Crab Creek Review: Notes on Contributors: Autumn/Winter 2004

Notes on Contributors

A.K. ALLIN moved to New York City last year to work on a Master’s in Creative Writing and is now embarking on a Museum Studies degree as well. She works as a cabinet finisher in Redhook and teaches elementary school poetry workshops throughout the year. "This poem was the result of a Creative Thinking test-class. My response to the class exercise—a Victorian sex poem set on a sea-saw. Oh boy!"

JESS BACAL lives with her husband in New York City. She recently completed an MFA at Hunter College, where "Public Transportation" won the Miriam Weinberg Richter Award. Her work has been published in Big City Lit. "On a New York City bus, I saw a woman push a kid who was sitting next to her, and then get into an argument with his father. The story came when I began wondering what would make a person act the way she did."

EDWARD BEATTY, Franklin Grove, Illinois, has poems forthcoming in Fulcrum, Poetry East, Bayou, Wisconsin Review, Cider Press Review, Out of Line, Northeast, Karamu, Willow Review, and Sunstone. After receiving an MA in American and British Literature from the University of Wisconsin he taught literature and philosophy until retiring to concentrate on writing. "In this poem I take common sights and sounds from my childhood to create a dreamscape of dread, helplessness, and guilt that many experience when young."

MARK BURNS, Yakima, Washington, teaches English at West Valley High. He moonlights teaching both creative writing and various English methods classes at Heritage Univeristy. When not teaching, he’s coaching his two children in soccer and basketball. He is figuring out how to use poetry to break life’s full-court press. His poems have appeared in English Journal, Washington English Journal, and previously in Crab Creek Review. "My students inspired this poem. Billy Collins also helped. Through reading his poems, I discovered my own poetic aptitude for humor."

DAVID CASERIO, Billings, Montana, is a former recipient of a Fellowship in Poetry award from the New York State Foundation of the Arts and has worked in various outreach programs such as the Jersey State Poets in the Schools and Goldwater Memorial Hospital for the Disabled. A member of Seattle’s 1998 National Slam team, he has been an invited poet to the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival, Bumbershoot, and The Seattle Poetry Festival. His CD, Wisdom For A Dance In The Street, is available from his publishers at www.gazoobitales.com. "I dislike author explanations as they often work against the mystery and authenticity of a reader’s experience; however, I hope the issue is not in doubt: post-coital afterglow. And like all such experiences it has been revised in the telling. But there is no fabrication or exaggeration. I have kept trust with the integrity of the moment."

ALICE DERRY, Port Angeles, Washington, teaches English and German at Peninsula College and co-directs the Foothills Writers’ Series. Her most recent volume of poetry is Strangers to Their Courage (Louisiana State University Press, 2001), which was a finalist for the Washington Book Award. Two previous volumes are Stages of Twilight (chosen by Raymond Carver) and Clearwater (Blue Begonia Press). A chapbook of translations of Rainer Maria Rilke appeared in 2002 from Pleasure Boat Studio in NYC.

STEVEN DOLD, Seattle, Washington, is pursuing an MFA at the University of Washington. His work has appeared in the Seattle Review. "The poem ‘mandibular radio-necrosis’ is inspired by the experiences of my friend Gerry Tiffany."

JOE MAX EMMINGER, Seattle, Washington, graciously offered us artwork for a third cover. He first appeared on the Autumn/Winter 2001issue. His artwork can be seen at Grover/Thurston Gallery in Seattle and at yarddog.com. "I am a self-taught painter—every day I paint. Painting is the center of my life but it was a crooked line to get here. My paintings are about what I see and what’s in my head. When I go to the studio I find out what that is. I start a painting by putting marks on the paper—then I see what it’s about. The paintings evolve as I paint them—in a way I try to stay out of the way and let them happen. I try to leave room for them to breathe and live in the world."

