Bookmobile: From the Library of Jesus Crisis - by David S. Pointer (CC#67)

Crisis Chronicles Press is pleased to present Bookmobile: From the Library of Jesus Crisis, a new chapbook by Tennessee poet David S. Pointer, published on 23 March 2015.

Bookmobile is 28 pages featuring 19 poems including "Skin Tale," "Carefree Customers," "Numbness of the Unknown Numbers," "America’s Coldest Case," "Cagefighter," "Printers Alley Elder" and more.  It is now available for $7 from Crisis Chronicles, 535 Parkside Boulevard, Cleveland, Ohio 44143 USA. This chapbook is currently sold out.

Handbound, saddle stitched. Pale cyan cardstock cover featuring art by Justin Jackley. Golden pastel endpapers. 8.5" x 5.5". ISBN: 978-1-940996-18-9

Click here to read an interview with the author at Ppigpen.

David S. Pointer grew up in Kansas City and Clinton, Missouri. He has recent work in Bukowski: An Anthology of Poetry & Prose About Charles Bukowski [Silver Birch Press], as well as in volumes V and VI of The Southern Poetry Anthology series. His latest chapbook, Bookmobile, was published in 2015 by Crisis Chronicles Press.  He currently resides in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, with his two daughters.  Read more about him here.

Thunderclap Amen - by Dianne Borsenik (CC#66)

cover photo by Steven B. Smith

Crisis Chronicles Press is thrilled to announce the publication of Thunderclap Amen by Dianne Borsenik on 11 March 2015. The third release in our NineSense series of loaded nine poem chapbooks by authors whose work you need to know, Thunderclap Amen features 24 pages of fiery work that challenges even the coldest February on record in northern Ohio. As you would expect, Borsenik's blazing poetic tongue triumphs.

Get your Thunderclap Amen for only $6.99 from Crisis Chronicles Press, 535 Parkside Boulevard, Cleveland, Ohio 44143 USA.

8.5 x 5.5", hand bound and saddle stapled. Textured cream card stock cover. Caramel construction endpapers. Ivory parchment pages laser printed recto side only. Poems include "Mother Tongue," "Karma Café," "Let's Get It On," "Polar Vortex," "Happy Hour," "'S No More," "Transcending Gender," "Around the Block" and "Cue Brick, or How I Learned to Stop Loving the Bomb and Start Worrying."

Print run: 99 copies.  ISBN: 978-1-940996-17-2.
 

Dianne Borsenik ablaze during Words Dance at Mahall's
photo by John Burroughs

Dianne Borsenik is active in the Cleveland, OH poetry scene and regional reading circuit.  Her work has been widely published in journals and anthologies, including Rosebud, Slipstream, Lilliput Review, Pudding Magazine, and Modern Haiku. She won first place in both the 2013 and 2014 Best Cleveland Poem Competitions.  As editor of NightBallet Press, she has published over 70 books for poets across the US.  Borsenik lives in Elyria with her husband James and dogsons Angelo and Bodhisattava. 

The author will give her debut reading/performance from Thunderclap Amen on 7 April 2015 at 6:30 p.m. during Words & Wine at Your Vine or Mine in Painesville, Ohio.
 

Cutting the Möbius - by Jonathan Thorn (CC#65)

cover photo by Chandra Alderman

Crisis Chronicles Press is happy to announce the publication of Jonathan Thorn's Cutting the Möbius on 1 March 2015.  It is the second release in our NineSense series of loaded nine poem chapbooks by authors whose work you should know, if you don't already.

Choose US or International

US Orders $4.99 USD International $6.99 USD

Available for only $4.99 from Crisis Chronicles Press, 535 Parkside Boulevard, Cleveland, Ohio 44134 USA.

Cutting the Möbius is 8.5 x 5.5", hand bound and saddle stapled. Textured cream card stock cover. Red card stock endpapers. Poems include "Cutting the Möbius," "Blind Eyes," "The Light Between Us," "Biological Binary," "Drawing Eyes," "Phone Calls," "Forgotten," "Night Sky’s Visitors" and "Bullets."

Print run: 99 copies.  ISBN: 978-1-940996-16-5.

About Jonathan Thorn: "I’m a stay at home dad, working only a few hours a week at a grocery store, and live in Columbus, Ohio, with my wife and four children. I have always loved writing. Poetry is for me an outlet that allows me express the way I see things, a medium to clarify my world to the world."  His previous publications include work in The Squire: Page-a-Day Poetry Anthology 2015 [Writing Knights] and Vending Machine: Poetry for Change, Volume 5 [The Poet's Haven].

