JOE BALAZ

Joe Balaz lives in northeast Ohio. His writing has appeared in Hawai’i Review, boundary 2: an international journal of literature and culture, Scrawling Wall, Kaimana—Literary Arts Hawai’i, Navigating Islands and Continents: Conversations and Contestations in and around the Pacific,Wisconsin Review, Honolulu Weekly, Pidgins and Creoles (United Kingdom),Whetu Moana: Contemporary Polynesian Poems in English (New Zealand), Chaminade Literary Review, ‘Oiwi—A Native Hawaiian Journal, Tinfish, Honolulu Stories, Hapa, The Honolulu Advertiser, Salome: A Literary Dance Magazine, Seaweeds and Constructions, Saving Place: An Ecocomposition Reader, Bamboo Ridge, Buss Laugh, Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Outch: An International Haiku Magazine (Japan), Hybolics and Mana: A South Pacific Journal of Language and Literature (Fiji).

His recent work has appeared in or is forthcoming from Icon, Oregon Literary Review, AdmitTwo, Eleventh Transmission, Right Hand Pointing, Neon Literary Magazine, Zygote in my Coffee, The Cerebral Catalyst, Clockwise Cat, Subtle Tea, Otoliths, Route 66, Ink Sweat and Tears, Ascent Aspirations, Unlikely Stories, Word Riot, Wheelhouse, Locust Magazine, The City, Sub-Lit, Blue Fifth Review, and The Pittsburgh Quarterly.

Balaz edited Ramrod—A Literary and Art Journal of Hawai’i and was also the editor of Ho’omanoa: An Anthology of Contemporary Hawaiian Literature.

He is the editor of 13 Miles from Cleveland.

Balaz is also coauthor of JOMA—online, an online gallery of concrete poetry and photography with photo-artist Mary Ellen Derwis.

MARCUS BALES

Not much is known about Marcus Bales except he lives and works in Cleveland, Ohio, and his poems have not been published in Atlantic Monthly or The New Yorker.

ANDREW BOERUM

Andrew Boerum lives in New York and writes poems quickly when no one is looking.

 

KIMBERLEY DIAMOND BONES

Kimberley Diamond Bones

Kimberley Diamond Bones writes fictional poetry about things that either have or have not happened in the real world. In high school she was accused of plagiarizing by her "Film as Art" class teacher after writing a movie review of the American Film Society's production of Jacque Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris. The teacher said no one in high school could write that good, I mean, that well. Kimberley was able to demonstrate that she had written the paper in question. No one else alive had seen the movie and no other reviews existed. She graduated early from high school in order to pursue her ambition of not having to wake up in time to get to classes.

Kimberley intentionally attempts to choose words that invoke ambiguity. She blames this on her inability to commit to one thing or another, and credits the influence of her late paternal grandfather Albert G., who was a naturally gifted and unapologetic punster. She takes all the big words out of her writing because she doesn't have spell check.

Currently she lives in Cleveland, Ohio, with 2 too many cats and once had 7 W2s in one year. Many years have passed and lots of stuff has happened. Some of her favorites: jumping waves along side dolphins out in the Pacific ocean on a jet ski, and passing the mandatory drug screening for her current employer.

Bree photo by Jim Lang

Bree is an artist, singer/songwriter, poet and founder of Green Panda Press, which produces anthologies and chapbooks of poetry and art. All books are handmade and bound using household materials like double sided window insulation tape, or minty dental floss. Green Panda titles include Rain Poet (2004), by Daniel Thompson and the memoir of Charles Potts Valga Krusa (2007) in two volumes.

ADAM BRODSKY

Adam Brodsky writes, teaches English, and runs Ptrint (a small literary press).

MICHAEL H. BROWNSTEIN

Brownstein teaches elementary school in Chicago ’s inner city, studies authentic African instruments with his students, conducts grant-writing workshops for educators and the State of Illinois Title 1 Convention, and records performance and music pieces with grants from the City of Chicago ’s Department of Cultural Affairs, the Oppenheimer Foundation, BP Leadership Grants, and others.

