The eighth volume in the Lost Horse Press Contemporary Ukrainian Poetry Series, Eccentric Days of Hope and Sorrow, co-translated by Dzvinia Orlowsky and Ali Kinsella, brings together a selection of Natalka Bilotserkivets’s poetry written over the last four decades. Having established an English language following largely on the merits of a single poem, “We’ll Not Die in Paris,” Bilotserkivets’s larger body of work continues to be relatively unknown. Natalka Bilotserkivets was an active participant in Ukraine’s Renaissance of the late-Soviet and early independence period.
Member News
Ralph Culver publishes new collection, A Passable Man
NEPC member Ralph Culver’s new collection A Passable Man is just out from MadHat Press (madhat-press.com) to excellent reviews, including Nina MacLaughlin in The Boston Globe on 12/09/21.
Congratulations to NEPC Board President Mary Buchinger on the publication of her new chapbook
About / klaʊdz /
The making of meaning from ephemera is a deeply human activity. The poems in this collection arise from this impulse. The title / klaʊdz / is the phonetic transcription of ‘clouds’— the symbols indicate how to pronounce the word. Like clouds, sounds are re-combinable elements with shifting meanings and outcomes both consequential and transient, as well as subject to randomness and governed by physics. Each poem plays with its subject— roams within its confines and pushes against (sometimes through) the walls of its meanings.
The topics range from the concrete— “hive,” “camisole,” “lantern”—
to the abstract— “resurrection,” “absence,” “derivation.”
Member Denise Provost publishes new book
City of Stories (Červená Barva Press, 2021)
Denise Provost served for many years in local government and for almost fifteen years in the Massachusetts House of Representatives. She has published in such journals as Ibbetson Street, Muddy River Poetry Review, qarrtsiluni, Quadrille, Poetry Porch’s Sonnet Scroll, Sanctuary, Light Quarterly, and in numerous Bagel Bard anthologies. She received the New England Poetry Club’s Samuel Washington Allen Award in 2021, and the Best Love Sonnet Award from the Maria C. Faust Sonnet Competition in 2012. Her chapbook Curious Peach was published by Ibbetson Street Press in 2019.
“City of Stories is a full length poetry collection which explores the narratives we construct to shape our world. In three thematic sections, these poems observe the shared experiences of community, reactions to current events, and the imaginative life sparked by interactions with literature. Many of these poems employ formal conventions: Shakespearean and Petrarchan sonnets; quatrains, heroic couplets, the ghazal and the ballade.”
Member Mark Pawlak publishes new memoir
Mark Pawlak’s memoir My Deniversity: Knowing Denise Levertov is now available from MadHat Press, Amazon, and selected independent bookstores. About the book Much more than the story of Mark Pawlak’s apprenticeship to … Read more
NEPC Member Cindy Veach publishes new book
Congratulations to NEPC Member Cindy Veach for the publication of her latest book, Her Kind, released this October from CavanKerry Press.
About Her Kind
Set against the historical backdrop of the Salem Witch Trials, Her Kind is a book about women who are innocent and are used or disregarded by their cultures: women viewed as witches, women making their own choices, women fighting for freedom. The poems in this collection skillfully braid together narratives of the female victims of the Salem Witch Trials with the experiences of contemporary women viewed as witches for their personal histories, their political circumstances, or for speaking out and making their own choices. A blend of lyrical and narrative poems, Her Kind celebrates women refusing the victim role and reclaiming their magic.
Congratulations to NEPC Board Member Jennifer Markell on the publication of her new book!
NEPC Board Member Jennifer Markell’s 2nd book of poems, “Singing at High Altitude” has just been published and is available from her website as well as from the publisher’s website, The Main Street Rag.
NEPC member Terence Culleton publishes new collection
Congratulations to NEPC member Terence Culleton for the release of his new collection of poems, A Tree and Gone, now out through Future Cycle Press. A Tree and Gone is … Read more
Congratulations to NEPC poet Michael Favala Goldman on the publication of his third book of poetry, Small Sovereign!
The succinct poems of Small Sovereign explore the paradox of personal power and powerlessness with irony and tenderness: “I am a clumsy giant/trying desperately not/to destroy my own city.” Poet Michael Favala Goldman interrogates our attempts to bridge the gap between the material world and emotion-based relationships.
– from Homestead Lighthouse Press.