Steve Borodkin ran away from home when he was 13 years old to escape sexual abuse by a family member. Growing up on the streets of Manhattan as a crew member for one of the families in Little Italy. Serving in Vietnam at the end of the war, three months before Saigon fell. He spent years on the road as a young man traveling around the country working odd jobs and learning about its people.
Steve has been writing since he can remember. Poems, essays, short stories, and way too many love letters. He has just finished a memoir that took eight years to complete and over five-hundred drafts. He says it's his second biggest accomplishment behind his son, Zack who is his pride and joy. Being an artist and musician, poetry has always been close to his heart and his favorite form of self expression.
"It is my way of sharing the way the world appears through my lens. I am an avid reader, words mean everything to me. The relationship between writer and reader has always fascinated me. If done correctly it is magical and transformative for both. I believe that the best form of self expression contains vulnerability. poetic thought, and empathy."
Kris Janvier is a poet, an aspiring artist, and an actor who can be seen in the short film, “The Bigger Picture,” streaming on Amazon Prime. Kris hails from Baldwin and has been featured in many venues on Long Island, including Poetry Street at The Blue Duck. His poem, “Train Conductor” was chosen for the anthology, Nassau County Voices in Verse, 2023
CK (they/them) is an Irish artist, spoken word poet, and educator who writes and performs poetry through the heart and perspective of a trans non-binary poet on a journey of self-discovery. Through her healing words, she hopes to represent and bring comfort and hope to people living beyond the binary, to demythologize the trans experience, and advance a deeper understanding of those living their truth.
I write Healing poetry through the heart and perspective of a trans non-binary poet on a journey of self-discovery.
Through my own navigation of my inner landscape and the world around me in wonder and awe of harmony prevailing I wish to reassure, comfort, and embrace people living beyond the binary with my words. As well as educate people and demythologize our Trans experience as we too cherish our humanness.
Through written poetry and spoken word, my voice is to be heard and amplified to represent myself, trans, gender expansive, and gender non-conforming people as we move through healing on the journey back to ourselves, capturing our own deeper knowing amongst the resistance we experience for living our truth.
In a world of separation, I write of inclusion.
In a world of rupture, I write of repair.
In a world of despair, I write of hope.
J R (Judy) Turek, Superintendent of Poetry for the LI Fair, 2020 Hometown Hero by the East Meadow Herald, 2019 WWBA LI Poet of the Year, NYS 2017 Woman of Distinction, Bards Laureate 2013-2015, 26 years as Moderator of the Farmingdale Creative Writing Group; two Pushcart nominations, recipient of the Conklin Prize for Poetry; editor, mentor, workshop leader, and author of 24 in 24, Midnight on the Eve of Never, B is for Betwixt and Between, A is for Almost Anything, Imagistics, and They Come And They Go.
Her new book, DogSpeak supports North Shore Animal League, the world’s largest no-kill shelter organization. She is the 1st Associate Editor for The North Sea Poetry Scene and editor/book chair for Performance Poets Association. ‘The Purple Poet’ has written a poem a day for over 19 years; she lives on Long Island with her soul-mate husband, Paul, her dogs, and her extraordinarily extensive shoe collection. msjevus@optonline.net
"Maya Dreamwalker is a Harlem-born author and poet currently living on Long Island. She has been a featured poet at numerous venues including Stonybrook University, Molloy College, Walt Whitman Birthplace,
Borders Bookstores, Peacesmiths, and Performance Poets Association.
For ten years, Ms. Dreamwalker taught "Thinkshops" at Bay Shore High School during the annual Ethnic Pen event to encourage critical thinking."
Clare Marie Lundberg is a true amateur poet. Never having a poem published since elementary or secondary school, nevertheless, Clare continues to try her hand at poetry every now and again. She enrolled in a formal poetry class at the University of Rhode Island night school class in the late eighties for an “easy credit.” Actual submissions for the class proved more difficult than anticipated, but it reignited her love for poetry as well as following the “lives of poets” whenever time permits.
