Terri Muuss has been working since 1996--well before the torrent of the "Me Too” movement-- to bring attention to the prevalence of sexual assault and rape through telling her own story through poetry, prose and theatre. As a white cis-gender woman, she has also worked tirelessly to understand her whiteness and privilege through the double lens of inaccurate messages foisted upon her since birth and the support and camaraderie she found almost exclusively among individuals and communities of color. Raising the trauma of violation and injustice to the light is her life's work.
Matt Pasca is author of two full-length poetry collections—A Thousand Doors (2011 Pushcart nominee) and Raven Wire (2017 Eric Hoffer Book Award Finalist)—and work that has appeared in more than 50 publications. As a New York State Teacher of Excellence, Pasca has taught Creative Writing, Mythology and Literature since 1997 and advised his school’s award-winning literary-art magazine, The Writers' Block, since 2003. Matt has performed and taught at dozens of colleges and conferences, and co-hosts a monthly poetry series, Friday Night Fire ,with his amazing wife and fellow author Terri Muuss. Matt was named Long Island Poet of the Year by the Walt Whitman Birthplace Association in 2022. www.mattpasca.com
MARGARETTE WAHL has worked in Special Education for twenty years. Her poetry is featured in many Long Island publications, anthologies, and venues. Margarette workshops her poetry through the Farmingdale Creative Writing Group. She has published four chapbooks through Local Gems Press: Educating by Heart, From Rags to Whiskers, Across My Paper Trails, and Broken Wings, and is working on a memoir. When not writing she cuddles her rescue cats.
Travis Madison is a writer, vocalist, and storyteller, host of The Muse Collective. After a two-year hiatus to work on music and
his inner demons, Travis is back to present his hard-hitting brand of confessional poetry.
Jay Jii
Purveyor of Poetic Cabaret.
Curator of the Avant Garden Poetry Amphitheater.
Writer. Composer. Adventurer. Romantic.
Musician. Thespian. Artist. Film-maker.
English Bulldog enthusiast.
Stuff like that…
Lillie B. Crowder has been penning her thoughts about that which piques her interest for many years. She enjoys and appreciates the beauty in that which exists, is created, the inanimate, and the living. Her empathy for that which is inhumane, and her desire to problem-solve for humanity, can be detected in some of her poems.
Lillie reflects on the friends who reminded her years ago, that she should keep a copy of the many cards with poems she created for friends, family and colleagues, and even strangers, through the years. Thus, her collection comprises these earlier works with personalized messages of inspiration. She exercises freedom in approach and in the use of words, as she creates stories, injecting humor and absurdities, as well. Lillie is a retired assistant architect/architectural drafting teacher from the NYC Board of Education. She earned a BS in Architectural Engineering from South Carolina State College, with enhancement credits at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama ( both HBCU's) before permanently relocating to NYC in the early 1960's.
Herb Wahlsteen earned a B.A. in English from California State University, Fullerton, and an M.A. in English from Columbia University. He then worked many years as a high school teacher in New York City public schools. He was a finalist in the Yale Series of Younger Poets contest, placed 3rd in the Writer's Digest 77th Annual Writing Competition: Rhyming Category, and has had poems published in Long Island Quarterly, the Great South Bay Magazine, The Long Islander, The Lyric magazine, Paumanok Interwoven, Paumanok Transition, Suffolk County Poetry Review, Bards Annual, Form Quarterly, Bards Against Hunger, Poets to Come, The Hands We Hold, A Tree in a Garden of Ashes, Beat Poets Anthology, Long Island Sounds, String Poet (2 poems translated from the French, 2 poems translated from the Spanish), Pratik; A Magazine of Contemporary Writing, and Measure magazine.
Christina M. Rau’s latest collection How We Make Amends takes a poetic jaunt from the forest to the sea. Other publications include the poetry collections What We Do To Make Us Whole and the Elgin Award-winning Liberating The Astronauts, and two other chapbooks. She served as the premier Poet In Residence for Cedarmere 2022-3 and has served as Poet in Residence for Oceanside Library (NY) since 2020. Her poetry airs on Destinies radio show (WUSB) and appears in various literary journals like fillingStation and The Disappointed Housewife while her prose has appeared in Punk Monk Magazine and Reader’s Digest. When she's not writing, she's teaching yoga or watching the Game Show Network. http://www.christinamrau.com
Q. Imagine is a published author, screenwriter and poet. She has been featured in magazines and anthologies from around the world, some recent publications include The Scene, Bards Against Hunger and Long Island Quarterly.
