== CHARLES ALBANO == (email: CharlesAlbano@webtv.net)
================
Dr. Charles Albano is an Adjunct Professor of Management at the
Graduate School of Business, Fairleigh Dickinson University in New
Jersey. He also operates a firm that provides management training
to business and industry called "Adaptive Leadership,"
Interestingly, his web site contains a number of his
business-oriented poems:
http//www.adaptive-leadership.com
His interest in poetry and nature was, in good measure, an
outgrowth of his early experiences of wonder and joy with the large
flocks of pigeons kept by his father and uncles. What he has
written in "High Flyers" he says is very representative of his
memories of those early experiences and of the pigeon fancier
"sub-culture" that endures in America and overseas to this day.
(The web identifies the sites of a surprisingly large number of
pigeon "fanciers" worldwide.)
Charles, while admiring homing pigeons, still holds those
"tumblers" and "rollers" closest to heart for their daring and
fascinating flight maneuvers. They seem to be part of built-in
escape and avoidance counter-measures that nature provided as
protection from birds of prey. He has watched them on many
occasions roll backwards in flight and tumble one or two thousand
feet before pulling out above the ground. (Truthfully, they don't
always succeed!) Even when birds of prey are not in the vicinity,
these rugged little daredevils seem to take joy in doing this!
This is also a tactic by which one owner's flock sometimes
infiltrates another's as they mix in the sky. If and when the
flocks return intact to their original home lofts, they are likely
to be accompanied by "strays" and newly-won "converts" from a
"competitor's" flock. When that happens, he says, depending on the
friendship between the owners, they are either returned as a normal
courtesy, or if the owners dislike each other, they will be
"re-banded" and kept as POW's until they learn to identify with the
new flock, mate and get to know the owner. (Sounds like
"hyper-competition" in modern business!) He has forgiven all the family-owned pigeons for the countless
times he had to clean their coops after school! He says such close
proximity to nature stirs poetic sentiment.
UPDATE (7/01): Charles' new series of five poetry books can be
ordered from
www.greatunpublished.com or www.booksurge.com.
== SCOTT EDWARD ANDERSON == (email: scott_anderson@tnc.org)
================
Scott Edward Anderson was the winner of the 1998 Larry Aldrich
Emerging Poets Competition and received the Nebraska Review Award in
Poetry in 1997. He has also been a semi-finalist for the
"Discovery"/THE NATION award. His poetry has appeared in numerous
literary journals and magazines, and his reviews and essays regularly
appear in THE BLOOMSBURY REVIEW. He is also the author of WALKS
IN NATURE'S EMPIRE: EXPLORING THE NATURE CONSERVANCY'S PRESERVES
IN NEW YORK STATE, published by The Countryman Press in 1995.
== JIM BRADLEY ==
================
. . . works at the Colorado Bird Observatory.
== POLLY BROWN == (email: pollybrown@igc.org)
================
"My poems about birds combine overlapping influences: my beginnings among
people who spend a lot of time staring at hills and water and sky--a habit
continuing into my children's generation; but also my pleasure in reading the
work of Frost and Yeats and A. R. Ammons and Mary Oliver; my work, since 1986,
with Every Other Thursday, a Boston-area poets' community combining the life of
the heart and the mind in an extraordinary way; and my second vocation as a
teacher, at Touchstone Community School in Grafton, Massachusetts, where I share
with my young adolescent students not only the pleasures of reading and writing
but also those of history and geography and science, including evolution, a
special interest. How have I been lucky enough to escape specialization in an age
of specialization? And why are birds such good guides to life, the universe and
everything? I'm not sure, but I'm glad.
"All three poems appear in _Blue_Heron_Stone_, a chapbook published by
Every Other Thursday Press in 2000. The chapbook's title poem has also appeared
in _Appalachia_ and in _Sanctuary_, two wonderful journals about nature that
regularly publish poetry. "Pigeon Hawk," one of my first published poems, appeared
in the mid-70's, in an Ithaca, New York publication called _The_Grapevine_Press_."
== DAVID CHORLTON == (email: violon@mindspring.com)
================
David Chorlton was born in Spittal-an-der-Drau, Austria, and
grew up in Manchester, England. After two years of growing bored in
an insurance office, he studied graphic design and began to paint,
eventually beginning a short career as a commercial artist. He
moved to Vienna in 1971. His first tentative lines of poetry were
committed to paper in the early 1970s and contact with a small
English-speaking writers group led to his first readings in Vienna.