ELI P. CIMOTA

A provincial, left-handed NW native, National Merit Scholar ( college dropout), voted "class poet" "least likely to succeed" by Richland, Wa HS peers. Urban child embraced 60s hippy ethic, survived rural rigors in coastal Oregon (part-time ANYthing- logger, tree-planter, commercial fisherman, moonshiner, midwife, farmer/forager, etc). Finds every musical form ear-worthy... but has a predilection for acoustic country blues, calypso, jazz, other "social protest" genre.

Amateur ecologist, native plant maven ( grower/marketer), religious recycler, morphing from the strident to the curmudgeonly, over time.

Melissa J. Craig

MELISSA J. CRAIG

I am a maker of book works/ artists’ books, a sculptor in handmade paper, and an installation artist who also makes prints and drawings. Sometimes I’m a curator, and every so often, I write things.

Nine months a year, I am also a professor. I’m the
full time teaching Artist In Residence in the MFA in Interdisciplinary Book and Paper Arts, at Columbia College Chicago’s Center for Book and Paper Arts.

For more information about Craig's work, please visit her website.

Jesus Crisis

JESUS CRISIS

Jesus Crisis is a Buddho-Taoist, agnostic, liberal, poet, musician, composer, pacifist, pagan, bibliophile, and philosopher in Elyria, Ohio. Involved in the vibrant Cleveland poetry scene and founder of the burgeoning Crisis Chronicles Press and free online library, JC at one point spent eleven years in prison for a crime he did not commit. While there, he was involved a series of musical theatre productions as a playwright, composer, actor, and musical director. JC spent about 20 years of his adult life studying at schools including Lorain County Community College, Ohio University and a couple of seminaries. He eventually became a number one blogger on MySpace in 2007 before deciding to declare his independence at www.crisischronicles.com.

* * *

Consider this selection from Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet:

"Is not religion all deeds and all reflection,

And that which is neither deeds nor reflection, but a wonder and a surprise ever springing in the soul, even while the hands hew the stone or tend the loom?

Who can separate his faith from his actions, or his belief from his occupations?

Who can spread his hours before him, saying, 'This is for God and this is for myself; This for my soul, and this other for my body?'

All your hours are wings that beat through space from self to self."

DANILEE EICHHORN

Danilee Eichhorn has worked seven different jobs and moved twelve times since she came to Ohio six years ago. She dropped out of Oberlin College and now, four years later, is going back to school at Cleveland State University, majoring in Religion Studies.

Z. Guadamour

She has a love-fear relationship with her lifestyle of perpetual transition. After all, she believes that deciding where you want to go is not nearly so important as deciding which path you want to walk. She's still working on figuring that one out.

Jim Lang

Poet, photographer, potter, philosopher, publisher, and poartist from Cleveland, Ohio USA who frequently accompanies his readings with multimedia visual works.

I've been the open mic host for the 3rd Saturday poetry reading at The Bookstore on West 25th Street forever and give a Bagozine of poetry, tea, pennies, incense and nonesense each month to everyone who attends.

I have taken photos of most every poet who has passed through Cleveland as far back as d.a. levy & Charles Dickens.

I gratefully edited issue #9 of ArtCrimes and coedited issues #15 and 17. I have published many chapbooks of my own and other's poetry.

I am a cantankerous full time professional curmudgeon, but an oddly a nice guy even so.

JACK MCGUANE

Poet Laureate of Lakewood through 2007 and poetry editor of Whiskey Island Magazine. He has published work in Whiskey Island, Family Matters, ArtCrimes, Hessler Street Poetry and Prose Annual, 2006 (third prize), Nov Third Club, First Person Plural from Twin Cranes Press (with Eric Anderson), in the Underground Literary Alliance e-zine and in the upcoming Favorite Lakewood Poetry. His poems received Honorable Mention in the last three Best of Ohio Writers Competitions. A chapbook--working title Sleeping With My Socks-- is coming soon by Deep Cleveland Press.