MICHEL ENGLEBERT, originally from Belgium, has lived, worked and taught in the U.S., Japan, Malaysia, Greece, and now makes his home in Korea. He is working on an American epic poem and a novel set in Brazil. "The boxing ring, although considered by many to be antithetical to poetry, has longed seemed to me an eloquent metaphor for our century. The character, style and entourage of great heavyweight champions (Louis, Marciano, Ali, Tyson...) for example, perfectly reflect the tone of the decade in which they reigned, for better or for worse."

KAREN HAUSDOERFFER, St. Petersburg, Florida, earned an MFA at the Universty of Idaho, and now teaches at Eckerd College. Her work has appeared in North American Review, Shenandoah, and Willow Springs. "I wanted to write a story about my high school synchronized swim team, in part because the experience offers wonderfully strange details, but in part because I am proud of practicing a sport not adopted from men, but developed around women’s mental and physical strengths."

LUCAS HOWELL lives in Moscow, Idaho with his fiancée and two cats, Ezra Pound and Prufrock. He is a first year MFA student at the University of Idaho.

ARIANA KELLY, Seattle, Washington, grew up on the east coast and graduated from Yale University in 1999. She is currently a second year student in the University of Washington’s MFA program. "‘Running After Coyote’ was a product of many long backpacking trips in the desert of south central Utah."

MERCEDES LAWRY, Seattle, Washington, has appeared in Poetry, Rhino, Fine Madness, and Nimrod. She has received honors from the Seattle Arts Commission and Artist Trust. She has also published fiction for children. "I’m reading about Van Gogh. I was haunted by the phrase that serves as the title and the question of how we look when feeling deep sorrow."

TUCKER LISKE lives in San Jose, California with his wife and two kids, where he works as a manager in a social service agency. He received a BA from the University of Virginia and an MA from San Jose State. This is his first publication. "I actually daydreamed this while driving to a used bookstore in Denver. In Colorado, a foot of snow is usually followed the next day by 70 degree weather. I drove past a beautiful red brick apartment building and dreamt of napping inside in the sun."

JEANNE LOHMANN, Olympia, Washington, has a new prose collection, Dancing in the Kitchen, coming out next year. Her most recent poetry collection is The Light of Invisible Bodies. "The roots of this poem are in my grandparents’ farm; the ritual at my mother’s burial; medical notes about how the heart works—and then, putting it all together over a period of years—the Dickensian epigraph came late."

FRANCES MCCUE lives with her family in Seattle, Washington. She is a poet, essayist, teacher and instigator in the arts. She’s the Artistic Director and Co-founder of Richard Hugo House, Seattle’s literary center. "‘Flying Headlong’ is a rumination on being a kind of Icarus, a moth fascinated by the bright lights of the city."

KEVIN MILLER lives in Tacoma, Washington. Blue Begonia Press published his most recent collection, Everywhere Was Far. "These poems are from a series on Spider."

ROBERT NECKER, Sherburne, New York, is sixty seven years old and has been writing poems for fifty years. He has appeared in The Saturday Review of Literature and has work forthcoming in Blue Unicorn, The Aurorean, and Epilepsy USA, among others. He also has a chapbook scheduled for publication. "The poem stems from memories of teenage summers spent in the ‘country home’ (a tumbledown place, really) of a friend whose dad was a NYC policeman."

ROBERT PERCHAN'S latest book of poems is Fluid in Darkness, Frozen in Light (Pearl Editions, 2000). His prose poem novella Perchan’s Chorea: Eros and Exile has recently been translated into French and published by Quidam Editeur (Meudon). He teaches English and American literature and language at a university in Pusan, South Korea. "Watched a bunch of soccer matches from beginning to end for the first time in my life during the recent Korea/Japan World Cup and became fascinated with the incessant spectacle of healthy, grown-up men lying in the grass holding on to various limbs/body parts as if they were about to fall off."

