Quintessential Poetry

Phyllis Klein works as a psychotherapist specializing in trauma and a Certified Poetry Therapist who has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for over 30 years. Her work has appeared or will appear in Crosswinds Poetry Journal, Chiron Review, Portside, Sweet—a Literary Confection, 3Elements, Poetry Hotel, I-70 and the Minnesota Review among others. She was a finalist in the Sweet Poetry Contest (20...

JBT is a writer, educator, performer, and poet based in Washington, DC. Sharing his work at schools, theaters, and venues around the world, he has performed in Cape Town, Boston, London, New York City, Stockholm, Seattle, the Kennedy Center, and the South African State Theater. Committed to empowering the next generation of artists and activists, for over 15 years he has been teaching and mentorin...

      Protest poetry cries out against wrongs (of any kind) that ought to be set right, whether they are social, political, environmental, etc. It’s not always kind and polite. It speaks truth to power. Poets have used their verses to oppose slavery, the segregation, Vietnam War, environmental issues and racial oppression, the Iraq war, and more recently, discrimination and police violence against...

    Francis DiClemente is the author of five poetry collections, most recently Dreaming of Lemon Trees: Selected Poems (Finishing Line Press, 2019). His full-length stage play, Beyond the Glass, inspired by Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks, was produced by a regional theater in Las Vegas, Nevada, in 2017. He lives in Syracuse, New York, where he works as a video producer, and his blog can be found at fr...

The program is sponsored by Quintessential Listening: Poetry Online Radio and the National Alliance on Mental Illness, Washington, DC Chapter.  Quintessential Listening: Poetry Online Radio is a popular BlogtalkRadio podcast. It is also available on ITunes and Sound Cloud. Please visit www.blogtalkradio.com/ql_p for more details. NAMI DC is the local chapter for the National Alliance on Mental Ill...

      Sara Cahill Marron, a relocated New York poet living in Washington D.C., is the author of Reasons for the Long Tu’m (Broadstone Books, 2018) and Associate Editor of Beltway Poetry Quarterly. Her work has been published widely in literary magazines and journals such as Gravel, Atlas + Alice, Joey & the Black Boots, Cordella, Newtown Literary, South Florida Poetry Journal, Golden Walkman, Lunc...

It's open mic poetry night on Quintessential Listening: Poetry Online Radio. So call-in and share your poetry about the pandemic and other topics.  https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2020/0331/1127523-poetry-pandemic-coronavirus/ https://www.thehindu.com/entertainment/poetry-in-the-times-of-covid-19/article31163319.ece https://www.pittoc.com/ https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/famous-lines-of-poetry-r...

https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2020/0331/1127523-poetry-pandemic-coronavirus/ https://www.thehindu.com/entertainment/poetry-in-the-times-of-covid-19/article31163319.ece https://www.pittoc.com/ https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/famous-lines-of-poetry-revised-for-the-age-of-coronavirus https://www.hindustantimes.com/art-and-culture/world-poetry-day-2020-10-poets-you-must-read-during-coronavirus-sel...

  Todd Cirillo is co-founder and editor of Six Ft. Swells Press. He is one of the originators of the After-Hours Poetry movement. Todd’s latest book is Kisses From A Straight Razor (Epic Rites Press, 2020) others include Burning the Evidence, Sucker’s Paradise, Everybody Knows the Dice Are Loaded, Still a Party, This Troubled Heart, Sexy Devils, along with ROXY, Three For the Road and Tonight, You...

Austin Davis is a poet and student activist currently studying creative writing at ASU. Austin is the author of THE WORLD ISN’T THE SIZE OF OUR NEIGHBORHOOD ANYMORE, which was released by Weasel Press on March 3rd, 2020.  The mission of Quintessential Listening: Poetry Online Radio is to provide a live format for emerging, mid-career and established poets to showcase their work. Whether traditiona...

Austin Davis is a poet and student activist currently studying creative writing at ASU. Austin is the author of THE WORLD ISN’T THE SIZE OF OUR NEIGHBORHOOD ANYMORE, which was released by Weasel Press on March 3rd, 2020.  The mission of Quintessential Listening: Poetry Online Radio is to provide a live format for emerging, mid-career and established poets to showcase their work. Whether traditiona...

Sophia Naz is a bilingual poet, essayist, author, editor, and translator. She has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize, in 2016 for creative nonfiction and in 2018 for poetry.  Her work features in numerous literary journals and anthologies, including Poetry International Rotterdam, The Adirondack Review,  The Wire, Chicago Quarterly Review, Blaze Vox, Scroll, The Daily O, Cafe Dissensus, G...

