People and Their Poems

Sandy Carlson, poet laureate of Woodbury, Conn., visits with Vyacheslav (Slava) Konoval, a Ukrainian poet and lawyer whose creative works have been translated into six languages. A writer of poetry for the past two years, Slava's poems have appeared in more than 60 literary magazines and anthologies. He is a member of the Scottish Writer's Federation and has a wide interest in the arts. EPISODE EXTRAS

Rick Magee, poet laureate of Bethel, Conn., and an English professor at Sacred Heart University, grew up in California and moved to the East Coast to work on his PhD. His wife Rebecca is also an English professor, and their son Cormac wants to be a writer when he grows up. Rick has published in a variety of online journals and has just recently signed with a publisher for his poetry chapbook.

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Listen as Sandy Carlson, poet laureate of Woodbury, Conn. (https://sandycarlson.net,) talks with Nicole Caruso Garcia, whose full-length debut poetry collection is Oxblood (Able Muse Press, 2022). Oxblood was named a finalist for the Able Muse Book Award and the Richard Wilbur Award.

Educated at Fairfield University, Nicole holds a BA in English and Religious Studies. After seven years in the corporate sector, she earned her MS in Education from the University of Bridgeport and taught English at Trumbull High School for fifteen years.

Nicole's poetry appears in Best New Poets, Light, Mezzo Cammin, ONE ART, Plume, Rattle, RHINO, and elsewhere. Garcia serves as associate poetry editor at Able Muse and as an executive board member at Poetry by the Sea, an annual poetry conference in Madison, Conn.

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Jack Powers taught high school special education, English and writing for 38 years. He won the 2015 and 2012 Connecticut River Review Poetry Contests and was a finalist for the 2014 and 2013 Rattle Poetry Prizes. Jack earned MFAs in fiction and poetry from Sarah Lawrence College, and a BFA in Painting from Syracuse University.  He has two poetry collections: Everybody's Vaguely Familiar (2019) and Still Love (2023).  Jack has published scores of poems in various journals, including Rattle, The Cortland Review, and The Southern Review. 

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Julie Cook lives in Woodbury, Connecticut, where she is a poet, musician, and music teacher. She has been writing poetry and making music ever since she was a child, playing on the piano her musician father bought for her and her sister. Julie is a member of the Orenaug Chapter of the Connecticut Poetry Society. She is also a member of Feminina Melodia and Music for People.

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Born and raised in Rochester, New York, Deborah Nash Ott holds a Masters of Education in Secondary Education, English. She taught for 35 years in the US and abroad. She has led writers' workshops in Bern, Switzerland, and edited the annual creative writing journal Voices for East Granby High School. Deb has published in various small presses. The poetry volume Twin Soul is Deb's collaborative work with Welsh poet Heather Gatley. Her novella Canopy is part of the Connecticut Indie Book Project, published in the Connecticut Bard Review in 2022. She also published a children's book with artist Helen Galick in 2016. Currently she is working on Solid Miss, her first solo collection of poetry.

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Melissa Studdard is the author of five books, including the poetry collections Dear Selection Committee and I Ate the Cosmos for Breakfast, the poetry chapbook Like a Bird with a Thousand Wings, and the young adult novel Six Weeks to Yehidah. Her work has been featured by NPR, PBS, The New York Times, The Guardian, Ms. Magazine, and Houston Matters, and has also appeared in a wide variety of periodicals, such as POETRY, Kenyon Review, Psychology Today, New Ohio Review, Harvard Review, New England Review, and Poets & Writers. She is a professor in the Lone star System.

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Dennis Barone, professor emeritus at the University of Saint Joseph, was born in New Jersey. He attended Bard College and the University of Pennsylvania. In 1992 he became the Thomas Jefferson Chair in American Studies, The Netherlands. In 1997, Dennis received the America Award in Fiction for Echoes. He received the first faculty scholarship award at the University of Saint Joseph in 2016. He has published 27 books as author or editor, including Garnet Poems: An Anthology of Connecticut Poetry Since 1776 (Wesleyan UP 2012), Beyond the Red Notebook: Essays on Paul Auster (U of Penn P 1995), Beyond Memory: Italian Protestants in Italy and America (SUNY P 2016), New Hungers for Old: One Hundred Years of Italian American Poetry (Star Cloud 2012), Second Thoughts (prose, Bordighera P 2017), Frame Narrative (poetry 2018), Walkers in the City ( a COVID poetry chapbook anthology Rain Taxi 2021), A Field Guide to the Rehearsal (poetry 2022).

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Pegi Deitz Shea, two-time winner of the CT Book Award, has published more than 500 works of poetry, nonfiction, fiction, and children's books. She founded and directs Poetry Rocks, and was the inaugural Poet Laureate of Vernon. She is president of the CT Coalition of Poets Laureate.

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Jessica Cuello is poetry editor at Tahoma Review and has been a French and English teacher in the public schools for 27 years. Her books include Liar (Barrow Street 2021), Yours Creature (JackLeg 2023), Hunt (Word Works 2017), and Pricking (Tiger Bark 2016). Cuello was the recipient of The 2018 New Ohio Review Poetry Prize, The 2013 New Letters Poetry Prize, and a 2015 Saltonstall Writing Fellowship. In 2014 she was awarded The Decker Award from Hollins University for outstanding secondary teaching.

