"The Word"

by Doug Holder

June 2010

Ibbetson Street Press: Publishing * Writing* Series to be launched This July (2010)

Ibbetson Street Press: Publishing * Writing* Series to be launched This July (2010)

(Newton Mass)
Doug Holder, founder of the Ibbetson Street Press and Arts Editor for the Somerville News, announced that an ongoing literary series titled the "Ibbetson Street Press Publishing* Writing* Reading* Series" will be launched at the Newton Campus of the Jewish Community Centers of Greater Boston. Holder had a number of discussions with Silka Rothschild, the Arts Education Director of the JCC and others in the organization. Holder said:  "Because of the reputation of the press and the poets involved with it, the JCC decided to include the Series as part of their program." During the month of July there will be a number of events including a workshop with novelist Luke Salisbury, and a poetry workshop with poets Harris Gardner, of Tapestry of Voices and Holder himself.

In the fall the plan is to have a self-publishing panel, a reading and discussion with notable Jewish poets, a morning with the grassroots poetry group the "Bagel Bards," and other events. Holder said: " It is very flattering to be approached by the JCC. It is a great feeling to be recognized by a great organization for the work Ibbetson Street has been doing in the community since 1998. I think the arts communities of Newton, Somerville and Boston need to come together and this is a great way to do it."

(Reading series at the Jewish Community Centers of Greater Boston*** Leventhal-Sidman JCC/Newton)

LEVENTHAL-SIDMAN JCC - NEWTON MA
Gosman Jewish Community Campus
333 Nahanton Street, Newton Center, MA 02459
Telephone: (617) 558-6522

The Leventhal-Sidman JCC is a branch of the Jewish Community Centers of Greater Boston. JCCGB is an agency of the Combined Jewish Philanthropies.

See you next month…
Doug Holder

Doug Holder was born in Manhattan, N.Y. on July 5, 1955. A small press activist, he founded the Ibbetson Street Press in the winter of 1998 in Somerville, Mass. He has published over 50 books of poetry of local and national poets and over 20 issues of the literary journal Ibbetson Street.

Holder is the arts/editor for The Somerville News, a co-founder of "The Somerville News Writers Festival," and is the curator of the "Newton Free Library Poetry Series" in Newton, Mass. His interviews with contemporary poets are archived at the Harvard and  the University of Buffalo libraries, as well as Poet's House in NYC. Holder's own articles and poetry have appeared in several anthologies including: Inside the Outside: An Anthology of Avant-Garde American Poets (Presa Press) Greatest Hits: twelve years of Compost Magazine (Zephyr Press) and America's Favorite Poems edited by Robert Pinsky.

His work has also appeared in such magazines as: Rattle, Reconfigurations: A Journal for Poetics and Poetry, Doubletake, Hazmat, The Boston Globe Magazine, Caesura, Sahara, Raintown Review, Poesy, Small Press Review, Artword Quarterly, Manifold (U.K.),  Microbe ( Belguim),The Café Review, the new renaissance, Quercus Review, Northeast Corridor, and many others. His two  recent poetry collections are: "Of All The Meals I Had Before..." ( Cervena Barva Press- 2007 ) and "No One Dies at the Au Bon Pain" ( sunyoutside-2007). 

His collection "THE MAN IN THE BOOTH IN THE MIDTOWN TUNNEL"  was released in  the summer of 2008  by the Cervena Barva Press. It was a pick of the month in the Small Press Review (July/August 2008) He holds an M.A. in Literature from Harvard University.

Parial listings of books, taped interviews, etc... by Doug Holder in Worldcat, an international online catalogue of library holdings: http://www.worldcat.org/profiles/dougholder/lists/74013

To see a listing of Ibbetson Street books and the libraries that hold them click on to:  http://www.worldcat.org/profiles/dougholder/lists/74047  Click on the title and scroll down to see in which libraries the title is held.

Doug Holder
www.ibbetsonpress.com
dougholder.blogspot.com
authorsden.com/douglasholder
somervillenewswritersfestival.com
yahoogroups.com/group/ibbetsonstreetpressupdate
myspace

This young buck is Doug at 23 !

April 2010
SOMERVILLE POETS TO READ AT BOSTON NATIONAL POETRY FESTIVAL April 10-11, 2010

March 2010
Berklee Performance Center stage on Thursday, March 4th, 2010

*****The Women Musicians Network takes to the Berklee Performance Center stage on Thursday, March 4th, at 8:15 p.m.

This will be their 13th annual concert. It has 12 original acts: jazz, Brazilian folk, modern classical, Middle Eastern rock and more. Tickets are only $10, available at the B.P.C. box office: 617.747.2261.

Article by Kirk Etherton

This concert has something for everyone. (Or is it everything for everyone?) One of the most inspired and inspiring annual concerts in Boston is produced by the Women Musicians Network, a student club at Berklee College of Music. “The overall level of musicianship was astonishing,” says Cambridge resident Matthew Greif, recalling last year’s event. “Also, I was impressed by how eclectic the evening was. You never knew exactly what was coming up next—or how it might resonate on a personal level.”

The W,M.N. concert has been featured on WGBH’s "Eric in the Evening," and as a Boston Phoenix Editors' Pick for shows not to be missed. Like last year, the 2010 concert will feature 12 original acts in a wide range of styles—from jazz and R&B, to contemporary classical. Like every year, it will highlight Berklee women students from around the world.

The March 4th show does not exclude men. Lucy Holstedt, W.M.N. Faculty Advisor, emphasizes that “this concert aims for diversity and inclusion. We feature women as arrangers, producers, band leaders, lead guitarists and drummers because there’s so much female talent in these areas that’s under-represented.” Holstedt mentions Julgi Kang, a superb violinist from South Korea who has prepared a funk-fusion arrangement of “Caprice No. 24,” Paganini’s famous composition. “Julgi will be performing this piece with Evan Veenstra, a fine electric bass player from Ontario, Canada. This is a very original and inspired act,” says Holstedt, “and that’s the bottom line.

Ultimately, our concert is about great music.” This year’s largest act is Women of the World—a group that has performed at the United Nations. The group itself represents many nations: its core members hail from Japan, Brazil, Italy, India, South Africa, Ghana, Mozambique, the U.S. and Australia. According to Boston poet Harris Gardner, “this annual show serves up a potpourri of music offerings that will satisfy any palate. I’d even say that if you can go to only one concert every year, make it this one.”

*NOTE: Lucy Holstedt thanks the Middle East Restaurant & Nightclub for their “valuable support of this concert every single year.” The 13th Annual Women Musicians Network ConcertMarch 4th, 8:15 p.m.Berklee Performance Center 136 Mass. Ave., Boston Tickets $10, available only at the Box Office:617. 747.2261 www.berkleebpc.com

February 2010
POEMS FROM THE LEFT BANK: SOMERVILLE, MASS. 

Poems from the Left Bank: Somerville, Mass. by Doug Holder was reviewed by Irene Koronas (we love her!) for the Wilderness House Literary Review:

Review:
Poems From The Left Bank: Somerville, Mass.
Doug Holder
2010 Propaganda Press
$5.00 (plus $2 US shipping; $4 out-of-US shipping alt-current.com)

Doug Holder's sense of humor is refreshing in this politically-correct-up-tight-consumer-society. Holder doesn't buy into the pre-packaged-cherry tomatoes, "with leafy laminated balls of Romaine." The poems come from the city of Somerville, Mass., which still has pockets of working class folks, vaudeville expressions, and the students' bawdy release on weekends. Holder, a master craftsman, observes the mundane with poetic intelligence:
The close habitation of sunlight and brooding shadow,
The incestuous tangle of backyards
The sudden eruption of a hill…
(from HAMLET ST., SOMERVILLE)

Every poem in this collection widens our experience because of his ability to contain what is an apparent situation or the reality therein of any given situation. And the humor he interjects in some of the poems becomes a place for the reader to finally relax and laugh. These poems show us, the reader, who we are, where we live, who we have become. We reacquaint ourselves with the everyday people we pass by; people and places, as an actuality, not just the someone who is part of the crowd.

Holder has the ability to pick out a scene, and then depict the actions related to those people, ... within the context of their private settings, urban reality, concrete walks, brick and wooden structures that may induce a reluctance on our part to notice anything or some of the happenings related to the everyday people. Holder sees people, places, and things, in a non-judgmental way, he gives us a glimpse, an opportunity to meet one another:

He turned his face toward me --
A smiling mouth
That had turned cruel
Still with the fleshy
Flushed cheeks
of a choirboy.
(from FALLEN CHERUB OUTSIDE A LIQUOR STORE)

Bloc 11: Café Society with an Open Mic.

Now, I am a regular of the cafes in my home turf of Union Square, Somerville. I try to alternate between the unpretentious home of the oatmeal scone at Sherman, and the sleek, hip environs of Bloc 11. For some reason I prefer to have my bagels at Bloc 11 (with my supplement of pickled herring) and keep to the baked goods at Sherman. Years ago I had a poetry reading at the Sherman Café, and now I noticed that Bloc 11 on Bow St. has an open mic every Thursday night from 6PM to 9PM for musicians, singers and even poets. On Wednesdays nights they have featured musicians play such as: Audrey Ryan, “Quill,” and Somerville resident Jennifer Greer. A press release states:

“This all ages, weekly series will provide a house guitar, keyboard and PA system, along with the chance to play 2 songs for peers and fans alike. This series will give back as much as it receives from performers. Never charging a cover, offering a free podcast of each performance, plus a video recording, steaming online and on Somerville Community Access Television (SCAT).
Sponsored by Rockin Bobs Guitars and Performer Magazine, those who shine at the Bloc 11's Open Mic can win free musical gear and an ad in Performer- a national music publication.
Hosted by local indie-rocker Kristen Ford, this Thursday night series is meant to foster community among musicians.

‘There is so much we can learn from each other, musically and professionally. With so few all ages venues in the city- it’s a shame to ostracize so many up and comers because of liquor sales. It’s not right to expect a starving artist to pay a cover, and buy drinks just for the opportunity to play. The open mic at Bloc 11 is open to all ages, all genders, all ability levels and all income brackets. We just ask that you come to play and listen. Those who join in have the opportunity to network, be considered for a full set on our Wednesday night acoustic series, plus the chance for national exposure with Performer Magazine.’

Kristen Ford's open mindedness has rubbed off in the first few weeks yielding memorable performances across genres, ages and genders. With initial open mics packed- one can only assume great things are to come for Bloc 11 Cafe's open mic night, and for the players who fill it.

The Bloc 11 Cafe Open Mic series will be every Thursday, starting January 7th 2010. Sign up is from 5-6pm with music 6-9pm. Open to all styles of music, spoken word and performance, Bloc 11's open mic night is only missing one thing- your performance.”

I had the chance to talk the founder of this spanking new enterprise Kristine Ford, who hails from Aldersey Street in Somerville. Ford is an employee of Bloc 11, an aspiring musician, and grew up in Western, Mass. She attended college in Chicago, and eventually moved to Somerville. Like any artist she needed a steady job to keep the income flowing, and allow her to follow her avocation. Bloc 11 has proven to be haven for her. She makes a living (and a pretty mean bagel with tomatoes, onions, and butter on the side) and works with other young artists with gigs outside of their job. Megan Brideau, for instance, is a smiling and welcoming presence behind the counter as well as the curator of art exhibits at Bloc 11. Presently her own provocative work is on display, but she has exhibited many other local artists.
Ford said he recently navigated the dangerous shoals of city government to get an entertainment license. I asked this vivacious guitarist where one could hear her play: She said:
"I’ve been around town: The Toad, Burren in Davis Square, the Lizard Lounge, and, well of course-- Bloc 11."
***Bloc 11 Café is located at 11 Bow Street, Union Square in Somerville, MA 02143
Ph: 617 623 0000
W: http://www.bloc11.com
Open 7 days, 7am-9pm Open Mic Thursdays sign up at 5, music 6-9pm.