Meet the author 24 April 2015, 7 p.m., at Buzzbin Art & Music Shop in Canton, Ohio, when he will be a featured poet for Stark Knights.

Poems for Explosion - by John G. Hall (CC#58)

We are thrilled to announce the long-awaited publication of John G. Hall's Poems for Explosion in February 2015.  This book features 60 pages of Hall's best poems, illlustrated by Becky Mackay, and is available for a mere $10 US from Crisis Chronicles Press, 535 Parkside Boulevard, Cleveland, Ohio 44143 USA.

Choose US or International

US orders $10.00 USD International $14.00 USD

Jack Hirschman says of Poems for Explosion, "These are 'letter rip' poems by a very conscious British poet who is forever breaking the chokehold that Willie Shakespeare has bent around the neck of that island. Hall really wants to include everything and everybody - he unloads personal and political contradictions with an organized spontaneity that is refreshing and millennial, and his urgencies are upbeat and rooted in a totalizing expressivity."

Gerry Potter says, "Powerhouse tenderness and lyrical agility bind together John's remarkable use of language to give work of lasting worth and historical accuracy. John G. Hall is poet first and foremost and a 20th-21st century documenter second to none. In a world of increasing unfairness we need work of this richness and colour to keep us sane."

Foreword by Sue Fox. Cover image by Charlotte Henson. 6x9" paperback.  Edited by John Burroughs.  ISBN: 9781940996141.

To read "Poetry of protest: why Manchester's John G. Hall strikes a chord across the Atlantic" by Judy Gordon, click here.

To order Poems for Explosion from CreateSpace, click here.
To rate on Goodreads, click here.

You may also buy from Amazon.com and Amazon UK.

John G. Hall is a Manchester (UK) poet who has served as the editor of Citizen32 and the host of Beatification. His previous books include The Drowning Fish, Bang! and Spleen. 

Attend the official book release of Poems for Explosion and meet John G. Hall on 8 April 2015 at the Sandbar, 120 Grovenor Street, Manchester, United Kingdom.

Be Closer for My Burn - by Robin Wyatt Dunn (CC#64)

Cover photo by Steven B. Smith

Crisis Chronicles Press is pleased to announce the publication of Robin Wyatt Dunn's Be Closer for My Burn in January 2015.  It is the first release in our new NineSense series of loaded nine poem chapbooks by authors whose work you should know, if you don't already.

Choose U.S. or International

US Orders $4.99 USD International $6.99 USD

Available for only $4.99 from Crisis Chronicles Press, 535 Parkside Boulevard, Cleveland, Ohio 44143 USA.

Be Closer for My Burn is 8.5 x 5.5", hand bound and saddle stapled.  Pale gray card stock cover. Red card stock endpapers.

Steven Smith, author of Unruly, says, "Just read Robin Wyatt Dunn's Be Closer for My Burn ... very nice, nine short whaps. Think I like the NineSense series idea."

Print run: 99 copies.  ISBN: 978-1-940996-15-8.

Robin Wyatt Dunn writes and teaches in Los Angeles. This is his fourth chapbook, and the first with an actual print run.

2015 Crisis Chronicles Press Publication Schedule

Those who know me best know I am always (at least since 2009) behind in my Crisis Chronicles Press commitments.  There are a number of reasons for this.  One minor one is that I've traditionally had difficulty saying no to a project I love, even if I have a lot on my plate already.  Though "we" are pretty much a one-person operation, some of the best writing I've ever encountered has made it into my inbox and I just had to say yes to publishing it.  However, I'm doing better at setting limits for myself.  Actually, I committed to doing better around a year ago, though I'm still working on making my better even better and catching up.  Being so far behind is simply unacceptable. 

With that in mind, I've put together an ambitious 2015 publishing schedule that I believe I can stick to (albeit somewhat flexibly).  Bear in mind that this schedule is inexact.  Some of the publications will be perfect bound and require me to pay a printer, while others will be hand-bound with materials I already have on hand.  Sometimes, if funds are short, I may skip ahead and do a less expensive book out of order.  Also, some of these books have firmer deadlines than others, either because they were submitted and accepted for publication earlier than others or because they already have immutable launch events scheduled for them.  And you'll notice I've frontloaded the schedule a bit, so it looks like Crisis Chronicles has less on tap for the second half of the year.  That'll give us some catch up time if we need it.  But no matter what, all these books will be published in 2015. 

And what fine books they are!  I am thrilled to have the privilege of publishing such excellent work by some of the world's best living writers.  I'm pretty sure you're gonna love these books as well.

Reminder: this schedule is only a rough guideline.  A few titles may get moved around depending on how things go, but hopefully not too much.

