The Poet and The Poem

Shirley J. Brewer (Baltimore, MD) graduated from careers in bartending and speech therapy. She serves as poet-in-residence at Carver Center for Arts & Technology in Baltimore, and also teaches creative writing workshops to seniors. Recent poems garnish Barrow Street, Comstock Review, Naugatuck River Review, Plainsongs, Poetry East, Slant, and many other journals and anthologies. Shirley was awarde...

The Write Blend Poetry Circle was officially formed in 2018, when six named poets agreed to become part of a larger collaborative to bring cultural diversity to communities through an expansive range of their voices and poetry.

Pamela Murray Winters is the author of The Unbeckonable Bird, a poetry collection published by FutureCycle Press in 2018. She has an MFA in poetry from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She is at work on a second full-length collection of poems and a few chapbooks. Pam lives in Maryland with her husband and a small menagerie.

Barbara DeCesare is a graduate of the Goddard College MFA-W program. She is the author of jigsaweyesore (Anti-Man Press), Adrift (Seventh Wave), and Silent Type (Paper Kite Press). Barbara curated The Prufrock Project, an art exhibit based on the T. S. Eliot poem, cast audience members to perform in her series of small plays You’re Soaking In It, and took the title in the Fear No Lit Literary Page...

Irish poet, Jane Clarke's first collection, The River, was published by Bloodaxe Books in 2015 to public and critical acclaim. Her second book-length collection, When the Tree Falls was published by Bloodaxe in September 2019 and her illustrated booklet of poems, All the Way Home, was published by Smith/Doorstop in April 2019. The River was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature’s Ondaatj...

A life-long musician, writer, and creative, Rob spent most of his childhood reading comic books, playing games, and making music. Graduated from the University of Virginia in 2002 with a degree in Anthropology, with a focus on ethnomusicology, he has spent the intervening years living and working as a musician and music professional. Aside from writing comics, Rob also works as an audio designer a...

Mervyn Taylor, a Trinidad-born poet and longtime Brooklyn resident, has taught at Bronx Community College, The New School and in the New York City public school system. He is the author of six books of poetry, including The Waving Gallery (2014), and most recently, Voices Carry (2017). About his work, Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott said, “Taylor’s is a quiet voice. His poems possess an admirable deg...

Natwar Gandhi served Washington, DC, as tax commissioner and independent chief financial officer. This book narrates his journey from a primitive Indian town—no paved streets, electricity, telephone or running water—to Mumbai and then, through hard work, determination and good luck, to New York. After academic and corporate stints, Gandhi became the CFO of America's capital and played a significan...

Joy Harjo is a poet, musician, and author. She is also the first Native American United States Poet Laureate. She is an important figure in the second wave of the literary Native American Renaissance of the late twentieth century. She studied at the Institute of American Indian Arts, completed her undergraduate degree at University of New Mexico in 1976, and earned an M.F.A. at the University of I...

Nancy Mitchell is a Pushcart Prize recipient and the author of The Near Surround, Grief Hut, and The Out-of-Body Shop, and co-editor of Plume Interviews 1. Her poems have appeared in journals such as Agni, Green Mountains Review, Poetry Daily, Washington Square Review and have been anthologized in Last Call (Sarabande Books) The Working Poet (Autumn House Press) and Plume 3, 4, 5 & 7. She has been...

Poet and journalist Celeste Doaks is the author of Cornrows and Cornfields (Wrecking Ball Press, UK, 2015). She is also the editor of (and contributor in) the poetry anthology Not Without Our Laughter: Poems of Humor, Joy, and Sexuality (Mason Jar Press, 2017). Her chapbook, American Herstory (Backbone Press, 2019), contains poems about Michelle Obama and the art she chose for the White House wall...

Linda Pastan grew up in New York City, graduated from Radcliffe College in 1954, and received an MA from Brandeis University. She has published 15 volumes of poetry, most recently Insomnia which won the Towson University Literary Award and A Dog Runs Through It. Two of her books have been finalists for the National Book Award, one for The Los Angeles Times Book Prize. She taught for several years...

Wendy Lesser is the founder and editor of the Threepenny Review and the author of a novel and several previous books of nonfiction, including Why I Read (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014). She has written for the New York Times Book Review, London Review of Books, Times Literary Supplement, and other publications. To complete this biography, she was awarded one of the first National Endowment for t...

David Gewanter is author of four books of poetry: Fort Necessity (Spring 2018), War Bird (2009), The Sleep of Reason (2003), and In the Belly (1997),all published by the University of Chicago Press; and co-editor, with Frank Bidart, of Robert Lowell: Collected Poems (Farrar Straus & Giroux, Faber & Faber, 2003; paperback, 2007). He earned a B.A. in Intellectual History from the University of Michi...

Dr. Xuhua Liang was born in a beautiful island in the southern China: Xiamen (Amoy), Fujian Province. During the political turmoil of Chinese Culture Revolution, her mother passed away. Raised by her grandparents, she was deeply influenced by her uncles and the Chinese traditional literature. Even though she only had a basic education for six years, she passed with flying color the rigorous nation...

Erica Wright is the author of the poetry collections All the Bayou Stories End with Drowned (Black Lawrence Press) and Instructions for Killing the Jackal (Black Lawrence Press). Her poems have appeared in Crazyhorse, Denver Quarterly, Gulf Coast, New Orleans Review, and elsewhere. She is the poetry editor at Guernica Magazine as well as a former editorial board member of Alice James Books. Her de...

Susan Orlean's The Library Book received The Marfield Award for Writing in the Arts.

Judith Farr is a well known poems Dickinson scholar and the author of poems, "What Lies Beyond."

Seema Reza is a poet and poetry activist working with veterans and galvanizing arts communities in Washington, Maryland, and Virginia.

Steven Leyva is an Assistant Professor at the University of Baltimore's School of Communications Design.

Blue Eyes Wide Open, in reverence. W.S. Merwin, 17th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry (1927-2019)

India born poet recognized as one of the country's first feminist writers.

Maryland poet helps establish "A Splendid Wake" archive of DC poets.

Minnesota poet produces Gaughin poetry anthology.

Pitas is an Iowa poet who translates poetry from Uruguayan to English and treats us to a sample translation.