Three premier Pennsylvania poets collide with several of northeast Ohio's finest at one of the best bookstores in the nation for a heap or several of anything goes poetry and revelry.
The evening will begin with readings by poets with recently published chapbooks from Ohio's Crisis Chronicles Press...
RA Washington, J.E. Stanley, Shelley Chernin, Steven B. Smith, and (all the way from Erie, PA) Cee Williams
...followed by readings by Pittsburgh poets Jason Baldinger and Jerome Crooks, co-authors of The Whiskey Rebellion (2011, Six Gallery Press). Open mic to follow if time permits. John Burroughs will emcee.
RA WASHINGTON is the author of close to 20 books, most recently the novella The Further Adventures of Gentleman Richards and the Crisis Chronicles Press chapbook Primer for the Vanguard Youth. He is a member of the soul punk duo, Crave, and has released ten albums under various monikers. For more, see http://clevelandtapes.com/
J.E. STANLEY is an accountant and on again/off again guitarist from the grayscale suburban wilderness of Northeastern Ohio where he is lucky enough to hang out with the Deep Cleveland Poets and the Cleveland Speculators. He is the author of Dark Intervals (vanZeno Press), Dissonance (Deep Cleveland Press), Rapid Eye Movement (Crisis Chronicles) and co-author, with Joshua Gage, of Intrinsic Night (Sam’s Dot Publishing). His work has appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, The Rhysling Anthology and numerous other mainstream and genre publications. He continues to assert that, winged or not, Man was always meant to fly; the moon and stars were just put there as incentives.
SHELLEY CHERNIN is a freelance researcher, writer, and editor of legal reference books. She lives in Russell, Ohio (aka Novelty, proving that the US Postal Service once had a sense of irony). Her poems have appeared in Scrivener Creative Review, Rhapsoidia, What I Knew Before I Knew: Poems from the Pudding House Salon-Cleveland, the Heights Observer, the 2010 through 2012 Hessler Street Fair poetry anthologies and the Cuyahoga Burning edition of Big Bridge. She received the 2nd Place award in the 2011 Hessler Street Fair Poetry Contest and Honorable Mentions in the Akron Art Museum's New Words Poetry Contest in 2009 and 2010. Her chapbook, The Vigil, was just published by Crisis Chronicles. Yes, of course, she plays the ukulele. Who doesn't?
STEVEN B. SMITH is a poet, memoirist, photographer, blogger and collage/assemblage artist who makes his home in the Tremont neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio. He's been writing poetry for nearly five decades, and for more than twenty years he published the famed ArtCrimes journal. He created a massive online art/poetry archive at agentofchaos.com, and a wide array of his poetry and collages have been published in the critically acclaimed book Zen Over Zero: Selected Poems 1964-2008 (The City Poetry Press) and his chapbook Unruly (Crisis Chronicles). Smith and his wife Lady have traveled the world extensively, creating and living art in places like Croatia, Morocco and Mexico, while blogging about the best, worst and most unique bits of their journey at walkingthinice.com. They've also collaborated on a soon-to-be published book about Smith's life entitled Criminal – a true story of armed robbery, stolen cars, alternative art, mainstream poetry, underground publishing, robbing the cradle, and leaving the country.
CEE WILLIAMS is a poet and spoken word artist residing in Erie, Pennsylvania. His work has appeared in the poetry and visual art journal Bathtub Gin (Pathwise Press), in the Dwelling in Possibilities anthology edited by Berwyn Moore and in the Crisis Chronicles chapbook 12 Poems. In 2010 Williams was named as a finalist for the Erie County Poet Laureate award. He is the founder and director of Poets’ Hall: the International Fellowship of Poets and Spoken Word Artists, for which he was the recipient of the EMBYP 2011 award for Business Innovation.
JOHN BURROUGHS is the founding editor of Crisis Chronicles Press. His most recent chapbooks are Water Works (Recycled Karma Press) and Electric Company (Writing Knights Press). Find him at www.crisischronicles.com
JASON BALDINGER has been published in The New Yinzer and Shattered Wig Press. He is author of two books of poetry, The Whiskey Rebellion (with Jerome Crooks) published in 2011 by Six Gallery Press, and the forthcoming The Lady Pittsburgh, out in this spring on Speed and Briscoe Press.
JEROME CROOKS is the author of i've been a mess and i feel fine (Speed and Briscoe, 2001) as well as the forthcoming The Moment I Feared (Low Ghost Press). Jerome has served as the active head of the Speed and Briscoe writer's collective since its inception in 1998. His work has appeared in the Pittsburgh City Paper, Natural Language, The New Yinzer, and Open Thread’s regional review. His journalism has appeared in Magazino and Islas. He is the son of Mary Anne and Jerry Crooks, brother to Theresa, brother in law to John Leonard, and proud uncle of young Aeden.
Pittsburgh Magazine said, "As Pittsburgh was once a gateway to the west, the entrance into the American wilderness, [Baldinger & Crooks'] The Whiskey Rebellion is a gateway into a mythopoetic American landscape." Outlaws & revolutionaries, crooked cops & patsies, ghost towns & superheroes come out to play in this collection inspired by the Whiskey Rebellion, Wordsworth & Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Byron's Don Juan.