You can find her poetry under her handle @qimagine on Commaful and Medium, as well as find her on Facebook under her name @Qiana Marks.
Howard Levy lives in Amagansett and has published two books of poetry with CavanKerry Press, A Day This Lit (2000) and Spooky Action at a Distance (2014). He has just completed a new manuscript and a new chapbook that concerns a trip to Antarctica he made in 2015. His poems have appeared in Poetry, The Threepenny Review, the Paris Review, American Poetry Review and many others..
Julie Sheehan’s three poetry collections are Bar Book, Orient Point and Thaw. A Whiting Writers’ Award winner, her poems have appeared in many magazines and anthologies, including Kenyon Review, The New Republic, The New Yorker, Parnassus, Prairie Schooner, The Best American Poetry, and Good Poems, American Places. She teaches in the MFA and BFA programs at Stony Brook.
Dr. Michael Anthony Ingram is the host and producer of the popular podcast Quintessential Listening: Poetry Online Radio (https://www.blogtalkradio.com/ql_p).
He is a retired university professor who has a deep love for poetry and uses it to raise awareness of power, privilege, and oppression in society. In addition to being nominated for the Pushcart Prize, he has also gained global acclaim for his magnetic and impactful spoken word performances. When Cherry Blossoms Fall on Black Skin, his forthcoming poetry collection will be published in 2024. To learn more about the podcast, visit (https://www.qlpor.com).
Nina Yavel's poetry has appeared in several collected works Beyond Words, Bitterroot, an international publication, the Nassau County Poet Laureate competition, the Paumanok Transition sponsored by The Walt Whitman Center. Her short story The Pinocle Game and poem Eve were included in Risk Courage and Woman, a prize-winning anthology, which featured Maya Angelou and other woman writers. She won first prize for poetry competitions sponsored by Barnes and Noble, The Owl in Garden City, The Park Slope Press, and The Mac Street Journal She was a member of the Poets of Well Being, three women who are poets and psychotherapists who conducted writing workshops at Recovery Centers throughout Long Island. Nina received a doctorate in clinical psychology at 72 and still practices. She resides in Greenport New York with her sweet loving ‘boys’, Chance and Finn.
Sarah Borruto is the author of the chapbook “Damsel in Dystopia” (Alien Buddha Press, 2022) and has been published in The Luna Collective, Train River Poetry, Suffolk County Poetry Review, Brave Voices Magazine, Long Island Quarterly, and COLORS: The Magazine. She has work forthcoming in Moral Crema academic journal. She has featured across the Long Island and NYC area, most notably The Parkside Lounge, Neir’s Tavern, and Jack Jack’s Coffee House. She was also the judge of the Huntington Youth Writes 2023 competition.
Linda Bullock is a retired but still active healthcare worker and Riverhead native. Linda wrote and read a fabulous poem for her brother, Bubbie Brown, at Poetry Street and has been writing ever since. She has embraced both poetry and the stage, having narrated BREAK OUT! a play in poetry and prose, written and performed by Susan Dingle and Maggie Bloomfield, most recently in September at The Jamesport Meeting House.
Gayl Teller is an award-winning poet, was Nassau County Poet Laureate for 2009-11 and the Walt Whitman Birthplace 2016 Poet of the Year, Gayl is the author of seven poetry collections, most recently, Flashlight: New and Selected Poems (Cherry Grove), and the editor of two poetry anthologies— Toward Forgiveness and Corona. She serves as Director of the Mid-Island Y Poetry Series and is a professor at Hofstra University.
