Joe Milford Show  

Randy Resh has been a prolific member of the Toronto poetry community; while he has published and performed his works throughout the community over the past decade, Resh was also instrumental in organizing the Gwendolyn MacEwen Memorial. While his primary poetic genres are romantic and erotic, Resh likes to work with free and experimental forms, with use of rhyme, alteration and neologisms. You can read three of his more recent works here: A Poet Should Be, Framed and Romantic. Currently working on the completion of two books, you can find out more about Randy Resh at poemhunter or view some of his performances on youtube.

Gemma June Howell was born in the Caerphilly Miners hospital in the South Wales Valleys, UK, in 1983, and went to live in Graig-Y-Rhacca, a small council estate in the Rhymney Valley. At the age of six she moved to Folkestone in England. In the predominantly upper-middle-class suburbs of Folkestone, Gemma was brought up in a single-parent family on benefits, and quickly learned the strict class-boundaries and her place in society. As a child, with her father’s encouragement, she became involved in political activism and attended Anti-Nazi League and ANC marches in London and Folkestone. Later, at Swansea University, 2002, an avid political activist, Gemma took part in the many ‘Stop the War’ and ‘Not in My Name’ demonstrations. At the age of 10, with an evidently ‘posh’ English accent, she moved to the working-class, post-industrial North of England, Whitley Bay in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. Just when she began to lose the accent and become familiar with the Geordie twang, she moved back to Wales, at the age of 12. Back to her roots in Graig-Y-Rhacca, Gemma lived with her politically active grandmother, and her interest in politics grew: her passion for the people who lived in ex-mining community being a catalyst for her developing vehement views. While studying for her A-Levels, she represented her age-group at local Labour Party meetings and was Chairwoman of the school council for two consecutive years. Her first taste of political writing was at the age of 16 when she joined the Red Poets Society for Poems and Pints, and she’d frequent old men’s working clubs and pubs around the valleys to read her poetry. In 1999 she won second place at the Aber Valley Arts Competition for her poem, Fear of the Unknown. While studying Politics & Media at Swansea University, she set up The Creative Writing Coalition and produced poetry magazine, Think Allowed! Since completing her Creative Writing MA two years ago she’s had excerpts from her plays.. (hear full bio on air)

Eric Elshtain is finishing his Ph.D in the University of Chicago's Committee on the History of Culture. His work can be found in journals such as McSweeney's, Skanky Possum, Notre Dame Review, Ploughshares, Interim, Salt Hill, GutCult and others. His latest chapbook, The Cheaper the Crook, the Gaudier the Patter, appeared last year from Transparent Tiger Press.

Christine, formerly a mechanical engineer in the automotive industry, lives in Brighton, Michigan. Her poems have appeared in literary journals such as The Gettysburg Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, and The Southern Review and have been selected for Poetry Daily and Best New Poets 2007. Her first book, Wild Flight, is available from Texas Tech University Press.

Christine Hume was born in 1968 and has lived in sixteen different States and countries. She is the author of Musca Domestica (Beacon Press 2000), winner of the Barnard New Women Poets Prize; Alaskaphrenia (New Issues 2004), winner of the Green Rose Award and Small Press Traffic’s 2005 Best Book of the Year Award; and Lullaby, a chapbook (Ugly Duckling Presse 2007) Her work has been included in anthologies such as Best American Poetry 1997 (Scribner), American Poetry: the Next Generation (Carnegie Mellon2000), No Crossing Guards (University of Iowa 2004), Isn’t It Romantic? (Verse 2004), The Verse Book of Interviews (Verse 2005), and Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century (Sarabande 2006), Not For Mothers Only (Fence 2007) and 12x12 (University of Georgia, 2008). Her work has been translated into German, Dutch, and Slovenian. In 2002, she was one of two Americans invited to an international festival, “Days of Poetry and Wine” in Slovenia; in 2006, she taught a poetry workshop in St. Petersburg for Summer Literary Seminars. She has written reviews and critical essays for a number of journals--Contemporary Literature, Rain Taxi, Chicago Review, Constant Critic--as well as for the American Poets in the 21st Century series (three volumes by Wesleyan 2002; 2006; 2009). The Wurlitzer Foundation in Taos, Valaparisio Foundation in Spain, Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire have awarded her residencies

Cate Marvin’s first book of poems, World’s Tallest Disaster, was awarded the 2000 Kathryn A. Morton Prize by Robert Pinksy, and published by Sarabande Books in 2001. In 2002, she received the Kate Tufts Discovery Award from Claremont Graduate University. Her poems have appeared in The Paris Review, Poetry, The New England Review, Ploughshares, Fence, Slate, The Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. She is co-editor with Michael Dumanis of the anthology Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century (Sarabande, January 2006). Her second books of poems, Fragment of the Head of a Queen, was published by Sarabande Books in 2007. Currently, she is an assistant professor in creative writing at the College of Staten Island, City University of New York.