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‘Discipline’ by Debra Spark
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Review by Off the Shelf correspondent Ed Meek
Debra Spark is the author of a number of novels and short story collections as well as a couple of anthologies. She teaches in the MFA Program at Warren Wilson College and at Colby College. Her novel Discipline is a mosaic of mysteries.
April 17
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María Del Castillo Sucerquia, born in Barranquilla, Colombia in 1997, is a bilingual poet proficient in both Spanish and English. She has translated poet Marc Goldfinger’s poem WHAT I DO into Spanish.
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Somerville Poet Laureate Lloyd Schwartz rounds up poets for what may be a historic reading
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Somerville Poet Laureate Lloyd Schwartz contacted me recently about a reading he has organized that will take place April 28, 2024, 5:30 p.m. at the Somerville Arts Armory in Somerville. I decided to interview him to bring attention to this important community event. The event is titled Somerville Poets Reading Their Own Poems and Poems They Love.
April 10
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Our poet writes: My name is Casey Moritz and I am from Dallas, Texas. I go to Endicott College in Beverly, Massachusetts, majoring in Psychology and minoring in criminal justice. I am a sophomore and currently play on the Women’s Ice Hockey team at Endicott. I enjoy going to concerts, reading, and listening to music.
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Somerville Artist Bruce Myren: Explores History as a Living Entity
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I recently caught up with Somerville photographer Bruce Myren to conduct an interview about his life and his accomplished work.
From his website:
Bruce earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in photography from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design and a Master of Fine Arts in studio art from the University of Connecticut, Storrs.
April 3
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Robin Stratton is the author of seven novels, including one which was a National Indie Excellence Book Award finalist (On Air, Mustang Press, 2011), three collections of poetry and short fiction, and a writing guide. A four-time Pushcart Prize nominee, she’s been published in Word Riot, 63 Channels, Antithesis Common, Lyrical Somerville, Poor Richard’s Almanac(k), Blink-Ink, Pig in a Poke, Chick Flicks, Up the Staircase, Shoots and Vines, and many others. Since 2004 she’s been Acquisitions Editor for Big Table Publishing Company, Senior Editor of Boston Literary Magazine since 2009, and she was Director of the Newton Writing and Publishing Center until she moved from Boston to San Francisco in 2018. Her latest book, Three Sister Stories, won the 2022 Pinnacle Book Achievement Award for Women’s Fiction. She’d love to have you visit her at www.robinstratton.com.
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‘The Book of Shores’ by Mary Buchinger
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Reviewed by Off the Shelf Correspondent Thomas DeFreitas
The late American poet Donald Justice once offered his opinion that American poets fall into one of two “camps”: the Walt Whitman camp and the Emily Dickinson camp. Whitman-poets are marked by their rambunctious, capacious inclusivity, their embracing acceptance of everything from stamen to stevedore, from wisteria to winebibber. Dickinson-poets are marked by cadence and deliberation, by a discriminating selectivity, by the understated emphasis on one or two painstakingly chosen things. (Justice himself professed a preference for Dickinson’s “closed room”).
March 27
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Steve Honig has published six collections of poetry as well as a book of short stories and a spy novel. His most recent work, entitled Parallel Universes, was released in March. This collection contains poetry of greater abstraction than his prior works, attempting to capture the thesis of an art exhibition at the Paris Museum of Modern Art in August, 2023 which proposed that current artistic endeavors were so varied from prior art as to require reclassification as from a parallel world. The below poem makes no reference to its subject or prompt, and its title is omitted here (in the book, titles appear on following pages so that the reader is challenged to think of the initial subject or impetus). The intent is to reflect in each poem a secondary memory, an emotional detritus existing within an afferent plane of thought. Steve is a member of the Board of the New England Poetry Club.
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Poet Robbie Gamble: Much More than a ‘Can of Pinto Beans’
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Interview by New England Poetry Club Co-President Doug Holder.
Recently, I was at a New England Poetry Club reading to hear poet Robbie Gamble and others read from their work. Gamble has a new chapbook out titled A Can of Pinto Beans. Gamble generously gave me a copy and I decided to interview this accomplished bard.
March 20
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Carissa Szabo is a current senior at Endicott College. She is soon to become an elementary school teacher in Turkey after graduation in May. She has always had a passion for new experiences. Growing up in rural Vermont, she was a neighbor to the trees and lakes. Her father and grandmother showed her their love of nature and from there Carissa began writing poetry about the natural world around her.
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Emmy winner Gordon Clapp to star in ‘Robert Frost: This Verse Business’
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Article by Off the Shelf Correspondent Joanne Barrett
Emmy-winning actor Gordon Clapp (NYPD Blue) will bring his acclaimed portrayal of poet Robert Frost to Boston this Spring in the one-man show Robert Frost: This Verse Business by local playwright A.M. Dolan. It’s an entertaining portrait of the great poet and platform legend whose public “talks” were hot tickets for nearly half a century and an illuminating glimpse of the old bard at home, aware of his fame and failures, with poems still to write and “promises to keep.”
March 13
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Marc Zegans has penned seven collections of poems, most recently, Lyon Street (Bamboo Dart Press, 2022) and The Snow Dead (Cervena Barva Press, 2020), two spoken word albums, several immersive theatrical productions, including Sirens, Dreams and a Cat (co-written with D. Lowell Wilder, 2020), and many poetry films. Ghost Book (Kite String Press, 2024), a collaboration with fine art photographer Tsar Fedorsky, will be released in April. Marc lives by the coast in Northern California.
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