Seattle Poets

Seattle Poets Gathering

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Scot Brannon edited Through the Gap: An Anthology of Contemporary Kentucky Poetry. He holds a masters degree in English, has received an Academy of American Poets prize, and has published poems in the Roanoke Review and Kentucky Poetry Review and through the King County Metro Transit Poetry on Buses program.

Greg Bee is a spoken word poet based in Seattle. He's performed on stages from Portland to Bellingham and is most often at the Seattle Poetry Slam performing or hosting. When not on stage, Greg dispenses relationship advice as The Bitter Single Guy at BitterSingleGuy.com. He also has a cat named Rosco who has not yet exhibited any inclination toward poetry.

Pazion Cherinet is an electrical engineer with the heart of a poet. He loves poetry, not only reading it, but writing it. He recently started to blog at awdema.blogspot.com. He hopes to learn and grow his love for poetry.

Jeff Encke taught writing and criticism at Columbia University for several years, serving as writer-in-residence for the Program in Narrative Medicine while completing his PhD in English in 2002. He now teaches at Richard Hugo House. His poems have appeared in or forthcoming from American Poetry Review, Barrow Street, Bat City Review, Black Warrior Review, Colorado Review, Fence, Kenyon Review Online, Salt Hill, and Tarpaulin Sky, among others. In 2004, he published Most Wanted: A Gamble in Verse, a series of love poems addressed to Saddam Hussein and other Iraqi war criminals printed on a deck of playing cards.

Noel Franklin is a mixed blood Eastern Band Cherokee/Euro mutt raised in a Chevy station wagon by parents desperate to make a break with their history. While still in urban nomad recovery, she earned a BA in fine arts printmaking from Western Washington University and has since turned her creative energies to the democratic and direct art of spoken word.

Franklin performed 37 featured readings in eight states and two countries in 1997 alone. These included the Albuquerque Poetry Festival, the Connecticut Poetry Slam Nationals, the premier JackStraw Foundation Writers Program, Firestorm! feminist readings, an iMusicinternet broadcast, the Mary Lou Lord/Amy Denio show from Moe's Mo'Rockin' Cafe (Seattle), and the Northwest Writers Harvest with August Wilson. Noel has self-published the chapbooks Gone Girl and Theo. Her work has appeared in Descanso, Flying Poems, Cupid, Spoken War, Son of Slam, Rain City Review, and the Albuquerque Poetry Festival Anthology.

Chris Jarmick had his first poem published in a national magazine when he was 12 years old. Born on the East Coast, he spent nearly two decades in Southern California producing documentaries, writing screenplays, and producing and writing segments for such TV shows at Hard Copy, Entertainment Tonight, and Personalities, as well as for several specials (Muppets, Honeymooners, Disney DTV, and many more). He relocated to Seattle in the mid-90s; co-wrote the novel The Glass Cocoon, which was first published in 2001; and got involved in the Seattle poetry scene creating, hosting, and curating several open mic venues. Today he curates and hosts a couple of seasonal poetry series (Pike’s Place Poets) and two monthly poetry readings (2nd Wednesdays at Parkplace Books in Kirkland and 3rd Fridays at Bookworm Exchange in Columbia City). He has published numerous articles and lots of poetry in magazines, newspapers, literary journals, and anthologies as well as online. He recently recorded a spoken word CD with Pulitzer Prize-nominated poet Michael C. Ford, scheduled for release late spring 2009.

Chris is the former Executive Vice President of the Washington Poets Association, President of PEN Washington, and a board member of PEN Center USA in Los Angeles. E-mail him at emeraldchris@yahoo.com. To receive three to four e-mails a month listing several literary readings around the Puget Sound, simply write "Please add me to your lit list" in the subject line of an e-mail.

Britta Kallevang holds an MFA from the Naropa University Writing and Poetics program in Boulder, Colorado and has published poetry in The Baltimore Review, Big Bridge, edifice WRECKED, Frank's Home, HOW2, Poetry Super Highway, Puppy Flowers, Shampoo, and Unlikely Stories. She is currently a PhD student in the Scandinavian Studies program at the University of Washington and spending the year abroad in Norway.

