Malformed Confetti - by Juliet Cook (CC#102)

Crisis Chronicles Press is delighted to announce the publication of glitter witch Juliet Cook's new darkly delicious full-length poetry collection, Malformed Confetti, on 16 October 2018.

Where are you?

United States $12.00 USD Elsewhere $15.00 USD

All hail the Queen of Grotesque, Juliet Cook! Her imagery is monstrous, distorted and unnatural — an unmistakably unstable mixture of estranged dollcanos and blood. These poems plunge into “your neckline, your mouth, your eyes”— into the absurdities of existence, and Cook can barely contain all that is coming apart, even “a stuck tongue keeps breaking.” Malformed Confetti is alive! And absolutely “plotting an insurrection.”

—Susan Yount, editor of Arsenic Lobster Poetry Journal

Juliet Cook’s full-length collection, Malformed Confetti, is a visceral examination of the body: bones, blood, teeth, breasts, ovaries, eyes, throat and thighs. Cook’s poetry is elemental grindhouse feminism; confronting what is most difficult with the unblinking eyes of a coroner. Lush and guttural, Cook leads us on a journey through a harrowing cycle of creation and destruction.

—Kelly Boyker, author of Zoonosis and Poetry Editor at Menacing Hedge

In her second full-length collection of poetry, Juliet Cook offers up a menagerie of beaten, bloodied, insect infested, ink ingested, broken girl bits.  Her words cut into the eyes with nettles and burs, leaving nothing but an empty socket, a hole to be filled with desire “rooted in sick compulsion.” Cook stares unflinchingly at the sugar and spice and everything nice to reveal the dark nature of such malformed conceptions of beauty and womanhood.  Each graphic image is threaded with the red yarn of things that are forbidden to say, so Cook cracks the skull open as easily as the shell of an egg.  She stares the darkest horrors of the mind straight in the eye to say “Doesn’t mean I still can’t maneuver up. / Maybe I just don’t want to / with you." Her poems in this collection leave the reader dazzled by blue blood and dead birds made out of the vocabulary of what it means to be a capital P Poet.

—Tracie Morell, author of Matilda's Battle Waltz

Poetry that devours you. That isn’t afraid to put its best twisted doll foot forward. I like to read Juliet’s poetry in the buff because her words keep me modest as I rail against the perversity of playing with shit and all the anorexic nightmares that go along with it. Her pound cake poetry fits perfectly in your misshapen pie hole. Swallow her words like a handful of blue-tinged tacks because there’s no standing on ceremony in this land of ravenous parasites and machinated halos. Her well-chosen and ill-fated albino words aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty as the maggots begin singing an emaciated melody and there’s nothing left but her Tilt-O-Whirl porno star mannerisms. This collection of Malformed Confetti  will leave you in traction as it’s rolled fresh from the oven and acts as a tranquilizer or dark red cloud burst depending on your dissolution or poisoned discord and how prepared you are to walk into the silently screaming fires.

—Charles Cicirella, co-author of Ether Bisque

In Malformed Confetti, Juliet Cook conveys both a rare elegance and grotesque violence simultaneously. This book is unafraid; it is not ashamed. It takes unabashed risks, and turns language into something that is breathing, and alive with vigor. In this landscape of “secret luminarias” the body is devoured like food, and her “tongue unroots from its dank cave”; “bones are tapered syllables” and “hollow flutes.” There is a vulnerability embedded in the anger and gore, and though some may say we are “forbidden to talk about hunger,” Cook speaks of it fearless of her rivals.  

—Lisa M. Cole, author of Dreams of the Living and Heart Full of Tinders

Nominated for an Ohioana Book Award, Malformed Confetti by Juliet Cook is 113 pages, perfect bound, 5.5x8.5" and features cover art by Simona Candini. ISBN: 978-1-64092-973-9. Available for $12 from Crisis Chronicles Press, 535 Parkside Boulevard, Cleveland, Ohio 44143 USA.

Read an interview in which Juliet Cook talks about embodied poetry and writing Malformed Confetti, at Rogue Agent.

Meet the author:

Tuesday 16 October 2018 at 7 p.m. during Poetry Plus featuring Juliet Cook at Art on Madison, 14203 Madison Avenue in Lakewood, Ohio.

Sunday 11 November 2018 at 6 p.m. during Uncloistered Poetry at Calvino's Restaurant & Wine Bar, 3143 W Central Avenue in Toledo, Ohio.