December 2009
Doug Holder to teach: Residencies at the Asylum: Poets at McLean Hospital / Newton Community Education / Starting Jan 12, 2010

Both poets will read their award-winning poems at the Somerville News Writers Festival: Nov 14, 2009 7PM http://somervillenewswritersfestival.com

The Ibbetson Poetry contest was judged by poet Richard Wilhelm.
First prize:
"Georgia, 1963" by Kirk Etherton
Second runner-up
"Flower Days" by Marc Goldfinger

**** Frank Bidart is the winner of the Ibbetson Poetry Award. This will be presented at the Somerville News Writers Festival as well. Previous winners have been Robert K. Johnson, Louisa Solano, Robert Pinsky, Afaa Michael Weaver, Jack Powers, and David Godine, Jr.

What Americans can learn from Gypsy culture

Littleton Massachusetts – September 1 2009 –Wilderness House Literary Review is pleased to announce a one hour lecture by noted Gypsy (Roma) scholar Sonia Meyer at 7:00 P. M. on October 14 2009 at the Out of the Blue Gallery in Cambridge Massachusetts. Tickets are $5.00 at the door.

Sonia Meyer will speak about the Roma (Gypsy) culture and what we can learn from them in this high tech, money-worshipping society. She hopes the audience look inside the Gypsies self-exiled world, and come to realize that their freedom is available to all of us.

Sonia Meyer was born in Cologne, Germany in 1938 and spent her formative years living in the woods among partisan and Gypsy fighters during WWII. She has been fascinated by Gypsies, or the Roma people ever since becoming a self-educated scholar of Roma (Gypsy) culture.

Meyer, who may indeed be part Gypsy herself has been intrigued by the freedom, the art, and the celebration of magic and mysticism of the Roma people. She encountered them throughout her travels in Europe, and struck up fascinating conversations with these enigmatic vagabonds. She lived much of her life like a Gypsy, moving from city to city across Europe, and eventually landing in the states. In Geneva she worked with Jewish refugees, she spent time with the Bedouins in the Negev desert, eventually moving to the States.

In the narrow and winding stacks of the Widener Library at Harvard she discovered a translation by Matteo Maximoff, Russian Gypsy, which concerned Russian nomadic Gypsies. She visited him, and traveled to Macedonia to visit the so-called “Queen of the Gypsies,” and lived with a family in the Gypsy section of Skopje where the Gypsies were well off.

She is the author of a novel to be published in the Summer of 2010. “Dosha” is about a Gypsy girl. The novel spans her childhood spent with Russian partisans in Polish forests to her defection during Khrushchev’s visit to Helsinki on June 6, 1957 “Dosha” will be published by Wilderness House Press (www.wildernesshousepress.com) and will be excerpted in the spring issue of Wilderness House Literary Review (www.whlreview.com ). For further information see www.soniameyer.com.

For further information contact Steve Glines (sglines@industrialmyth.com ) 978-800-1625 – Industrial Myth & Magic (www.industrialmyth.com ) is a public relations firm specializing in literary persona and events.

September 2009
Steerage by Bert Stern

Steerage, by Bert Stern
Ibbetson Street Press
http://ibbetsonpress.com
http://bertstern.blogspot.com  
$15 Review by Miriam Levine

BURNING STARS, JADE SILK, CAMARROS

We’ve heard a lot about American individualism; and, in American literature, about writers like Melville, who have what one critic has called, the voice of “the imperial self,”: majestic, heroic, grand. In “Walden,” Thoreau, though a less imperial writer than Melville, still creates a narrator who lives heroically alone in his tiny cabin in the woods and sees few people. He’s a man without family. In actual life, Thoreau walked daily to Concord village to see his mother. In contrast Bert Stern writes about his deep connection to the living and dead. He sheds his ego and takes on the voices of his ancestors who immigrated to America from Eastern Europe. Though him, we hear his dead mother’s account of the voyage. The family is out to sea; order falls apart; the family loses its center. Sailing in limbo, his mother says, “Nobody talked. We could not look at the sea or the dead sky/ above us. We hung between these. We would be here always.”

In “Lotty is Born” Stern bears the weight of generations: “All suffered to bring me here to this room/ where I write, bigger than the house/ my mother was born in.” Beautifully, in fluid lines, he registers a dissolving self: “I am somebody’s dream . . . let them tell me if they can/ if I am recompense for what they endured.”

A descendent of those who in steerage endured the stink of “of seawater and piss, animals and human sweat,” Stern brings his ancestors into the light. His mother says, “my spirit was waiting for me, dancing on the shore.” The spirit is feminine, like the Shekinah: the principle of immanence, the divine showing itself. I’ve heard the Shekinah described metaphorically as a single green leaf that keeps falling to earth but is never seen to land. Stern refers to the Shekinah in “Hannah Remembers,” notable for its sense of shining, never-ending time: “Evenings that went on forever/ still unfolding.” In “Driving Home from Elizabethtown” the poet is gathered into transcendent light:

. . . I am ready to fall
with the turnings of poplar
and oak. Through the windshield
even the thin rain that takes on
gold light from the sun in its falling
is fuel for the burning.

Stern’s “Wait,” the long poem, which comprises part five of “Steerage,” is a triumph, sweet and mysterious. The Shekinah takes the form of a dying girl who lives inside the man Stern calls “Jacob.” “He called out to her as one might/ throw a flower at a star.” The girl keeps falling, imperiled, but she comes back to life: “she’s close as your skin, still humming her tune.” Stern gives the girl a voice: “She said this. The girl said this now was always as it is now.” Nothing is lost. Time is eternal. The poem ends by connecting a tender earthly image—“the turnip’s sweet spheroid,/ its little tail”—with an image of fire and living water: burning stars and icicles dripping as if they were “breathing.”

Besides water-fire-falling-burning poems in which Stern invokes a self’s dissolving in radiant never-ending time, there are poems about closely observed everyday life. (I prefer the spirit-Shekinah and daily-life poems to the fable poems, “What the Teller Knows” and “Early autumn in the Mountains,” which seem unreal to me.) Stern writes about his neighbor, Kenny, a Vietnam war veteran; he watches him capably “sizing boards with a handsaw,/ setting them snug.” But at night, in his dreams, he keeps shooting at a girl who is “hardly a shadow.” He describes Kenny’ son, “washing his car,/ a black Camarro/ with V8 engine,” and the everyday of American life with its skateboards and televisions playing all night in store windows.
“Tea,” which I’ll quote in its entirety, demonstrates the lyrical beauty of Stern’s poems. Here, the feminine appears as a muse. “Tea” is also a love poem that recognizes the separateness of the beloved:

That clear song—
was it you while I slept,
slipping down in your jade
silk to feed the stove
with pine and drink your tea
alone, at down, as you like to do?

Stern could be describing his own clear song: tender, lyrical, beautifully phrased.

*Miriam Levine's most recent book is The Dark Opens, winner of the 2007 Autumn House Poetry Prize. She is the author of In Paterson, a novel, Devotion: A Memoir, three poetry collections, and A Guide to Writers' Homes in New England. Her work has appeared in Harvard Review, The Kenyon Review, The Paris Review, and Ploughshares, among many other places. A recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts writing fellowship and grants from the Massachusetts Artists Foundation, she was a fellow at Yaddo, Hawthornden Castle, Le Château de Lavigny, Villa Montalvo, Fundación Valparaíso, and the Millay Colony for the Arts.

August 2009
Well I was laid off from my job at McLean Hospital. It has been 27 interesting years. Fortunately I have a generous severance package, and I am "exploring" other career opportunities. Who knows where I may wind up!  I decided to reprint this article from The Boston Globe (Feb. 2000) about my poetry efforts during my tenure there. Poetic Healing: As the hospital and its clients have changed, counselor Douglas Holder adds another dimension.

By Michael Kenney (Globe Staff)

SOMERVILLE—In the fourth collection of poetry of poetry Douglas Holder has published at his Ibbetson Street Press here, he includes a poem of his own, titled: “ A Simple Nod.”

I saw him in Harvard Square,
happily walking with a friend.
As we passed each other
we exchanged a simple, understated
nod.
Our silence was a friendly conspiracy
a reminder of where he once was
and where he was
now.

The where is never stated—although two words, “the ward,” a few lines further on provide a hint. Holder, 44, is a mental health counselor, and for the past six years he has been conducting poetry workshops at McLean Hospital for its patients. “ I’d been working there 17 years, and I’d had my poetry published in small journals,” he says. I wanted to add another dimension to my job and help a few folks out.”

While Holder would not think of ranking himself with Anne Sexton, who won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1967, he does invoke the legendary poetry workshops she conducted at McLean in the late 1960s. Sexton, a patient at the Belmont hospital in 1973, committed suicide in October 1974.

Nor does Holder claim that the hospital today resemble the institution of those years. “It’s not like the old McLean,” he says, “with patrician types sitting around drinking tea from bone china.” That was the McLean of Harvard fullbacks, Porcellian Club members, and “ Mayflower screwballs.” That was the McLean that Robert Lowell, a frequent patient there in the 1960’s, memorialized in his poem “Waking in the Blue,” and that writer Susanna Kaysen, a patient in 1967, recalls in her best-selling memoir “Girl Interrupted,” now a major motion picture. Today, Holder says, the members of his poetry groups are more likely to be the homeless “ coming in with a bit of doggerel.”

He runs two workshops, one on Thursday afternoons for patients in the hospital’s open-ward program, which meets in a converted Victorian mansion, and other Friday evenings for patients on two locked wards where Holder works. Neither is open to an outside visitor. But whether in the mansion or in the more institutional setting of the locked ward, Holder says, “ I try to sort of have a coffeehouse atmosphere. We’ll have a round of applause when some reads a poem.”

Of course it doesn’t always work out as planned. Holder remembers reading Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” at his very first workshop. “I was pretty enthusiastic then, and a bit naïve,” he says. I thought they’d like it. I saw the poem—with its lament about the “best minds of his generation lost to madness”—as a haunting cry that would be a catalyst for discussion.”

And he says with some self-deprecation, “ I thought they’d think of me as, “ Hey, this guy knows where I am coming from.” Instead , “they were angry and one of them walked out,” he says. “And one of them told me: “Why do I have to hear this? I live with it.” Another time, Holder says, a young woman became hysterical and ran out when he read a poem of his own about a kosher butcher in Brookline. “It turned out the young woman had a painful experience in her life, which she associated with chickens, and she couldn’t take it,” Holder says. “ I had a lot of explaining to do with the clinical staff.” “You never know,” he adds, “when you might hit a vein.”

The problem is compounded, Holder says, by the fact that today’s hospital stays tend to be shorter—a week or two instead of several months. “You don’t always know what to expect,” he says. It also means that the workshops aren’t quite they were in Sexton’s day. “I get in their face about it,” Holder says. “ I’ll go around to the rooms in my wards and ask: “Are you coming to the poetry group tonight?’ “And sometimes, I’ll have a doctor or another staff person tell me that so-and-so is a well-known writer, so I’ll make a special effort to get them to come.”

A number of poems written by patients in these workshops have been published—usually anonymously in the now defunct Boston Poet and other small poetry magazines. But not in his own magazine, which shares the name of his small press, Holder says, because that would violate hospital policy.

Because he believes that poetry can play a healing role, Holder started Ibbetson Street Press, out of house in Somerville—naming it after the street where he lives with his wife, Dianne Robitaille, a poet and geriatric nurse. Holder, who got a master’s degree in literature from Harvard’s extension school while working at McLean, has been publishing his poetry in small magazines and especially Spare Change, the monthly journal for the homeless. “I write a lot about homelessness and mental health problems.”
Starting a small press to publish local poets, Holder says, was “ a way to get connected.”

The most recent issue—38 pages on 81/2 by 11 paper with a paper cover, bound with black slip plastic binder—sells for $4 and contains 40 poems; an interview with Ed Galing, an elderly small press poet; and several reviews. Among the poets are a number of first-time writers and others described as “mainstays” of Holder’s press. There are also two professors of literature—John Hildebidle, who teaches at MIT, and Robert K. Johnson, who teaches at Suffolk University—as well as Don DiVecchio, the poetry editor of Spare Change.