Kristen McHenry is a resident of Seattle, Washington, a poet and freelance writer by night, and a health outreach worker by day. Among other publications, her work has been seen in Wanderings, Trellis Magazine, Heart Magazine, The Pregnant Moon Review, and the upcoming anthology Meanderings—A Collection of Poetic Verse. Kristen has received two awards for her poetry from the Shoreline Arts Council and an honorable mention from Heart Magazine for her poem "Renters." Although currently non-practicing, she is a Licensed Massage Therapist and has been trained and certified in Mind-Body counseling.

Kristen is the creator and facilitator of the Poet's Cafe, a weekly poetry workshop for homeless teens at the New Horizons drop-in center in downtown Seattle. She lives in Ballard with two cats, two firebellied toads, and one husband. She loves to sing, but only in the car with all of the windows rolled up.

Jesse Minkert began studying art at the age of twelve, under his father’s instruction. He acquired a master's degree in Sculpture from Humboldt State University in 1981. He began working on access to the arts for visually impaired people in 1983, started the audio description service in Seattle in 1985, and founded the non-profit corporation Arts and Visually Impaired Audiences in 1991.

Minkert has written and produced several radio plays, including “Margaret Jean, A Radio Portrait,” broadcast on the National Public Radio Playhouse, and “Turf Fire,” Irish stories of Halloween adapted from storyteller Joe Heaney, broadcast on stations in Washington State. He has written and produced his own plays, including “He Needed Sleep” in 1987 and “Dust Jackets” in 1991 (with a King County Arts Commission Playwright’s Production grant). In 1999, Minkert collaborated with sound artist Susie Kozawa on “Nearly Seen, Closely Heard,” an interactive environment of computer graphics and sound for Jack Straw Productions. His story“A Sweater in a Chair” appeared in The Raven Chronicles Urban Writing issue (1999, Vol 8, No 2). "Texas 1952" was part of the Seattle Playwrights Alliance's first "New Waves" radio production, "Taboo," in 2000.

His literary work has appeared in anthologies and performances on radio and spoken-word CDs, including the prose poem "Love Dog" with original drawings by the author in The Wandering Hermit Review (#2). "Love Dog" was adapted for dance in Phrasings for Word and Dance, Bellingham Repertory Dance Company in 2007. The story "Jigsaw Magic" appeared in when it rains from the ground up (#4, 2007). The poem "Sylvia's Hair" appeared in Raven Chronicles (Summer 2008). Minkert produced and published the spoken-word CD and chapbook Since the Ace: the Poetry of Charlie Burks, as well as a radio program of that material broadcast on KUOW-FM. He teaches a class in radio theater each summer to blind and visually impaired teenagers. In June 2008, Wood Works published a collection of Minkert's stories and poems entitled Shortness of Breath & Other Symptoms. Samples of his ongoing work can be read online at http://blog.myspace.com/jesse_minkert.

Elizabeth Myhr publishes poetry, book reviews, and critical essays. Her work has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Knock, The Raven Chronicles, Web Del Sol Review, and other journals and magazines. She serves as poetry editor for The Raven Chronicles and is Managing Editor of Marick Press. Enrolled in the MFA Program for Poetry at Seattle Pacific University, she lives in Seattle.

Keith Nipper is a poet, choir singer, drywaller, and ESL instructor leaving for Taiwan in February.

Lucy Simpson writes, "Hello! My name is Lucy Simpson and I live in Seattle with my husband and two children. By day, I home-school the kids and by night, I write. The nights and early hours of morning are mine!

My poems have appeared in The Comstock Review, Poetry Bone, and WordWrights, among other journals. I have work currently featured at KeepGoing and a poem forthcoming in Gargoyle. To see more of my work, both visual and literary, please visit www.catscratch.org. I also dabble in photography and sculpture. Favorite poets are not limited to Anne Sexton, Carolyn Kizer, Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, Martin Espada, Louise Erdrich, Rebecca Hoogs, Charles Simic, and Judith Roche. I love nature walks and picking wild berries. I also make a mean pot of sangria!"

Joannie Kervran Stangeland is the author of two poetry chapbooks: A Steady Longing for Flight (Floating Bridge Press) and Weathered Steps (Rose Alley Press). Her work has most recently appeared in The Cape Rock, Floating Bridge Review, Pinyon, and Journal of the American Medical Association. To support this poetry habit, Joannie works as a technical editor and writer.

