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EVENTS
featuring Light poets and editors

On June 1, 2025, a prose poem by Michele Herman is being turned into a dance by choreographer Billy Blanken as part of a program called “Threat to Democracy” at NYC’s Dixon Place..

On June 18 at 2:30 pm ET, New Walk Editions will launch D.A. Prince‘s chapbook Continuous Present on Zoom. Click here to register.

Al Basile‘s latest audio verse play, Fakespeare, premiered in November, 2023, and is now streamable on YouTube. Al writes that it’s “a combination literary hoax/science fantasy [that] centers around the purported discovery of a hitherto unknown Shakespeare play, and its attempted theft by a scientific genius who hates humanity while collecting its greatest art.”

Many Light poets are upcoming readers in the Powow River Poets reading series, sometimes in person in Newburyport, MA, and sometimes via Zoom. You’ll find the full schedule here.

Many Light poets have read and discussed their work in the following online series. Click blue names for videos: Able Muse Press (recent readers: Barbara Lydecker Crane, Daniel Galef, Stephen Kampa, Jennifer Reeser, and Robert Schechter; Poems On (recent readers: Melissa Balmain, Allison Joseph, Chris O’Carroll, David J. Rothman, and A.E. Stallings); and Rattlecast (including Maryann Corbet (#215), Jennifer Reeser (#185), Nicole Caruso Garcia (#169). Bruce Bennett (#162), Anna M. Evans (#152), Melissa Balmain (#96), Wendy Videlock (#84), A.M. Juster (#62), Amit Majmudar (#55), Rhina P. Espaillat (#53), A.E. Stallings (#82), Kathering Barrett Swett (#36), and Barbara Crooker (#23)). 

Enjoy all nine of our Light Verse in Dark Times readings, free on YouTube! Each 60-90 minute recording from 2020 includes at least a half dozen of your favorite Light poets, Zooming in from the US and beyond.

Click here for a photo gallery from Light‘s recent night of Poetry & Punchlines (in Washington, D.C.) here. (If you live in a city with a high concentration of funny poets, and know of a welcoming venue, email us at lightpoetrymagazine@gmail.com. We just might come to you next!)

Hear Julie Kane weigh in as part of an NPR feature on the infamous “Poet Voice”!

Julie Kane and Jenna Le join Annie Finch in an online “salon” on the villanelle, recorded here.

RECENT AND FORTHCOMING BOOKS (AND A LITTLE MUSIC)
written, edited, translated, or contributed to by Light poets