After three years in the design studio of a detergent company, he
left to allow more time for painting. In 1978, he moved to Phoenix
together with Roberta, his Arizona-born wife. Since then, his poems
have appeared piecemeal in a long list of literary magazines and
collections of poetry include FORGET THE COUNTRY YOU CAME FROM from
Singular Speech Press, and OUTPOSTS from Taxus Press in Exeter,
England. His translations of prose by Austrian writer Hans Raimund
appeared in 1997 from Event Horizon Press as VIENNESE
VENTRILOQUIES. Essays, reviews and other prose have appeared in a
range of publications. His paintings, mostly watercolour, have been
exhibited in Austria and the United States, and ASSIMILATION, a new
chapbook, has just appeared from Main Street Rag.
"As I continue writing poetry, the process eclipses the product.
I have written my way closer to the Southwest desert and tried to
maintain a link of sorts with the Europe I left behind, discovering as I go that poetry to me is language's dream-life."
== ETHAN COLLINGS == (email: ecolling@pepperdine.edu)
================
"I'm a Junior at Pepperdine University majoring in Creative Writing.
There's little else of interest in my life, except for the epic on
the pan-galactic rise and fall of the Great Gummi Empire." Ethan is the son of . . .
== MICHAEL R. COLLINGS == (email: mcolling@pepperdine.edu)
================
"I teach creative writing at Pepperdine University and just published
my sixth and seventh books of poetry this year: MATRIX (120 pages,
White Crow Press, 1995, $25.00) and ALL CALM, ALL BRIGHT: CHRISTMAS
OFFERINGS (112 pages, Zarahemla Motets/White Crow Press, $15.00). I
have been at Pepperdine for 17 years, and my non-poetry includes
books and articles about writers as diverse as Stephen King and John
Milton (I am considered an internationally recognized authority on
King and his works). Right now, though, I am concentrating on poetry,
POETRY, POETRY!!" Michael is now poet-in-residence at Seaver College of Pepperdine University.
== KEITH ALLEN DANIELS == (email: kdaniels@ix.netcom.com)
================
"Michael R. Collings [see above] wrote the introduction to my first
full-length collection of poems, WHAT ROUGH BOOK: DARK POEMS & LIGHT
(winner, 1992 Fallot Literary Award). My second collection, SATAN IS
A MATHEMATICIAN & OTHER POEMS, will appear in 1998 from Anamnesis
Press."
[From a literary bio on the Web:]
"Keith Allen Daniels, a member of the Science Fiction Poetry
Association since 1979, has been publishing poetry since 1972. Listed
with Poets & Writers, Inc. and Whos Who in Writers, Editors and
Poets, he has been called one of the foremost science fiction poets
of our time by David Kopaska-Merkel, editor of Dreams & Nightmares.
His poems have appeared in Asimovs Science Fiction, SomePIG! (an
'arachnoid poezine'), Weird Tales, Recursive Angel, Poets of the
Fantastic, Narcopolis, Once Upon a Midnight and numerous other
magazines and anthologies. He has given readings at Barnes & Noble,
the World Science Fiction Convention and the Fort Mason Center in San
Francisco. In addition to winning the National Association of
Independent Publishers Fallot Literary Award for What Rough Book in
1993, his work has been nominated for the Nebula Award, the Rhysling
Award (13 times), the Pushcart Prize and the Clark Ashton Smith
International Poetry Award. His poem, Satan is a Mathematician, was
awarded the 1995 Rhysling Award (Honorable Mention) in the Short Poem
category. His other books include Loopy Is The Inner Ear (Quick
Glimpse Press, 1993), Dyscrasias (Anamnesis Press, 1995), Notes From
The Antipodes (Anamnesis Press, 1995), Apokalyptikon (Anamnesis
Press, 1995), Arkology: Animal Poems for Curious Humans (with Toni
Luna Montealegre, Anamnesis Press, 1996) and With All of Love:
Selected Poems by James Blish (editor; Anamnesis Press, 1995)."
== RICHARD DENNER == (email: rychard@sonic.net)
================
Richard Denner lives near Sebastopol, California, where he teaches
poetry at a Waldorf School. He was for many years the proprietor of
Fourwinds Bookstore and Cafi in Ellensburg, Washington, and the
manager of a Tibetan Buddhist Dharma store for Tara Mandala Retreat
Center in Pagosa Springs, Colorado. In his spare time, he publishes
dpress chapbooks. You are welcome to visit his website: http://www.dpress.net.