Ibbetson Street Press has also published a number of chapbooks, and old English term for a small collection of poems or ballads, most recently: Poems From 42nd Street” by Rufus Goodwin, a poet and journalist who lives in Boston; and a collection called “ Poems for the Poet, the Working Man and the Downtrodden,” by A.D. Winans, who published a small poetry magazine in San Francisco.

“What distinguishes our journal,” says Holder, “is that it contains poems that anyone can read.” They deal “with everyday life. There’s not a lot of arcane words or funny verse patterns.” Anyone, he adds,” can get something out of them.” The following is a poem written by an anonymous participant in one of Douglas Holder’s poetry workshops at McLean Hospital:

When The Hunter Arrived

When the hunter arrived
at the place
where it was unfamiliar
he became the prey
stalked by everything
ever unleashed
by the conspiracy of creation.
to the edge he cantered
idols toppling by his sides
until at last
those that were against him
trusted his insight into their
essential nature
Finally pushing a hole through
God’s left eye
past what had separately
designed the limitless war
streaming beyond infinity.

July 2009
This is a great opportunity for Boston Girl Guide Readers to have their poetic talents recognized! Ibbetson Street Press Poetry Award 2009
Ibbetson Street Press Poetry Award
IBBETSON STREET PRESS POETRY AWARD

The Ibbetson Street Press Poetry Award is presented at the annual Somerville News Writers Festival (http://somervillenewswritersfestival.com/ ) held this year at the Armory Arts Center in Somerville, Mass.. The festival will be held November 14th (2009) this year. In past years poets and writers such as Pulitzer Prize winner Franz Wright, Junot Diaz, Robert Olen Butler, Oscar-nominated novelist Tom Perotta, Iowa Writer’s Workshop head Lan Samantha Chang, Sue Miller ( author of “The Good Mother”) , Steve Almond, Boston Globe Columnist Alex Beam, poet Nick Flynn, and many others have read in this event. This year Frank Bidart will be receiving the Lifetime Achievement award.

Ibbetson Street Press is also pleased to announce the 3rd annual Ibbetson Street Poetry Contest.
The winner of the Ibbetson Street Press Poetry Contest award (must be a Massachusetts resident) will receive a $100 cash award, a framed certificate, publication in the literary journal “Ibbetson Street” http://ibbetsonpress.com/ and a poetry feature in the “Lyrical Somerville,” in The Somerville News.

To enter send 3 to 5 poems, any genre, length, to Doug Holder 25 School St. Somerville, Mass. 02143. Entry fee is $10. Cash or check only. Make payable to “Ibbetson Street Press” or “Doug Holder." Deadline: Sept 15, 2009. The contest will be judged by Richard Wilhelm http://richardwilhelm.blogspot.com/ poet and arts/editor of the Ibbetson Street Press.The winner will be announced at the festival, and will receive his or her award. A runner up will be announced as well.

June 2009
"Ibbetson Street Press is a unifying force in the Boston poetry scene, and the most viable way for poetry lovers to keep in touch with what's happening. There's nothing sectarian or cliquey about Ibbetson, and I think the variety of its poets...reflect the breadth of its community." (Peter Desmond- Cambridge, Mass. poet and winner of two Cambridge Poetry Awards)

IBBETSON STREET PRESS "A journal and publisher of poetry."
 
  Since 1998 Ibbetson Street publishes the best of the small press. Our press is nationally distributed. We have received favorable notice in The Boston Globe, Verse Daily, Harvard Review, Small Press Review, PRESA, Rattle, and other repsected journals. We have published poetry books by AD Winans, Robert K. Johnson, Gloria Mindock, Abbott Ikeler, Helen Bar Lev, Lo Galluccio, Irene Koronas, Molly Lynn Watt, Patricia Brodie, Linda Larson and many others. Ibbetson Street books have been featured on TV shows and radio, including: WBZ Radio, PBS, NPR, Newton Cable, Boston Cable, Cambridge Cable, Somerville Community Access TV, as well as a feature on MIT Radio. Our magazines and books are carried at a host of independent bookstores in the area.

On June 20 there will be a celebratory reading for the release of Ibbetson 25.  Featured poets will be : Sam Cornish, Bert Stern, CD Collins, Dorian Brooks, Mignon Ariel King, Pam Rosenblatt, Cameron Mount and others. Open mic  $4 donated. suggested  3PM  Out of the Blue Art Gallery  106 Prospect St. Cambridge  http://outoftheblueartgallery.com

May 2009
Dorian Brooks: A poet who ponders what is behind "The Wren's Cry"

Interview with Doug Holder
Dorian Brooks is not a self-promoter, but if one was to read her poetry he or she would surely be hooked. Reviewer Barbara Bialick wrote of her latest collection from the Ibbetson Street Press "The Wren's Cry,"

"She both enriches and breaks our hearts with well-edited, polished lyrics carved out of love, nature and memory. But don’t stop till you read the last poems, which will almost kill you with their powerful anti-war messages, one after another, landing as a dead monarch butterfly on Sitting Bull’s hat…"

Brooks is a widely published poet, an editor for the Ibbetson Street Press, an independent scholar of women's history, a politcial activist, a graduate of Harvard, to name a few accomplishments. I interviewed Brooks about her writing life and her new collection.

Doug Holder: Why did it take to your 30's for you to take your writing of poetry seriously?
Dorian Brooks: I was always writing, but as a child of Sputnik I felt torn between poetry and science, studying science and the history of science in college and grad school. When I was about 30, living in Connecticut, I took a poetry workshop, and I remember the woman who ran it saying she liked my work but found it distant, academic, and at one point said to me, “Dorian, when are you going to get in touch with your gut?” A few years later we moved to Minnesota, where poetry was big—in the schools, in the streets—as I imagine it’s been in Russia. I took several workshops there that encouraged me to write more about what I felt strongly about, which at that time tended to be personal relationships, family.

DH: You were a technical writer in the corporate world. Many poets I interviewed have been journalists and they found it a good training ground for being a writer—how about technical writing?
DB: I suppose that in forcing you to write clearly and economically it’s a bit like poetry. But there wasn’t much emotion involved (unless you count my increasing dislike of corporate America!) The principal of the high school I went to said that a poem has to begin with an emotion, and he was right.

DH: You first thought you had to write poems that were difficult to understand. Later you changed your tune. Why?
DB: I gradually realized there was no point in being obscure; it was a kind of affectation. I used to haunt the poetry sections of libraries, taking out books of contemporary poetry I liked, and they were usually by poets whose work spoke simply and directly in ways I could understand, like Sylvia Plath, Denise Levertov, Louise Bogan, James Wright, John Haines. When I lived in Minneapolis in the mid-1970s to mid-1980s, I had a wonderful teacher, Jim White. I remember him saying of his own work, “I went from opaque to translucent to transparent.” I think that was true of mine as well.

DH: How does your concern for the environment, and for women's history, play out in your new poetry collection The Wren's Cry?
DB: Several poems come out of a concern for the environment, mostly in the section “The Earth I Travel On”—such as “Back Road,” “At Martha’s Point,” and “Ground Zero,” in which I touch on our disengagement, our split from the natural world. In “Green Man” I suggest a little more directly that our dominant religious traditions have been part of that split.

As for women’s history—in poems scattered throughout the collection, but especially in the section “Who She Was,” I draw on the theme of silenced women’s voices, as in “Historical Marker (also an anti-war poem),” “In Memoriam,” and “Who She Was.” “To Brigit” and “Sea Child” express my strong interest in female spiritual figures and women’s voices in folklore.

DH: You say poetry for you is a way to come to terms with things. You say your new collection concerns the great themes of love and death. Have you come to terms with the fact that we die...even love dies...?
DB: Well, some of the poems are on those themes. Poetry is a way to connect with, to clarify, to express one’s deep feelings and thoughts, whether about love or death or whatever—hopefully in ways others can relate to. Maybe writing itself comes out of an awareness of the transitory nature of all things, ourselves included. I guess many of the poems in The Wren’s Cry are more or less elegies—for loss of the earth as we have known it; loss of those whom I, or we, hold dear.

DH: You have a great affinity for Native American cultures. Do you find a certain purity in native cultures ... or is it wrong to characterize them as such?
DB: It’s not that I have such an affinity for Native American cultures, though I’ve tried to learn what I can about them, or some of them. It’s more that I’ve come to realize how much of those cultures we (Euro-Americans) have destroyed over the past several hundred years. As a country, we’ve never really acknowledged that part of our history, and I think that until we do, it’s just lying there like a wound festering beneath the surface of things. Indians were mainly to be got out of the way—by assimilation, removal, or outright genocide—so we could take their lands and resources; and this taking is still going on, most recently in the appropriation of their spiritual traditions. I know “it wasn’t me” personally that did it, but it was my culture, whose hallmarks of dominance and greed are with us still and I believe directing much of what our country is doing vis a vis the rest of the world today.

As for Native cultures being “pure,” I wouldn’t put it that way, but I do think they often reflect important values that we in the dominant culture have lost sight of, such as a closeness to and spiritual affinity with nature, and a sense of community, of interrelatedness with others. I think that some older, pre-Christian, pre-industrial European cultures have held similar values, but they were mostly lost, and we’d do well to revisit them now.

DH: How does editing the magazine "Ibbetson Street" help or hinder your work as a poet?
DB: It doesn’t hinder my work. To some extent I think it helps it in the sense that it makes me aware of how many good poets are out there these days, writing on all manner of subjects, and that’s a source of inspiration.

August
By late summer, the maples
have gathered so much darkness
among their boughs,
we finally concede
our own maturing.

We hear crickets and mourn
an earlier music,
the days grown shorter now,
even our few words
a measure of acquiescence.

And in time,
longing itself dwindles
to a single leaf—
fine-veined and lucent,
yet trifling.

Day closes
and we are one
with the vesper sparrow,
at home with solitude
and night descending.

* From The Wren's Cry." ( Ibbetson 2009)
To order "The Wren's Cry" contact ibbetsonpress@msn.com Or send $17 check or money order to: Ibbetson Street Press 25 School St. Somerville, Mass. 02143

April 2009
THE BOSTON NATIONAL POETRY MONTH FESTIVAL

Now In Its Successful NINTH!!! Year

CO-SPONSORS: Tapestry of Voices & Kaji Aso Studio in partnership with the Boston Public Library, SAVE the DATE, Saturday, April 4th 10:00 A.M.- 4:45 P.M. OPEN MIKE: 1:30 to 4:00P.M. The Festival will be held at the library’s main branch in Copley Square. FREE ADMISSION

53 Major and Emerging poets will each do a ten minute reading;
ALSO... Featuring six extraordinarily talented prize winning high school students: Dianna Willard & Joshua Mejia from Boston Latin High School; Yolanda Cruz, Peter Li & Yamira Serret: Boston Arts Academy; Gabriella Fee: Walnut Hill School for the Arts. These student stars will open the Festival at 10:00 A.M. SAM CORNISH, Boston’s current and first Poet Laureate will open the formal part of the Festival at 11:00 A.M. 52 additional major and emerging poets will follow with a

POETRY MARATHON

Some of the many luminaries include SAM CORNISH, Diana Der Hovanessian, Richard Wollman, Jennifer Barber, Afaa M. Weaver, Barbara Helfgott-Hyett, Dan Tobin, Ellen Steinbaum, Charles Coe, Ryk McIntyre, Elizabeth McKim, Regie O’Gibson, Kate Finnegan, Michael Bialis, Gary Tucker, (Kaji Aso Studio), Marc Widershien, Sandee Story, CD Collins, Marc Goldfinger, Diana Saenz, Stuart Peterfreund, Valerie Lawson, Joseph DeRoche, Frannie Lindsay, Ifeanyi Menkiti, Dick Lourie , Mark Pawlak, Lainie Senechal, Harris Gardner, Joanna Nealon, Susan Donnelly, Irene Koronas, Doug Holder and a Plethora of other prize winning poets.