Over the years, Russ Green has been co-editor at Great Weather for Media, put on poetry and arts events around Long Island and NYC, and has raised funds through some of these events for humanitarian and social justice organizations such as Tahirih Justice Center, The Trevor Project, and an the earthquake victims of Nepal. Additionally, Russ hosted and curated poetry stages at various festivals and has read his work from New York to New Orleans, Cleveland, Santa Fe, and cities in between. His book, Gimme Back My Radio, is out with Night Ballet Press. Currently, he runs a monthly workshop with poet Christina M. Rau called South Bay Sundays and also hosts and curates poetry and music events in Port Jeff called Saturdays on the Sound. You can usually find him communing with the mountains in Vermont with interesting artist friends or roaming the docks of Port Jefferson Harbor at night looking for signs of life in the starry night sky.
Bernard Hicks, also known as Bsolid the Poet, is a returning feature at Poetry Street after way too long an absence.
Bernard is a Bronx-born citizen and proudly Harlem-reared from the age of two. He has been featured in many Long Island poetry venues.
“I will say my poetic nature comes from a form of nurture as I was an avid reader of books from my household shelves, a church gospel song singer, and a rap aficionado. Art from me in my household was appreciated and encouraged and I looked for ways to be creative. For that, I thank my parents for allowing me to think and write in tune with the colors of a fluorescent rainbow.”
Bernard likes to think of poetry as a gift of humanity, the soul of our nature, and the language of the arts. He hopes that as you listen to his writings, you digest them, and let the words nourish your thoughts.
Kathaleen Donnelly is a 1976 graduate of St.Vincent’s Hospital, School of Nursing which WAS in Greenwich Village, New York City and currently works at Stony Brook Medical Center as a Nurse Practitioner in Cardiology.
With a little help from her friends, she compiled Paumanok, Poems and Pictures of Long Island, then later, Paumanok, Interwovenand Paumanok, Transition. Her poems are published in many anthologies and she sits on her first collection for a chapbook. She loves the written word, strives to write something you’d enjoy reading. Web Site: www.poetographyLongIsland.com.
Jen Mara is a writing instructor, editor, and Adjunct Assistant Professor of English, Humanities, and Women’s and Gender Studies at Suffolk County Community College. She has written newspaper columns and articles, and the only story she published was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. After a nine-year hiatus, she has begun to write for an audience again.
Our Poets Page 5
J. Joy “Sistah Joy” Matthews Alford is Prince George’s County, Maryland Poet Laureate Emerita (2018-2023). As Poet Laureate, she serves as a literary ambassador and community activist, presenting poetry, conducting workshops and accepting public speaking engagements representing the County at official and community events while advocating for the voice of county residents to be heard through poetry. Sistah Joy has authored three collections of poems: Lord I’m Dancin’ As Fast As I Can, From Pain To Empowerment – The Fabric of My Being, and This Garden Called Life. Her work, which has been included in numerous regional and international poetry anthologies, most often addresses social injustices, empowerment, and spirituality. She edited the inaugural Prince George’s Arts and Humanities Council (PGAHC) poetry anthology, Poets That Dance with Words, which is expected to be released in 2024.
Sistah Joy has hosted and produced the nationally recognized poetry cable television program, Sojourn with Words, since its inception in 2005. She has served as president of the Poetry Ministry of Ebenezer A.M.E. Church in Fort Washington, Maryland for 20 years (since 2003), and was appointed as Poet Laureate of Ebenezer AME Church on April 15, 2016. Sistah Joy is the founder of Collective Voices, an ensemble of Washington area poets known for their poems of social consciousness, empowerment, and spirituality. The group had their international performance debut at the International Women’s History Celebration in 1998 in London, England (UK), and continues to perform throughout the U.S., primarily along the East Coast.
She is a Founding Charter Board Member of CAAPA, (Coalition of African Americans in the Performing Arts, Inc.); a lifetime member of The Prince George’s African American Museum and Cultural Center; and a member of the Prince George’s Truth Chapter of ASALH (Association for the Study of African American Life and History). She is an alum of the Poets in Progress reading series at the Folger Shakespeare Library established by former Washington, DC Poet Laureate, Dolores Kendrick; and is also an alum of the Mariposa Poetry Retreat. Visit her website at www.sistahjoy.com. Contact Sistah Joy at Sistahjoy@pgahc.org, Poetsistahjoy@aol.com or 202.246.0111.