== TOM GANNON == (email: tgannon2@unl.edu)
================
"I'm the creator of these CoolBirdPoems web pages, and I worked away
for six months of this project only to finally be able to sneak in a
few poems of my own." ;-}
[15 years later:] I'm now an Associate Professor of English and
Ethnic Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the author
of a scholarly tome entitled Skylark Meets Meadowlark:
Reimagining the Bird in British Romantic and Contemporary Native
American Literature.
== MICHELLE ROGGE GANNON == (email: Michelle.Rogge.Gannon@usd.edu)
================
Michelle teaches courses in literature and creative writing at the
University of South Dakota. But her greatest achievement is her wonderful marriage to Tom Gannon. ;-}
== ALAN KAUFMAN == (email: Akpoem@aol.com)
================
Alan's poem ("I Know How It Feels") "first appeared in Stovepiper
(how's that for a bird name?), edited by Mike Daly, a southern
California anthology that included Bukowski, Neeli Cherkovski, Steve
Richmond, Hu brown Shu, Irving Stetner, me, others. The poem has also
been translated into German and published in Berlin in an anthology
of six American Spoken Word poets entitled _SLAM!Poetry: Hefitgue
Dichtung Aus Den USA_ (Druckhaus Galrev). I've performed the poem in
over six countries, always to much laughter. As for me, my most
recent book is _Who Are We?_, a collection of poetry. I appear in
_ALOUD:Voices From The Nuyorican Poets Cafe_ and have poems
forthcoming in _Identity Lessons: Learning American Style_ (Penguin
Books),due out in November [1998]."
== JUDIE PEET MARCH == (email: miworld@iprimus.com.au)
================
"Judie Peet lives in Dubbo, a city of some 35,000 in the sheep-wheat belt
of central western New South Wales, Australia. Judie has had a lifelong
interest in natural history, and an avid interest in birds for around 15
years. She has worked on projects connected with bird welfare, including
public awareness campaigns to inform land managers of viable ways to manage
agricultural land whilst protecting natural habitat for the benefit of
wildlife."
== NELSON MILLER == (email: millers4460@mindspring.com)
================
"Born and raised in the Tennessee hills. Have taught English at
Macon State College in Georgia since 1971. Actively wrote and
published poetry 1966-1972, but full-time teaching and other
creative interests (including writing for and performing in a
comedy troupe for a number of years) drew me away until a year or
so ago. Surprised to discover that somehow in the interim I'd
become a formalist; now trying to learn to write sonnets. Married
for 19 years to an artist who also writes poetry occasionally;
we're the human companions to four cats and an African Grey parrot
who loves car rides."
== MARCELLA REMUND == (email: mremund@usd.edu>
Marcella is currently pursuing a PH.D. in Creative Writing at the University
of South Dakota. She has published poems in a plethora of publications and is
also co-editor of the _Vermillion_Literary_Project_. She lives in the country,
far (okay, a few miles) from that teeming megalopolis of Vermillion,
so that she can see more birds from her kitchen window.
== RACHEL PALMER == (email: rpalmer6@bigred.unl.edu)
================
Rachel was one of the brightest students in my Native American Literature
course this spring (2008). She will be attending the University of South
Dakota in the fall.
== MICHAEL ROTHENBERG == (email: walterblue@bigbridge.org)
================
"This elegy appeared previously in broadside edition and was selected as
Fine Print Magazine's Broadside of the Year Award a few years ago. It was
also published previously in a collection of my poems, _Favorite_Songs_,
published by Big Bridge Press, 1990. My poems have appeared in Ironwood,
Exquisite Corpse, Sycamore Review, Berkeley Poetry Review, Mudlark,
Pyrowords, Rolling Stock and other publications. I am editor of Big Bridge,
a webzine of poetry and everything else, http://www.bigbridge.org. For the
past 20 years, I have been active in environmental issues involving the
northern California coast. I also was project coordinator for Sea Turtle
Restoration Project, Earth Island Institute, San Francisco."
== DAVE RUSLANDER == (email: sweetbos@bellatlantic.net)
================
"I am a computer network engineer by vocation and have been writing
poetry for only about six months. I'm 50 and my wife and I have
2 beautiful horses, that we think of as our 1000 pound babies."
== LYNN SAMSEL == (email: lasamsel@yahoo.com)
================
A native Californian transplanted to the Midwest, Lynn SamselÕs writing can
best be described as eclectic. Celebrations of life, transformation, and making do are captured in her
poetry, from the sound of ocean surf caught in the branches of plains-planted cottonwoods to the miracle
of life captured by the first brave crocus of spring. She wrote her first poems at age 10; left off
writing ten years later when life happened; and came back to the creative life a few years ago.