This Festival has it all: Professional published poets, celebrities, numerous prize winners, student participation, OPEN MIKE.
Even more, it is about community, neighborhoods, diversity, Boston, and Massachusetts. This popular tradition is one of the largest events in Boston’s Contribution to National Poetry Month. FREE ADMISSION !!!
FOR INFORMATION: Tapestry of Voices: 617-306-9484 or 617-723-3716
Library: 617-536-5400

Wheelchair accessible. Assistive listening devices available. To request a sign language interpreter, or for other special needs, call 617-536-7855(TTY) at least two weeks before the program date.

NEW ENGLAND POETRY CLUB
Founded in 1915 by Amy Lowell, Robert Frost, and Conrad Aiken
www.nepoetryclub.org
*Free and open to the public*
*For information, please call (617) 744-6034*

FIRST MONDAY  POETRY READINGS
 
Monday,  April 6th,  7:00 p.m.  
AT:   Harvard Yenching Library, Common Room, First Floor, No. 2 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge (off Kirkland Street, near Sanders Theatre/Memorial Hall)

Panel on Publishing by Poets Who Edit:
The Perils of Starting a Press  
VALERIE LAWSON: Former editor of South Shore Poet, is that rare combination of prize-winning slam poet and editor of literary journals. She has traveled in Ireland and Europe on youth poetry cultural exchange programs. She and Michael Brown edit Off the Coast in Maine.

GLORIA MINDOCK: Editor and publisher of Cervena Barva Press, who is a social worker, was  founder and former editor of the Boston Literary Review.  She authored two new chapbooks and the collection, Blood Soaked Dresses which will be translated into Romanian.

March 2009
I have a new collection out of interviews: "From the Paris of New England: Interviews with Poets and Writers." It has a number of interviews that I have conducted with poets and writers in New England's "City of Light" Somerville, Mass. The following is an introduction from the Curator of the Rare Books and Poetry Collection at the University of Buffalo, Mike Basinski.To order go to:  lulu.com/ibbetsonpress "Welcome to the Neighborhood" 

Within the realm of the poem are communities in which constellations of poets reside with their poems, and their journeys and influences, books, poetics and colleagues, and where they were born and where they work, and the color of their dogs, cats and washing machines. Of course, individual poets have individual lives and spheres. However, in order for their poetry to expansively thrive and develop, there must be a place for them to do so. There has to be a place for poets to be poets, which is to say people. I liken these locals to networks of waterways where the wandering flocks gather to honk in delight or where the frogs congregate to engage their necessary singing. Without these vast neighborhoods of mind there would be no poetry. For communities of creativity to form and function, we, the poets, need to know who we are. This book is the imagination's welcome wagon. Hello.

 It takes a certain individual to build a city of poets. It demands a person of commitment and singular vision and purpose, a person who can live way beyond the mysteries of plumbing and MLA sessions on the role of 20th century amebas in metaphors or how paramecium influenced Pound's economic agendas. Of course, these are important instances for the masses and pedantic scholars. Yes, but the poem needs place to generate and germinate.

I will say that Doug Holder is a maker of a space for poetry. He does the wallpaper and the wash and he makes a protective headquarters where the poetic imagination can rest in comfort and where poetry roams and rules, where the poem is alive and functions as a center of the daily. It is a place where poets can resist troublesome headlines, headaches, cholesterol and salt and do it in comforting chorus. Doug Holder keeps company. Holder holds it together. He is a keeper of the imagination, in the tradition of the Native Americans who are the keepers of the earth. Doug Holder, a culture worker without prejudice, must be labeled steward. It is in his care that poetry gets from today to tomorrow. Really, if it were not for the likes of Doug Holder we poets would be... alone.

 Therefore, what we have here is a book that manifests a vision of a world of poetry from the unique and well tended and considered world of Doug Holder. It is a world where all poetry counts. This book dose not segregate and it does not separate. It is the place of the poet. When it comes to family, Hugh Fox and Gloria Mindock and Robert Creeley and Marc Widershien and Martha Collins all do join hands and smile. Cheese.

I was recently in conversation with a mighty prestigious politician in western New York and it was an honor. She put a question to me. And it was (forgive my strained memory) something like: Is the poem still a vibrant entity... as I remember it from school? Stopping by the snowy woods and all? I said, of course. I mean, here we are! This book vibrates. But that is a big question that does get asked by those not on the invite list. I say here's the phonebook. Make the call. Use the poem, poetry and the poets to stop all the wars and all the Wal-Marts and all the lawn mowers and hedge clippers disturbing sleepy Sunday mornings.

We need poetry in this century more than ever before. Poetry from the person as poet is not complex or distant, if we meet on the corner or the corner bar. Poetry is the occasion of the everyday and it is everywhere. Doug Holder knows that and so he assembled here peeks into many different lives. Now you know this. We are all human. Here is a fine introduction into the poet's parlor. It is a relaxed and permissible passage into the lives of those summoned to the poem. You can get with it.

 There are many ways into the sublime, up the Alps! We can all be poets. Read about the many paths. Ed Sanders is a cultural activist. Dick Lourie is poet and one of the editors/publishers of that most democratic of magazines: Hanging Loose and Louisa Solano was owner of the Grolier's Poetry Book Shop. (Oh I do remember my first visit. It was decades ago. It was like I was a young monk making it to Rome! I bought, I remember distinctly, a thin book of poetry by Doug Blazek!). And then some of us do strange things with poetry: put it in alphabetical order, order it by size, talk about its blurbs, and keep all the books of poetry safe from gigantic book barn dumps and the "Brave New World" of relentless digitization, from the digital fire. The wider world must walk into the world of the poem. Like, here is the yellow brick road! It ain’t on TV! We don't live in Paris. But here it is. It is us! We have here simply much, much more than a collection of Doug Holder's interviews. We have here more than his superior vision that all the poetry is unified and that all of poetry is one poetry flush hot and red from the imagination. Here poets are people from different walks and different, defiant lives and in fact, it is from all walks of living that poetry ascends. Let's get walking? Door to door. 
Michael Basinski
The Poetry Collection
Buffalo, New York

February 2009
You get to a certain age where there is more behind you than ahead of you, unless of course I live beyond 106. Anyway I have written a helluva a lot of poems during my time across this stage we call life, and I revisited some old ones that I have forgotten. I came across them in my dusty and decidedly musty archives. May I share them with you? Well, really, you have no choice.

KITSCH  ~  Appeared in the Cambridge Tab ~
In the parlor
By the Lava Lamp
Under the gaze of the sea monkeys
Blooming in their tank
I took a bite of my Twinkie…
Only the crème de la crème
Letting my hair down…
Falling over my polyester collar
Luxuriating in the quotidian
Resting my cocktail on the ornate coaster
The sunlight spilling through the windows
The intricate pattern.
After my third drink
I could almost swear…
I saw the plastic beak
Of the flamingo
Break into a resplendent
Conspiratorial grin

A DISCARDED BOTTLE ~ Appeared in The Laureate Letter ~
The wind gave it a voice
Whipping a hollow sound from its mouth.
The label
Like a gravestone
Signaling a name, an existence.
It waved at me
Plastic and striped
This was the last straw.

January 2009
Mike Amado is a poet friend of mine who is suffering from “End Stage Kidney Disease.” The Ibbetson Street Press of Somerville has released a collection of poetry by Mike: “Rebuilding the Pyramids: Poems of Healing In A Sick World.” Mike was diagnosed at age thirteen, and at 24 he started on dialysis. Later, Mike received a transplant that didn’t take.The poems in this book deal with his journey and his attempts to take control of his health.
In spite of Mike’s illness he regularly attends the Bagel Bards in Davis Square, publishes his work, and hosts his own reading series in Plymouth, Mass. I decided to use a couple of his poems from his new collection.
Just Waiting
Waiting for the Doctor
Waiting for the pills
Waiting for the scalpel
Waiting to heal
Waiting for treatment to begin
Waiting for treatment to end
Waiting to feel better
Waiting to feel worse
Waiting for an organ
Waiting for the worst
Waiting for an ambulance
Waiting for the hearse.
--Mike Amado.
To order this book and other Ibbetson titles go to http://www.lulu.com/ibbetsonpress

December 2008
"The Word"(Doug Holder) has a new poetry book out "The Man in the Booth in the Midtown Tunnel" (Cervena Barva Press) To order go to: http://lulu.com/cervenabarvapress 
Here is a review by Don Winter:
THE MAN IN THE BOOTH IN THE MIDTOWN TUNNEL
By Doug Holder. 2008. 63 pages. $13 Cervena Barva Press. POBOX 440357 W. Somerville, Mass. 02144-3222
Rather than puzzle poems the reader must pick to find meaning, Doug Holder presents crystal portraits filled with small details that resonate more and more with repeated readings:
Postal Worker
The supervisor
Counts the seconds
As you wipe
The Crumbs from your
Face and return
To your post.
Your hands
Anonymous
Callused, pedestrian
You feed
A rapid
Stream of letters
To a ravenous federal machine.
Your eyes dimmed
For years
From the sea of manila
The bland white face
Of the mail
Faces scarred
With zips.
You feel
Ready to
Be returned to
Your sender.
Holder often aligns himself with those emblematic and beneath notice, voicing experience as a tollbooth attendant, a heroin addict, and a psychiatric patient. And often the poetry is the response to the desolation and the ominous surroundings that engulf characters. When characters aren’t anticipating some form of anxiety (“You felt/It press/Again/In your/Stomach”), they are displaced, or home retreats. “She could never run that way again,” a voice admits in “For Sarah,” and in “The Family Portrait” we are told, “Nothing will last.”But while this is book is about loss and anguish and darkness, it is also about hope:“A daily ritual Of decrepit defiance Walking the ground That will own them.”
(Cambridge, Mass: Two Old Women,” p.26)
What may in fact be best about this book is the way the poetry oscillates between the chaotic and the organized, the terrifying and the peaceful. Holder’s is a voice both comfortable and uncomfortable with itself, a voice that allows both the catastrophic and beautiful to co-exist harmoniously. As the speaker in “The Last Hotdog,” suggests, bad things are happening, with worse on the way, but we can find small moments of (mitigated) joy even where hope is no longer possible:
She brought it
To his sick bed,
He bit through
The red casing
The familiar orgasm of juice
Hitting the roof
Of his mouth
In some facsimile
Of his youth.
Holder takes the grit of everyday life and transforms it into elegant, generous and personal poems, as easy to read as a pop novel, as fulfilling as a hearty meal. “The Man in the Booth in the Midtown Tunnel,” is the type of book that might bridge the aesthetic gap between popular culture, which often does not acknowledge the existence of the fine arts, and the usually snobbish intelligentsia, which rarely acknowledges the existence of popular culture.
~ Don Winter’s work has appeared in the: New York Quarterly, Southern Poetry Review, 5 AM, Passages North, Slipstream, Portland Review, Chiron Review, Sycamore Review, Pearl, and close to 500 other journals in the U.S, Canada, England, Australia, Switzerland, Scotland and Ireland. His work has been nominated for twelve Pushcarts. His first collection, Things About to Disappear, is the best seller at Bone World Publishing and in New York Quarterly’s on-line store. He is co-founder of Platonic 3Way Press, home of Fight These Bastards ~

November 2008
They Don’t Look Like Real Books: Taking A Stand on Print-On-Demand. Rebecca Wolff: Founder of "Fence" magazine

I was at the Massachusetts Poetry Festival on Oct 11, 2008 to take part in the Small Press Festival. There were a number of presses and magazines represented there, such as: Godine Publishing, Cervena Barva Press, Ibbetson Street, Boston Review, Fulcrum, Zephyr Press, Zoland Books and many more. I got the chance to speak to many folks, both publishers and the general public. Ed Sanders, legendary poet, and founder of the 60’s political/ folk/art/rock band the “Fugs,” as well as “Fuck You: The Magazine of the Arts,”( to name just a few accomplishments), was there. He was in Ibbetson Street 23, and I interviewed him recently for The Somerville News, so it was nice to run into him.
As I wandered around the tables, I stopped off at Fence Books, an offshoot of the hip and influential literary magazine “Fence” I spoke to the founder Rebecca Wolff, who I met briefly years ago at the Boston Alternative Poetry Conference. Since then she has come along way and Fence has received recognition from the literati, and is now housed at the University of Albany in New York, where they are the recipient (no doubt) of institutional largess. I admired the Fence books that were on the table and innocently asked if any were “Print-On-Demand.” Well Wolff was like a wolf on a meat truck, and replied: Never! “I never saw one that looked like a ‘real’ book.”
Well perhaps Rebecca works in a rarefied atmosphere, far above the banal masses of the small press. But as an editor and reviewer myself, I see a slew of poetry books each year, review my share: good, bad and indifferent. I certainly can determine what a “real” book looks like. And these perfect-bound collections coming from Print-On-Demand printers are “real” books, and books to be proud of.
I invited Wolff to come by the Ibbetson Press table to take a look. She did after I called out her name as she passed my table. She looked over titles and said: “ Oh, I don’t know, the covers look like pictures of pictures.” Whatever. She did allow; “ I suppose they are comparable.”
There was a small press panel during the festival, and I situated myself in the front row so I could partake in the Q and A. On the panel were Ed Sanders, Geoffrey Young, Anna Moschovakis, Rebecca Wolff, and Kyle Schlesinger. Somerville, Mass. poet Joe Torra, a neighbor of mine, moderated it.