Brian Allgar and Marcus Bales: Baleful Biographica (Kelsay Books, 2024). (Reviewed here.)
Damian Balassone: Chime (2022).
Ned Balbo: Ultraviolet Chimera, a collection of original tunes and lyrics (including some comic ones), available to stream and download at Bandcamp.com.
Melissa Balmain: Satan Talks to His Therapist (Paul Dry Books, 2023); The Witch Demands a Retraction: Fairy Tale Reboots for Adults (Humorist Books, 2021).
Jane Blanchard: Furthermore (Kelsay Books, 2025); Metes and Bounds (Kelsay Books, 2023); Sooner or Later (Kelsay Books, 2022; reviewed here.)
Dan Campion:  A Playbill for Sunset (Ice Cube Press, 2022)The Mirror Test (MadHat Press, 2024; reviewed here). 
Catherine Chandler: Annals of the Dear Unknown (Kelsay Books, 2022).
Edmund Conti: That Shakespeherian Rag (Kelsay Books, 2021). (Reviewed here.)
Maryann Corbett: The O in the Air (Franciscan U. Press, 2023).
Barbara Lydecker Crane: You Will Remember Me (Able Muse Press, 2023). (Reviewed here.)
Thomas DeFreitas:  Walking Between the Raindrops (Kelsay Books, 2025).
Boris Dralyuk: My Hollywood (Paul Dry Books, 2022). (Reviewed here.)
K.E. Flann: How to Survive a Human Attack: A Guide for Werewolves, Mummies, Cyborgs, Ghosts, Nuclear Mutants, and Other Movie Monsters (Running Press/Hachette, 2021).
Andrew Frisardi: The Moon on Elba (Wiseblood Books, 2023).
Daniel Galef: Imaginary Sonnets (Word Galaxy/Able Muse Press, 2023). (Reviewed here.)
Nicole Caruso Garcia: OXBLOOD (Able Muse Press, 2022).
Claudia Gary: Genetic Revisionism (a companion to her course “The Poetry of Science, the Science of Poetry;” available via email from the author).
Coleman Glenn: A Little Light (2024). (Reviewed here.)
Midge Goldberg: To Be Opened After My Death (Kelsay Books, 2021). (Reviewed here.)
David Hedges: Trump Über Alles: Rhymes for Trying Times (Road’s End Press, 2022).
Rob Jackson: Into the Clear Blue Sky: The Path to Restoring Our Atmosphere (Simon & Schuster, 2024)
Allison Joseph: Lexicon (Red Hen Press, 2021)
A.M. Juster: Gerytades: An Aristophanes Play…sort of (Contubernales Books, 2023). (Reviewed here.)
Girlatee (Paul Dry Books, 2025). 
Steven Kent:  Home at Last (Kelsay Books, 2025) and I Tried (And Other Poems, Too), (Kelsay Books, 2023; reviewed here.)
Jean L. Kreiling: Shared History (Kelsay Books, 2022).
Peggy Landsman: Too Much World, Not Enough Chocolate (Nightingale & Sparrow Press, 2023).
Jenna Le: Manatee Lagoon (Acre Books, 2022).
Leslie Monsour: The Colosseum Critical Introduction to Rhina P. Espaillat (Franciscan University Press, 2021). (Reviewed here.)
Alfred Nicol (translator): One Hundred Visions of War, by Julien Vocance (Wiseblood Books, 2022).
James B. Nicola: Fires of Heaven: Poems of Faith and Sense (Shanti Arts, 2021).
Alistair Noon: Paradise Takeaway (Two Rivers Press, October 2023).
Chris O’Carroll: Abracadabratude (White Violet Press, 2021; reviewed here); Quantum Creed (Human Error Publishing, 2024; reviewed here.).
Samantha Pious: Sappho Is Dead (Headmistress Press, 2024). (Reviewed here.)
Kyle Potvin: Loosen (Hobblebush Books, 2021).
D.A. Prince: The Bigger Picture (HappenStance Press, 2022); Continuous Present (New Walk Editions, June 2025).
Orel Protopopescu: Dancing Past the Light: The Life of Tanaquil Le Clercq (University Press of Florida, 2021).
Matt Schatz: Shoes Last Longer in LA (Kung Fu Treachery Press, 2024)
Robert Schechter: The Red Ear Blows Its Nose: Poems for Children and Others (Word Galaxy Press, 2023) (Reviewed here.)
Leslie Schultz: Larks at Sunrise: Light-hearted Poems for Dark Times (2021). (Reviewed here.)
Jan Schreiber: Breath Lines: How Poems Work and Why They Matter (LSU Press, 2025).
J.D. Smith: Catalogs for Food Lovers (Kelsay Books, 2021; reviewed here); Glenn Danzig Carries Cat Litter (2021); Transit (Unsolicited Press, 2022).
C. Luke Soucy: Ovid’s Metamorphoses: A New Translation (University of California Press, November 2023)
Katherine Barrett Swett: The Basket Cat: Quatrains from Quarantine (2022).
A.E. Stallings: This Afterlife: Selected Poems (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022).
Marilyn L. Taylor: Outside the Frame: New and Selected Poems (Kelsay Books, 2021). (Reviewed here.)
Reagan Upshaw: In the Panhandle (Kelsay Books, 2023).
Wendy Videlock: Wise to the West (Able Muse Press, 2022; reviewed here); The Poetic Imaginarium: A Worthy Difficulty (essays; Lithic Press, 2022).
Richard Wakefield: Terminal Park: Poems (Able Muse Press, 2022).
Gail White: Paper Cuts (Kelsay Books, 2023). (Reviewed here.)
Paul Willis: Losing Streak (Kelsay, Books, 2024). (Reviewed here.)
Marly Youmans: Seren of the Wildwood (Wiseblood Books, 2023).

Purr and Yowl: An Anthology of Poetry About Cats, (World Enough Writers, 2023), edited by David D. Horowitz, includes work by Susan McLean, Richard Wakefield, Gail White, and others.

Outer Space: 100 Poems (Cambridge University Press, 2022), edited by Midge Goldberg, includes poems by Catherine Chandler, Rhina Espaillat, Martin Elster, Ned Balbo, Allison Joseph, A.M. Juster, Leslie Monsour, A.E. Stallings, X.J. Kennedy, and Robert Crawford.

Lost Love and City! Oh City are the latest Potcake Chapbooks (Sampson Low Ltd., 2022), edited by Robin Helweg-Larsen and illustrated by Alban Low. They include poems by Wendy Cope, Amit Majmudar, Gail White, Maryann Corbett, Jerome Betts, J.D. Smith, Michael R. Burch, Brooke Clark, Martin Elster, Robin Helweg-Larsen, James B. Nicola, Martin Parker, Cody Walker, Melissa Balmain, and others.

The haiku anthology Eating Salad Drunk (St. Martin’s Griffin, 2022) includes work by Paul Lander and dozens of other professionally funny people, such as Maria Bamford, Mike Birbiglia, Margaret Cho, Jerry Seinfeld, and Sasheer Zamata. (Reviewed here.)