Wednesday 13 March at 7 p.m. during Sara Minges & Juliet Cook at Mac's Backs, 1820 Coventry Road in Cleveland Heights, Ohio.

Malformed Confetti book trailer by Susan Yount: 
https://youtu.be/mYcdyX864Ic

Juliet Cook [photo by Darryl Shupe, processed by Cook]

Juliet Cook has been writing poetry for more than 25 years. Her poetry has appeared in a small multitude of magazines, both online and in print. She is the author of numerous poetry chapbooks, recently including a collaboration with j/j hastain called "Dive Back Down" (Dancing Girl Press, 2015), an individual collection called "From One Ruined Human to Another" (Cringe-Worthy Poets Collective, 2018), and with another individual collection, "Another Set of Ripped Out Bloody Pig Tails" forthcoming from The Poet's Haven.

Cook's first full-length individual poetry book, Horrific Confection, was published by BlazeVOX in late 2008, ten years ago now. Her more recent full-length poetry book, A Red Witch, Every Which Way, is a collaboration with j/j hastain published by Hysterical Books in 2016. Her MOST recent individual full-length poetry book is this one, Malformed Confetti.

The poems within Malformed Confetti range from 2008 to 2015. In early 2010, Cook suffered from an unexpected Carotid Artery Dissection, which lead to an Aneurysm which lead to a Stroke. Later in 2010, while on the brink of divorce and temporarily living with her parents, Cook began to assemble and submit an earlier version of this manuscript. As time went on, she revised it, added more recent poems, and rearranged it, forming it into a dissected but interconnected discombobulation of pre-stroke and post-stroke work.

Cook's poetic style has undergone changes over the years, but her passion for poetry lives on.

Cook also sometimes creates semi-abstract painting collage art hybrid creatures.

Cook also runs her own tiny independent press, Blood Pudding Press, which sometimes publishes hand-designed poetry chapbooks and sometimes sells art.

Dodge, Tuck, Roll - by Rikki Santer (CC#101)

Crisis Chronicles Press is thrilled to announce the publication of Rikki Santer's new full-length poetry collection—Dodge, Tuck, Roll—on 29 September 2018.

Where are you?

United States $15.00 USD Elsewhere $20.00 USD

Nominated for an Ohioana Book Award, Dodge, Tuck, Roll is 63 pages, perfect bound, 5.5 x 8.5", featuring cover art by Christine Ruddy. ISBN: 978-1-64092-972-2. Available for $15 from Crisis Chronicles Press, 535 Parkside Boulevard, Cleveland, Ohio 44143 USA. 

"These poems do indeed 'dodge, tuck, roll' with their unflinching argument that one needs 'another logic' to prevail. What’s to dodge or roll away from? Ultimately, the inevitable 'whirling death girder,' as in waiting for a biopsy while 'godding...for right results,' or sympathizing with a friend about to be widowed again, his 'two wives dealt sentence, paragraph, chapters.' Yes, Santer ponders a fate akin to Job’s with a writerly pun. So where do we find that other logic to ease the way? In just that sort of wit, in starlings, the moon, fireflies, memory of mother in hats, trees, music, in humor like 'the coral flush of flockus plasticus' flamingos, and in art—its lushness and triumphant translations, its 'pact' with 'sorrow,' and ability to limn 'dignity into what was knarled.' Santer finds solace in film and sensory seductions that include food: hence the elegy to Anthony Bourdain, nor does she neglect dreams and a Ouija board for help to peer beyond the beyond. She slows us down and speeds us up with puns, formal patterns, keen insights, striking images—like 'the peach and cream gingham of a ripped party dress,' and musical phrases—my favorite: 'you came to me this morning buoyant in a dream.' Sometimes the sheer density beckons deep reading, yet other times, poems, like 'Uncle Max’s Deli,' speak so clearly we fall right in. There are series of poems here to ride: poems about art, dreams, food, and Betty Boop. What is Betty doing here, you ask? Plenty, with her be-bop slang. This sequence asks us to consider what Betty signifies, that Jazz-Age 'Goth Lolita,' that 'eternal vamp' who, by 'filling in for Lucy,' reminds us how art travels through time to sustain us in the present. Santer has her ears to the airwaves, the ground. She listens to owls who 'know more than they should.' She transcribes vibrations. Come listen."
—Charlene Fix, author of Taking a Walk in My Animal Hat (Bottom Dog Press), Frankenstein’s Flowers (CW Books), Harpo Marx as Trickster (McFarland), and Flowering Bruno: A Dography (XOXOX Press)

