The Somerville News Blog

Somerville publisher pushes small press legend

Off The Shelf by Doug Holder

Confessions of a White Hat by Ed Galing (Alternating Current c/o Propaganda Press POBOX 398058 Cambridge, Mass. 02139) [email protected] $2

I speak to 91 year old Hatboro, Pennsylvania poet Ed Galing on a regular basis, and I am amazed that despite his advanced years his mind is still sharp, and he continues to regale the small press with his prolific output of poetry and prose. Ed at this stage in the game is being discovered and is being published in such top shelf magazines such as: Pearl, Margie, Rattle and others.

Wisdom comes from strange places in Hoffman’s poetry

Gold Star Road by Richard Hoffman. (Barrow Street  PO BOX 1831  Murray Hill Station  NY 10156) $25.

Review by Doug Holder

There damn well should be a poem for a doorman, a poem that celebrates in-your-face blue-collar wisdom, and a poem that sings for the many unsung Gold Star Roads.

(designated roads where soldiers killed in the line of duty lived and are memorialized), in far flung communities across the country.

Somerville philosopher examines what's behind the 'Veil'

Off The Shelf by Doug Holder

For a year or so Ajume H. Wingo and I sat across from each other at the Sherman Café in Union Square. We would nod politely to each other and then resume our respective reading. We never really talked. Of course I wondered about this tall, and distinguished African man who seemed to have a scholarly bent. But as fate had it, on a rainy April evening we found ourselves walking together just outside Harvard Yard and started to chew the fat.

A few days later we met at Sherman's to converse some more. Wingo is an associate professor of Philosophy at UMass-Boston, a senior fellow at the McCormack Graduate School of Public Policy for Democracy and Development, and also a fellow at Harvard's Du Bois Institute.

Somerville poets host Dylan Thomas' daughter

Off The Shelf by Doug Holder

I found myself on a cool evening in April walking to Dunkin Donuts in Harvard Square with Aeronwy Thomas, daughter of the late great Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. Aeronwy Thomas, a well-regarded educator and poet in her own right, is on a national tour talking about her father Dylan, who wrote some of the most revered verse in the 20th Century, as well as a critically acclaimed play “Under Milk Wood.”

Somerville resident, Wellesley College professor, and owner of the famed Grolier Poetry Book Shop, Ifeanyi Menkiti hosted a reading with Aeronwy Thomas, her husband Trevor Ellis, and Peter Thabit Jones, a respected Welsh poet and editor of the Swansea Poet Magazine. I asked Menkiti why he decided to host this event organized by publisher Stanley Barkan of Cross-Cultural Communications. Menkiti said:” I Love Dylan Thomas' sense of community. His work releases a poetic impulse across the world. It travels across borders.

Davis Square poet: Somerville makes you want to write

Off The Shelf by Doug Holder

Poet Ed Meek is a new transplant to Davis Square, Somerville, and damn glad of it. Meek, an accomplished writer in both the fiction and non-fiction genre, moved from the staid and tony suburbs of Belmont to the hotbed of cultural activity: Somerville.

Belmont, once labeled the “most boring” town in the state by The Boston Globe, was a bit rarefied for the writer in the man. Meek, the author of a new poetry collection “What We Love” (First World Publishing) said of Davis Square and Somerville: “Somerville is a great community. It makes you feel like writing.”

A recent transplant to Somerville’s rich artistic milieu

Off The Shelf by Doug Holder

Poet Heather Madden is in the midst of a love affair. She was in love at her first sight of Somerville. She loves the mix of artists, the generations of families that reside here, the Sherman Café, the eclectic shops of Union Square and the general enthusiasm for the arts the ‘Ville embodies. Madden, who lives in Union Square, told the News that her Somerville neighborhood is: “quiet enough” for her to write and she loves the view of a historic home across the way from her flat.

Writers fest co-founder pens new book

Off The Shelf by Doug Holder

This is where you go when you are gone by Tim Gager (Cervena Barva Press) $7

Tim Gager's poems are poems of the regular guy, and in his own way Gager's work is as American as apple pie. He is a man who is confused by and craves women, retains a childlike enthusiasm for baseball into his middle age, downs  burgers and brews, and pines for something that always seems just out of his reach. There is nothing rarefied about the poet's work; his poetry speaks as plainly as a stick or bone.

