Sally Cook’s work in both disciplines may be described as idiosyncratic, representational and colorful. A recipient of a Margaret Eyer Wilbur fellowship, she has received several scholarships and awards for both her painting and her writing.

Cook’s essays and poetry have appeared in publications such as The Barefoot Muse, Bumbershoot, The Chimera, Chronicles, Contemporary Sonnet, First Things, Iambs & Trochees, Lucid Rhythms, The New Formalist, Pivot, The University Bookman and others. Her work will shortly appear in Pool and The Hypertexts. Featured poet in the fall issue of The Raintown Review, she was nominated by that publication for a 2007 Pushcart Prize.   Her poetry may be seen at The New Formalist Press.

Recent awards include third prize in the Best American Poetry Challenge II for her poem "As The Underworld Turns" and several prizes and honorable mentions in The 2007 World Order of Narrative and Formalist Poets Contest.

Whether writing or painting, Cook keeps a sharp eye out for the psychological portrait. To quote her, "Art is a lonely path, and promises nothing. It is neither a group activity nor a special club for the over-educated. If weaving compelling images satisfies you more than anything else, then you are probably an artist or a poet. Good luck to you!"

Margaret Menamin wrote her first poem when she was in the second grade, and saw her first published poems in Seventeen before she was 20. Since then her poems have appeared in a number of newspapers and magazines, including Good Housekeeping, The Missouri Conservationist. Most recently her poems have appeared  The Lyric, The Formalist, Iambs & Trochees, and The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Her book, Sonnets for a Second Summer, was published by Westphalia Press in 1996. For seven years she was a newspaper reporter and feature writer for the Rolla Daily News.

In 1994 she won first place in the rhymed poetry division of the Writer’s Digest annual competition, and in 2002 she won first place in Iambs & Trochees’ poetry competition. She has been a finalist for the Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award, and has won awards from The Lyric and other poetry journals. Since 1967 her sonnet, Prayer for OWAA, has been used as the official invocation and benediction for the annual meeting of Outdoor Writers of America Association. Her on-line chapbook, Essential Tremors, was published by New Formalist in 2005.

A native of Missouri she lives in Murrysville, PA, and shares her back yard with deer, wild turkeys, squirrels, rabbits, chipmunks, an obese groundhog, and many birds.

Jared Carter’s most recent book is Cross this Bridge at a Walk from Wind Publications in Kentucky. His work has appeared in Stand, Agenda, Outposts Poetry Quarterly, The Dark Horse, Eyewear, and Nth Position. Additional poems and stories may be found on his web site at http://www.jaredcarter.com

David W. Landrum is professor of Humanities at Cornerstone University, Grand Rapids, Michigan. His poetry and short stories have been published in Contemporary Sonnet, The Barefoot Muse, Measure, The New Formalist, and many other magazines and journals. He edits the on-line poetry journal, Lucid Rhythms.














 

A BETTER INDICTMENT 

THE POET DULY TAKES NOTE OF HIS CRITICS

SALEMI VS. THE STATE OF POETRY

Jared Carter’s first collection of poems, Work, for the Night is Coming, won the Walt Whitman Award for 1980. His second, After the Rain, received the Poets’ Prize for 1994. His third, Les Barricades Mystérieuses, appeared in 1999.  All three volumes are available from Cleveland State University Poetry Center. His fourth book, Cross this Bridge at a Walk, is from Wind Publications in Kentucky.

 David Lee Garrison teaches Spanish, Portuguese, and comparative literature at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio.  He has led writing workshops at various other colleges and universities.  His poems, essays, and translations have appeared in a number of literary journals.  His co-edited anthology, O Taste and See: Food Poems (Bottom Dog Press), won the 2004 American Poetry Anthology Award from Pudding House Press.  Two poems from his latest book, Sweeping the Cemetery (Browser Books), were read by Garrison Keillor on his nationally syndicated radio program, The Writer’s Almanac.