I asked the panelists about the “elitist” attitudes I face when I tell people we now publish Print-On-Demand books. I used Rebecca Wolff’s comment as an example. I talked about the history of the small press and its role in fostering new talent, its job of getting worthy poets on the margin out there and heard. For many of us, without the largess of the academy, foundation grants, big lips for ass kissing, etc…the only affordable way ( especially in the economic straits we have now) is Print-On-Demand. Because of low and non-existent start up prices, and printing geared to exactly how much we need at a given time, we don’t have books sitting around collecting dust. The books are quality productions, our own have been bought by university libraries, bookstores, for classes, and we get regular commissions. We are lucky if we break even, but you go in this for the love.
Anyway the panelist seemed to agree that Print-On-Demand is a viable option. Sanders, a veteran of the Mimeograph Revolution on the Lower East Side of NYC in the 60’s reminded us of the importance of printing poetry, even if it is a simple broadside, and has a press run of 2 or 3 copies. Another panelist said if he had Print-On-Demand in his day, all the books decaying in his garage would not be there. Wolff made some comments about her advocacy of poets and her efforts for the best presentation of their work ( as if we don’t!). At the end she said: ” I am intrigued…” or something in that vein, well, you know the drill.
Whenever a new technology, or new approach, is around there is always a lot of resistance. But now publishers like David Godine Jr., and others are starting to experiment with Print-On-Demand. We must remember what Jerome Rothenburg points out in his preface to “A Secret History of the Lower East Side” ( as noted in the program for the festival:
“American poetry, the part by which it has been and will be known, has long been on the margins, nurtured in the margins, carried forward, vibrant in the margins…”
Perhaps, now that Wolff has joined the ranks of the literati, she has lost sight of the fact. Let’s encourage not discourage.

October 2008
Look to Lowell, Mass., birthplace of Jack Kerouac, for a great poetry festival Oct. 10 to 12. The Mass. Poetry Festival will feature readings by Robert Pinsky, Nick Flynn, “Bagel Bard” Regie Gibson, Ed Sanders, and many others. There will also be a small press fair, where many of the state’s small, indie presses will be represented.
Did you know that the Ibbetson Street Press has an online Print-On-Demand poetry bookstore? Go to Lulu.com/Ibbetsonpress and check out the new titles.
There is a new Biker poetry anthology out edited by Joe Gouveia, “Rubber Side Down” ( Archer Books) There are great poems riding on these pages from folks like: Marc Goldfinger, Linda Lerner, Susie Buck, Valerie Lawson and many others.
We are gearing up for the sixth Somerville News Writers Festival Nov. 22, 2008. Acclaimed poets and writers like: Junot Diaz, Afaa Michael Weaver, Dan Tobin, Meg Kearney, Ifeanyi Menkiti, Steve Almond, A.C. Kemp, Marty Beckerman, and others will read from their work. Check out: SomervilleNewsWritersFestival.com for more info.
And “The Word” will be giving a workshop out at Endicott College in Beverly, Mass., the home of that fine literary journal “The Endicott Review” edited by Dan Sklar. “The Word” will be talking about his new poetry collection “The Man in the Booth in the Midtown Tunnel” ( Cervena Barva Press) with the students. By-the-way, Sklar , the head of creative writing at Endicott, has a new book out with the Ibbetson Street Press: “Bicycles, Canoes, and Drums.”

September 2008
Breaking News…. Boston poetry activist Harris Gardner has a new poetry reading series at the Omni Parker House Hotel in Boston. The first reading will be Sept 11 at 6:30PM—open mic—food and wine available in hotel. The Omni Parker House Hotel is on the Boston Literary Trail, and has a rich literary tradition, that includes such folks as: Charles Dickens and Longfellow. Contact Gardner at: tapestryofvoices@yahoo.com
Well … at a recent editorial meeting at The Somerville News Mayor Joe Curatone told me he is working on the Somerville Poet Laureate position…nothing specific…no times…dates… so it goes…
I have already spoke to Bob Trane, (Alderman), Gregory Jenkins (Somerville Arts Council)….A new Biker poetry anthology is out “ Rubber Side Down” edited by Joe Gouveia. Check it out…available the Grolier Poetry Book Shop in Harvard Square…ask the manager an about the book and tell him Doug sent ya!
I am proud to announce that my new poetry collection “The Man in the Booth in the Midtown Tunnel” (Cervena Barva Press) was a pick of the month in the Small Press Review. July/August 2008 To order go to: www.lulu.com/cervenabarvapress.com
Well Gloria Mindock, Mark Pawlak and myself had a great time teaching at the Cape Cod Writers Center. Many thanks to Anne Elizabeth Tom who is the new director and made this annual conference a success!
Afaa Michael Weaver is gearing up for his International Chinese Poetry Conference at Simmons College in Boston. [Click here] for more information.

August 2008
Well, there is a season for everything… and this is the season the “Ibbetson Street” literary magazine’s long-time poetry editor Robert K. Johnson will retire. Bob has helped the magazine in many ways, and he will be sorely missed. He will still be around on a consultant basis, and he will still work with a select group of writers who contribute to Ibbetson Street.The next issue, Issue 24, will be his last. The good news is Irene Koronas, veteran Boston-area poet, and Wilderness House Literary Review poetry editor will assume his duties.
Joe Bergin of the Jamaica Plain (Boston) Carpenter Poets tells me he is organizing a big reading for poets at the Strand Theatre in Dorchester, Mass. for October. The theme will be poets reading about their jobs. Check out their site and their new anthology “Break Time.”
Ifeanyi Menkiti will be replacing Tino Villanueva in the Somerville News Writers Festival, Nov. 22, 2008. Villanueva, a Boston University Romance Language Professor has to be overseas. We hope he will be able to join us in 2009. Menkiti is the current owner of the famed Grolier Poetry Book Shop and a well-regarded poet in his own right.
And the Somerville Poet Laureate status is still up in the air. I spoke to Greg Jenkins of the Somerville Arts Council who basically said he supports the idea but told me there is there is no dough for it. He suggested I bring it up to the City Council. Alderman Bob Trane told me at a meeting at The Somerville News that he may have private corporate sponsorship… but he won’t reveal the name before it is a done deal. Meanwhile Cambridge and Boston are enjoying their laureates…don’t hold your breath on this one folks…
And hey… I have a new poetry collection out: “The Man in the Booth in the Midtown Tunnel” from Somerville’s Cervena Barva Press… Get yourself a copy, make my day…and yours…
I was on a TV panel on (Somerville Community Access TV) with a number of female writers, some from the MIT faculty, and another from Hampshire College. They were upset with the genre titled: “Chick Lit” One astute panelist said” Hey, every time a man writes something should we call it “Dick Lit?” She’s got a point.

July 2008
The Word has been quite busy of late. I had the privilege to be on a small press panel at UMASS BOSTON with Martha Collins (Field Magazine), Jennifer Barber (Salamander), Bert Stern and Tam Lin Neville (Off the Grid Press) and Steve Glines (Wilderness House Literary Review).
Later I was covering the Grace Paley Tribute for The Somerville News at UMASS (William Joiner Workshop), a celebration and discussion of the life and work of this late poet/writer/political activist and former Vermont Poet Laureate. Paley’s husband Bob Nichols was there, as well as Pushcart Prize winner Afaa Michael Weaver, Fred Marchant (Director of the Poetry Center-Suffolk University), and other notables.
I was also invited to the dedication ceremony for “Louisa Solano Square” in Harvard Square. This was a well-deserved honor for Louisa Solano, the former long-time owner of the Grolier Poetry Book Shop. Later I went with Harris Gardner, the poet impresario of Boston, and his charming companion, poet and noted ecologist Lainie Senechal to tape a TV show for the Cape Cod Writers Center.
In August I will be on a small press panel at the Center: “Demystifying The Small Press” with Mark Pawlak (“Hanging Loose press”) and Gloria Mindock ( Cervena Barva Press). Check out the Center at: http://capecodwriterscenter.org
And breaking news: The Ibbetson Street Press http://ibbetsonpress.com will be publishing a collection of poetry by Boston Poet Laureate Sam Cornish…stay tuned…

June 2008
Somerville poet Afaa Michael Weaver has won the prestigious PUSHCART PRIZE for his poem “American Income,” published in POETRY magazine.
Speaking of Weaver , I am organizing a public discussion between Weaver and poet Major Jackson next April 2009 (poetry month) titled: “Two Generations of Black Male Poets/Two Sets of Eyes on the Urban Landscape
(Location: Somerville Community Access TV studios)  Afaa Weaver & Major Jackson
In a public chat in the SCAT television studios in Somerville, these two poets share the experience of their lives as black men who came of age in large American cities, Baltimore and Philadelphia. They discuss the music, visual art, and literature that were influential in their times, from The Temptations to Grandmaster Flash and Chuck D, from Ron Milner to Susan Lori Parks, and more. They share intimate moments in their lives and some of their own work as well as that of poets they know and admire in an evening setting in the burgeoning artistic community north of Cambridge to be recorded in front of the live audience. The moderator for the said event will be announced in the coming months.
Well, still no word on the Somerville Poet Laureate. The Word has spoken to Sam Cornish the Boston Laureate a few times, and he is full of ideas and plans. Hopefully Somerville will follow …Poets Michael Brown and Valerie Lawson moved to Maine recently from the Cape. They have taken over the small literary magazine “Off the Coast.”and I am told they are looking for submits. Contact Brown at: michaelbrown@lifename.com for more info.
I had the pleasure to interview poet Eva Salzman on my SCAT show “ Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer” who was visiting from London. Salzman is the author of a new collection of poetry “Double Crossing…” ( Bloodaxe) She was also the good friend and mentor to the late Sarah Hannah. I had Hannah on my show before she took her own life about a year ago. Salzman gave an emotionally charged reading of Hannah’s work at the Pierre Menard Gallery in Cambridge last month, She tells me she edited a new anthology of women poets: “ Women’s Work: Modern Women Poets Writing in English.” It will be released soon…stay tuned.