Alexis Vergalla has a BA from Moravian College in Bethlehem, PA and an MFA from University of California, Riverside. After graduation she struck out towards Seattle and is still settling in a bit. She edited both of her college magazines (CRATE and The Manuscript) and is working on an extended project involving ether and archaic science. She has two blog sites: alexisv.wordpress.com and bodyofclimates.wordpress.com (a collaborative journal project with friends from around the country). She has published some and has a chapbook, Letters Through Glass, published by Finishing Line Press in February 2009.

Arthur Tulee was born and raised on the Yakama Indian Reservation and graduated from Washington State University with a BA in English. Currently living and working in the Seattle metropolitan area, Mr. Tulee is working on his first manuscript of poetry. He has been published in ZYZZYVA, The Raven Chronicles, Ergo! - The Bumbershoot Literary Anthology, upstream, the Salmon Bay Review, and the Seattle Arts Commission newsletter.

Julene Tripp Weaver has a BA in Creative Writing from the City University of New York where she studied with Audre Lorde. She has a Masters in Applied Behavioral Science from the Leadership Institute of Seattle and works in HIV/AIDS services. She won a prize for her poetry from the Unfinished Works Contest sponsored by AIDS Services Foundation Orange County. Finishing Line Press published her chapbook Case Walking: An AIDS Case Manager Wails Her Blues (a review of the book appears in the Winter 2009 issue of Calyx). One of her poems was featured on The Writer’s Almanac. Her poems have appeared in many journals and a few anthologies, including Main Street Rag, The Healing Muse, Knock, Arabesques Review, Nerve Cowboy, Arnazella, Crab Creek Review, Pilgrimage, The Smoking Poet, and Letters to the World Poems from the Wom-Po LISTSERV. Julene practices Continuum movement and ran Muse to Write Circles for ten years. She integrates movement to evoke body-centered writing and has used this to create two performance pieces, “The Wailing Wall” and “Spin the Bottle.”

Koon Woon studied poetry with Nelson Bentley in the mid 80s and has since published a full-length book (The Truth in Rented Rooms, Kaya, New York, 1998) and a chapbook (The Burden of Sanity and Other Poems). He has given and organized poetry readings and edited and published the poetry magazine Chrysanthemum since 1990 and several titles of poetry and short fiction through his Goldfish Press. He works as a tutor (principally math and writing) and is learning about business formations. He thought that he could give up poetry but finds that he can't, even though he found the MFA program he attended to be of little use.

	Scot Brannon edited Through the Gap: An Anthology of Contemporary Kentucky Poetry. He holds a masters degree in English, has received an Academy of American Poets prize, and has published poems in the Roanoke Review and Kentucky Poetry Review and through the King County Metro Transit Poetry on Buses program.

	Greg Bee is a spoken word poet based in Seattle. He's performed on stages from Portland to Bellingham and is most often at the Seattle Poetry Slam performing or hosting. When not on stage, Greg dispenses relationship advice as The Bitter Single Guy at BitterSingleGuy.com. He also has a cat named Rosco who has not yet exhibited any inclination toward poetry.

	Pazion Cherinet is an electrical engineer with the heart of a poet. He loves poetry, not only reading it, but writing it. He recently started to blog at awdema.blogspot.com. He hopes to learn and grow his love for poetry.

	Jeff Encke taught writing and criticism at Columbia University for several years, serving as writer-in-residence for the Program in Narrative Medicine while completing his PhD in English in 2002. He now teaches at Richard Hugo House. His poems have appeared in or forthcoming from American Poetry Review, Barrow Street, Bat City Review, Black Warrior Review, Colorado Review, Fence, Kenyon Review Online, Salt Hill, and Tarpaulin Sky, among others. In 2004, he published Most Wanted: A Gamble in Verse, a series of love poems addressed to Saddam Hussein and other Iraqi war criminals printed on a deck of playing cards.

	Noel Franklin is a mixed blood Eastern Band Cherokee/Euro mutt raised in a Chevy station wagon by parents desperate to make a break with their history. While still in urban nomad recovery, she earned a BA in fine arts printmaking from Western Washington University and has since turned her creative energies to the democratic and direct art of spoken word. Franklin performed 37 featured readings in eight states and two countries in 1997 alone. These included the Albuquerque Poetry Festival, the Connecticut Poetry Slam Nationals, the premier JackStraw Foundation Writers Program, Firestorm! feminist readings, an iMusicinternet broadcast, the Mary Lou Lord/Amy Denio show from Moe's Mo'Rockin' Cafe (Seattle), and the Northwest Writers Harvest with August Wilson. Noel has self-published the chapbooks Gone Girl and Theo. Her work has appeared in Descanso, Flying Poems, Cupid, Spoken War, Son of Slam, Rain City Review, and the Albuquerque Poetry Festival Anthology.