Reintroduced to poetry in 2014 by the Poets of Wellbeing, Maggie Bloomfield, Susan Dingle, and Nina Yavel, as a form of healing therapy, Clare has been hooked ever since. Known as the “original chairperson of Poetry Street” since its first debut in the Spring of 2014 at the Blue Duck Bakery, Clare has been volunteering on and off with our organization for the last nine years. Clare makes her home in Peconic, New York, and continues to work full-time in her “accidental” profession of real estate administration, as well as volunteering for other local organizations, and being a part-time caregiver for her not-so-young father.
Adrienne Unger received her BA in English/Creative Writing and Literature from Long Island University-Southampton Campus and her MFA in Creative Writing from George Mason University. She is the Program Coordinator at the Humanities Institute at Stony Brook. Previously, she was the Administrative Coordinator at the Creative Writing and Literature program at Stony Brook Southampton. Her work for other organizations includes stints at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs, the Alvin Ailey Dance Theatre Foundation of Maryland, the Johns Hopkins Children's Center, the Kennedy-Krieger Institute, and the Baltimore Museum of Art. She was a Washington, DC staff reporter for Crain Communications Inc.’s Business Insurance and was a freelance writer for various publications including Jubilee, Black Engineers, and NSBE Magazine. Adrienne’s poetry, essays, and fiction have been published in The Southampton Review, Chautauqua, Harvard Review Online, Mystery Tribune, FLARE: The Flagler Review, Oberon, Passager, and Alehouse, among other publications.
Bill Batcher, a retired teacher, considers himself a poet under construction. He has led a writers' group in Riverhead, NY. His poetry has been published in magazines, anthologies, and online collections, and has won several awards. He tries to post one of his poems on Facebook each morning. His four books of poetry—Footsteps to the Resurrection (2005), Celebrations (2014), Imaginings (2016), and Challenges (2022)—are available from Amazon, as well as a historical book, The Storytellers (2016), about his ancestors 3 PM who fought on opposite sides of the American Civil War. Bill’s other interests include singing, genealogy, computers, and puzzles. On Sunday, May 7th, at 3 PM, he will be reading from his book Challenges, at Floyd Memorial Library in Greenport.
Austin Alexis is the author of the chapbooks Lovers and Drag Queens and For Lincoln & Other Poems (both from Poets Wear Prada Press) and the full-length collection Privacy Issues (Broadside Lotus Press, Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award). His work has appeared in the anthologies Long Island Sounds, Poets 4 Paris, NYC: From the Inside, and in journals such as Paterson Literary Review, Flash Boulevard, Connecticut River Review, and Quill and Parchment. He lives in New York City.
Kathryn Levy is the author of two poetry collections, Reports, a finalist for the Midwest Book Award, and Losing the Moon, as well as The Nutcracker Teacher Resource Guide, a guide to K-12 poetry instruction. Her work has appeared in various journals including Slate, The Progressive, Cimarron Review, Minnesota Review, Provincetown Arts, Seattle Review, and Hanging Loose, among others, as well as the anthologies We Begin Here: Poems for Palestine and Lebanon, The Light of City and Sea, Adventures in the Spirit, and the recent Japanese anthology 36 New York Poets.
Levy’s awards include fellowships from MacDowell, Yaddo, Blue Mountain Center, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Ragdale, Vermont Studio Center, and Cummington Community of the Arts. She has received a Special Mention from The Pushcart Prize and was a finalist for the Press 53 Poetry Contest.
Her work has been set to music by Scott Wheeler, Dennis Tobenski, and David Brandenburg. A new set of her poems, Wheeler’s song cycle Falling in Love With Ghosts, premiered in March 2022 at St. Andrews University in Scotland. Levy was the founding director of The Poetry Exchange and the New York City Ballet Poetry Project, two poets-in-the-school organizations. She has taught poetry to public school students throughout New York and conducted courses in literature, film, theater, and arts education for numerous schools and cultural institutions. She lives in Sag Harbor, NY. For more about her, go to https://kathryn-levy.com
Jawaan Sween
From Long Island New York. He’s 21 Years Old. He’s A Young Preacher, Motivational Speaker, And Youth Leader In His Community. He got involved in music, which inspired his spoken word pieces when he was just 13 years old and he stuck with it because he wanted to inspire, influence, and cultivate a generation that would be devoted to seeking and knowing God for themselves.