[Editor's note: I updated the below schedule again on 9 July 2015.  You'll see that where there was a bit of a cluster in January and February when I originally posted this, there's now a bit of a cluster later in the year instead.]


January 2015:

#ThisISCLE: An Anthology of the 2014 Best Cleveland Poem Competition by various authors (edited by Dianne Borsenik)

Be Closer for My Burn by Robin Wyatt Dunn

February 2015:

Poems for Explosion by John G. Hall

March 2015:

Cutting the Möbius by Jonathan Thorn

Thunderclap Amen by Dianne Borsenik

Bookmobile: From the Library of Jesus Crisis by David S. Pointer

April 2015:

Ohio Triangle by Alex Gildzen

May 2015:

2015 Hessler Street Fair Poetry Anthology by various authors

Readings / The Road: Two Poems from Euclid Creek Book Three by Michael Ceraolo

June 2015:

Matilda's Battle Waltz by Tracie Morell

Ghost on the Inside by John Dorsey

July 2015:

When You Don't Know Who You Are by Alinda Dickinson Wasner

Balefire by Susan Sheppard

Contents Under Pressure by Kevin Ridgeway

Special Watch by Richard M. O'Donnell

August 2015:

Oct Tongue 2 by Eric Anderson, Margaret Bashaar, Dianne Borsenik, Kathleen Cerveny, Juliet Cook, Mark Sebastian Jordan, Lyn Lifshin, and George Wallace

Inquiry into Loneliness by Meg Harris

god save your mad parade by Austen Roye

Fractured Fairy Tales by William Merricle

September 2015:

Ship of Theseus by Christopher Willard

Of Friends & Liars & Intelligent Crows by Carolyn Srygley-Moore

Desire Doesn't Work Here by Lisa Cihlar

Turnstile Burlesque by John Greiner

October 2015:

This Frankenstein Union by Esteban Colon

The Gravity of Chainsaws by Azriel Johnson

Field Notes by Heather Ann Schmidt

Malformed Confetti by Juliet Cook

PLUS: (months yet to be determined for these - could be in November, December or earlier depending on time and when the manuscripts are finalized)

Works by Jennifer MacBain-Stephens, Christopher Franke, Helen Shepard, Elliot Nicely, Luba Gawur, Michael Estabrook, Bradford Middleton, Lana Bella, Christopher Mulrooney and Dion Farquhar.

That's well over two dozen publications.  So if there was ever a year to purchase a year's subscription to Crisis Chronicles Press (see link below), this is it.  Thank you for your amazing support and patience and poetry.

2016:

Titles by Steven B. Smith and Chansonette Buck; the 2016 Hessler Street Fair Poetry Anthology.
Peace, love and all of the above,
John

For a year's subscription:

#ThisIsCLE: An Anthology of the 2014 Best Cleveland Poem Competition (CC#63)

cover photo by Steven B. Smith

Crisis Chronicles Press is thrilled to announce the publication of #ThisIsCLE: An Anthology of the 2014 Best Cleveland Poem Competition on 5 January 2015. 

The second annual Best Cleveland Poem Competition was held on Sunday, June 1, 2014 at the Willoughby Brewing Company.  #ThisIsCLE features contest highlights including poems by Geoffrey Landis, Theresa Göttl Brightman, Jeffrey Bowen, Mary Turzillo, JP Armstrong, Anita Herczog, Danya Eichhorn, Michael Murray, Steven B. Smith, Frannie Lograsso, S. Renay Sanders, two-time Best Cleveland Poem winner Dianne Borsenik and competition emcee Ray McNiece.

The book is 40 pages, perfect bound, 6x9" and a steal at only $10 from Crisis Chronicles Press, 535 Parkside Boulevard, Cleveland, Ohio 44143 USA.

Available now by mail and online — and soon from particular independent bookstores across the country!  Please join us for the official #ThisIsCLE release party on January 5th 2015 during Mondays at Mahall's Poetry and Prose series at Mahall's 20 Lanes, 13200 Madison Avenue in Lakewood, Ohio.  Meet and hear many of the contributors there. 

Project editor for #ThisIsCLE: Dianne Borsenik 
Executive editor: John Burroughs
ISBN: 978-1-940996-13-4
1st printing: 125 copies.

For more information about the annual Best Cleveland Poetry Competition sponsored by attorney Tim Misny, please click here.

I Don't - by Bree (CC#62)

We are thrilled to publish a new chapbook-length poem by the inimitable Bree!  It's a big bang, multiverse, oh-my-wow of a work that blew me away. I bet it will you, too. 