Author, performer, facilitator and entrepreneur, Dinahsta Thomas, also known as Miss Kiane, loves all things artsy. A native of Queens, NY Miss Kiane was born to an African American mother and a West African father.  Consequently, Miss Kiane enjoys the benefits of a diverse and rich cultural background.  Much of which shows up in her creative writing, performances and presentations.  As a performe...

James Morgan-Jones was born and brought up on the Essex/London borders. His mother was Welsh and his father from the East End. He trained as a professional actor at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London and worked for several years in the theatre. After a serious accident he retrained as a feline behaviourist and now lives in West Wales. He began writing seriously after gaining an MA w...

World Poetry Day was adopted as 21 March by UNESCO in 1999. It is an invitation to reflect on the power of language and the full development of each person’s creative abilities. It also supports linguistic diversity through poetic expression and offers endangered languages the opportunity to be heard within their communities (https://globaldimension.org.uk/). Over the years, it has become the larg...

Born and raised in the DC area, Gabrielle Oliver is a first year MFA Creative Writing Poetry student at the University of Kentucky. She holds bachelor’s degrees from Howard University and Kansai Gaidai University in Osaka, Japan. A self-proclaimed linguist, Oliver is most proficient in Japanese – with her experience translating for the State Department, the Embassy of Japan, the National Cherry Bl...

    Sharon Y. Ingram (Sistah Fire) is a native Washingtonian that has been writing poetry for 30+ years. She's a poet, playwright, event facilitator as well as a member of the Anointed Poets Empowered to Nurture Souls (P.E.N.S.) Poetry Ministry of Ebenezer A.M.E. Church. Also a 2019 World Food Day Poetry Competition Second Place Award Winner (an annual competition sponsored by the North American L...

Karla Linn Merrifield, a nine-time Pushcart-Prize nominee and National Park Artist-in-Residence, has had 800+ poems appear in dozens of journals and anthologies. She has 14 books to her credit. Following her 2018 Psyche’s Scroll (Poetry Box Select) is the newly released full-length book Athabaskan Fractal: Poems of the Far North from Cirque Press. She is currently at work on a poetry collection, M...

Philip John is a Welsh poet from the Rhondda Valleys, Wales. Upon graduating from the University of South Wales in 2014, he moved across the border to Bristol, England to work within government procurement alongside serving and ex-military personnel. He secured a publishing deal with Wordcatcher Publishing and had his first book of poetry 'Home Truths' published in November 2018 which explores the...

  James Steck grew up in Albany, NY and now lives in Washington, DC. He studied art for a brief period, at Virginia Tech, before pursuing a degree in English. He currently teaches high school and coaches track and field in Fairfax, Virginia. He sketches frequently, enjoys sitting on fire escapes, and shares his poetry around the city at open mics and elsewhere—most recently with Makars Open Mic Se...

Heather Corbally Bryant is a Lecturer in the Writing Program at Wellesley College; previously she taught at Penn State University and Harvard College where she won awards for her teaching. She received her AB from Harvard and her PhD from the University of Michigan. Her first book, How Will the Heart Endure: Elizabeth Bowen and the Landscape of War (University of Michigan Press) won the Donald Mur...

Brian Rihlmann was born in New Jersey and currently resides in Reno, Nevada. He writes free verse poetry, and has been published in The Blue Nib, The American Journal of Poetry, Cajun Mutt Press, The Rye Whiskey Review, and others. His first poetry collection, “Ordinary Trauma,” (2019) was published by Alien Buddha Press. The primary mission of Quintessential Listening: Poetry is to provide a live...

Duane Vorhees and his wife and son moved the population of Farmersville, Ohio over the 1,000 mark when they moved there last year. He returned to his hometown after teaching in Korea and Japan. His book "Love's Autobiography" was published by Hawakal last summer and is available on Amazon. He manages a daily arts zine duanespoetree.blogspot.com, featuring contemporary poets from around the world....

Rebroadcast - Women's History Month 2019 Writer's Biography Pearl Brown holds a Bachelors of Science degree in Chemistry, She is a Montessori Certified Middle and High School Teacher. She teaches Math and Science at the Oneness Family School (from 2014 till the present) in Chevy Chase, Maryland. I first began writing at the young age of 7 or 8. Writing was a way of expressing my love of reading. W...

Octavio is Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at Wellesley College. His first poetry collection, The Book of Ours, was a selection of the chapbook series at Letras Latinas, University of Notre Dame (Momotombo Press, 2009). He is currently working on a second poetry manuscript, tentatively titled "The Wingless Hour." Some poems from this collection appear in Lambda Literary's Poetr...