ALLAN PETERSON, Gulf Breeze, Florida, has appeared in Gettysburg Review, Many Mountains Moving, West Wind, Arts & Letters, Northwest Review, and Belleview Literary Review. He has two chapbooks and one book, Anonymous Or. He has received an Arts & Letters Poetry Prize, a Florida Arts Council Fellowship, and an NEA Fellowship. "We are the expression of our sensory capabilities. Our limitations are what they allow. But we often seem dissatisfied by projecting ghosts while within us and around us in the complex common are the stars."

JOHN RONAN, Gloucester, Massachusetts, is a poet and filmmaker and Francophile. He has been an NEA Fellow and a Bread Loaf Scholar. He has a book of poetry, The Curable Corpse (Folly Cove) and a film, Gloucester’s Adventure.

DEREK SHEFFIELD, Leavenworth, Washington, received a 2004 GAP grant from Artist Trust. He is a regular reader of and contributor to Crab Creek Review. His work is also forthcoming in an anthology of Northwest poets which will be published by Cloudbank Books. "Kevin Miller and I have been engaged in a segue of poems, lines, images, and phrases for nearly 20 years. This is one of the results of that epistolary interaction."

JUDITH SKILLMAN, Bellevue, Washington, is the author of eight books of poetry. Her New and Selected Poems 1985-2005 will appear next year. "Poem was inspired by the summer solstice!"

JULES SUPERVIELLE was born in Uruguay and educated in Paris; his work is full of European sophistication and Latin mystery.

MARK TAKSA, Albany, California, has poetry forthcoming in Margie, Heliotrope, and Hawaii Review. His numerous chapbooks include The Root (Pavement Saw), The End of Soup Kitchen (Pudding House), and Choice At The Blossom Café (March Street Press). "The poems say that if we alter our perception of specific things, i.e., a shopper in a store, or change how we position ourselves in the world, i.e., sitting in mediation, we can move from economic or spiritual poverty to hope."

KIRSTEN SMITH, Los Angeles, California, is originally from Port Ludlow, Washington. She has had poems appear in magazines such as The Gettysburg Review, Shenandoah, Prairie Schooner, The Massachusetts Review and Witness. In addition to co-writing the feature films 10 Things I Hate About You and Legally Blonde, her young adult novel-in-verse, The Geography of Girlhood, will be published by Little, Brown in fall 2005.

BRANFORD TICE, Knoxville, Tennessee, recently received his MA in poetry from the University of Colorado, and is now at work on his PhD at the University of Tennessee. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in North American Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Nimrod, and Mississippi Review, among others. "This poem’s inspiration came from an article on the practices of snake charming, which has largely been outlawed in India due to the charmer’s inhuman treatment of the cobras. Many charmers were known to sew up the mouths of their snakes with black thread, thereby preventing them from striking."

S.D. TULLIS is a writer living in Indianapolis, Indiana, where he works as a copy editor for a book publishing company. "‘Gladiators’ is a departure for me in that most of my published fiction to date has been geared toward a specific genre; though this story shares with my other work an interest in the ambiguity that exists in people’s relationships with their environment, with each other, and with themselves."

CATHY ULRICH, Billings, Montana, is a single mother working three jobs. In her spare time, she makes jewelry and writes. Her daughter enjoys eating her beads and poems. "I enjoy writing about people who have strange jobs—these two poems just came together from two images I had: one, of a female human cannonball, and the other, a man outlining a body with chalk."

WENDY WISNER, Brooklyn, New York, teaches writing at Hunter College. Her first collection of poems, Epicenter, was released by CustomWords in May 2004. Her poems have appeared in Runes, 5AM, Sojourner, and elsewhere. Visit Wendy on the web at www.wendywisner.com. "‘Apron’ is part of a book length sequence of prose poems about growing up with hippie-activist parents on Martha’s Vineyard in the 70’s. ‘Apron’ is from the first section of the book, which offers quick snapshots of the island, the lifestyle, the family. The poems in this book came quickly, and I’m very grateful for that!"