A Bagel Bard is new head of the Cape Cod Writers Center

Off The Shelf by Doug Holder

Anne Elizabeth Tom, among other things, is a member of the Bagel Bards, a writers group that meets every Saturday at the Au Bon Pain in Davis Square. Late in 2007 Tom was appointed the new executive director of the Cape Cod Writers Center. Anne who lives on the Cape with her husband Steve grew up in Boston but remembers her summers on the Cape with great affection. Tom got an MFA from Tufts University, worked as a writer/editor for the MITRE Corp., started a family, lived around the country, but wound up back on the Cape.

Interview with poet Mark Doty: A poet who goes from “Fire to Fire”

Off The Shelf by Doug Holder

When a publicist from Harper Collins in New York City emailed to see if I wanted to review Mark Doty's new poetry collection: “Fire to Fire,” I was on it like the proverbial hornet. Doty is high on the top shelf of American poets, a winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, a Whiting Writers Award and the U.K's T.S. Eliot Prize. His poetry has appeared in the American Poetry Review, Ploughshare, Prairie Schooner, and many other well-regarded literary journals. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment of the Arts, the Ingram-Merrill Foundation, as well as the Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. In his new collection Doty peppers his work with beautiful studied images, and haunting apparitions he spies in the most unlikely of places. Doty has an astute ear for music, he can smell death's most subtle odor, and he can explain to you what you have been just dying to articulate. To be honest, few of the poetry books I get to review are dyed-in-the-wool page turners. But Doty's is hands down. I interviewed Doty recently for The Somerville News.

Somerville poets host Ed Sanders and his “Tales of Beatnik Glory”

Off The Shelf by Doug Holder

The Squawk Coffeehouse is a throwback to the bohemian coffeehouses of yore, with ample doses of off-key, off-the-wall, outside-of-the box poetry and song. Presided over by resident Somerville bohemes Lee Kidd and Jessa Piaia, Squawk located at the Harvard Epworth Church, 1555 Mass Ave., Cambridge (just outside Harvard Square), is a refuge for those of us who are still beatniks and hippies at heart. The doors for the readings open at 9 p.m. on Thursdays, and the readings usually last till 12 a.m. or so.

Lisa Beatman: A poet for the unsung workers of the Ames Safety Envelope Factory

Off The Shelf by Doug Holder

Lisa Beatman has penned a new poetry collection “Manufacturing America: Poems from the Factory Floor ( Ibbetson Press) that was inspired by her stint as an Adult Literacy teacher at the Ames Safety Envelope Factory in Somerville.

Beatman, after being outsourced from the factory, now manages the adult literacy program at the Harriet Tubman House in Boston. She has won honorable mention for the 2004 Miriam Landberg International Poetry Peace Prize, and was awarded a Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant, as well as a fellowship to Sacatar Institute in Brazil. Her work has appeared in Lonely Planet, Lilith, Harvard Pacific Review, Rhino, Ibbetson Street and others. Her first collection of poetry was titled “Ladies Night at the Blue Hill Spa.” I spoke with Beatman on my Somerville Community Access TV show “Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer.”

How about a poet laureate in Somerville?

Off The Shelf by Doug Holder

Recently I was invited to a reception for the Boston Poet Laureate Sam Cornish at the Parkman House in Boston. It was a nice affair with many of the poets and players from the Boston area poetry scene in attendance.

I got to eat a lot of fancy hors d'oeurves, drink a slightly diluted pomegranate punch, and admire the genteel trappings of this celebrated house. If I remember correctly Mayor James Michael Curley's desk was stolen from the premises some years back.

Somerville poet ponders factory workers

Off The Shelf by Doug Holder

Lisa Beatman worked as an Adult Literarcy teacher at the Ames paper factory in Somerville. Somerville's Ibbetson Street Press has published a book of her poetry “Manufacturing America: Poems From The Factory Floor.” Many of the poems are studies of the workers she taught while there. This is hardly a subject for trendy or sexy writing, but it deals with a shrinking underclass in society that for the most part is invisible. Laurel Johnson of the Midwest Book Review wrote this review of the book. I decided to include it in my column this week. Here is Johnson's review:

From Somerville to the Bowery

Off The Shelf by Doug Holder

No matter where you go Somerville is not far behind. I found on my recent literary related trip to New York City all kinds of Somerville connections. I had planned to visit my mother in New York the first weekend in February, and it just so happened that poet Charles Ries from Wisconsin was reading at the KGB bar in the Bowery and he invited me and other folks to attend. Charles was attending the Association of Writer's and Writing Programs conference in NYC. It was held on 52nd St. at the Sheraton so I figured I would make a pit stop there. Unfortunately you have to register to get in, and they were booked, so I was unable to attend the book fair segment. You figure they would let the general public in for the book tables. As a publisher and poet I would want as many folks as possible to be exposed to my books, not just our arcane world of small press people. But being the small press guerilla that I am to the bone, I left “Ibbetson Street” magazines strategically appointed around the lobby. Hopefully they got a receptive audience… a literary minded bellboy, or perhaps a luminary like Sue Miller picked it up in an afterthought.