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Suzanne Frischkorn is a poet, essayist, and editor. She is the author of Fixed Star (JackLeg Press2022) as well as the books Girl on a Bridge and Lit Windowpane (both from Main Street Rag Press). Her chapbooks are American Flamingo, Spring Tide, Red Paper Flower, Exhale, and The Tactile Sense. She is the recipient of The Writer’s Center Emerging Writers Fellowship for Lit Windowpane and the Aldrich Poetry Award for her chapbook Spring Tide, selected by Mary Oliver. Suzanne earned an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Connecticut Commission on Culture & Tourism, and a 2023 SWWIM Residency at The Betsy Hotel – South Beach. Her poems have appeared in Copper Nickel, Ecotone, Indiana Review, The Los Angeles Review, North American Review, Tahoma Literary Review, Verse Daily, Conversation Pieces: Poems That Talk to Other Poems, part of the Everyman’s Library Pocket Poet Series (Knopf), Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy (Trinity University Press 2020), NPR’s Poetry Moment podcast, and elsewhere. She is an editor at $ – Poetry Is Currency and serves on the Terrain.org editorial board. Her books are available on Bookshop, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and Indiebound.

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B. Fulton Jennes ("Barb") Jennes spent the first 25 years of her career as an advertising copywriter and freelance corporate writer and editor. After volunteering to run creative writing programs at her daughter's elementary school, she decided to pursue a teaching degree, leading to a 16-year second career as a public-school English teacher.

Upon retiring in 2017, Jennes returned to her first love: poetry. She is Poet Laureate of Ridgefield, Connecticut, where she also serves as poet-in-residence at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum. Her poems have appeared in The Comstock Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Connecticut River Review, The Night Heron Barks, Tar River Poetry, SWIMM, Anti-Heroin Chic, Pareidolia Literary, Extreme Sonnets II, and many other journals and anthologies. Her poem “Glyphs of a Gentle Going” was awarded the 2022 Lascaux Prize and is a nominee for the 2023 Pushcart Prize. Jennes’s collection Mammoth Spring was a finalist for the 2021 Two Sylvias Wilder Prize and also the  Small Harbor Press Laureate Prize. Her collection Blinded Birds (Finishing Line Press, 2022) was named Winner of the 2022 International Book Awards in the poetry chapbook category; “Ghazal: For a Wild Child, Grown” – a poem from that collection – is also a nominee for the 2023 Pushcart Prize.

Barb lives in Ridgefield with husband Chuck. Blinded Birds is available at Bookshop.com or any local independent book seller. Barb's 2023 resolution is to try her hand at writing short stories.

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Several of Connecticut's leading poets and poets laureate share their works in this holiday peace reading, presented by the Oliver Wolcott Library in Litchfield, Conn. Jim Kelleher, of the Oliver Wolcott Poets, is the organizer and host for this seasonal celebration of peace and hope.

Host Sandy Carlson talks with Katherine Schneider, a poet and adult ESL professional living in Norwalk, CT. She holds an MFA from Fairfield University's low residency MFA program where she worked closely with Baron Wormser and the late Dr. Kim  Bridgford. She has also received an MA in TESOL and has taught ESL to adult students in the greater NYC area for 10 years. 

Being an active participant in writing/poetry community is important to Katie. She co-founded and co-hosts the literary livestream FUMFA Poets &  Writers Live (@fumfalive) with her MFA colleague, fiction writer Chris Belden. She is also engaged with combining poetry with music and other creative arts. Her endeavors in this regard can be followed at @the_story_of_how.

Her first chapbook, I Used to Remember the  Story of How, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2019. Her publication credits for individual poems include Ruminate, Blue Line, The Poetry Porch, The Paddock Review, and Collateral. Her poem "Breath" was also a nominee for a Pushcart Prize.

Katie has recently  completed a manuscript, which constitutes her first book-length manuscript, entitled Breaking the Fever. This manuscript leans even more heavily into vulnerability in religious, romantic, and political social  contexts explored in her first chapbook, and it takes the reader as  much into personal memory as it does into literal and abstract Holy Land. It brings the reader on a journey of longing, revelation, ecstasy,  and pain to arrive at a place of hard-won faith in self-worth.

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In this episode, Sandy talks with Nancy McMillan of Bethlehem, CT. Nancy is the award-winning author of March Farm: Season by Season on a Connecticut Family Farm. Her essay “For the Love of Linen” (CT Lit Anthology 2020) was a Pushcart Prize nominee. Litchfield Magazine publishes her feature stories, one of which won first place in the CT Press Club 2022 Contest. Her work has appeared in Pangyrus, The Sunlight Press, Persimmon Tree, Fiction Southeast, and Edible Nutmeg, and her reviews have run in Connecticut newspapers. She directs the writing program at Arts Escape (Southbury, CT), where she helps students embrace and inhabit their innate creativity. 

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Sandy talks with Patricia about the influence of meaningful lyrics on Patricia during the heyday of the Beatles' invasion, about  Patricia the roles of mentors, and of responding to opportunity when it presents itself in the development of her craft.

Patricia is an author, poet, performer/actor, and freelance writer/communications professional who has been featured at numerous venues, festivals, on radio and television, and published in various periodicals and anthologies. A member of the Author’s Guild and Nonfiction Author’s Association, Martin is the author of six nonfiction books and a poetry collection. She collaborated on a CD with composer/producer/musician Gus Mancini.

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Sandy talks with Southbury, CT, poet and artist Faith Vicinanza, who discusses her role in slam poetry in Connecticut, the influence of others to drive us toward poetry, and the vital relationship between the poet as performer and the audience.

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In this episode 3, Sandy talks with Woodbury, CT, poet Amy Dorio (@amy_dorio on Twitter), an educator who writes poetry. Amy reflects on her father's influence on her interest in and pursuit of poetry and the potential for poetry to transform students' lives as they learn to read poetic language as well as to write it.

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