May 2008
Well Anne Elizabeth Tom, the new head of the Cape Cod Writers Center, has finished booking and planning their annual conference in August. Go to their website to see what the program includes. Mark Pawlak, Gloria Mindock and yours truly Doug Holder will be on the panel titled: “Demystifying the Small Press.”
Still no word on the Somerville Poet Laureate. Boston’s got its Cornish, Cambridge has its Payack, and Somerville has its??? The Word brought it up with Somerville alderman Bob Trane, and hopefully the Trane is on track pushing this through…will keep you posted.
Boston –area vocalist/poet Jennifer Matthews is leaving the area for good (along with her manager & BGG creator Rose Gardina) for the wilds of Alaska and the greener pastures of Europe. The Word has it that she plans to eventually settle in the West…so as Bob Dylan sang “ When your rooster crows at the break of dawn, look out your window and I’ll be gone…” Good luck!
Little did Tim Gager know that when he secured the services of novelist Junot Diaz for The Somerville News Writers Festival that Diaz would win the Pulitzer Prize. Well he did…stay tuned for November

April 2008
Well April as Eliot wrote is, “the cruelest month,” but it is also poetry month. On April 12, Harris Gardner’s brainchild the “Boston National Poetry Festival” will be held at the Copley branch of the Boston Public Library at 10 A.M. Hey—it’s free, a whole bunch of established and emerging bards will read, open mic, book table—come on down. For more information contact Gardner at tapestryofvoices@yahoo.com.
At the Newton Free Library annual poetry festival the readers will be Freddie Frankel, Robert K. Johnson, and Deborah DeNicola. It starts at 7PM, April 8, 330 Homer St.,Newton Free Library, Newton, Mass.Cambridge poet Philip Burnham Jr. will have a poem read from his collection “Housekeeping” ( Ibbetson Street”) on the Writer’s Almanac on NPR April, 4. This is a national broadcast.
Congrats Philip! Well Bagel Bard Anne Elizabeth Tom is the new director of the Cape Cod Writers Center. Anne tells me she has lined up the creative writing head at Emerson College in Boston, Dan Tobin as poet –in-residence. THE WORD will be out at the center in August as part of a small press panel. Tim Gager, co-founder of the Somerville News Writers Festival has secured Junot Diaz as the featured reader in next November’s fest. Keep tuned on this one folks!

March 2008
Well, THE WORD hopes March will be the proverbial lamb and warm up the creative juices with the promise of spring. Ibbetson poet Jennifer Matthews is back from her Italy tour, and she tells me that a publisher in that boot-shaped land wants to translate her Ibbetson poetry collection “Fairytales and Misdemeanors.” I think that “translates” into pretty damn-good news for this rocker/bard!
THE WORD recently suggested to Somerville alderman Robert Trane that he consider a Poet Laureate position for Somerville. I am told that Mayor Curatone fully supports the idea, and Trane has brought it up at the latest board meeting. My editor at The Somerville News was at the meeting and he opined that it has a good chance. Of course funding in these lean times are always a problem.
Meanwhile, my pal poet Harris Gardner invited me to the Parkman House in Boston for a reception for Sam Cornish, the new Poet/Laureate of Boston. Gardner was on the committee that selected Cornish. Hey, it was nice affair: good grub, witty conversation, Mayor Menino in attendance, and all those players on the Boston-area poetry scene.
Well Timothy Gager and The Word have been working feverishly on the next Somerville News Writers Festival. http://somervillenewswriterfestival.com So far we secured; Junot Diaz, Marty Beckerman, Dan Tobin, Meg Kearney, Steve Almond, Afaa Michael Weaver, Tino Villanueva…stay tuned.
THE WORD is proud to say it will be the featured poet in the journal of the groundbreaking avant-garde PRESA PRESS. “Presa” (the journal) will be out later this month. http://presapress.com  And Poesy magazine (http://www.poesy.org) will be out online and hopefully in print this month. Harris Gardner, the impresario of the Boston poetry scene will be a featured subject of an interview by THE WORD. I am told the new edition will be perfect bound. Well, that’s just perfect.

January 2008
From The Heart of Union Square, Somerville to the Heart of Israel
Up until this December (2007) I had never been overseas. I’m not a kid. At 52, I have arrived at the second half of the roller coaster ride, or as Camus put it by now I am “responsible for my own face.” I have never been the adventurous type. I have been content to travel back and forth to my ancestral grounds of New York City, or to my favorite isle in Maine, or perhaps the rare trip to the heat and swamps of Florida to visit an old friend. I was well traveled in Somerville of course: from the tony environs of Davis Square to the hinterlands of Sullivan Square. But when I had the offer to judge the “International Reuben Rose Poetry Award” sponsored by the “Voices Israel” literary organization, and to travel to Israel to run workshops and read from my own work, I was like a dog on a meat truck. I knew my time for travel had finally arrived. Mind you, for my maiden voyage, I was not traveling to a relatively benign England or France; I was heading to a part of the world that has seen its share of strife. But I never really had any doubts that I would undertake the trip, and I am glad that I did.
Say what you will about Israel’s foreign policy, it is none-the-less surrounded by countries hostile to its existence. Traveling the country from the mountains in the north, to the south and the Mediterranean Sea, there is a strong sense of a country under a siege. Soldiers, young women and men, with M-16s slung over their shoulders are a ubiquitous sight. Conducting workshops in Haifa, Tel Aviv, and Jerusalem, it seemed that everybody had been intimately and recently affected by violence. I often stayed in homes or apartments complexes that were hit by SCUD missiles in the last Lebanese incursion. Security checks are common in restaurants and shops. But in spite of this the people I met were vibrant and alive.
The city of Jerusalem where I spent a little time in is a mosaic of ethnicity, architecture and intrigue. While in the “Holy City,” I was guided by “Voices” member Adrian Boas, a senior lecturer at Haifa University in Archeology. He was an expert guide who gave me some of the history of the city, took me to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, and the Wailing Wall among other places. I placed a book of my poems “ Poems from Boston and Just Beyond: From The Back Bay to the Back Ward” in one of the many cracks and crevices in the wall. It kept company with the many folded notes people slip in. It was my own message in a bottle drifting out to sea.
Mike Scheidemann, the president of Voices, and one of the co-founders of the “World Congress of Poets,” sponsored by UNESCO, ferried me to many of my destinations, and I stayed on the kibbutz he resides in called "Yizre'el." "Yizre'el" is located about 60 miles outside of Tel Aviv. A kibbutz is an Israeli collective community. It combines socialism and Zionism in the form of practical Labor Zionism. The original kibbutzim developed as a pure communal mode of living.
"Yizre'el" is one of the last purely socialist kibbutzim. I ate some of my meals in the communal dining hall. The food was nothing fancy, but they had excellent produce, sardines, eggs, etc… A lot of their food is grown on their own farm. I was also told the kibbutz has its own fish farms, and produces internationally acclaimed pool filtration equipment in their factory. Schiedman told me that everyone on the kibbutz has their ownhouse, everyone from plant manager to dishwasher gets the same pay, and they all share a small fleet of communal cars. Each resident is required to have some type of job in this community.
Later in the trip I stayed in Metula, the most northern city in Israel. Metula is right next to the Lebanon border, and the town was hit over 100 times by SCUD missiles during the Lebanese incursion. I stayed in the home of Helen Bar-Lev and Johnmichael Simon. Bar Lev is a well-respected landscape painter in Israel and abroad. She used to own a successful art gallery in Jerusalem. She is the current editor- in -chief of the “Voices Israel” anthology. Her partner, John Michael Simon is a published poet, and a collaborator with her in many projects. Recently Bar Lev and Simon published a poetry collection “Cyclamens and Swords” with the Ibbetson Street Press.
There was an informal poetry workshop at their home. It included a female Rabbi, an art therapist, and an English teacher—in short an interesting mix. Like all the workshops I ran I found the participants as passionate about their poetry as they were about their politics.
Being the urban and hopefully urbane man that I am, I was anxious for more of a taste of the cities. One night I stayed at the home of Voices members Susan and Richard Rosenberg who have an apartment in Haifa. Susan is the secretary of the Voices organization. It is situated high up on a hill above the city, with a striking view of the Mediterranean. Wendy Blumfield, a journalist with the Jerusalem Post, and her husband David, were my guides around the city the next day. They showed me the old Arab Quarter, and the Jewish section that was peopled with many Hasidic Jews in full traditional garb.
Haifa is the third largest city in Israel. It is situated in the Carmel Mountains, and it has a terraced landscape with some breathtaking panoramas of the sea and the city. I had the chance to see the Bahai Shrine—a golden-domed spiritual center for the Bahai religion. The Bahai Garden around it is artfully manicured, making a striking picture for a legion of tourists’ cameras.
From Haifa the Rosenburgs escorted me by train to Tel Aviv. I had judged the “Voices” poetry competition so I was expected to help present awards, make a speech, and read from my own work at a venue in the city
Tel Aviv is the second most populated city in Israel after Jerusalem. It is located on the Mediterranean coastline. As we took a cab and traversed the downtown I got the impression of a sleek, modern city with little of the traditional trappings of Haifa. The award ceremony was held at the ZOA House. ZOA House was founded in the 1950’s. by the Zionist Organization of America. It has established itself as a cultural center for the city that operates 24 hours a day. In this center there are three auditoriums for theatre performance, a movie theatre, workshop, course facilities, an art gallery, etc…The ceremony took place in of all places “Douglas Hall” and was well-attended. The award-winning poets Zvi Sessling and Celia Merlin were announced and Merlin read from her work. The honorable mentions also read from their selected poems.
The last part of my trip was in the seaside resort of Netanya, on the seashore between Tel Aviv and Hadera. There is a long stretch of beach along the seemingly placid blue/green waters of the Mediterranean that I had a chance to jog on. There are a bunch of cafes, with relatively cheap food on the beach. I love hummus so I savored this creamy delicacy while enjoying the balmy weather and the ocean view. In fact it was so warm in this southern city that a few folks were swimming. What a contrast to the chilly environs of Jerusalem! Many Russian immigrants hang out at the beach, playing chess, cards, and down more than a few shots. There was a huge influx of these immigrants in the 1990’s I have been told.
The Hotel I was staying at was named the “Residence Hotel” It overlooked the beach, and my room had a tremendous view of the ocean. I ran two workshops at the hotel during Friday and Saturday. In attendance were a number of fine poets from Voices, many of whom won awards and honorable mention in the contest, including Celia Merlin the author of the second prize-winning poem: “Paris Unsaid.” It turned out that Celia’s sister Peri works at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass., the very place I have worked at for the past 25 years. I used to work with Celia’s sister in the early 80’s, on the inpatient ward of McLean; which is world-renowned psychiatric hospital outside of Boston. For you poetry aficionados out there Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, and Anne Sexton, were all hospitalized at the hospital at one point. Sexton was most noted for the poetry workshops she ran at the hospital. Other poets in attendance at the workshop were Donna Bechar (who grew up in a neighboring town on Long Island, NY around the same time I did), Rena Nevon, who won a record of four honorable mentions in this year’s contest, and noted literary critic, Saul Bellow scholar, and peace activist Ada Aharoni. Aharoni, 74, has taught Comparative Literature at Haifa University, and she founded the group: “ The International Forum For Literature and Peace” of which she still is president.
Also in the workshop was actor/poet Amiel Schotz, who wrote a groundbreaking book for theatre training: “Theatre Games and Beyond: A Creative Approach for Young Performers.” Dara Baranat, a poet and faculty member of the English and American Studies Department at Tel Aviv University where she teaches creative writing and poetry was also an active participant.
I had my fears traveling across the world to the Middle East, especially in these troubling times, but I faced them. I was challenged on many fronts: the jam-packed schedule, finding relevant and helpful things to say about scores of work-shopped poems, and dealing with an unfamiliar culture and environment. But I am glad to say I have arrived back at my usual seat at the Sherman Café (and occasionally Bloc 11) in Somerville in one piece, and I am a much better man for the experience.

December 2007
Well, the Somerville News Writers Festival was a hit. To see the pictures of this year’s festival go to: somervillenewswritersfestival.comI just got word that Timothy Gager has given birth to a new baby: a poetry collection that will be released by the Cervena Barva Press…stay tuned.
Seems like a lot of local poets are releasing books this season: Mary Bodwell of Cambridge has a new release from the “Finishing Line Press”: “Roomful of Sparrows.”…way to go Mary! Robert K. Johnson, submissions editor for “Ibbetson Street” has recently released a collection from “Mist to Shadow.” My good friend and founder of Tapestry of Voices, Harris Gardner has a collection out “Among Us” that deals with those heavenly denizens: angels! Richard Wilhelm’s collection “Awakenings” released by Ibbetson Street has finally hit the street!
I recently read out at the Poetry Session at O’Shea’s in Dennis, Mass. which is hosted by playwright and graphic artist: Greg Hischak. A good bunch of poets out there folks, contact Greg at: alarmpup@verizon.net for more information.
And I am off to Israel this month as a guest of the “Voices Israel” organization. I will be reading and conducting workshops in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, and will be reading at Tel Aviv University.