	Chris Jarmick had his first poem published in a national magazine when he was 12 years old. Born on the East Coast, he spent nearly two decades in Southern California producing documentaries, writing screenplays, and producing and writing segments for such TV shows at Hard Copy, Entertainment Tonight, and Personalities, as well as for several specials (Muppets, Honeymooners, Disney DTV, and many more). He relocated to Seattle in the mid-90s; co-wrote the novel The Glass Cocoon, which was first published in 2001; and got involved in the Seattle poetry scene creating, hosting, and curating several open mic venues. Today he curates and hosts a couple of seasonal poetry series (Pike’s Place Poets) and two monthly poetry readings (2nd Wednesdays at Parkplace Books in Kirkland and 3rd Fridays at Bookworm Exchange in Columbia City). He has published numerous articles and lots of poetry in magazines, newspapers, literary journals, and anthologies as well as online. He recently recorded a spoken word CD with Pulitzer Prize-nominated poet Michael C. Ford, scheduled for release late spring 2009. Chris is the former Executive Vice President of the Washington Poets Association, President of PEN Washington, and a board member of PEN Center USA in Los Angeles. E-mail him at emeraldchris@yahoo.com. To receive three to four e-mails a month listing several literary readings around the Puget Sound, simply write "Please add me to your lit list" in the subject line of an e-mail.

	Britta Kallevang holds an MFA from the Naropa University Writing and Poetics program in Boulder, Colorado and has published poetry in The Baltimore Review, Big Bridge, edifice WRECKED, Frank's Home, HOW2, Poetry Super Highway, Puppy Flowers, Shampoo, and Unlikely Stories. She is currently a PhD student in the Scandinavian Studies program at the University of Washington and spending the year abroad in Norway.

	Kristen McHenry is a resident of Seattle, Washington, a poet and freelance writer by night, and a health outreach worker by day. Among other publications, her work has been seen in Wanderings, Trellis Magazine, Heart Magazine, The Pregnant Moon Review, and the upcoming anthology Meanderings—A Collection of Poetic Verse. Kristen has received two awards for her poetry from the Shoreline Arts Council and an honorable mention from Heart Magazine for her poem "Renters." Although currently non-practicing, she is a Licensed Massage Therapist and has been trained and certified in Mind-Body counseling. Kristen is the creator and facilitator of the Poet's Cafe, a weekly poetry workshop for homeless teens at the New Horizons drop-in center in downtown Seattle. She lives in Ballard with two cats, two firebellied toads, and one husband. She loves to sing, but only in the car with all of the windows rolled up.

	Jesse Minkert began studying art at the age of twelve, under his father’s instruction. He acquired a master's degree in Sculpture from Humboldt State University in 1981. He began working on access to the arts for visually impaired people in 1983, started the audio description service in Seattle in 1985, and founded the non-profit corporation Arts and Visually Impaired Audiences in 1991. Minkert has written and produced several radio plays, including “Margaret Jean, A Radio Portrait,” broadcast on the National Public Radio Playhouse, and “Turf Fire,” Irish stories of Halloween adapted from storyteller Joe Heaney, broadcast on stations in Washington State. He has written and produced his own plays, including “He Needed Sleep” in 1987 and “Dust Jackets” in 1991 (with a King County Arts Commission Playwright’s Production grant). In 1999, Minkert collaborated with sound artist Susie Kozawa on “Nearly Seen, Closely Heard,” an interactive environment of computer graphics and sound for Jack Straw Productions. His story“A Sweater in a Chair” appeared in The Raven Chronicles Urban Writing issue (1999, Vol 8, No 2). "Texas 1952" was part of the Seattle Playwrights Alliance's first "New Waves" radio production, "Taboo," in 2000. His literary work has appeared in anthologies and performances on radio and spoken-word CDs, including the prose poem "Love Dog" with original drawings by the author in The Wandering Hermit Review (#2). "Love Dog" was adapted for dance in Phrasings for Word and Dance, Bellingham Repertory Dance Company in 2007. The story "Jigsaw Magic" appeared in when it rains from the ground up (#4, 2007). The poem "Sylvia's Hair" appeared in Raven Chronicles (Summer 2008). Minkert produced and published the spoken-word CD and chapbook Since the Ace: the Poetry of Charlie Burks, as well as a radio program of that material broadcast on KUOW-FM. He teaches a class in radio theater each summer to blind and visually impaired teenagers. In June 2008, Wood Works published a collection of Minkert's stories and poems entitled Shortness of Breath & Other Symptoms. Samples of his ongoing work can be read online at http://blog.myspace.com/jesse_minkert.

