Book Publications
Member Julia Lisella published Our Lively Kingdom on October 11, 2022 with Bordighera Press. “Our Lively Kingdom timestamps the beauty and strangeness of the United States—from poetry to parenting, from marriage to mortality. Strong women ancestors guide these poems that tackle aging, the lynchings of Italian Americans, and what the natural world can teach us flawed humans. It is a wise and emotionally complex collection, one that offers future generations a glimpse of life at this time.” —Yona Harvey
In addition to OUR LIVELY KINGDOM, Julia Lisella is the author of two full length collections of poetry: Always (WordTech Editions, 2014) and Terrain (WordTech Editions, 2007) and the chapbook, Love Song Hiroshima (Finishing Line Press, 2004). Her poems are widely anthologized and her poems appears in Ploughshares, Paterson Literary Review, Italian Americana, Pangyrus, Mom Egg Review, Nimrod, Alaska Quarterly Review, Antiphon, Ocean State Review, Literary Mama, Salamander, Prairie Schooner, Valparaiso, and many others. She has received residencies from the Vermont Studio Center, MacDowell, Millay, and Dorset colonies, and has received a number of grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council to lead community poetry workshops. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from New York University and a PhD in English from Tufts. Her scholarship focuses on American women modernists. She is the coeditor of Modernist Women Writers and American Social Engagement (Lexington Books) is a professor of English at Regis College in Massachusetts. She co curates the Italian American Writers in Boston Literary Series at I Am Books in Boston’s North End.
Member Jess Levens published A Break in the Spine on October 12 2022 with Alien Buddha Press. “The book guides you through the nature and microcosms observed generations ago by Henry David Thoreau and Robert Frost while creating stunning snapshots of seemingly mundane, common occurrences. These poems will make you stop and smell the flowers again and again, discovering something new on every pass.”
Jess Levens lives with his wife, sons and dogs in Holliston, Massachusetts, where he draws inspiration from New England’s landscapes and history. His poetry has been featured in Fevers of the Mind, The Dillydoun Review, Prometheus Dreaming and Roi Fainéant Press, among other literary journals. Jess is a Marine Corps veteran and Northeastern University alum.
Member Cheryl Clark Vermeulen published They Can Take It Out on March 1, 2022 with The Word Works. “Weaving illness, art, and pregnancy together as if surprising, even stunning, twists of phrasing could out-maneuver a cancer or guarantee conception, this collection covers an amazing range of human event and emotion.” -Cole Swenson, poet and author of On Walking On and Landscapes on a Train
Cheryl Clark Vermeulen is author of the poetry book They Can Take It Out (Word Works, 2022) and the chapbooks Dead-Eye Spring and This Paper Lantern. An M.F.A. graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she has published poems, translations, and poetry reviews in Caketrain, The Drunken Boat, Tarpaulin Sky, Third Coast, Two Lines, Interim, DIAGRAM, EOAGH, among others, and the anthology Connecting Lines: New Poetry from Mexico. Beyond teaching at MassArt, where she founded the Creative Writing Minor, she is the Poetry Editor at Pangyrus.
Member John Perrault published Season of Shagginess in September 2023 with Finishing Line Press “Thoroughly felt and beautifully observed, John Perrault’s poems trace the crucial motions time puts us through. The context is earthy and earthly, that haunting contrast between the sturdily transient and the seemingly perennial. The words have an inhabited depth that comes with age—the awareness of that long tail we call ‘the past,” how tangible it is, how intangible. Meanwhile, as the poet wisely puts it, ‘today’s a gift.'” —Baron Wormser, author of Unidentified Sighing Objects
John Perrault is author of Jefferson’s Dream (Hobblebush Books), Here Comes the Old Man Now (Oyster River), and Ballad of Louis Wagner (Peter Randall). A Pushcart Nominee, John has published in Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Blue Unicorn, Christian Science Monitor, Comstock Review, Poet Lore and elsewhere. John is a former Portsmouth, NH poet laureate. His chapbook, Season of Shagginess, has just been published by Finishing Line Press.
Member Pamela Wax published Walking the Labyrinth in May 2022 with Main Street Rag. “If you want to know the powers of poetry to transform experience—and how a rabbi transforms grief—follow the thread of Wax’s revelatory intellect through this accomplished, complex, and spiritual book.” — Jessica Greenbaum
Pamela Wax is the author of Walking the Labyrinth (Main Street Rag, 2022) and the forthcoming chapbook, Starter Mothers (Finishing Line Press). Her poems have received awards from Crosswinds Poetry Journal, Paterson Literary Review, The Poets’ Billow, Oberon Poetry Magazine and the Robinson Jeffers Tor House and have been published in literary journals including Barrow Street, Connecticut River Review, Naugatuck River Review, Pedestal, Tupelo Quarterly, Split Rock Review, Sixfold, and Passengers Journal. Her essays on Judaism, spirituality, and women’s issues have also been published broadly. An ordained rabbi, Pam facilitates online spiritual poetry writing and spiritual journeying workshops from her home in the Northern Berkshires of Massachusetts.
Member Jennifer M. Phillips published A Song of Ascents in September 2022 with Orchard Street Press.
Jennifer M. Phillips is an immigrant, retired Episcopal Priest, gardener, grower of Bonsai, painter, and has been writing and publishing poetry and prose since age seven. Phillips grew up in upstate New York and has lived in New England, London, New Mexico, St.Louis, Rhode Island, & Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Her work has won several awards and appeared in over fifty journals. Her first chapbook is Sitting Safe in the Theatre of Electricity (iblurb.com, 2020).