‘Living In Storms. Contemporary Poetry and the Moods of Manic Depression’

Off The Shelf by Doug Holder

Edited by Thom Schramm. (Eastern Washington University Press Spokane, Washington 2008) $24.

The “black dogs” of depression are never far outside our gate, as Winston Churchill once wrote. The euphoria of mania and the freefall of depression are known in the field as manic depression. This rapid cycling tornado of mental illness has affected (according to recent studies) poets and writers to a greater degree than the general population. In fact in the New York Times awhile back it was reported that poets and writers, but particularly poets, have a shorter lifespan than the rest of the masses. Could it be we are more prone to suicide or have we just forgotten to take our daily dose of statins?

I am in a McIntyre and Moore frame of mind

Off The Shelf by Doug Holder

As you probably know by now McIntyre and Moore Booksellers is going to close April 1. Along with the recent closing of Jimmy Tingle's Off Broadway Theatre this is a big loss for Davis Square and Somerville. Word has it they might relocate to the old Bookcellar site in Porter Square. The site will be much smaller. The Bookcellar was another fine used bookstore that hit the dust some years ago.

If I were to go to central casting and say “Hey, Mac. I need a used bookstore and make it snappy!” McIntyre and Moore would fit the bill perfectly.

David Surette: A poet who finds it ‘Easy to Keep: Hard to Keep In’

Off The Shelf by Doug Holder

David Surette is the author of the new poetry collection:  “Easy to Keep, Hard to Keep In.” Surette is also the author of the poetry collections titled “Malden,” “Good Shift,” and “Young Gentleman's School.” He also co-hosts the ever successful Poetribe Reading Series in East Bridgewater.

Award-winning poet Frannie Lindsay writes of his new collection:  “David Surette is a steward of humility in its many forms: from his blue collar Arcadian roots to his lowly yet noble farm animals. With charm and affability, yet neither of these at the cost of implicit depth, this collection impresses…”  I spoke with Surette on my Somerville Community Access TV show “Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer.”

From the heart of Union Square to the heart of Israel

Off The Shelf by Doug Holder

This is the second in a two-part series on my recent trip to Israel.

Being the urban and hopefully urbane man that I am, I was anxious for more of a taste of the cities. One night I stayed at the home of Voices members Susan and Richard Rosenberg who have an apartment in Haifa. Susan is the secretary of the Voices organization. It is situated high up on a hill above the city, with a striking view of the Mediterranean. Wendy Blumfield, a journalist with the Jerusalem Post, and her husband David, were my guides around the city the next day. They showed me the old Arab Quarter, and the Jewish section that was peopled with many Hasidic Jews in full traditional garb.

From the heart of Union Square to the heart of Israel

Off The Shelf by Doug Holder

This is the first in a two-part series on my recent trip to Israel

Up until this December I had never been overseas. I'm not a kid. At 52, I have arrived at the second half of the roller coaster ride, or as Camus put it by now I am “responsible for my own face.” I have never been the adventurous type. I have been content to travel back and forth to my ancestral grounds of New York City, or to my favorite isle in Maine, or perhaps the rare trip to the heat and swamps of Florida to visit an old friend.

Johnson write 'From Mist to Shadow'

Off The Shelf by Doug Holder

Robert K. Johnson is a retired English professor from Suffolk University in Boston. He has been widely published in the small press and is the author of nine collections of poetry, including his latest “From Mist to Shadow” ( Ibbetson 2007).

Johnson has also written two critical studies, one of filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, and the other of playwright Neil Simon. He is a winner of the Ibbetson Street Press Lifetime Achievement Award along with other notables such as: Robert Pinsky, David R. Godine, Louisa Solano, and Jack Powers. He is currently the submission editor for the literary magazine Ibbetson Street.