Extreme Formal and Extreme Sonnets II (Rhizome Press, 2021 and 2022), anthologies edited by Beth Houston, include poems by C.B. Anderson, Melissa Balmain, Bruce Bennett, Jerome Betts, Jane Blanchard, Susan Jarvis Bryant, Catherine Chandler, Maryann Corbett, Susan de Sola, Kevin Durkin, Daniel Galef, Nicole Caruso Garcia, Claudia Gary, Max Gutmann, Robin Helweg-Larsen, Jean L. Kreiling, Barbara Loots, Susan McLean, Leslie Monsour, Chris O’Carroll, Alexander Pepple, Kyle Potvin, Wendy Sloan, Rob Stuart, Gail White, and others.

AWARDS AND HONORS
recently received by Light editors and contributors

We’re delighted to announce Light‘s Pushcart nominees, finalists, and longlisters for work published in 2024.

The nominees:
Marshall Begel: “Ad Ad Astra“
Midge Goldberg: “Words My Mother Didn’t Know“
Julia Griffin: “Persian Emersion“
Steven Kent: “Progressive Glen“
Nina Parmenter: “I Am Wearing Too Many Hats“
Samantha Pious: “The Curator“

The finalists (aka near-nominees):
Ilana Baer: “Ten Ways to Reconcile“
Anna M. Evans: “My Life as a Serving Wench of the Round Table”
Martin B. Margulies: “A Father’s Prayer”
Angela Alaimo O’Donnell: “I Want a Pretty Dress That Fits Me, Please”
David Southward: “A House Hunter’s Wish Listing”
Alex Steelsmith: “Go Figure”

Longlisters:
Robert Archambeau: “To the Poets, to Make Much of Cheese”
Bruce Bennett: “The Unworthy Lover Pleads His Case”
Michael Calvert: “Breithless”
Dan Campion: “New Light on Light”
Barbara Lydecker Crane: “The Robertolink”
Daniel Galef: “The Kiss of Asterion”
Nicole Caruso Garcia: “Poem in Which Mike Pence Interviews Vice-Presidential Nominee J.D. Vance”
Julia Griffin: “Brazen Bliss”
Nora Jay “The Forty-Year Mitch”
Steven Kent: “Parts Unknown (Or, Every Mechanic’s Estimate)”
Philip Kitcher: “A Journey, and Such a Long Journey”
Mike Mesterton-Gibbons: “Diverse Coterie”

Other recent honors:

Nicole Caruso Garcia‘s debut collection, OXBLOOD, received the 2023 International Book Award for narrative poetry.

Barbara Lydecker Crane and Jean L. Kreiling are the winners of the 2024 Kim Bridgford Memorial Sonnet Contest, Barbara for her sonnet crown “Roughly True” and Jean for her sonnet “Calling Hours at the Funeral Home.” Daniel Galef, Mia Grogan, and Gail White are among the finalists.

A.E. Stallings has been named the forty-seventh Oxford Professor of Poetry.

Lily Jarman-Reisch‘s poem “Chemo Becomes Me”—published and nominated by Light—has won a Pushcart Prize. It appears in Pushcart’s 2024 anthology (of work originally published in 2023).

Jean L. Kreiling‘s poem “Clair de Lune” won Plough‘s 2023 Rhina Espaillat Poetry Award. Midge Goldberg‘s poem “Argument of Periapsis” was one of the two finalists.

Barbara Lydecker Crane, Claudia Gary, Midge Goldberg, Jean Kreiling, Kathleen McClung, and Marly Youmans are among those shortlisted for the 2023 Kim Bridgford Memorial Sonnet Contest (judged by Julia Griffin). 

Amit Majmudar’s novel The Map and the Scissors (HarperCollins, 2022) won Tata Literature Live’s Book of the Year award.

CONTESTS AND CALLS FOR SUBMISSIONS

The staff of Light is unable to vet every contest or call…
but we’re happy to pass the info along.

Potcake Chapbooks Editor Robin Helweg-Larsen is “keen to read and consider rhymed and metered verse that has already been published” for new chapbooks in the series. Poems may be on any topic and run up to 40 lines (though ones under 20 lines are likelier to be chosen). Other things Robin is looking for: wit, elegance, a variety of traditional and nonce forms, and a variety of voices and moods. Submit 3-10 poems (your own work only, and you must have the rights to it) to robinhelweglarsen@gmail.com—either in the body of your email or as a single attachment. Include a cover letter with a link to more of your work.

The annual Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest is open for submissions through June 1, 2025.

The weekly Invitational humor contest (which often calls for light verse or parodies) is hosted on Gene Weingarten’s “Gene Pool” Substack.

The annual Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry Contest will be open for entries Aug. 15, 2025 through April 1, 2026.