Quintessential Poetry: Online Radio, YouTube and Zoom

Indran Amirthanayagam (www.indranmx.com) is an American poet and diplomat, He writes in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese and Haitian Creole. He has published sixteen poetry collections thus far, including the just-released Coconuts on Mars (www.paperwall.in), En busca de posada (Editorial Apogeo, Lima, 2019) and Paolo 9 (Manofalsa, Lima, 2019).  The Elephants of Reckoning (Hanging Loose Press, NY, 1993) won the 1994 Paterson Prize in the United States. Uncivil War (Tsar/Mawenzi House, Toronto, 2013) tells the history of the Sri Lankan Civil War. The Splintered Face: Tsunami Poems (Hanging Loose Press, NY, 2008) was written in the wake of the Asian Tsunami of 2004. Other books include Il n'est de solitude que l'île lointaine (Legs Editions, Haiti, 2017), and Ventana Azul (El Tapiz del Unicornio, Mexico City, 2016), In music, he has released Rankont Dout (available to download from all the music stores). He has written on poetry for the blog  http://indranamirthanayagam.blogspot.com. He directs Poetry at the Port, a monthly spoken-word series at Port Au Prince restaurant in Silver Spring. He is on the Board of Directors of DC-ALT, an association of literary translators. He writes a weekly column featuring poems for the newspaper Haiti en Marche. Amirthanayagam is a past recipient of fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, The US/Mexico Fund for Culture and the Macdowell Colony.

Drew Kerr is a PhD student in anthropology. While he intends for his research to engage the anthropology of militarized zones, he utilizes poetry as a tool to reflect, digest, and present his own and interlocutors’ struggles living the realities of such spaces. Having lived in India during the formative years of his political and social orientations, Drew draws on revolutionary forms and themes of South Asian poetries. Recently, Drew's exploration in poetry and performance has been nurtured by the community of the Washington, DC Guerilla Poetry Insurgency.

Jessica Philie Park is a founding member of the DC Guerrilla Poetry Insurgency (GPI) and co-hosts the GPI Open Mic (https://bossadc.com/events/dcgpi-open-mic-night) every second Tuesday of the month at Bossa in Adams Morgan. She has lived in DC for 24 years and works as a bookkeeper. She started writing in her teens and did her first open mic in her twenties. Her pieces are inspired by current events and personal growth. Jessica thinks anyone could and everyone should give an open mic a shot, because it’s amazing to share with others and find out we all have so much in common.

Heather Corbally Bryant teaches in the Writing Program at Wellesley College. She has taught at the Pennsylvania State University, the University of Michigan, and Harvard College where she won awards for her teaching. She received her A.B. with honors in History and Literature from Harvard. She received her PhD in Literature from the University of Michigan. Her academic publications include, How Will the Heart Endure: Elizabeth Bowen and the Landscape of War (University of Michigan Press, 1992). It was awarded the Murphy Prize for best first book. In 2018, she published her work of creative nonfiction, You Can’t Wrap Fire in Paper, which explores her grandmother’s years as a journalist in Shanghai during the 1920s. Since 2011 she has published six books of poetry with the Finishing Line Press: Cheap Grace, Compass Rose, My Wedding Dress, Thunderstorm, Eve’s Lament, and James Joyce’s Water Closet (forthcoming). The Parallel Press Poetry Series of the University of Wisconsin at Madison published her chapbook, Lottery Ticket (2013). To read more please visit, https://1drv.ms/w/s!At_9Hw2EcAFFgj8WDh03U5YRWbO0

Octavio González is Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at Wellesley College. His first poetry collection, The Book of Ours, was a selection of the chapbook series at Letras Latinas, University of Notre Dame (Momotombo Press, 2009). He is currently working on a second poetry manuscript, tentatively titled "The Wingless Hour." To read more please visit https://1drv.ms/w/s!At_9Hw2EcAFFgj8WDh03U5YRWbO0 

“Royalty Free Music from MusicCatRF.com

John MacDonald is a Maryland poet living in Silver Spring, near Washington, DC. He experiments in a variety of styles of poetry and poetry performance. His poems have appeared in various publications, including Gargoyle Magazine, Haiku Journal, Poetry Quarterly, and Dual Coast Magazine. Seven of his poems appear in Music of the Aztecs, an anthology featuring poets from the Washington, DC area. He has directed and presented several choral presentations of his poems, as a guest of the Performetry @ BloomBars series in Washington, DC, and is an occasional guest poet for Poetic License and Poetic Resistance, two poetry-inspired improvisational comedy troupes based in Washington, DC.