"Rikki Santer's Dodge, Tuck, Roll is an eruption of measured delight in a boop-boop-a-doop world. What Elizabeth Spires has called 'the great body of the world'—that great body (and beating heart) is the source of these poems. As the opening poem tells us: 'You dodge and tuck and roll under the whirling death / girder. You do the trick you pose you smile—applause.' Vision is centerstage. And we feel as if we’re in the presence of 'owls / that seem to know more than they should.' Rikki Santer’s poems remind me of an iPhone photograph shoved to life when you press the screen. In the words of the Betty Boop poems: 'She’s in my cortex / this gartered Goth Lolita / eyelashes like knives / crimson bullet lips / dog collar spiked.'"
—Roy Bentley, 2018 finalist for the Miller Williams Poetry Prize for Walking with Eve in the Loved City

"There is plenty of heft and whimsy in the poems of Rikki Santer. Besides her obvious love of language and its play, she ruminates over failed relationships, environmental peril, internet addiction, health scares, and death. But there is also a well-balanced celebration of music, art, and nature to appreciate. Betty Boop is reconsidered as only a feminist might. A food and art mashup with appearances by Picasso, Gertrude Stein, Stephen Hawking and abstractions of culinary possibilities leave the reader dizzy. Reading Santer's poems is an experience of synesthesia as she navigates the "thin membrane between apocalypse & carnival." Dodge, Tuck, Roll is a book to be savored."

—Review in Pudding Magazine: The Journal of Applied Poetry by Editor/Publisher, Connie Willett Everett

Meet and hear Rikki Santer at these 2018 events:

9/29 in Akron, OH — 5:15 p.m. during the High Arts Festival at Uncorked Wine Bar.
10/3 in Youngstown OH — 7:30 p.m. at The Soap Gallery.
10/20 in Mansfield, OH — Borderlands Poetry feat. Concrete Wink at Main Street Books.
11/15 in Columbus, OH — Hometown book launch at The Book Loft of German Village.
11/30 in Athens, OH — Concrete Wink at The Dairy Barn Arts Center.

Rikki Santer has worked as a journalist, a magazine and book editor, cofounder and managing editor of an alternative city newspaper in Cleveland, and a poet-in-the schools. She earned a M.A. degree in journalism from Kent State University and a M.F.A. degree in creative writing from the Ohio State University. Her work has won honors from The Poetry Forum (the William Redding Memorial Contest), Black Lawrence Press (the St. Lawrence Book Award Competition), the Ohio Poetry Association, the National Federation of State Poetry Societies, the Best of Ohio Writer Contest sponsored by the Poets’ & Writers’ League of Greater Cleveland, as well as Pushcart and Ohioana Book Award nominations, and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Two of her published poetry collections have explored place: Front Nine (the Hopewell earthworks of Newark, Ohio) and Kahiki Redux (the late Kahiki Supper Club of Columbus, Ohio). Clothesline Logic was published by Pudding House as finalist in their national chapbook competition. She also has published two other full-length collections: Fishing for Rabbits from Kattywompus Press and Make Me That Happy from NightBallet Press.

The Strength of Flowers - by Steve Thomas (CC#100)

Crisis Chronicles Press is pleased to announce the imminent publication of Steve Thomas' new book, The Strength of Flowers. Steve has been a stalwart of the Cleveland poetry scene for many years, and now, finally — this collection. It's about time! 

The Strength of Flowers is 80 pages, perfect bound, 5.5 x 8.5", featuring cover art by Danielle Stull, and available beginning 20 August 2018 for $12 from Crisis Chronicles Press, 535 Parkside Boulevard, Cleveland, Ohio 44143 USA. 

Where Do You Want It?

United States $12.00 USD Elsewhere $16.00 USD

ISBN: 978-1725142312. Poems include "Mapless," "When Miriam met Raymond Carver," Smoke dream, "Being moved unaware," "Contact in a contrary world," "Staring at Issa in the afternoon revisited" and many more. Now in its second edition with added poems as of March 2019!