Open mikes at coffee houses and a few forays into slam keep things lively.
== FRANK STOKES == (email: kitster@fgi.net)
================
"I retired in 1993 as a professor of English (25 years at
Eastern Illinois University); BA,MA, PhD from The University of
Illinois. I wrote the original draft of this poem around 1973 but
revised it last month. I recall reading somewhere that bird images
predominate in the works of blind poets; I am fully sighted but
still no stranger to the image of flight.
"I retired to Maui for five years to write fiction, but on
returning to Springfield, Illinois, resumed the writing of poetry,
the local writers' group being more congenial for poets. Last year
I self-published two collections of poetry: Out Of Nothing A
Something; and Stone Songs And Lighter Verses. Most of my poetry
is formal, as shown by my current project, a kind of Spoon River
Anthology done entirely in Italian sonnets [Sonnets from The
Village Daybook]. A few of these have appeared on The Sonnet Board
at Sonnet Central.
"What else? Married 46 years to the girl I met when she was
nine. Five children, three granddaughters. Back in the 1970's I
pestered enough editors to get about a dozen poems
published--Kansas Quarterly, Ball State Forum, Scholia Satyrica,
The Christian Science Monitor are among those I recall. I write
every day now, but the passion to see my name in print has cooled
considerably."
== KAREN STROMBERG == (email: STROMBOS@aol.com)
================
"Karen Stromberg believes poetry is your basic cottage-industry. She works on
an ancient LC-2 inherited from her children. She is currently teaching an
on-line class on writing small form poems--the lune, the haiku, the clerihew,
the cinquain, etc. A forthcoming book, 'As Yet Untitled,' will be released
from Caernarvon Press, San Diego, early in 2001."
== RITA SUMMERS == (email: riet@hotmail.com)
================
"I am a Canadian, resident in Australia since my teens. I have
written poetry seriously for a couple of years, although I was
writing articles and short stories long before that. My first
collection of poems, AN UNSORTED DRAWER, was published last year,
in the U.S.A. as a chapbook. If you want to check this out, the
web address is:
http://www.webcom.com/yeolde/books/summers/unsorted.html.
"I have had 2 poems (1996 and 1997) in the semi-finals of the
National Library of Poetry Contest, with one receiving an Editor's
Choice Award. The second is still in the running for the grand
prize of $1,000. Both will be included in anthologies. I also won
equal first in the International Yellow Moon Literary Competition,
with a tanka poem. I also have a number of poems on different web
sites on the Internet (Unpublished Works, OzLit and Live Poets
Society).
"There's more, but that'll do. Currently, I'm looking for a
publisher for my latest collection, FAIR AS THE MOON, BRIGHT AS THE
SUN, which will include the Washing Day poem."
== DAN TOMPSETT == (email: OWLcrkbrg@webtv.net)
================
"I have been writing off and on since I was eight or nine years old.
Hmmm...wow, that's forty years already. I have never submitted anything
for publication except to a couple of ezines and a small newspaper in
southern Idaho. I joined an online poetry workshop a few months ago and
am taking writing more seriously now. I have been birding for about
twenty years. I had the privilege of observing a Loggerhead Shrike every
day for three weeks while living in Pacifica, Ca about five years ago.
(1995). I have never read a poem about the Shrike so I decided to write
one."
== PENNY WILKES == (email: PFWLJ@aol.com)
================
Penny Wilkes has served as managing editor of a scientific journal, travel
writer and columnist. Along with short stories, her articles on animal behavior
and humor have appeared in a variety of publications. She teaches creative writing
in San Diego, California. Penny is completing her MFA in poetry.
== MARY ZOLL ==
================
A friend's umbrella cockatoo, Charmaine, was the inspiration for "A
Manifestation." (The poem was forwarded by the "friend," Joan Hervey
GREAT THANKS, also, to . . .
== SAM DROEGE == (email: FROG@NBS.GOV)
================
. . . for his multitudinous contributions of bird-poem texts. Besides his
work for the National Biological Service (http://www.im.nbs.gov), Sam
enjoys life as a "Naturalist, homesteader, traditional woodworker, and
general misanthrope" who "Lives off the grid in cabin in the woods with
warblers, tanagers, and his family in Davidsonville, MD."
================
================