan and Ms. Desai, for organizing such a wonderful reading today for Issue #48! The following is a link to my reading of “Dear Mom”, which can be heard from 1:06:10 to 1:08:00, right after “Emptyness”, by the Ghanaian poet Geosi Gyasi, and right before “Second Hand Clothes”, by fellow New Jersey poet, Fred Iucci.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P48R-GDNQuU

“Thanks a Lot, Shakespeare, for the Starling” (which first appeared in “America”) wins the Telluride Institute’s 2020 Fischer Poetry Prize

Animals, Home, Life, Marriage, Metaphor, metaphysics, Nature, Parenthood, philosophy, Poetry, Poets, Reality, Science, Thoughts, Time, Trees, Writing
2020 Fischer Prize Winners Announced!

It’s an extraordinary honor to have “Thanks a Lot, Shakespeare, for the Starling” selected as the winner of the 2020 Fischer Poetry Prize! A special thank you to judge Claire Blotter and the Talking Gourds crew for making my 2020 a little less horrible, and congrats to all the other finalists!

“Nothing in Life is Easy”, shortlisted for the 2020 Sexton Prize for Poetry

Poetry, Poets

An enormous thank you to The Black Spring Eyewear Press Group and to judge Terese Svoboda for shortlisting my manuscript for the 2020 Sexton Prize for Poetry!  And congratulations to the winner, Denise Miller, for their work “A Ligature For Black Bodies”!  More information on their book can be found here:

https://store.eyewearpublishing.com/blogs/news/the-2020-sexton-prize-for-poetry-winner

“Not for Sale,” shortlisted for the Times Literary Supplement’s 2019 Mick Imlah Poetry Prize

Fantasy, Metaphor, New York City, philosophy, Poetry, Poets, World, Writing

Mick Imlah Poetry Prize 2019 shortlist

Not for Sale

The minimum-wage worker drags the cart
full of children, all of them
so cute, put together
so perfectly. Along the cracks of the sidewalk,
the wheels twist, popping, the ride
far from smooth. Occasionally,
couples stop him, ask how much
for the little girl with pigtails, for the boy
with the black eye. The worker
doesn’t speak much English,
tells the passersby the kids aren’t for sale
until tomorrow, & only
at the store, not illegally
like this, smack in the middle of the street.

Audio of 2017 Ledbury Poetry Competition Winners Event, “The fire escape, no longer weighed down”

Poetry, Tragedy, Writing, ,

Phillippa Slinger’s introduction (12:03-13:05)
“The fire escape, no longer weighed down” (13:05-14:45)
Fiona Sampson’s remarks (14:45-15:22)