Meet and hear the author:

10 October 2018, 7 pm, at Mac's Backs Books on Coventry in Cleveland Heights, Ohio.
22 March 2019, 7:30 pm at Visible Voice Books in Cleveland, Ohio.

Steve Thomas has had poems published in Baldwin Wallace University’s The Mill during the years of 1984 & 1985. Upon returning to Baldwin Wallace in 2005, The Mill published his poetry in 2005 and 2006. He also has contributed to Hessler Street Fair anthologies intermittently from 2007 to 2015, placing third in the competition in 2008. He also had some exposure in a literary magazine Muse sponsored by The Lit in 2009.

Cover Artist Danielle Stull majored in Art at Youngstown State University. Along with her painting and sculpting interests, Danielle has been tattooing, for the last decade, unique designs for customers. She is currently at Focused Tattoo in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, on Coventry.

Citizen of Metropolis - by Christine Howey (CC#99)

Crisis Chronicles Press is thrilled to announce the highly anticipated publication of Christine Howey's newest poetry collection, Citizen of Metropolis.

"Christine Howey’s unique brand of conversational poetry blooms brightly in Citizen of Metropolis. Like a bee nuzzling flower after flower, I found myself buzzing from poem to poem, delighted to find tales of poems with wires showing, visitors from another world, reasons to sit, and babies in treetops. Howey asks questions we’d never think to ask, and then answers them, twinkle in her eye, with penetrating wit." 
—Dianne Borsenik, editor/publisher NightBallet Press, author of Age of Aquarius

Citizen of Metropolis is 32 pages, perfect bound, 6x9", featuring cover art by Steven B. Smith, and available beginning 2 August 2018 for $7 from Crisis Chronicles Press, 535 Parkside Blvd, Cleveland, Ohio 44143 USA.  Add $2 for domestic shipping.

Where Do You Want It?

United States $7.00 USD Elsewhere $10.00 USD

Nominated for an Ohioana Book Award, this volume features 19 poems including "Citizen of Metropolis"; "I Don’t Like This Title"; "Things That Make Me Sit"; "Satisfaction"; "Rock-A-Bye Baby"; "One Second"; "My Muse Eats Cheetos"; "Destination Vacation"; "Meals"; "Losing It at Age 73"; "Edward Hopper, Motivational Speaker"; "An Evening Out"; "Beowulf at Breakfast"; "I Want to Write a Poem with the Wires Showing"; "My Grandson on a Sled"; "Taking Bryn, Age 7, to MOMA"; "There are Parts of My Body I No Longer Encourage People to Handle Freely"; Weather Report"; and "William Randolph Hearst, Diving Alone, San Simeon." ISBN: 978-1-64092-971-5.

Listen to Marcia Epstein's recent podcast featuring Christine Howey at Talk with ME.

Christine Howey is an actor, director, theater critic and performance poet. She was the Poet Laureate of Cleveland Heights, Ohio for 2016-2018. Her one-person stage play of poetry about her transgender journey, Exact Change, was turned into a feature film. As a play, it premiered at Cleveland Public Theatre and was an official selection of the 2015 New York International Fringe Festival. The film was an official selection of the Chagrin Documentary Film Festival in 2018. Christine has had four books of poetry published. She is also a slam poet and competed in the National Poetry Slams, in 2013 and 2017, as a member of the four-person Cleveland team. Since 2002, Christine has been the theater critic for Cleveland Scene and she also posts reviews on her blog, Rave and Pan. She has been named Best Critic in Ohio by both the Press Club of Cleveland and the Society of Professional Journalists. Christine was awarded a Creative Workforce Fellowship in 2014 from the Community Partnership for Arts and Culture, and an Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council in 2016, which also granted her a 13-week residency at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA. She was honored to receive the Illumination Award as the transgender leader of the year in northeast Ohio for 2015, and the Torch Award for leadership on transgender issues from the Cleveland chapter of the Human Rights Campaign in 2017.

Where Never Was Already Is - by Steven B. Smith (CC#98)

I am so very excited to announce the publication of underground art legend Steven B. Smith's magnum opus, Where Never Was Already Is, a collection of decades worth of his best poetry combined with a liberal array of his renowned collage art.