MICHAEL SALINGER

Michael Salinger

Has been writing and performing poetry and fiction for over 25 years. In this time he has become a fixture in the performance poetry and education community. His work has appeared in dozens of literary journals published across the US and Canada, including Poetry Magazine, Sapphire Magazine, Taproot, the Detroit Metro Times and the Cleveland Free Times.

Five time captain and coach of the Cleveland Slam team that represented the city at the National Poetry Slam competition, he has also served as a consultant and board member to Poetry Slam, Inc., the governing body of Poetry Slams across the country. He currently directs the organization's summer writing and performance conference held at the campus of SUNY, Oneonta in Oneonta New York. He is the founder and director of the Nova Lizard project, a seminal performance troupe in Cleveland, Ohio and chief facilitator of the teen writing and performance program at Cleveland's Playhouse Square Foundation - the second largest performing arts center in the United States after Broadway.

Darryl Salach

DARRYL SALACH

I reside in the Great White North (a.k.a. Canada) and have been writing poetry ever since I listened to Jim Morrison and The Doors. My writing has evolved over the years to the point where only in the last few years have I been comfortable enough to present it to the world, first through the internet and recently in book form. I self published a book of my poetry through lulu press, Stepping Out of Line.

I have also had some of my poems published in various poetry mags and online zines such as Unquiet Desperation, Neonbeam Magazine, SkitzoLit. com, Heroin Love Songs, LitupMagazine, The Starfish Journal, Gloom Cupboard and the upcoming editions of Target Audience Magazine, The Rattlesnake Review and Battered Suitcase.

ERIC SHAFFER

Is a poet and artist and framer who lives in Cleveland, back after an extended sabbatical in Florida, more like a life experience. He's been busy making lamps out of bottles for more than four years. A graduate of Shaker Heights high school, he went to the University of Michigan in the early eighties, and holds an AA degree from a junior college in Tampa, Florida.

WENDY SHAFFER

Wendy Shaffer is a gratefully recovering poet who lives in the city of Cleveland amid firecrackers, roosters, boom boxes, gunshots, small children with muddy little hands & feet, her brother, Marian, 17 cats & 2 dogs. She likes animals.* She has a BFA in writing from Carnegie Mellon University & an MFA in the same from Bowling Green State University. Shaffer's poetry blog, house of cats, features many Cleveland poets.

*Anyone who needs a fine, fixed kitty with all his or her shots (for free), please call 216-631-9841.

YUYUTSU RD SHARMA

Yuyutsu RD Sharma Photo by Sara Dobbs

Recipient of fellowships from the RockefellerFoundation, Irish Literary Exchange and Sahitya Academy, National Academy of Letters, New Delhi, Sharma has published six poetry collections, most recently a picture book, The Way to Everest : A Photographic and Poetic Journey to the Foot of Everest with German photographer Andreas Stimm. He also translated Irish poet Cathal O' Searcaigh's poetry into Nepali, and published the bilingual English/Nepali anthology, Kathmandu, 2006. Sharma has also translated and edited several anthologies of contemporary Nepali poetry.

His works have appeared in Chandrabhaga, Amsterdam Weekly, Exiled ink, Irish Pages, Omega, Howling Dog Press, Iton77, The Little Magazine, The Telegraph, Indian Express and Asia Week.

Yuyutsu has read in London at the Poetry Cafe, the Gustav Stressmann Institute, the Guardian newsroom, the Royal Society of Dramatic Arts, the Gunter Grass House, the Sudasien Institute of Heidelberg University, Ruigoord (Amsterdam), GTZ, the Nehru Centre, the New Delhi Academy of Fine Arts, the Royal Nepal Academy, the Frankfurt Book Fair, the Indian International Centre in New Delhi and Villa Serbelloni, Italy.