"Once again, Ahmad Alkhatat uses his excellent writing talents to create sorrowful but beautiful images, this time as he visits the place of his birth, Baghdad, Iraq. The book begins with poems that describe his feelings about the visit and what he sees. “The Cost of Cigarettes,” “In A Random Street in Baghdad,” “Wounds From Iraq,” “At the Airport” and “Baghdad Taxi.” all denote images of the flavor and culture of Baghdad itself. Ahmad also shows his heart and sympathy for what is happening or has happened within Iraq and Syria with such poems as “Flooding in Aleppo,” “The Crying Girl on the Border” and “My Colorful Sorrows In Iraq.” We expect poets to show emotion within their work, but not all do it with such heartbreaking ‘hit on the mark.’ Mr. Alkhatat always has a wish for peace that can be seen in the form of a prayer in his books. This book contains at least two prayers for peace and comfort for Iraq and neighboring countries, “Send My Salutations” and “Will the Gate of Mesopotamia open for us?” (Will someone wake us up and give the key so that our dreams can come true.) “If Santa Clause Was In…” is stunning and worthy of much thought. (If Santa Clause was in Syria, he would never forgive himself, Knowing that all the children waiting in tombs in the dying gardens.) The book ends with “My Childhood” as he reminds those of us in safer places that there is horror and loss going on in other places in the world. While I enjoyed the entire book and gave each poem several reads, there are two that I could return to read every single day for the foreseeable future. The first is the beautifully penned, “The Beautiful Dream of Baghdad.” The other worthy of many reads is “Grief and Palm Trees in Iraq.” -Linda Imbler-

Unstoppable by Design is a play that explores the life of Matt Rifenburg who at times has been homeless, friendless, hungry, married to someone addicted to drugs,  a clueless father trying to raise his son, and a man losing his job and being diagnosed with a brain tumor in the same week.  Refusing to give up, he applies for a job at Cornell University. Will his determination to overcome be enough to convince the interviewers he is worthy of a design position in the particle physics lab despite dropping out of school at 15 and never returning or will this be the end of his journey?

Biographical sketches of the artists involved in the production of Unstoppable by Design

https://1drv.ms/w/s!At_9Hw2EcAFFgjN2I1mp2JuS8lcE

bes is the nom de guerre of a poetperformer, transdisciplinary researcher, conscientious creator and advocate for civil and human rights. Currently Washington, D.C.based, bes began collaborating with Art Is Dead (A.I.D.), an Istanbul-rooted “art and non-art formation” while living in Turkey in her early-mid twenties. Her poetry attempts to scrape the borderlands of memoir, activism, and antropoesía (Resato 2013), verse with an ethnographic sensibility. Arab American poetry and the Beat movement are important strands of influence in her thematic and stylistic tendencies. Involvements in choral and vocal performance, theatre and competitive creative writing and public speaking from an early age inform her poetic praxis today. Recently, bes has shared her work at open mics hosted by Muslim Writers Collective- D.C. (May 2019),  D.C. Guerilla Poets Insurgency (February, March, April, May, June) and Istanbul Spoken Word (October, November 2018) and supplied extended vocal improv in a free jazz/noise quartet at A.I.D. Ankara #3 in October 2018. She is a member of the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA-NA) and RAWI, the Radius of Arab American Writers. 

You can follow bes' work on Facebook, Instagram and Vimeo. 

 

 

Best,

Corey Veraceouz Houser is a 36 years old actor, author, father, poet, singer, songwriter, pianist, and a producer from Santee, SC and resides in Atlanta, GA. The word "Veraceouz" means representing or speaking the truth. Ever since 13 years old Veraceouz has been expressing his feelings through his art. Veraceouz's art comes from deep within his soul. It's deeper than the art, it's about helping one another, helping our people to reach their full potential, building a relationship with God, and making a difference in the world.

The Episode is Prerecorded

Yvonne Brewer is originally from County Offaly, Ireland and lives in Cork, Ireland. She has had poetry published since 2014 with Women's Spiritual Poetry, including in their fourth anthology “Goddess: When She Rules: Expressions of Contemporary Women” (Dec 2017) Motherhood has taken her down a very creative path and her writing is greatly influenced by her children, her dreams, nature and fairies.

In 2013 Yvonne self published an e-book called “Breathe and Bloom.Soul Mother Meditations”, 10 pregnancy meditations that she was inspired to write during her second pregnancy.

She also has had poetry published with the Blue Nib and her poetry has been read on several audio poetry radio shows of American poet Tamara Miles “Where the Light Most Falls” broadcast by SpiritPlantsRadio.com

Prior to Motherhood , Yvonne studied in University College Cork graduating in 1994 with a Degree in Social Science and in 1996 with a Masters in Social Science (Youth and Community Work) Her career path includes working in jobs such as a Lecturer in Adult Education, supporting communities as a community development worker and after school services for children. Her most fulfilling career to date has been as a full time Mother to her two sons.

Her first poetry book released in October 2018 is available to buy in paperback or e-book on Amazon. “Twigs” by Yvonne Brewer is a collection of poems based on the simple but extraordinary mindful moments of everyday life combining motherhood with nature and reflecting spiritual themes that take the reader on a journey to the soul.

Yvonne is currently working on her second poetry collection “The Story Stones and Wishing Bones” which is a reflection of the sorrow and losses of Ireland’s past.

All Music by Longzijun