If not for discovering Smith and his work, I might never have attended a live poetry event or become a publisher. I cannot overstate his importance and influence, but not just on me. He is a master of language and rhythm and distilling innumerable harmonious essences from disparate parts. His humor is delightful and biting. His sensitivity and insight are unsurpassed. And no one is better at wordplay. Mix in love, lust, brain dust, the news, the blues and a lifetime of experiences that would make one hell of a series of movies and out comes Where Never Was Already Is, the must-have book of 2018.

Where Do You Want It?

United States $15.00 USD Elsewhere $20.00 USD

Where Never Was Already Is by Steven B. Smith is perfect bound, 6" x 9", featuring 27 collages and roughly 250 poems on 324 pages. Nominated for an Ohioana Book Award. Cover collage and author photo also by Smith. ISBN: 978-1-940996-49-3. Available for $15 from Crisis Chronicles Press, 535 Parkside Boulevard, Cleveland, Ohio 44143 USA.

Meet and hear Smith at these special upcoming events:
4/21 at 7pm during the Kleft Crisis 2018 poetry festival at Mac's Backs in Cleveland Heights.
4/22 at 6pm during the Tongue-in-Groove Poetry Jam at the Millard Fillmore in Cleveland.
6/13 at 7pm at Mac's Backs in Cleveland Heights.
7/7 at 7:30pm at Visible Voice Books in Cleveland.

Self-portrait by Smith

Smith: poet 55 years, artist 54 years. His books include Zen Over Zero - Selected Poems 1964-2008 on City Poetry Press; Unruly on Crisis Chronicles Press; Hip Cat Femur Whack Give a Doc a Bone on NightBallet Press; and his memoir Stations of the Lost & Found, a True Tale of Armed Robbery, Stolen Cars, Outsider Art, Mutant Poetry, Underground Publishing, Robbing the Cradle, and Leaving the Country by Smith & Lady on City Poetry Press.

See his art and poetry on agentofchaos.com, Smith & Lady's blogs on walkingthinice.com, and his songs on reverbnation.com/mutantsmith where he sort of sings his words with music by Peter Ball and Billy Clarksville.

Smith says his greatest achievement is finding and marrying Lady K. 13 years ago and their selling his place to live for 31 months in 10 countries on 3 continents.

Serving - by Kari Gunter-Seymour (CC#97)

In May 2020, Crisis Chronicles Press is thrilled to release a new revised edition of Kari Gunter-Seymour's acclaimed poetry book, Serving.

"After decades of war, many of us don't know any who have served or their families. Gunter-Seymour gives an emotionally honest portrayal of what service and sacrifice look like for military families. A sense of home, of place, offer context for what we protect and why. A book of heartbreak, but most of all, love."
—Review in Pudding Magazine: The Journal of Applied Poetry by Editor/Publisher, Connie Willett Everett.

"The poems in Kari Gunter-Seymour's Serving are so tender, reading them hurts, but it's a sweet ache, the kind worth enduring. The collection begins with the speaker's memory of her son as a young boy, in 'Oshkosh bibs and tiny / red tennis shoes,' but in the next poem, he is a young adult, deploying with his 'tactical gear' and 'newly shaved head. Why isn't this juxtaposition jarring? Because that fierce, abiding love is a kind of umbilicus between a mother and her child, regardless of age or distance. The poems in Serving are so much about place, about home, whether Appalachia or Kandahar. As Gunter-Seymour shows us, poem after masterful poem, serving is not only about sacrifice, what those in the military do for our country. Serving is also what we do for one another, for the people we call home, no matter where they are." 
—Maggie Smith, Author of Good Bones (Tupelo Press). 

"Kari Gunter-Seymour's Serving is a heartbreaking and honest portrayal of the life of a war veteran's mother. Gunter-Seymour juxtaposes the horrors of combat with perfectly rendered images of childhood, domesticity, and home, allowing the reader to experience a perspective we don't often hear about. This collection is eye-opening, unapologetic, unforgettable, and absolutely necessary." 
—Logen Cure, Juror, 2016 Yellow Chair Review Chapbook Contest and author of Letters to Petrarch (Unicorn Press).

Where Do You Want It?

United States $7.00 USD Elsewhere $10.00 USD

Serving was the 2016 Yellow Chair Review Chapbook Contest runner up and nominated in 2018 for an Ohioana Book Award. It is perfect bound, 6x9", and features 17 poems on 26 pages [the updated 2020 edition features 19 poems]. Cover design by Kari Gunter-Seymour. Available for $7 from Crisis Chronicles Press, 535 Parkside Boulevard, Cleveland, Ohio 44143 USA.