November 2007
The Word was sorry to hear that Jimmy Tingle’s Off Broadway Theatre is closing November 1. A lot of great shows were staged there, and I had the pleasure to review more than a few.
“Inflorescence” a poetry collection by the late poet Sarah Hannah is out from the Tupelo Press. Lo Galluccio will be reading a selection of Hannah’s poetry, as well as her own work, at the Somerville News Writers Festival , Nov. 11, 7PM at the VFW Hall, 371 Summer St. Davis Square, Somerville.
somervillenewswritersfestival.com
We are anxiously awaiting the debut of “Eden Waters” a new yearly anthology published by Bagel Bard Anne Brudevold. Keep tuned.Speaking of Bagel Bards, that Somerville/Cambridge band of poets and writers; it seems that five members are among the nominees for the Cambridge Populist Poet position!
And did you know that Somerville poet and Bagel Bard member Afaa Michael Weaver was featured in the current issue of Poets and Writers? His thoughtful mug is graced on the front of the said magazine. Weaver has recently released a new poetry collection: “ Plum Flower Dance.” (U Pitt Press)
I am proud to announce that I am traveling to Israel to judge the Rueben Rose Poetry Award for the “Voices Israel” literary group. I will be running workshops, and doing a few readings in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. I am very excited about it all.

October 2007
There will be a memorial service for the late poet Sarah Hannah ( 1966-2007) at Poets House in NYC Oct. 25 7 to 9PM. The Tupelo Press has released a memoir in verse by Hannah: “Inflorescence.” Poet Lo Galluccio will read from Hannah’s work at the Somerville News Writers Festival www.somervillenewswritersfestival.com Nov. 11, 2007 at 7PM.
I got an email from poet Robin Clarke who runs a new poetry venue in West Dennis, on the Cape. Named the “Poetry Session,” it is housed at O’Shea’s Olde Inn. It meets the third Thursday of every month from 7 to 9PM. Open mic, music features. I hear the likes of Richard Cambridge, Valerie Lawson and others have read out there. I will be reading out there Nov. 15.
Speaking of a new poetry series; I hear that Gloria Mindock’s “Cervena Barva Press” reading series at the Pierre Menard Gallery 10 Arrow St. Harvard Square was a hit, Sept. 19. The readers were Lucille Lang Day, Diana Der-Hovanessian, and F.D. Reeve. I heard that my dear old friend David Slavitt was in the audience. How I miss him! The next reading will be Oct. 17. The featured readers: John Minczeski, Mark Pawlak, and Susan Tepper. Starts at 7 PM …wine and chesses and stuff follows… See you there!

September 2007
Well gang, we hope to see you at church this Saturday ( Sept. 15). No. I haven't gone fundamentalist on you. But at the International Community Church 30 Gordon St. Allston ( right down from Twin Donut) there will be a 70th birthday celebration for Jack Powers. Such poets as Marc Widershien www.marccreate.com, Bob Clawson, Diana Der-Hovanessian, Linda Larson, Deb Priestly outoftheblueartgallery.com, will read in honor of the founder of Stone Soup Poets jackpowerspoet.blogspot.com Jack Powers. Sidewalk Sam, the celebrated street artist and veritable "Pavement Picasso" will preside. Music will be provided by the poetess and songwriter Jennifer Matthews jennifermatthews.com and the "Blue Dust Drifters" Potluck dinner is scheduled so please bring a dish, a poem to read, and a friend. Starts at 5PM.
I hear that Don Share, former curator of the Harvard Poetry Room, and editor at the Harvard Review, is in Chicago, and is working as a senior editor at Poetry Magazine. No word on the new curator of the Poetry Room, but we will keep you informed. They are looking for someone with strong library science skills, as well as having a font of knowledge about poetry.
A few new poetry titles are out by the Ibbetson Street Press: ibbetsonpress.com Robert K. Johnson's "From Mist to Shadow," Linda Larson's "Washing the Stones," "Blood Soaked Dress" by Gloria Mindock and "Sonatina" by Johnmichael Simon. Many of these books can be purchased at lulu.com
The fine Somerville small press sunnyoutside.com has shuffled up to the artic-like environs of Buffalo, N.Y. We wish Dave McNamara and his band of brothers and sisters good luck!
And I can't keep track of poetic whirlwind Gloria Mindock. (new reading series, books, etc...). You can though...Check out her newsletter at cervenabarvapress.com The word has it she is going to be releasing a book by Boston-poet Harris Gardner. Gardner tells me its' all about angels. He didn't tell me more. Maybe the devil is in those details, pal!
And who will be Cambridge's populist poet? Names like Deborah M. Priestly, Richard Cambridge, and Charles Coe have been making the rounds. Time will tell.

August 2007
Well, two venues of publishing and readings for and by the small press in the Boston-area will have a reading at Schoenhof’s Books in Harvard Square, Aug 18 at 4PM. Lee Kidd the founder of the “Squawk Coffeehouse”, and “Squawk” magazine, and yours truly( Doug Holder) founder of the Ibbetson Street Press,will read from their work.
Did you know the founder of Stone Soup Poets Jack Powers will be turning 70? Well there is going to be a party for him Sept 15 at 5PM at the International Community Church in Allston, 30 Gordon St. Email me for details: ibbetsonpress@gmail.com
Although not formally known as a poet, The Word” was sorry to hear that “Mr. Butch” a beloved street figure in the Hub (mostly between Kenmore Square and Allston/Brighton) passed away at the age of 56 in a motor scooter accident. Butch was known to spouts bits of verse and wisdom over the years, and “The Word” will miss him.
And “The Word” has heard that Linda Larsen former editor of Spare Change News will be releasing a book of poetry this summer from a local press. Poet Anne Brudevold, has a new baby, and she named it the “Eden Waters Press." The first issue is due out this fall.
And do you have a book project in mind? My good friend Steve Glines has started a new agency that may be just the thing the doctor ordered. ISCS PRESS http://www.iscspress.comCheck them out!

July 2007
Poesy Magazine http://poesy.org, founded some 17 years ago by Brian Morrisey was the top pick of the month in the Small Press Review. (May/June) Hundreds of small press mags from around the country are sent to SPR, so competition is tight. I am proud to say that for nine years I have been the Boston editor of the said magazine. The folks at http://sunnyoutside.com are churning out books at a good clip. I just got poetry titles in the mail from Nathan Graziano, and Christopher Cunnigham. Dave McNamara, founder of the press, is leaving Somerville at the end of the summer. The “Word” wishes him well.
I was asked to participate in a small press publishing panel at U/Mass Boston, as part of the William Joiner Writers’ Workshop last month. On the panel were Mark Pawlak (Hanging Loose Press), Sara Burke (Peacework), and others… I also attended a panel on politics and publishing at the Center and chatted with Lady Borton, the noted translator. She tells me that she has a book she edited of Vietnamese poetry titled “Defiant Muse” coming out from the Feminist Press.
“The Word” has it that Cynthia Brackett Vincent publisher of the “Aurorean” is editing an anthology: “Words&Images of Belonging,” and she is looking for submissions. Email her for details: cafpoet37@encirclepublications.com
The Ibbetson Street Press http://ibbetsonpress@msn.com has had a flurry of new releases including poetry collections from Wilderness House Literary Review http://www.whlreview.com poetry editor Irene Koronas, not to mention Emerson College prof. Abbott Ikeler, and rumor has it that Robert K. Johnson (submission editor for the Ibbetson Street Press), and Linda Larsen (former editor of Spare Change News) will have releases later this summer.

June 2007
"The Word" has it that long-time curator of the Harvard Poetry Room Don  Share, is leaving for Chicago to be senior editor of "Poetry" magazine.Jack Powers, founder of "Stone Soup Poets" (1971) is celebrating his 70th birthday Sept 15, 2007. A dinner and reading will be held at the International Community Church in Allston, Mass. at 5PM. Contact me if you want to attend, read a poem, or bring a dish for the potluck dinner. Rumor has it that poet/vocalist Jennifer Matthews and Powers' sons will be providing the music!
Sad News. "The Middlesex Beat" a magazine for the arts that I wrote for has folded after 8 years. Doreen Manning, the editor, did a great job and "The Word" wishes her good luck on her next venture.Cambridge, Mass. poet Lo Galluccio got a glowing front page review for her book "Poems for Dave Tronzo," in Len Fulton's "Small Press Review.' Way to go Lo.
"The Word's" good friend Beth Purcell, PR Guru for the Newton Free Library in Newton, Mass., is leaving her post of many years to teach. Beth has been very supportive of the "Newton Free Library Poetry Series" and she will be sorely missed.

May 2007
Word is poet/singer/songwriter Jennifer Matthews will be at St. Peter's Church in Central square on Friday May 11th for a special evening that will transform & transcend you..
Tala... 'Sacred World Music' debut performance featuring Jennifer Matthews on Lead Vocal, Gtr, Tev Stevig on Oud, Saz, Chumbush, Gtr, and Mike Daillak on World Percussion. Talas' music is as intoxicating as it is inspiring...combining styles ranging from the Middle East, Africa and American Roots.. Tala will send you soaring through the stratosphere.
Also sharing the bill is Hudost... an 'Alternative World Music' ensemble with Moksha Somers on Lead Vocal, Harmonium and Jemal Wade on Gtrs & Mandolin... Hudost music ranges in style from Alternative World to their own 'Country and Eastern' Fusion - a blending of traditional Sufi Music, Bulgarian & Balkan Translations, Turkish, Arabic, Folk, Pop and Southern Gospel. Get tickets at the door or e-mail jennifer@jennifermatthews.com
Yes, it is true; Robert Pinsky former poet/laureate of the United States has emailed me and said he will accept the Ibbetson Street Press Lifetime Achievement Award at the Somerville News Writers Festival next November. Tim Gager, co-founder of the said festival, has secured the services of Oscar-nominated novelist Tom Perrotta as a featured reader for our fiction lineup. Other poets in the festival will be: Gloria Mindock, Sarah Hannah, and Danielle Legros Georges.
Rumor has it that Cambridge poet Douglas Worth has agreed to edit Somerville poet Richard Wilhelm's first collection of poetry. This long-time arts/editor of the Ibbetson Street Press will be turning sixty soon, so it's about friggin time!
The Bagel Bards, that band of bagel- chomping poets and writers will be reading at the Somerville Museum June 23 from 3 to 5 PM, as part of the "Imagining Somerville" extravaganza.The legendary San Francisco poet A.D. Winans' apartment was burnt down and he is now living with his sister out-of-town. He is still writing up a storm; stay well my friend.
Ed Galing, that soon -to-be ninety year old poet/laureate of Hatboro, PA. has not slowed down a bit, and is getting published in every nook and cranny of the small press. An inspiration to us all!

April 2007
Well the new "Bagel Bard" anthology is out and available from http://www.lulu.com The "Bagel Bards" is a group of iconoclastic poets and writers who have been meeting at the Au Bon Pain in Central Square, Cambridge, and Davis Square, Somerville for the past two years. This is the second anthology they have released. Harris Gardner's brainchild "The Boston National Poetry Month Festival" will be held at the Boston Public Library (Copley Square) April 14 to 15 this year. Go to http://www.tapestryofvoices.com for more information.

On a personal note: yours truly will have two new poetry collections released by two cutting-edge Somerville presses titled " No One Dies at the Au Bon Pain"(http://sunnyoutside.com) and "Of All The Meals I Had Before," (http://cervenabarvapress.com)
The oldest literary magazine in the state "the new renaissance" http://tnrlitmag.netis rumored to have a new home at Endicott College in Beverly, Mass. We will keep you posted.
Somerville poet Afaa Michael Weaver had two poems in what some would call the most prestigious poetry magazine in the country "Poetry" He also made the front cover.Way to go Afaa!
Tim Gager is starting to grease his wheels so he can bring us another Somerville News Writers Festival
http://somervillenewswritersfestival.comthis November. I have already selected a few poets for the festival. You want names?... stay tuned.Hugh Fox, that bad boy (well, the bad elderly man) of the small press scene is slated to visit Cambridge's "Out of the BlueGallery"http://outoftheblueartgallery.com for a book party and reading for his newpoetry collection to be released by Higganum Hill Books in May.

