Brendan Constantine was born in Los Angeles, the second child of actors Michael Constantine and Julianna McCarthy. An ardent supporter of Southern California’s poetry communities and one of its most recognized poets, he has served as a teacher of poetry in local schools and colleges since 1995. His first collection, Letters to Guns, was released in February 2009 from Red Hen Press to wide acclaim. This was followed in 2011 by Birthday Girl With Possum, under the performance based publisher Write Bloody, and established Mr. Constantine as a poet equally at home on the page and the stage. His work can be found in many of the nation’s standards, including Poetry, Tin House, Best American Poetry, Poem-a-Day, Virginia Quarterly, Rattle, Prairie Schooner, Field, Chautauqua, and Poetry Daily. His most recent collections are Dementia, My Darling (2016) from Red Hen Press and Bouncy Bounce (2018), a chapbook from Blue Horse Press.

He currently teaches creative writing at the Windward School. In addition, he brings poetry workshops to veterans, hospitals, foster care centers, & shelters for the homeless. He is also very proud of his work with the Alzheimer’s Poetry Project. Since 2017, he has been working with speech pathologist Michael Biel to develop the first poetry workshop for people dealing with Aphasia.

Brendan has appeared in four issues of Rattle and was interviewed in issue #52.

Find more info and all the books here:

https://brendanconstantine.com/

As always, we'll also include live open lines for responses to our weekly prompt or any other poems you'd like to share. For details on how to participate, either via Skype or by phone, go to: https://www.rattle.com/rattlecast/

This Week's Prompt:

A portmanteau is a blend of two words that combines their meaning. For example, brunch, spork, and sitcom are portmanteaus. Write a poem containing one or more portmanteaus. (Feel free to make up your own!)

Next Week's Prompt:

Write a poem set in a time period of at least one hundred years ago.

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