Revised edition with additional poems (7 May 2020): ISBN 978-1-64092-949-4.
First edition (released 26 March 2018): ISBN 978-1-940996-48-6.

Three times a Pushcart Prize nominee, Kari Gunter-Seymour blames her method of writing on the rich Appalachian Ohio soil, her wildly eclectic family, her neighbors and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. She holds a B.F.A. in graphic design and an M.A. in commercial photography and is an instructor in the School of Journalism at Ohio University. She has served as the Poet Laureate for Athens, Ohio, and in 2020 was named Poet Laureate for the State of Ohio. Her poems can be found in numerous literary journals, Rattle, Crab Orchard Review, The American Journal of Poetry, The Los Angeles Times and on her website at www.karigunterseymourpoet.com.

Kari is the founder/curator of the Women of Appalachia Project, an arts organization she created to address discrimination directed at women from the Appalachian region.

Oct Tongue 2 - by George Wallace, Lyn Lifshin, Mark Sebastian Jordan, Juliet Cook, Kathleen Cerveny, Dianne Borsenik, Margaret Bashaar and Eric Anderson (CC#96)

Achtung! Crisis Chronicles Press is pleased to present the long-awaited Oct Tongue 2, our biggest book yet (it's like eight books in one!). See October (and so much more) through the eyes of eight of America’s finest poets: George Wallace, Lyn Lifshin, Mark Sebastian Jordan, Juliet Cook, Kathleen Cerveny, Dianne Borsenik, Margaret Bashaar and Eric Anderson.

Where Do You Want It?

United States $15.00 USD Elsewhere $20.00 USD

Each of these eight writers wrote and submitted at least 31 poems in response to editor John Burroughs' October 2014 poem-a-day invitation. Life intervened and it took awhile to get this fine collection into print, but we believe it is well worth the wait.  Oct Tongue 2 features 258 poems on 328 pages, and is 6"x9",  perfect bound, with cover photo by Chandra Alderman. ISBN: 978-1-940996-47-9. It will make you laugh, make you cry, make you angry and make you glad you read it.

Now on sale $10 from Crisis Chronicles Press, 535 Parkside Boulevard, Cleveland, Ohio 44143 USA.

Please join us for a special book launch event Saturday, November 18, 2017 from 2 to 4 p.m. during the Borderlands: Poetry on the Edge series at Main Street Books, 104 N. Main Street, Mansfield, Ohio 44902.

About the authors:

Eric Anderson is a graduate of the Vermont College of Fine Arts. His poetry has appeared in The Sun, Connotation Press, Prairie Schooner and other journals. His novella, Isn't That Just Like You? (Cleveland State University Press) won the inaugural Ruthanne Wiley Memorial Novella Contest. His "A Couple of Scars on My Back" earned a Lantern Award for best poem from The Lit. And his first full-length collection, The Parable of the Room Spinning, is available from Kattywompus Press.

Margaret Bashaar’s first book, Stationed Near the Gateway, was released by Sundress Publications in 2015. Her poetry has also been collected in four chapbooks and dozens of literary journals and anthologies. She co-organizes the annual event FREE POEMS with Rachael Deacon. And she lives in Pittsburgh, PA, with her partner, her son, and her kitty cats, and edits Hyacinth Girl Press (hyacinthgirlpress.com).

Dianne Borsenik is active in the northern Ohio poetry scene and regional reading circuit. Her work has been widely published in journals and anthologies, including Pittsburgh Poetry Review, Rosebud, Slipstream, Lilliput Review, The Offbeat, Chiron Review, Poems-For-All, A Rustling and Waking Within (OPA, 2017), and Resist Much/Obey Little: Inaugural Poems for the Resistance (Spuyten Duyvil, 2017). Crisis Chronicles Press published her first full-length collection, Age of Aquarius, in 2016. She won first place in the Best Cleveland Poem Competition in 2013 and 2014, and Lit Youngstown put her poem “Disco” on their tee shirts, which makes her feel like a rock star. Founder/editor at NightBallet Press and producer of BeatStreet Cleveland, Borsenik lives in Elyria with husband James and dogs Bodhisattva and Michel-Angelo. Find her at dianneborsenik.com.