 

Get I Don't for $7 US from Crisis Chronicles Press, 535 Parkside Boulevard, Cleveland, Ohio 44143 USA. This chapbook is currently sold out.

I Don't is out 15 November 2014, 20+ pages, hand assembled, recycled paper, black end papers, saddle staple card stock bound, featuring cover art by Smith.

ISBN: 978-1-940996-12-7. 1st ed. 59 copies.

 

 

 

 

 

Bree vibes at the Lix & Kix Poetry Extravaganza
(photo by JC)

Bree's work has been published by Arthur Magazine, ArtCrimes, Big Bridge, Big Hammer, Bottle of Smoke, Bottom Dog, Cleveland State University, Deep Cleveland, Ecstatic Peace, Iniquity, Jawbone, Kirpan, Miser, Muse, Ronin Press, Split Whiskey, Temple, The City, The Literary Underground and countless precious mags. She is the author of Some Hiatus: Tucky Poems (2014); A Leg to Stand On (2013); The Rainbow Sweater & My Mother (2012); Let Cupid Know (Ronin Press 2012); Laying Pans (Ecstatic Peace 2009), Sleeping with the Sun In His Eyes with Akol Madut, the story of one Lost Boy of Sudan, and how he found his home in Cleveland, OH; (2009); was chicken trax amid sparrows tread (Temple 2009); Awol culinary poems (Ptrint /P2Begin, Cleveland 2009); and many titles thru her Green Panda Press, began in 2001, which puts out anthies, collections and ephemera, produces poetry fests and events assembling the small press community, getting poets who face each other on pages in the same room for a bit of company.

HOLDING STORIES in YOUR HANDS: Narrative Poems and Poetic Narratives - by Elise Geither (CC#61)

cover photo by Steven B. Smith

Poet/playwright Elise Geither is one of my favorite Ohio writers, and has been for years. So I'm excited to announce the release of her new Crisis Chronicles Press chapbook, HOLDING STORIES in YOUR HANDS. This book is 26 pages, loving handbound with ivory cardstock cover and black endpapers.  Highlights include "The End of Once Upon," "How to Fold a Woman" and "Into the Woods We Go."

Get yours for $7 from Crisis Chronicles Press, 535 Parkside Boulevard, Cleveland, Ohio 44143 USA.

ISBN 978-1-940996-11-0.  1st edition: 70 copies. 

 
Join us for the official release and meet Elise at 7:30 pm on 3 November 2014 during Monday at Mahall's featuring Writer's Root, 13200 Madison Avenue in Lakewood, Ohio.  

Click here to rate HOLDING STORIES in YOUR HANDS at Goodreads.

Elise Geither at the Lava Lounge - photo by JB

Dr. Elise Geither’s previous books include Monologues for Poets, Horse Latitudes, and (with Lisa Meeks) Helping Students with Autism Spectrum Disorder Express Their Thoughts and Knowledge in Writing.  Her plays have been produced throughout the United States, and she lives in Ohio with her husband and three daughters.

City of Tents: Poems About the Occupy Movement and Other Items Taken From the News - by Martin Willitts, Jr. (CC#57)

Cover photo by Steven B. Smith

Crisis Chronicles Press is thrilled to publish Martin Willitts, Jr.'s latest chapbook, City of Tents: Poems About the Occupy Movement and Other Items Taken From the News, in October 2014.  According to the author, "This is a collection of poems based on protest and social issue concerns. The poems start with the Occupy Movement, and include forced slavery, forced migrations, disenfranchised people, and other subjects. I question a lot in this book. As a Quaker, I find many things troubling in this world. I scold my own generation who had protested war, for women and minorities. Where are they? They should have joined Occupy, not the Tea Party."

 

City of Tents is a 38 page, handmade, 8.5 x 5.5", saddle-stapled chapbook featuring 22 poems including "Occupy This," "Hell for Plants," "If We Pull Down the Empty Sky," "The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti" and much more.  ISBN 978-1-940996-10-3.  Gray card stock cover, black endpapers.  1st edition: 60 copies.  Available for only $7 from Crisis Chronicles Press, 535 Parkside Boulevard, Cleveland, Ohio 44143 USA.

"Willitts calls out the irrationality of the put-on soundbite, of cruelty and greed. He asks of us and society to do the uncomfortable work of self-examination.

"At times he's in anguish at the scale, ledgers a litany of injustice with the grief of an exhausted exhale. Some of Willitts's lines are like skipping ahead steps in a math problem: 'smoking cigarettes of last chances.' He recognizes the nebulous: 'the type of nothingness nobody understands.'