More information can be found online at www.yuyutsu.de.

 

David Smith

DAVID SMITH

David Smith aka Handsome Duke Deal, is a bartender in the classic style. His books include Closer to Jesus (Ouija Madness Press) and in collaboration with Scott Wannberg, Rockets Redglare (Green Panda Press). He was twenty percent of The Feedbag (a Kill Poet & Off Beat Pulp Press joint). His broadside collaboration with art by S.A. Griffin of his poem Genocide Sutra (Rose of Sharon Press - and which first appeared in The City Poetry) has become something of an underground classic. Between Singapore Slings, he is editing his next book White Time (Off Beat Pulp Press), which includes the Handsome Duke Deal galleries from the mythical Hotel Malaria.  Smith is not quite as handsome as Amos Alonzo Stagg, but he is generally happier than King Farouk. He agrees that Lake Erie is really much larger than it deserves to be.

LADY K & S B SMITH

Kathy Ireland Smith -- Smith's "Lady K" -- edits The City Poetry. In 2006, Lady left the U.S. to make art, write poetry, and have adventures with S B Smith, who is a fractal finding ambiance adjuster on the run from reality wandering the Earth. Smith and Lady document their continuing adventures on the blog Walking on Thin Ice.

Lady has a chaplet and broadside package with Green Panda Press. Lady is on MySpace.

 

STEVEN B SMITH

smith:
was born.
is currently living.
eventually won't be.
all the rest is lie.

and i am NOT insane.

 

L-J Stockman

WANDA SOBIESKA is a violinist and poet in Cleveland, Ohio.

L-J STOCKMAN

L-J comes from the South Island of Aoteora New Zealand. Her writing is strongly influenced by the landscapes and experiences of her West Coast childhood in an isolated and rugged rural community made up of dairy farmers and hippies. L-J now lives in the city of Christchurch with her handsome husband and their cute children. L-J is haunted by the demographic regardless of how spontaneous her ideas and actions appear to be. Her poetry resembles a social commentary crossdressing as a personal disclosure, or vice versa.

GEORGE WALLACE

George Wallace

---SKY IS, GEORGE WALLACE & THE MOONTONES, on CDBABY --- 'the surreal surprise, the whitmanic impulse!'--- new york-based poet and performer --- coming soon to a beat museum near you --- travels widely in the us, uk and in europe to read his work and lead writing workshops --- works solo or in improv sessions with musical combos --- conversations with baez, bly, cassady, creeley, donovan, ginsberg, lurie, max, plymell, stafford, tambellini, vega, yevgeny yevtushenko --- appearances at howlfest, lowell celebrates kerouac, woody guthrie festival, dylan thomas centre, shakespeare and co/paris, rexroth festival, international womens arts festival --- nyc hang time @ bowery poetry club, back fence, cornelia street cafe, tribes gallery -- appeared on stage or cds with david amram, claire daly, levon helm, tony lamb, martin loyato, joe mannix, jonny mcewan, glen moore, dave rave, lee renaldo, dj spooky, paul winston --- digs reading with larry carradini, steve dalachinsky, emily xyz, kirpal gordon, geraldine green, denis grey, simon pettet --- edits poetrybay (www.poetrybay.com), polarity (www.poembeat.com), poetryvlog (www.poetryvlog.com) --- fourteen poetry chapbooks, us/uk/italy --- poetry workshops in new york and skiathos greece --- judge of beowulf prize and beat poet of the year competition, guest editor for bigcitylit and orbis -- a surreal trip through the heartland of america (a.d.winans) --- cool and musical (donovan) --- a post-existential enigmast (charles plymell) --- his reading voice reminds me of ee cummings, the best i know (mary de rachewiltz).

All work used in the City is copyrighted by the contributors.