The Ghazal Page 2009
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These brief biographies show the variety of backgrounds and interests of the poets published on The Ghazal Page. Note also the links to poets' Web sites, blogs, and other locations of interest. I recommend following the links in the bios.
If you are an editor or publisher who wants to contact one of the poets, please email me, and I will put you in touch. (I'm not posting poets' email addresses out of concern they would attract spambots.)
Jenny Ward Angyal lives on a small organic farm in Gibsonville, NC, with her husband and an Abyssinian cat. When not attempting to communicate through poetry and fabric art, she spends her time teaching children with disabilities how to communicate any way they can. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Avocet, Brussels Sprout, The Charlotte Poetry Review, Pinesong, Snowy Egret, and Timberlake Farm Newsletter.
Tiel Aisha Ansari is a Sufi, martial artist, and computer programmer living in the Pacific Northwest. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in several print and online venues including Islamica Magazine, Mezzo Cammin, The Lyric, and the VoiceCatcher anthology from Portland Women Writers. Her poetry has been featured on Prairie Home Companion and MiPoRadio. She is the author of the poetry collection Knocking from Inside, published by Ecstatic Exchange. You can visit her online.
Bill Batcher is a native of Long Island, New York. After graduating from the New York City Public Schools, he received a Bachelors from Syracuse University, where he majored in English. Bill earned two Masters degrees from Teachers College, Columbia University, New York where, in 1992 he was a awarded a doctorate in the area of education of the gifted.
Kate Bernadette Benedict, of New York City, is the author of the full-length poetry collection Here from Away and the editor of Umbrella: A Journal of Poetry and Kindred Prose. Please visit her home page.
Lauren Camp (Santa Fe, New Mexico) is an visual artist and creative writing teacher. For more than five years, she has also hosted and produced a jazz program on KSFR-FM. Visit her website to see examples of her visual work. www.laurencamp.com
Laura A. Ciraolo lives and works in New York City. She has poems in the current issues of Agenda (UK) and Diakonos (Theology Journal of St. John's University). She's had poems in Words-Myth, Left Facing Bird, the New York Quarterly, the Long Island Quarterly, iota (UK), The Centrifugal Eye, MiPOesias, Rumble, and Orbis Quarterly International Literary Journal (UK).
A polyglot graduate of Harvard University's Regional Studies East Asia program, Danielle De Feo currently lives, writes and learns Hindi in Singapore, where she is Manager of Membership at Singapore's Asian Civilisations Museum. She is a veteran of London and Boston poetry slam scenes and her poetic and journalistic work appears in diverse publications including Harvard's Dudley Review and the Newsletter of the Indian Institute of Technology.
Nicole Cartwright Denison lives on a trout farm in western North Carolina, is the author of The 4th Stage of Grief (blossombones, 2008), Purview to Undoing (Gold Wake Press, 2008) and Recovering the Body (dancing girl press, 2007) and a Best New Poets 2009, Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize nominee. Work is forthcoming in A Trunk of Delirium and Taiga and has appeared in Up the Staircase, Diagram, Spider Vein Impasto, No Tell Motel, Six Little Things, 13 Myna Birds, Press 1, Arsenic Lobster, WOMB, Spooky Boyfriend, elimae and others. Photography has appeared in Southern Women's Review, Stirring, Digital Paper and Lily. With founder Rachel Mallino, she co-edits Tilt Press.
Susan J. Erickson lives in The City of Subdued Excitement, Bellingham, Washington. Early in her poetic life she encountered the ghazal form and has been addicted ever since. Her work has been published in print and online, most recently at Raven Chronicles.
"I live in Bowling Green, Ky. I am retired and like to read poetry and novels, especially historical ones. I also like to study foreign languages which probably explains my interest in poetry and especially the Ghazal. Poetry for me is a challenge. I find it especially helpful to be able to be able to compose it at any time and anywhere.
"Some of my poems have been published in Words Words Words; moonset THE NEWSPAPER, cc&d magazine, and Poetic Hours. Others will be published in foam:e, Pink Chameleon, Language and Culture, Ink, Sweat & Tears, and The Tangled Web."
Nina Hart (Seattle, WA) is a modern dancer, electric bass player and massage therapist. She is an ardent and prolific writer, though she rarely shows her work to anyone. She is finally striking up the nerve to do so.
M. H. was born in Dallas in 1958. Shortly afterwards, fish fell from the sky.
M.J.Iuppa lives on a small farm near the shores of Lake Ontario. Recent and forthcoming poems in The Comstock Review, Tar River Poetry, Iconoclast, Bird’s Eye re View, Poetry Midwest, Apple Valley Review, The Puckerbrush Review, The Hurricane Review, miller’s pond and The Centrifugal Eye; in the following anthologies: From the Other World: Poems in Memory of James Wright, edited by Bruce Hendricksen and Robert Johnson, Lost Hills Books (2007); and forthcoming in Eating the Pure Light, Poems honoring Thomas McGrath, edited by John Bradley, Backwaters Press (2009); The Poets Guide to The Birds, edited by Judith Kitchen and Ted Kooser, Anhinga Press (2009); Beyond Forgetting: Poetry and Prose about Alzheimer’s Disease, edited by Holly Hughes, Kent State UP (2009); Eating Her Wedding Dress: A Collection of Clothing Poems, edited by Vasiliki Katsarou, Ruth O'Toole, and Ellen Foos, Ragged Sky Press 2009; a lyrical essay in Gulf Coast, fiction in The Northville Review, and a poetry review in Tar River Poetry. She is Writer-in-Residence and Director of the Arts Minor Program at St. John Fisher College; and is currently serving as a poetry advisor for the New York Foundation for the Arts (2007-2011).