The name they gave me is Matthew Richard Forrest and at this phase of the game at 40 I can say i vastly appreciate and have deeply enjoyed the process of growing into my name. Although this wasn't always the case. At 20 years old suicide was an everyday thought and I was fully reliant upon self-medicating to find some sort of an experience of happiness. When all the cards which represented self will read 0 and in sincere desperation, i turned to prayer for help... a short while after with only the mercy and grace of The One that Presides over us all I got introduced to the sober 12 step life and consequently was introduced to prayer, meditation, community building, a spirit reliant path of limitless dimensions and a lifestyle which consisted of the principles that I always had 12-step inherent believed in (although for the 1st 20 years of my life, i hadn't necessarily trained in them) I had to learn how to live again from the ground up and the past 20 years has been a spiritual journey of prayers, mistakes and learning experiences on the journey towards spiritual understanding and a joyful heart.
Poet, feminist, activist, certified ennui therapist, and fairy tale revisionist. Deborah Hauser is the author of Ennui: From the Diagnostic and Statistical Field Guide of Feminine Disorders. Her poems and book reviews have appeared in Ms. Magazine, Women’s Review of Books, Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, and Bellevue Literary Review. She has taught literature and writing at Stony Brook University and Suffolk County Community College. She curates and hosts a monthly reading series at Jack Jack’s Coffee House for the Babylon Village Arts Council and is the Secretary of the Suffolk County Chapter of NOW. She leads a double life on Long Island where she works in the insurance industry. ."
Robert Savino, Suffolk County Poet Laureate 2015-2017, is a native Long Island poet, and winner of the 2008 Oberon Poetry Prize. He is co-editor of two bilingual collections of Italian American Poets, No Distance Between Us. His books include Fireballs of an illuminated scarecrow, Inside a Turtle Shell and I’m Not the Only One Here.
Gladys Henderson is truly beloved and revered as one of the mothers of Poetry Street. Her poems are widely published and featured on PBS Channel 21 in their production, Shoreline Sonata. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. She was co-editor of the anthology Leaves of Me…published by Early Lilacs Press, in 2019. Nationally she was a finalist for the Paumanok Poetry Prize 2006 and has received recognition in the Writer’s Digest Poetry Competitions 2008, 2009, 2012. Finishing Line Press published her chapbook, Eclipse of Heaven in 2009. She was named the Walt Whitman Birthplace Poet of the Year in 2010 and was chosen Poet Laureate of Suffolk County 2017-2019.
Robert (Bubbie) Brown is Riverhead’s favorite poet, and consistent activist for social causes on the North Fork and beyond. He implements and supports writing and social programs in Riverhead schools, and excels in finding young poets to join our poetry community. Bubbie is the father of Poetry Street, which he founded so many years ago with Susan Dingle, and we’re still going strong after nearly ten years.
Tom Oleszczuk is a former college professor and administrator, a published poet in journals and online coast-to-coast, and editor (Bards Annual, and Performance Poets Association Literary Review, among others) His current project is Blue on Blue, a book of poems about the East End. Tom has hosted readings in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Sag Harbor, and lives in Noyac, NY, with his wife, poet Heidi Rain and their cat Frodo
Heidi Rain has written poetry since age eight, sometimes just to know what she’s feeling and other times because she’s full of feelings that have to be expressed. She has published several chapbooks and for eight years co-hosted a poetry reading at the Moroccan Star on Court Street in Brooklyn. Heidi is completing the first of a three-part memoir entitled TOUCHED Part I: Never Quite Home (the other volumes are TOUCHED Part II: An Enlightenment Experience and TOUCHED Part III: California and Beyond.)
Hermond Palmer is a poet, author, and songwriter who has performed his work at spoken-word venues in and around Harlem, Philadelphia, Atlanta, and Washington DC. His work has been published in numerous anthologies and he has several books of poetry including Echoes from the Quiet that I Keep, Words to Fill the Light in You, What the Ancestors Told Me and I Decided to Listen, and a chapbook of poetry entitled Aquarian Love Poems available through Moonstone Publishing. He is currently working on a novel of family fiction entitled Road Kings due in the fall of 2022.