"After we're wrung wet, he offers sparing notes like plates of sunlight: 'joy as temperamental as a geyser' and 'a cautionary song of Amazing Grace.'"

— Kathy Smith, co-author of Oct Tongue -1 and founding editor at The City Poetry 

"There are two pervading themes braided throughout City of Tents: 'He could have been any of us' and 'Words can…be an unlit match.' Willitts confronts oppression and imprisonment in its many varied guises, including poverty, bullying, ignorance, and war.  He also offers hope:  'I open envelopes of promises—heritage seeds…small changes begin.' City of Tents is a demand for political and socio-economic awareness.  Heed its call!"

—Dianne Borsenik, author of Blue Graffiti and founding editor at NightBallet Press 

“'Like many things it had no beginning'—yet, even a trauma, a seeking, a quest with no beginning can be brought to some wholesome end. However, this Picardy-third-like sound alighting the grid, causing fractals to sing across Indra’s net, would only ever take place by way of the body. 'Where is the body going?' ('sinkholes of a woman’s sorrow,' into 'the disquieted spirit')—

"This is a grief book, a human emotions book, a book-length rhetorical question capable of leading the body into an activist martial stance in the street, among a gathering of tents. Willitts gives us a long hard look at 'the type of nothingness nobody understands.' As the 'floating world' sink[s] it is an excess of belief that keeps us afloat. Will we be able to tow its weight? Can we adjust these norms by taking the sinking weight of a world on our shoulders?

"What is being modeled for us—what it is that we inherit: 'to take things apart and not necessarily put them back together.' Yet, through these poems, these proposals, the pulse being pumped into a desire for peace and rightness, he (we) are willing to stand up for this! We are actually how the things get put back together."
— j/j hastain, author of xyr and secret letters

Click here to read "Occupy This" from City of Tents in The New Verse News.
Click here to read "Hell for Plants" from City of Tents at Edgar Allan Poet.
Click here to rate City of Tents at Goodreads.

Martin Willitts, Jr. receiving the Dylan Thomas
International Poetry Award in Swansea, Wales

Martin Willitts, Jr. is a retired librarian living in Syracuse, New York. He currently evaluates Prior Learning for SUNY Empire State College. He is a Quaker. He is a visual artist of Victorian and Chinese paper cutouts. He was nominated for 5 Pushcart and 4 Best of the Net awards. He provided his hands-on workshop “How to Make Origami Haiku Jumping Frogs” at the 2012 Massachusetts Poetry Festival.

Martin has 5 full-length books and over 20 chapbooks including Art Is Always an Impression of What an Artist Sees (Edgar and Lenore's Publishing House) and Swimming In the Ladle of Stars (Kattywompus Press).  He is the winner of the inaugural Wild Earth Poetry Contest for his full length collection Searching for What is Not There (Hiraeth Press).  He won the William K. Hathaway Award for Poem of the Year 2012 and he won the Dylan Thomas International Poetry Award in 2014.

Irises Made of Moth Wings (by Christian O'Keeffe) - CC#56 - OUT OF PRINT

cover foto by Steven B Smith

Free poetry you need to read!

Crisis Chronicles Press presents an inspired 26-page chapbook by the late Christian O'Keeffe (1991-2012).

The first time I met and heard Christian, at the Jawbone poetry festival, I found myself greatly moved and told him I’d love to publish a book of his work. He said he’d be honored and would work on sending me some poems. A year later, he gave me these cut and pasted, photocopied and (when he had revisions) pasted again galleys, a sort of handmade chapbook called Irises Made of Moth Wings, saying this is what he had in mind. I loved the poems. But before we made time to work together on the book, he was gone.  

I had mixed feelings about how to proceed. It was hard. I couldn’t consult Christian, so I set it aside. It took nearly 2 years before I knew what to do. I would photocopy his hand-created galleys, leaving them totally as is, come up with an appropriate cover to bind them, and disseminate his poems freely, as he did.

Irises Made of Moth Wings is offered at no charge in a saddle stapled edition, 8.5" x 5.5", with white cover stock, crimson endpapers and white photocopied pages.  1st edition of 99 copies published 14 September 2014.  ISBN 978-1-940996-09-7.  The book was free, but alas, we are out of copies out as of 30 November 2017.

 
Christian O’Keeffe lived in Kent, Ohio. His influences included the river, Jim Carroll, Maj Ragain, Jack Micheline, Bob Kaufman, moths, deer, blue heron, Kurt Cobain, Arthur Rimbaud, and that ecstatic act of walking.

Find more of his work online at https://soundcloud.com/christian-okeeffe.

Christian O'Keeffe at Jawbone, 6 May 2011 - photo by JB