Nicola Masciandaro is Associate Professor of English at Brooklyn College, CUNY and a specialist in medieval literature. He is founding editor of Glossator: Practice and Theory of the Commentary, has a blog called The Whim, and reads his poetry at Ghazalville.
The author is Brooklyn-born, still residing in the Marine Park section, where she and her husband have lived for many years. She also enjoys the couple’s Berkshire home in Becket, Massachusetts where she hikes and bikes, generally enjoying the cultural ambience and nature.
For many years, a Special Education teacher, she embarked on a series of classes at the Unterberg Poetry Center of the 92nd Street "Y", reading and writing poetry for the past five years. Her first chapbook, Chameleon was published last year by Finishing Line Press. She has published in US1 Worksheets and Tapestries.
Also a serious amateur musician, she studies and plays as much as possible, sometimes accompanying her husband on his clarinet and always on the look-out for a chance to play with a chamber group.
Nicola Morris lives in Central Vermont and teaches in the Goddard College MFA in Writing Program.
Joel Neubauer has enjoyed writing with various groups and is passionate about exploring the roles of ancient and established poetic forms in a postmodern context. Poetry becomes his orderable chaos wherein faith and life may freely intersect by verbal means. Originally from Maryland, he now lives a busy vegetarian life with his dog, Sal, in New England where he serves as a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
Ellen Pickus taught English and creative writing for thirty years on Long Island, where she lives with her husband and her son. Retired, she now conducts creative writing workshops for adults and does volunteer work at an elementary school. The topics of her poems range from summers spent in the Catskills to the joys and challenges of raising a special needs child. Her first book of poems, Unbroken Promises, is being sold for Alzheimer's Research; if interested, please send a check for $20 payable to Alzheimer's Disease Research to Boxer Books, PO 217, Baldwin, NY 11510.
Her work has appeared in the Long Island Quarterly, PPA Review, Fan Magazine, Midwest Poetry Review, Paws and Tales, and Candlelight. She received awards at poetry contests run by Peninsula Public Library, one judged by Naomi Lazard and one by James Reiss. She won first place at the Rockville Centre Guild for the Arts and also at the Plainview Y.
Jessica Bane Robert is currently completing a mixed-genre memoir about growing up off the grid in a log cabin built by her father in the woods of Maine. A selection from this manuscript won the 2007 Editor's Choice Prize for the Writecorner Press Poetry Contest; another was published in A Walk Through My Garden, anthology published by Outrider Press. A prose piece appears in David Gessner's journal, Ecotone. Her first volume of poetry entitled, Scarred Seasons is forthcoming. She currently teaches literature and writing courses at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts where she resides.
Roger Sedarat is the author of Dear Regime: Letters to the Islamic Republic (Ohio UP). He teaches poetry and translation in the MFA program at Queens College, City University of New York.
M. E. Silverman currently resides in Georgia and his work has appeared or is forthcoming in Crab Orchard Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, Cloudbank, Pacific Review, Neon, Mississippi Crow, Sugar House Review, Shout! and other magazines. He was a finalist for the 2008 New Letters Poetry Award. His unpublished manuscript, *Sounds for the Sun*, is looking for a publisher.
J.E. Stanley is an accountant and part-time guitarist from the grayscale suburban wilderness of Northeastern Ohio. A member of The Deep Cleveland Tribe of Poetry and the Cleveland Speculators, he is the author of the book, Dark Intervals (vanZeno Press), the chapbook, Dissonance (deep cleveland press) and the short collection, Ink (Gypsy Lips Press).
Jeanne Stauffer-Merle teaches writing and literature in the English Departments of Baruch College (City University of New York) and The State University of New York at New Paltz.
Her poetry publications include:
"A Cento of Houses," forthcoming in the anthology, The Cento: A
Collection, editor Thersa Welford, Red Hen Press;
"Ghost Stories," Ellipsis, Forthcoming;
"Crash Point," Main Street Rag, Fall 2008;
"Adonis Sleeping at Storm King" and "Negative Space," The Notre Dame
Review, forthcoming, NDR 25 Winter 2008;
"Within in an Inch of Your," The Laurel Review, Summer/2007;
"Fizzling Out," "Family Secret," and "Light Endings," Realpoetik, Nov/2006,
"Miro’s Head," Beauty/Truth: A Journal of Ekphrastic Poetry, Winter
2006/2007; "Birth Stones," Caveat Lector, Winter, 2006;
"Maybe," Patriot Axe: Poems of Protest from the Hudson Valley and Beyond,
forthcoming anthology.
Her awards include:
Finalist, Spring Garden Poetry Chapbook Contest for Point of Diffusion.
Three prose poems, Nancy Drew at the Final Clue, King Schariar Tells It,
and Limelight, were semi-finalists in the Mid-American Review Prose Poem
Contest, 2007.
Birth Stones, Honorable Mention, Caveat Lector 2005 Poetry Contest.
Maybe, winning poem, 2004 Arts for Peace Poetry Contest
"A Beautiful, Breezy, Bali Night" (literary short fiction category): First
Honorable Mention, Florida State Writing Competition
Burning Indians (feature film script category): First Place, Twenty-Seventh
Biennial Conference Writing Contest, The California Writers' Club
The Evil Eye ,Honorable Mention, Putnam County Film and Video Festival, 2001
Matthew Stranach teaches technical writing at the College of the North Atlantic-Qatar in Doha, Qatar. He is originally from Fredericton, NB, Canada.
Raza Yaseen received a B.A. in English Writing from the University of Colorado (Denver). He maintains a ghazal blog, The Tree of Voice, and a razal (reduced ghazal) blog, Razalogy. Also, he contributes to ghazalville.