Check out our Summer 2017 poetry card in a medical waiting room near you. They’re available in hospices, prisons and rest homes as well. Mercy Hospital and the SDHB also have copies for reading and leaving or taking home to keep. If you haven’t seen any poetry cards at your medical centre, let me know and I can make contact and see if they would like to stock them, they’re free.
Introducing the poets featured in our summer card
Annie Lighthart started writing after her first visit to an Oregon old-growth forest. Since those first strange days, she earned an MFA in Poetry and published her poetry collection, Iron String. Her poetry has been read by Garrison Keillor on The Writer’s Almanac and chosen by Naomi Shihab Nye to be placed in Ireland’s Galway University Hospitals as part of their Poems for Patience project. Annie loves being a traveling teacher and has taught writing workshops at Boston College, as a poet in the schools, and with many community groups, working with writers from ages 6 to 89. She lives in a small green corner of Portland, Oregon.
Anya Krugovoy Silver is a poet living in Macon, Georgia. She is the author of four books of poetry, The Ninety-Third Name of God (2010), I Watched You Disappear (2014), From Nothing (2016), and Second Bloom, (2017). She currently teaches in the English Department at Mercer University. She shares her life with her husband, son, and cockapoo.
Cherry Hill is a retired teacher of Chinese and Japanese languages. She is a partner on a sheep and deer farm on the edge of Lake Ellesmere/TeWaihora.
Connie Wanek has written four books of poems, most recently Rival Gardens: New and Selected Poems, published in 2016 by the University of Nebraska Press. She’s also the author of a book of prose called Summer Cars. She lived for over 25 years in Duluth, MN, which is on the shore of Lake Superior. Her website is www.conniewanek.com.
Paul Hostovsky’s poems have been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, The Writer’s Almanac, and Best of the Net. He has nine full-length collections of poetry. He makes his living in Boston as a sign language interpreter at the Massachusetts Commission for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing.
Pauline Cartwright – When I was 9 I dreamed of becoming a writer. For many years now I have made my living that way. Sometimes I have written for adults, sometimes for myself. Mostly I have written for children, everything from poems to picture books, from 8-page readers to full-length novels. Support has come from an early NZ Literature Grant, the Richards Literary Agency, from other writers, my family, and readers.
I would find it distressing not to be able to write and even more so not to be able to read. Because of books I know the truth of Margaret Mahy’s words: “Imagination transforms the world, it is a force for alteration and enlightenment
Robert K Johnson – Born in New York City (in Elmhurst), I lived in several different places there but have memories only of The Bronx (off Fordham Road). Then my family moved out “on The Island”—to Lynbrook, where we stayed till I graduated from Hofstra (then a College). Several years after my wife, Pat, and I married, we, plus our two children, settled in the Boston area and have remained there (except for my daughter, Kate, who has lived in Manhattan for quite a while). I have been writing poetry since I was twelve (many moons ago).
Ron C. Moss is an artist and poet from Tasmania, a place of wilderness that inspires his work. Ron is recognized as an outstanding illustrator and designer of many poetry books, and his haiku and achievements in related genres have been widely published and honoured with many awards.
“I consider myself a student of the Zen arts,” Ron writes, “which have fascinated me from an early age. I enjoy the distilled conciseness of haiku, the exploration of art and mixed media, and sometimes I like to combine the two, as in the ancient tradition of haiga. I try to bring a sense of contemplation into my work. Moments of stillness are important in our very busy lives, and my path is to practice the way of art and haiku poetry.”
Samantha Montgomerie is a writer and teacher. Several of her poems have been included in the New Zealand Poetry Society Anthology, and a number have also been published in newspapers. The latest edition of Landfall features Samantha’s poem, Kate Sheppard reads the Weekly. She lives on the Otago Peninsula. Samantha won Third place in the 2017 PitWR competition with her poem Threads.
Steve Klepetar lives in Saint Cloud, Minnesota. His work has received several nominations for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize, including three in 2016. Recent collections include Family Reunion, A Landscape in Hell, and How Fascism Comes to America.
Poems in the Waiting Room (NZ) 