poetry by Christopher Janke, Michelle Naka Pierce, Chris Pusateri,
& Betsy Wheeler
Saturday * October 20 * Morning Times * 10 E. Hargett St. * Raleigh, NC
Christopher Janke's first book, Structure of the Embryonic Rat Brain, won the Fence Modern Poets Series prize. His poems have been published in Harper's, American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, A Public Space, Field, Forklift Ohio, Conduit, and dozens of other journals. He fixes laundry machines, tends bar, and hosts a yearly lost-and-found fashion show on 3rd Street in Turners Falls, Mass. Across the river in Greenfield, he stacks wood, cooks, writes poems, and edits manuscripts for Slope Editions, where he is VP and Senior Editor. His recent series of hybrid poem/sculptures called "of the of of the of" involve lots of plexiglas and vellum and explore the question: how do words attach to non-words? http://www.christopherjanke.com/.
Michelle Naka Pierce is the author of Continuous Frieze Bordering Red (2012), awarded Fordham University's Poets Out Loud Editor's Prize; She, A Blueprint (2011) with art by Sue Hammond West; Beloved Integer(2007); TRI/VIA (2003), co-authored with Veronica Corpuz; and several chapbooks. Pierce has collaborated with artists, dancers, and filmmakers and performed internationally, most recently in France. Her work has been translated into French, Spanish, Japanese, and Hebrew. Born in Japan, Pierce currently teaches in and directs the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University in Boulder, CO.
Betsy Wheeler is the author of the poetry collection Loud Dreaming in a Quiet Room, and Start Here, a poetry chapbook. Her poems have appeared in notnostrums, Bat City Review, Forklift Ohio, The Journal, and elsewhere. From 2005-2007, she served as the Stadler Fellow at Bucknell University. She is editor of the limited-edition poetry chapbook publisher Pilot Books, and Managing Director of the Juniper Summer Writing Institute. Visit her website (http://louddreaming.com) or read a poem.