Kathleen Cerveny, has been a working artist, an award-winning producer for Cleveland Public Radio, and Director of Arts Initiatives for the Cleveland Foundation. Her poems have appeared in the Southern New Hampshire University journal Amoskeag, the e-journal Shaking Like a Mountain, and in several Pudding House anthologies, as well as in in Future Cycle Press’ international anthology Poems for Malala Yousafzai. In 2014 Kathleen received the Robert Bergman Award from the Cleveland Arts Prize and she served as the 2013-14 Poet Laureate of Cleveland Heights. Her first collection, Coming to Terms, was published by NightBallet Press in 2015. Kathleen’s blog, Pay Attention, can be found on her website, kathleencerveny.com. She currently teaches arts management in the Conservatory at Baldwin Wallace University.

Juliet Cook's poetry has appeared in a small multitude of magazines, including Arsenic Lobster, Diagram, Diode, FLAPPERHOUSE, Hermeneutic Chaos, Menacing Hedge and Reality Beach. She is the author of numerous poetry chapbooks, recently including Red Demolition (Shirt Pocket Press, 2014), a collaboration with Robert Cole called Mutant Neuron Codex Swarm (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2015), and a collaboration with j/j hastain called Dive Back Down (Dancing Girl Press, 2015), with more forthcoming. Cook's first full-length individual poetry book, Horrific Confection, was published by BlazeVOX and her second full-length individual poetry book, Malformed Confetti is forthcoming from Crisis Chronicles Press. Her most recent full-length poetry book, A Red Witch, Every Which Way, is a collaboration with j/j hastain published by Hysterical Books in 2016. Find her at JulietCook.weebly.com.

Mark Sebastian Jordan is a refugee of the corporate business world, where he spent a decade in packaging purchasing. Finding himself compulsively writing and creating to escape the unfulfilling day job, he fled when a corporate buyout ended his position. Since then, he has only worked jobs that offer personal fulfillment and creativity. He has written three full-length plays, several one-acts, and four books. He covers concerts of the Cleveland Orchestra for Seen & Heard International and performs widely as a director, actor, storyteller, and improv comedian. His humorous mystery Slammer, Private Dick was published by Sinister Hand Media in 2017.

Lyn Lifshin won the Jack Kerouac Award for her book Kiss the Skin Off, the Paterson Poetry Award for Before It’s Light, and the Texas Review Award for The Licorice Daughter: My Year with Ruffian. She’s been praised by Robert Frost, Ken Kesey, and Richard Eberhart, and is the subject of the award-winning documentary film Not Made of Glass. Lifshin earned the distinction “Queen of the Small Presses” for her dedication to the small presses which first published her, and for surviving on her own apart from any major publishing house or academic institution. Her most recent books include Femme Eterna (Glass Lyre, 2014), #AliveLikeALoadedGun (Transcendent Zero Press, 2016) and Little Dancer: The Degas Poems (NightBallet Press, 2017). Find her at lynlifshin.com.

George Wallace has been described as ‘a kind of Max Ernst stuck in the up-down elevator of America’ (A.D. Winans) and a poet who ‘navigates between high and low diction with generosity, elegance and power’ (Angelo Verga). “If you want to know what America feels like in your mouth, read his poems out loud,” writes Huffington Post’s Robert Peake. The editor of Poetrybay, co-editor of Great Weather for Media and author of 31 chapbooks, George is a fixture on the NYC scene and travels internationally to perform, lecture and teach workshops. Poet Laureate, Suffolk County, LI NY (2003-2005). Writer in residence, Walt Whitman Birthplace (2011-2017).

Forthcoming in 2018 from Crisis Chronicles Press (and subscription info)

Smith collage from Where Never Was Already Is

In 2018 I plan to publish twelve books by writers/artists whose work I have long admired. Many of these have been in the works for quite some time, and I am looking forward to finally midwifing them into print. All of them will be perfect bound. Some do not yet have finalized titles, but here are the dozen in no particular order:

Serving, poems by Kari Gunter-Seymour

Awaiting Time, poems by Helen Shepard

Malformed Confetti, poems by Juliet Cook

not yet titled, poems by Christopher Franke

Where Never Was Already Is, poems and collages by Steven B. Smith 

Ode to Horatio and Other Saviors, poems and photos by Carolyn Srygley-Moore

Drinking from What I Once Wore, poems by Chris Stroffolino

ouroboros, poems by Chansonette Buck and art by Jillian Mardin

Before the Next Ice Age, poems by Lisa J. Cihlar

Citizen of Metropolis, poems by Christine Howey

not yet titled, poems by Julie Ursem Marchand

a super surprise book to be announced later

Where Are You?