	Elizabeth Myhr publishes poetry, book reviews, and critical essays. Her work has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Knock, The Raven Chronicles, Web Del Sol Review, and other journals and magazines. She serves as poetry editor for The Raven Chronicles and is Managing Editor of Marick Press. Enrolled in the MFA Program for Poetry at Seattle Pacific University, she lives in Seattle.

	Keith Nipper is a poet, choir singer, drywaller, and ESL instructor leaving for Taiwan in February.

	Lucy Simpson writes, "Hello! My name is Lucy Simpson and I live in Seattle with my husband and two children. By day, I home-school the kids and by night, I write. The nights and early hours of morning are mine! My poems have appeared in The Comstock Review, Poetry Bone, and WordWrights, among other journals. I have work currently featured at KeepGoing and a poem forthcoming in Gargoyle. To see more of my work, both visual and literary, please visit www.catscratch.org. I also dabble in photography and sculpture. Favorite poets are not limited to Anne Sexton, Carolyn Kizer, Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, Martin Espada, Louise Erdrich, Rebecca Hoogs, Charles Simic, and Judith Roche. I love nature walks and picking wild berries. I also make a mean pot of sangria!"

	Joannie Kervran Stangeland is the author of two poetry chapbooks: A Steady Longing for Flight (Floating Bridge Press) and Weathered Steps (Rose Alley Press). Her work has most recently appeared in The Cape Rock, Floating Bridge Review, Pinyon, and Journal of the American Medical Association. To support this poetry habit, Joannie works as a technical editor and writer.

	Alexis Vergalla has a BA from Moravian College in Bethlehem, PA and an MFA from University of California, Riverside. After graduation she struck out towards Seattle and is still settling in a bit. She edited both of her college magazines (CRATE and The Manuscript) and is working on an extended project involving ether and archaic science. She has two blog sites: alexisv.wordpress.com and bodyofclimates.wordpress.com (a collaborative journal project with friends from around the country). She has published some and has a chapbook, Letters Through Glass, published by Finishing Line Press in February 2009.

	Arthur Tulee was born and raised on the Yakama Indian Reservation and graduated from Washington State University with a BA in English. Currently living and working in the Seattle metropolitan area, Mr. Tulee is working on his first manuscript of poetry. He has been published in ZYZZYVA, The Raven Chronicles, Ergo! - The Bumbershoot Literary Anthology, upstream, the Salmon Bay Review, and the Seattle Arts Commission newsletter.

	Julene Tripp Weaver has a BA in Creative Writing from the City University of New York where she studied with Audre Lorde. She has a Masters in Applied Behavioral Science from the Leadership Institute of Seattle and works in HIV/AIDS services. She won a prize for her poetry from the Unfinished Works Contest sponsored by AIDS Services Foundation Orange County. Finishing Line Press published her chapbook Case Walking: An AIDS Case Manager Wails Her Blues (a review of the book appears in the Winter 2009 issue of Calyx). One of her poems was featured on The Writer’s Almanac. Her poems have appeared in many journals and a few anthologies, including Main Street Rag, The Healing Muse, Knock, Arabesques Review, Nerve Cowboy, Arnazella, Crab Creek Review, Pilgrimage, The Smoking Poet, and Letters to the World Poems from the Wom-Po LISTSERV. Julene practices Continuum movement and ran Muse to Write Circles for ten years. She integrates movement to evoke body-centered writing and has used this to create two performance pieces, “The Wailing Wall” and “Spin the Bottle.”

	Koon Woon studied poetry with Nelson Bentley in the mid 80s and has since published a full-length book (The Truth in Rented Rooms, Kaya, New York, 1998) and a chapbook (The Burden of Sanity and Other Poems). He has given and organized poetry readings and edited and published the poetry magazine Chrysanthemum since 1990 and several titles of poetry and short fiction through his Goldfish Press. He works as a tutor (principally math and writing) and is learning about business formations. He thought that he could give up poetry but finds that he can't, even though he found the MFA program he attended to be of little use.