March 2007
There is a new journal on the literary scene “Tuesday; An Art Project” tuesdayjournal.com, and they had an inaugural reading at Lame Duck Books in Cambridge, Mass. Always good to see a new lit mag hit the streets.I noticed my old pal from The Somerville News, Amber Johns is on the staff… what comes around goes around. The “Celebration of Somerville’s Small Presses” played to a packed house at Richard Cambridge’s Poets Theatre at Club Passim in Harvard Square. Special thanks to Dave McNamara of sunnyoutside press, Gloria Mindock of Cervena Barva Press, and Lo Galluccio for making this possible.
“The Word” has it that Lo Galluccio has signed a contract for a new poetry collection to be published in 2008 from the Cervena Barva Press in Somerville, Mass. I hear the Diesel Cafe in Davis Square, Somerville is going to put up a new branch in Union Square, Somerville…and folks there is going to be poetry there…I’ll keep you posted.
The Somerville News and Poetry Series headed by singer/songwriter Lisa Locke is a hit, with packed crowds, at that fine independent bookstore” Porter Square Books,”portersquarebooks.com in Cambridge. It meets the first Sunday of every month from 3 to 5PM. Open Mic included. This month’s featured poet is Valerie Lawson—who has a new book out.

February 2007
A lot of activity in the Small Press around town. Gloria Mindock of Somerville’s Cervena Barva Press has released a chapbook of fiction by Ian Randall Wilson “Out of the Arcadian Ghetto.” Check it out at cervenabarvapress.com
And in “The Word’s” mailbox—a beautifully illustrated book by Cambridge resident Andre B. Toth, with writings by Julia H. Low. The introduction reads: “This little book is dedicated to the residents and friends of the City of Cambridge.” Want a copy? Contact: juliahlow@yahoo.com
I was at my usual seat at my old haunt in Union Square, Somerville “Sherman” Café (they have a wonderful oatmeal scone-folks.), where I talked with Mike O’Connell, the curator of the Somerville Museum. Mike’s last brainchild is “Imagining Somerville: Discovering A City Through Art,” a collaborative effort from artists of many mediums to present works that will hopefully influence the way Somerville is perceived and defined. There is going to be a poetry and writing component to this… “The Word” will keep you posted.
Harris Gardner is working feverishly on the “Boston National Poetry Festival” scheduled for April 2007 at the Boston Public Library tapestryofvoices.com “The Word” will be there and will read there.
Also Tim Gager and yours truly will be meeting with the powers-that-be at “The Somerville News” thesomervillenews.com to plan yet another “Somerville News Writers Festival” slated for next November.

January 2007
"The Word" has it that Molly Lynn Watt the popular host of the "Fireside Reading Series" in the People's Republic of Cambridge has a poetry collection to be released by Somerville's scrappy independent press "Ibbetson Street." She calls her baby "Shadow People." Simmons College professor Richard Wollman and co-director of the "Zora Neale Hurston Center" at the said college has a new poetry collection out from Stanley Moss' Sheep Meadow Press: "Evidence of Things Seen."
Poet/Vocalist Jennifer Matthews tells me she's got a gig with the original founding member of the J. Giles band "Danny Klein & Friends" in June. Stay tuned for that one! Get her current schedule @ myspace.com/jennifermatthews
And Lo Gallucio, poetry editor "The Alewife" has a memoir she's shopping around titled: "Birdman" I read it and it rocks! You can read an excerpt on my literary blog: doughholder.blogspot I have been told that U/Mass Boston is opening a creative writing MFA program, to be headed by poet Joyce Peseroff.
Oh did you read Alex Beam's column the other day about poet/translator David Slavitt? Seems that Beam is of the opinion that Dave is a pornographer as well. Dave you are so eclectic!

December 2006
Well another Somerville News Writers Festival has come and gone. It was great to hear readers such as: Nick Flynn, Joanne Nealon, Marc Widershien, Marc Goldfinger, Tim Gager, Michael McGlone, Hugh Fox, Steve Almond, Lisa Carver, and Lifetime Achievement Award winner David R. Godine. The festival was not without controversy… but hey, tell me about one that doesn’t have any!
I am proud to report that my article on 89 year old Hatboro, PA. Poet Laureate Ed Galing, will be in “Rattle” magazine this month. Galing puts us youngsters to shame, and is still writing up a storm. He calls me almost everyday with his latest publication credits. The December issue of “Rattle” will be dedicated to poets of the “Greatest Generation.” (World War ll era)
A few folks around the area and my little circle have been nominated for that coveted small press award the “Pushcart.” On my list are: Lo Galluccio (Poet and Cambridge Alewife columnist), Ibbetson Street Press art/editor Richard Wilhelm, Emerson College professor Sarah Hannah, and Spare Change Poetry editor, Marc Goldfinger.
Deb Priestly’s popular "Open Bark” poetry series at the “Out of the Blue Art Gallery,” in Cambridge, is now presenting features, and who is booking them?... Bagel Bard poet Mike Adamo, that’s who!
Speaking of the “Bagel Bards,” they are rather nomadic these days—splitting their time between the Au Bon Pain in Davis Square and the Au Bon Pain in Central Square. (I’m talking Somerville, Cambridge respectively). Jan Gardner of the “Boston Globe” calls them “the moveable feast,” and “poetry in motion.” For more info about the Bards call 617-628-2313.

November 2006
The “Word” has it that Boston area poets: Sarah Hannah (Professor Emerson College), Lo Galluccio (Cambridge Alewife Poetry Editor), Richard Wilhelm (Arts-Editor/ Ibbetson Street Press), Marc Goldfinger (Poetry- Editor/ Spare Change News), and Tomas O’Leary (Wilderness House Literary Review), have been nominated for the venerable small press award “The Pushcart Prize.”
Rumors abound: Somerville’s independent press “sunnyoutside,” is pondering publishing an encyclopedia of Somerville, Mass. You never know what Dave McNamara, the founder, is up to next!
While sipping my java at the Diesel Café in Davis Square, Somerville I noticed this popular spot is putting out their own lit mag “Work.” The “Word” has it that they will take some submits from folks other than their employees. Send your literary works to: info@ diesel-café.com
And my friend and founder of the Cervena Barva Press in Somerville, Gloria Mindock is opening an online bookstore the “Lost Bookshelf” that I encourage all you poets and writers out there to send your books to. For more info go to: http://www.cervenabarvapress.com.

October 2006
While leafing through the Fall 2006 Season Program for Poet’s House in New York City, I noticed that my pal Afaa Michael Weaver is reading at the “Cave Canem” celebration along with such all-stars poets as: Yusef Komunyaka, Walter Mosley, Major Jackson, Lucille Clifton, to name just a few. The reading will be Oct 12 to Oct 14. “Cave Canem” is a retreat that for the last decade has been dedicated to nurturing emerging African- American poets. Go to http://www.poetshouse.org for more info.

A couple of years ago I was a visiting poet at Endicott College in Beverly, Mass. Well, I noticed in my dog-eared copy of “The Best American Poetry: 2006” that a poem from the “Endicott Review” was selected. Congrats to Dan Sklar the Creative Writing head. The word has it he is starting a new MFA program out there.
The next reading at the Newton Free Library will feature poet and songster Lo Galluccio (“Hot Rain”) http://logalluccio.com, Jean Monahan http://jeanmonahan.com, and Richard Cambridge. Jean has a new book out the “Mauled Illusionist,” and Richard is the curator of the “Poet’s Theatre” at Club Passim in Harvard Square.
By-the-way former poet/laureate Robert Pinsky phoned me at home to graciously bow out of the Somerville News Writers Festival. ( Nov. 12 Jimmy Tingle’s Off Broadway Theatre—Davis Square) http://somervillenewswritersfestival.com However David R. Godine, legendary Boston small press publisher and new owner of the famed “Black Sparrow Press” imprint, will be around to accept the Ibbetson Street Lifetime Achievement Award.
I just interviewed local poet and songwriter Lisa Locke http://www.lisalocke.net . She’s slated to take over the “Somerville News Poetry and Music Series” from Chiemi in November, and move it from the Tir Na Nog to the Porter Square Bookstore. http://portersquarebooks.com.

September 2006
Well September is here, and the "Word" has its nosey little ear to thegrapevine. Bagel Bard member, and Simmons College literature professor Richard Wollman has a new poetry book out: "Evidence of Things Seen," from the Sheep Meadow Press of N.Y.
The Mad Poets Café at the Warwick Rhode Island Art Museum had its final event in August with readers Timothy Gager and yours truly.
There is a rumor, well, isn't there always one or two floating around?. that the Somerville News Poetry and Music Series is heading for Porter Square Books in the Fall, with a new host.stay tuned!
I met with visiting Israel poet, and "Voices Israel" editor Helen Bar Lev at my favorite haunt in Brookline, Mass. Zaftig's ( they make a mean bagel and lox), and she tells me she is working on a manuscript of poems about her said country along with her stunning illustrations. she gave me a peek. She's looking for a publisher.hey I'm one, no?  Ran into an old publisher/friend of mine Diana Saenz of http://www.bostonpoet.com fame. She said she is ready to release an anthology of poetry that includes Somerville's own poet laureate ( I say he is.so there!) Afaa Michael Weaver.

August 2006
“The Word” is out that the Newton Free Library Poetry Series is up again Sep 12, 7PM with poets Ifeanyi Menkiti, Mark Pawlak, and Jennifer Matthews…that’s 330 Homer St. in Newton Centre.
Well…I was in contact with former poet/laureate Robert Pinsky, and he looks like a good bet to be at the The Somerville News Writers Festival this November to receive the Ibbetson Street Press Lifetime Achievement Award…somervillenewswritersfestival.com
Hard to believe, but I ventured out from the safe environs of my native Somerville recently to go to Watertown Community Access TV to take part in the filming of a documentary based on local writer Susie Davidson’s Holocaust anthology “I Refused to Die…” http://www.irefusedtodie.com I am told the film should be out in a few weeks…”The Word” will keep you posted…
Somerville poets Alex Kern and Bert Stern are making a few waves…. Seems that Kern has edited an anthology of spiritual poetry and prose by twenty and thirty-somethings, and he calls the collection “Becoming Fire…”
Bert Stern knows that old age isn’t for sissies, so he has become involved in a new venture “Off the Grid Press” that published poetry books by writers over sixty…you’ll have to wait your turn kiddies! http://offthegridpress.net
Oh…by-the-way at the Au Bon Pain in Davis Square, in Somerville Mass. the “Bagel Bards” are baking in the summer sun, and talking about poetry and other such stuff every Saturday morning starting at 9AM…come and go whenever you want…
Louisa Solano, former owner of Harvard Square famed Grolier Poetry Book Shop is slated to be the luncheon guest at the “Wilderness House Literary Retreat” Aug. 5, in Littleton, Mass. The retreat was founded by Steve Glines…want to find out more? …go to http://www.wildernesshouse.org...

July 2006
The "Word" has it that writer Nick Flynn has agreed to be a featured reader at the "Somerville News Writers Festival," this November. Flynn is the author of the acclaimed memoir "Another Bullshit Night In Suck City."... And rumor has it that the former Poet/Laureate Robert Pinsky has tentatively agreed to be the recipient of the "Ibbetson Street Press Lifetime Achievement Award," at the same festival.
Roaming around my old stomping grounds at Harvard, I noticed that the Lamont Library poetry room has closed for renovations for the summer and will reopen in September. And yes there is life beyond the Charles River, local literary activist Tim Gager, founder of the Dire Reader Series held at the Out of the Blue Art Gallery in Cambridge, is scheduled to read for Harris Gardner's "Tapestry of Voices" series at the Warwick Art Museum ( Warwick, Rhode Island) with yours truly in August.
Sad news for you literary, java freaks... it seems the "Someday Café" in Davis Square lost its lease ( according to The Somerville Journal) and will be closing in the dog days of August. I wrote many a poem and ate many a scone in that hallowed hole-in-the wall. The café is to be replaced, I hear, by a " Mr. Crepe." Don't that take the cake, or crepe, as the case may be.