In the USA $100.00 USD Elsewhere $125.00 USD

Order all twelve in advance for $100, which will (1) save you $20 off the projected retail price, (2) get you an immediate bonus shipment of three recently published [2017] Crisis Chronicles Press publications, and (3) get you free shipping on all of the above.  Fifteen fabulous books in all!

Click the Buy Now button or send a check for $100 to Crisis Chronicles Press, 3431 George Avenue, Parma, Ohio 44134 USA. Please add $25 if you're ordering from outside the United States.

Our 2018 Ohioana Book Award and Pushcart Prize Nominations

It's so hard for me to choose from among the many excellent works Crisis Chronicles Press has published recently. I love them all, and each book has one or more pieces I think supremely worthy of an award. I came close to having to flip a coin before making my ultimate decision. But here we go:

Pushcart Prize nominees (from books we published in 2017):

• "America, Land of the Brittle" - a poem by George Wallace, from Oct Tongue 2
• "The Black Between Stars" - a nine-senryu sequence by Elliot Nicely, from The Black Between Stars
• "Crystal" - a poem by Meg Harris, from Inquiry into Loneliness
• "Houglass Studies" - a twelve-part poem by Krysia Jopek, from Hourglass Studies
• "Jane in Her Business Suit" - a poem by John Greiner, from Turnstile Burlesque
• "Love Letters" - a poem by Victor Clevenger, from Sandpaper Lovin'

2018 Ohioana Book Award nominees (from Ohio-related books/authors we published in 2016-2017):

• Diary of a Feminist Thug, Volume I: His[tories] of Her Land by Lyz Bly (co-published by Crisis Chronicles and Guide to Kulchur Books)
• The Black Between Stars by Elliot Nicely
• Scraping the Sky by Luba Gawur
• Age of Aquarius: Collected Poems 1981-2016 by Dianne Borsenik
• Fractured Fairy Tales by William Merricle
• Special Watch by Richard M. O'Donnell

Good luck, everyone!

Hourglass Studies - by Krysia Jopek (CC#95)

Crisis Chronicles Press is very pleased to announce the publication of Krysia Jopek's stunning new poetry chapbook, Hourglass Studies, on 31 October 2017.

"Krysia Jopek’s poems in Hourglass Studies are not so much linear as Möbius: they twist back upon themselves in ways hauntingly familiar, while offering surrealistic flashes of the outré. Reading this book is like having your own Tarot cards read: you find yourself spellbound, immersed in questions and answers, hints and predictions, that all make sense in the end."

     —Dianne Borsenik, NightBallet Press publisher and
     author of Age of Aquarius, Collected Poems 1981-2016

Where Do You Want It?

United States $7.00 USD Elsewhere $10.00 USD

Hourglass Studies is available for only $7 US from Crisis Chronicles Press, 535 Parkside Boulevard, Cleveland, Ohio 44143 USA. ISBN: 978-1-940996-46-2. Dimensions 5.5 x 8.5". Perfect bound. Cover design by Dale Houstman. 26 pages featuring 12 poems / studies. Nominated as a whole for a Pushcart Prize.
 

Read sample poems from Hourglass Studies at Meta/ Phor(e) /Play.
Read Michelle Reale's review of Hourlass Studies at Rag Queen Periodical.
Read John Sweet's review of Hourlass Studies at The Bleeding Horse, Avenged.
Read Chris Stroffolino's review of Hourglass Studies at Thing.
Read DeWitt Clinton's review of Hourglass Studies at The Café Review.
Find Hourglass Studies on Goodreads.
 
The official book release party was November 21st, 7:30 p.m., at The Outer Space, 295 Treadwell Street in Hamden, Connecticut.

Krysia Jopek’s poems have appeared in The Great American Literary Magazine, Crisis Chronicles Cyber Litmag, Gone Lawn 19, Split Rock Review, The Woven Press, Columbia Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, The Wallace Stevens Journal, Phoebe, Murmur, Artists & Influence, and other literary journals. She has written reviews of poetry for The American Book Review. Maps and Shadows, her first novel (Aquila Polonica 2010), won a Silver Benjamin Franklin award in 2011 in the category of Historical Fiction.