Poetry. Paper, Perfect Bound. 92 pages 2022, ISBN: 978-1-952781-11-7 ///
Animals, horses, dogs, cats, and visiting wildlife are the gifts that bring me great joy, and so they appear in my poetry. Even rats and skunks are worthy of my poetry. As for humans, I focus on the downtrodden, and those living in slums and hollows---not to forget those living in our iron cities, our prisons. I mourn the deteriorating condition of the planet. I mock those who have elitism and greed at the center of their lives. I also poke fun at myself especially my struggles with aging. In terms of style, I try to balance the trend toward narrative with my love for the early imagists.…
Poetry. 84 pages, 2022, $19.95 + S&H -- Nancy Takacs is a poet in love with places, desert areas once home to ancient seas in the Colorado Plateau in Utah, and bodies of water, like Lake Superior, and the ocean she knew as a child growing up in New Jersey. These are personal poems with sensuous images that link the past and the present with a variety of tastes, smells, and textures. This collection surprises, wakes us up, and at times, soothes us. It includes poems that find strength in women’s relationships, that express the need to keep women’s voices strong and resonant. Also concerned with drought and its effects on animals, plants, and humans in this time of climate change, species extinction, and political upheaval, these poems breathe compassion for the dire situations in our world, and our own desire for wildness, wilderness, questioning our human-centered lens. Deeply connected to the natural world, both in Utah where she lives full time, and in Wisconsin near Lake Superior, where Takacs spends summers, these poems voice a need to protect and nurture, within and without, all of our fragile landscapes.…
From DesiBooks’ Podcast: “#FiveDesiFaves: Zilka Joseph, author of “In Our Beautiful Bones”, shares her favorite books of poetry and hybrid essays” https://desibooks.co/fivedesifaves-zilka-joseph/ From the introduction to the podcast: Today, in the #FiveDesiFaves segment, we have Zilka Joseph, who has a new poetry collection out titled In Our Beautiful Bones. She’s sharing her five favorite desi…
The Jerusalem Post has reviewed “The Man Who Loved His Wife” by Jennifer Anne Moses The review is by Neville Teller. Mr. Teller points out Jennifer’s ability to paint complete characters in short stories, almost effortlessly putting us in a particular time and place. This collection of short stories is certain to provide a great…
Zilka Joseph, author of In Our Beautiful Bones, will have a virtual book launch event on Wednesday October 6th at 7pm Eastern Time. The event is sponsored by Literati Bookstore and the link to the event will be published on this page is here: https://www.literatibookstore.com/event/home-literati-zilka-joseph-w-nawaaz-ahmed-nancy-naomi-carlson. Other featured readers will be Nawaaz Ahmed and NN Carlson.…
Jennifer Anne Moses, author of The Man Who Loved His Wife, is the subject of a long and fascinating feature in the Times of Israel’s Jewish Standard section. The feature, entitled No Easy Answers, includes an extensive interview with the author and also features some of her remarkable paintings. You can get your own copy…
Poetry. Paper, Perfect Bound. 104 pages
2021, ISBN: 978-1-952781-07-0 $19.95 + S&H
In Our Beautiful Bones traces various stages in the poet’s journey as an immigrant from India who makes a new life in the US, and her encounters with racism and otherness. In it she explores her Bene Israel roots and ancestors, her life in Kolkata, the influences of British rule and a missionary education, her growing knowledge of what racism and marginalization means, how Indians and Indian culture is perceived and represented. While delving unflinchingly into the violence and global impact of colonialism, the weaponization of the English Language, the evils of tyranny and White Supremacy, and the struggles of oppressed peoples everywhere, she creates powerful collages from mythology, folklore, fairy tales, Scripture, world history and culture, literature, music, food, and current events. Traditional and experimental forms, sensory riches, wit and word play, and an unwavering and clear voice make this book a compelling read. These poems expose prejudice on an international as well as a personal level, and lead the reader to face harsh truths— insults, insensitivity, injustice, ignorance, discrimination, subtle and deliberate aggressions that immigrants, people of color, and the oppressed face daily, and wrestles with her own complex emotions, the current threats to Democracy both in the US—her adopted home, and her native India, her love for both countries. In Our Beautiful Bones is a multi-layered, sharply ironic and sometimes pathos-filled critique of the world, and at the same time it is visionary and a triumph of the human spirit.…
Poetry. Paper, Perfect Bound. 60 pages
2021, ISBN: 978-1-952781-05-6 $18.95 + S&H
Venezuela is a country in crisis. The economic crisis has produced hyperinflation and prices have risen by more than 6,000%. Millions of citizens do not have access to basic health care and adequate nutrition. Police practices are brutal. With all this happening simultaneously, it’s no surprise that more than 5.5 million citizens have left Venezuela, the largest mass migration in recent Latin American history.
In Venezuela, citizens sometimes die at home because there is no fuel for ambulances. Rolling blackouts leave citizens without electricity for many hours at a time and when the power returns, the surge of electricity sometimes damages appliances. Venezuela rarely publishes books because there is scarce paper to print them on.
This is the world of poet Ricardo Jesús Mejías Hernández. The poet, however, has taken all the events of daily life and elevated them, has transformed them into poetry. These poems of the struggles of everyday life in Venezuela have risen above the everyday and ultimately won the National Literary Competition IPASME in 2015. Libro de Percances /Book of Mishaps appears here for the first time in English.
In the short poems in the collection, the poet longs for a place of refuge. But he does not die. He does not go into exile. He finds his escape in these poems. Power outages or not, despite whatever inflation surrounds him, he always finds his solace in poetry. …
Fiction. Paper, Perfect Bound. 220 pages
2021, ISBN: 978-1-952781-01-8 22.95 + S&H
As members of the wild, wandering generation raised on rebellion find ourselves growing older, who do we now understand ourselves to be? Revolution may be in our souls but our lives are now affected by illness, financial concerns, careers that may not have panned out as expected, and a diminishing pathway leading through the years ahead. But how, exactly, is a lake monster involved...…
Poetry. Paper, Perfect Bound. 58 pages
2021, ISBN: 978-1-952781-02-5 $17.95 + S&H
Wrong ticks on, and it feeds on silence. In her book, "when animals are animals", Betsy Johnson refuses to be “the quietest person in the world.” She names where the teeth are, gets closer to the kick she knows is coming, and makes her weary spirit take up the empty rucksack, because there is work to be done. That is the work of standing up to the “cloud monster,” of being an antidote, of finding hope in a knot of stones.…
