'Biography is always of two kinds. There is the external biography of places lived in, books published and plays preformed. This is legitimated and this is included - but it is not the full story. True biography occurs in the mind that confronts certain issues and then gives them form in books and poems. So it is that when I say I live in Flanders I am not just referring to the northern Flemish speaking area of Belgium. When I say Flanders I am touching an imaginative source that covers place and history, archetype and existential fact that roots into all the work I do.'
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December 2013 update: "The Dream House" was nominated for the Pushcart Prize by the Origami Poems Project.
"I was born in Plymouth, England a long time ago but I’ve lived most of my life in Scotland. I’ve written stage and radio plays, songs and sketches for revues, flash fiction, short stories, novels, stories for children and books aimed at helping students to write effective academic essays and dissertations and get the most out of university and work. I’ve been a university lecturer, actor, director, TV presenter, visiting professor and artist at the University of Rhode Island and spent a few years as a Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow in universities in Aberdeen, Dundee and St Andrews. I love writing and exploring many forms and genres."
By way of introduction, Bill mentioned to the OPP that he's been invited on 3 occasions to spend time at URI as Visiting Professor & Director in the Theater department. - Rhode Island is not such a small world, after all!
Paula Lietz (Pd Lietz)lives in rural Manitoba Canada. Her award winning photography, art and writing have appeared in numerous publications such as, Sunrise From Blue Thunder, Naugatuck River Review issues Summer 2011 & Winter 2013, MaINtENaNT: Journal of Contemporary DADA Writing and Art, 4, 5 and 6, Visions, Verses and Voices and on Phantom Billsticker Posters NZ placed throughout the world, to name but a few.
Patrick Maygrew up in Providence, Rhode Island and attended Boston University, where he penned the controversial column Diaria for the student newspaper. Since graduating, he has completed a feature length film in 2007 called The Grateful Undead and has worked as a debt collector, night watchman, and a census worker.
Darcie Dennigan is the author of Madame X and Corinna A-Maying the Apocalypse. She's a Discovery/The Nation winner and recipient of awards from the Poetry Society of America and Rhode Island State Council of the Arts. She works as an assistant professor in residence at the University of Connecticut and is a cofounder of Frequency Writers, a Providence-based writing community.
Lois Marie Harrod's 18th collection Spat was published by Finishing Line Press, 2021 and her chapbook Woman by Blue Lyra, 2020. Dodge poet, life-long educator and writer, she is published in literary journals and online ezines from American Poetry Review to Zone 3. She currently teaches college level courses in literature at The Center for Modern Aging, Princeton. More info and links to her online work www.loismarieharrod.org
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► Lois Marie Harrod's microchaps, selected poems & audio versions are available below.
Her Face - First published in Shot Gun Journal: Online Journal for Short Poems
Anatole’s Hold
He was holding me loosely his arms were round his arms round me how I change everything one leg, could you, love could you love a one-legged man? One leg over your legs one leg, two oh, he had two legs too keeping me warm keeping my two legs warm Anatole though some sunrise some Sundays I rise imagining him carrying me through the thrash through the threshold hopping on one leg not two.
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Karl's Rhubarb
Karl was a slob but he planted rhubarb and handed his stalks over the back fence, Here, cook this, he said, low carb, and though he was garbed in a stinky himmelfarb t-shirt, he was a heart-throb among the old ladies who longed for rhubarb pie and rhubarb tea. What I am saying is there was something about him that even I loved, the jam I could make, though I knew poison in those spargelkraut leaves. What I am saying is that I kept my cats from perturbing his dog, I kept my sickles from his sheaves.
What My Mother Told Me
Not much. She wasn’t much of a talker.
Sometimes a tad. Be quiet in church.
Mostly cautionary. Chatter is the coin of fools.
She didn’t know silence makes some uneasy
and refused gossip. Be kind, she said
and I tried to harness my tongue
but the pen proved, as pens do, that writing is a sword
silent and sneaky.
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Grandmother's Oppossum
What was she if not pretense?
Nice when she felt dour Dour when she could not mend.
'From Nightmares of the Minor Poet' was previously published in Off the Coast
The Minor Poet
If the world had been his aviary, he would have been the lesser bird, unable to sing the high notes or the low though he knew enough of depression to spill himself into that well which is the world.
And perhaps that was his purpose, he thought, a beak that might bring to the surface just enough water to sustain someone, anyone, passing by,
not for eons or years, but an hour . . . less, just until she trod a little farther on and found a fresh stream, where she could sit, maybe listen.
The Minor Poet Tries Haiku
Stinkbug hibernating in Manny’s suitcase– been there since Tennessee.
Manny sips his morning chai, too noisy, can’t write, all the lattes chattering.
Tattered scarecrow – left in the wild oats never did more than watch. Steamy bath, – Manny plops in ouch!
Cold rain falling – and no umbrella Manny takes yours.
is best. No one has time or inclination for voyages or treks. Long wars take a life or more and the shortest spat becomes a drawn-out divorce. We’ve been here and there fore and aft. So avoid story. Avoid conflict and all its sticky dead. Be slick. Be quick. A little poem is best.
Splitting the Chair
Like dividing – a baby Solomon knew which mother by her distress. But the chair was hideous and the child, not easy either. So take it, she says, to the one who is leaving. You chose the chameleon green. Keep it, he says, believing he is generous.
Truth sat in the barber chair bald and cold except for the fringe the blind woman tried to trim. It’s often that way: we pare the eyes from the potato and shuck the silk from ears of corn. But tidying up – the relative – even to set it free reveals how naked truth can be.
Penelope Decides What to Wear to Her Funeral
Penelope Decides What to Wear to Her Funeral
Depends, she says, on when she dies: in winter the blue silk with its Mediterranean shifts, in summer, white clouds, the blinding walls of Mykonos. Whatever the weather, she will look good, better than life, Botox can do that these days, a new body before she’s shrunken under, just in case her man returns from his wanderings to stand at her casket, to say he loved her once with the terseness of men who drift, who suddenly remember that once they promised to be faithful as the flotsam that bore them home.
Martin Willitts, Jr., a frequently published Origami Poetry Project poet, has over 20 full-length collections of poetry. He has four books released in 2023, “Not Only the Extraordinary are Exiting the Dream World” (Flowstone Press, 2023); “Ethereal Flowers” (Still Point Press, 2023); “Rain Followed Me Home” (Glass Lyre Press, 2023); “Leaving Nothing Behind” (Fernwood Press, 2023).
Martin Burke was a widely-published Irish poet/playwright who lived in Belgium. He passed away in 2017 (June 4, 1951 - April 26, 2017) 
Martin Willitts, Jr., a frequently published Origami Poetry Project poet, has over 20 full-length collections of poetry. He has four books released in 2023, “Not Only the Extraordinary are Exiting the Dream World” (Flowstone Press, 2023); “Ethereal Flowers” (Still Point Press, 2023); “Rain Followed Me Home” (Glass Lyre Press, 2023); “Leaving Nothing Behind” (Fernwood Press, 2023).