Welcome to Červená Barva Press!

Here we go: The next Read America Read Project is April 26th.

Leave a book for someone to take anywhere you want. This time, ask two people you know to do this also. This way the project will grow each month. I would like a book marker to go in every book so people know where they are coming from. Thank you for being a part of this project. Lets make April 26th great! Send me photos too. I have a list of names of who participated and as this grows, keep letting me know you are doing this. Thanks a zillion. You all rock. Lets get America reading!!!!

e-mail: gloria@read-america-read.org

Thanks so much,
Gloria

Coming in October 2025: My Way Home by Mary Bonina

New Release: SOME DISTANT PIN OF LIGHT by Francine Witte

Francine Witte is an award-winning poet, flash fiction writer, and playwright. She is the author of 12 books of poetry and flash fiction and her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. She is a native New Yorker and attends and produces poetry events in the vibrant NYC scene. She is the co-host and co-curator of the online reading, The Prose Garden. She is the flash fiction editor for FLASH BOULEVARD and South Florida Poetry Journal. A former high school English teacher, she now leads writing prompt sessions on zoom. Witte holds an MFA in Creative Writing/Poetry from Vermont College and an MA from SUNY Binghamton. Visit her website at francinewitte.com.

Francine Witte newest poetry collection Some Distant Pin of Light is an exploration of life's fleeting moments, capturing the essence of human emotion with lyrical precision. Her poems delve into themes of love, loss, and the passage of time, blending vivid imagery with evocative language. Each piece is a snapshot of everyday experiences, transformed into profound reflections on the human condition. As with her previous collections, Café Crazy and The Theory of Flesh, these pages are filled with lost lovers, nostalgic family portraits, and her deep concern for the environment. Witte's keen observational skills and masterful use of brevity create a tapestry of interconnected vignettes that resonate deeply with readers.

Gregor Samsa woke up as a huge insect in a bourgeois bed, struggling to make sense of what has happened to him and what he can do about it. Among her many story-telling bursts of brilliance, Francine Witte contemporizes the Kafkaesque shock of being slapped in the existential face, offering up modern perplexities that are familiar as they are strange. A woman finds herself among many middle-aged women in a grocery shop, 'wheeling their girliness around in a shopping carts... (to the) burst of corn pops and leprechauns winking.' A man finds himself trapped in an oceanic human wave, aching to break past his 'beach-locked future' and make connection to the 'distant pin of light' from which he came. There's humor and metaphorical pathos aplenty in this fine collection — from men who can play themselves backwards, to prove that Paul is dead, to a self-declared 'map of me' that would drive you into a lake if you tried to navigate by it. This is smart stuff, New York City smart, memorably smart. Tales told to the tune of the underground thrum which goes beyond the play of good story-telling to a place of reawakening. These are poems to match the beat of a reader's heart — the heart which is 'the acorn inside the tree you have turned into.'
—George Wallace, Walt Whitman Birthplace

The poems in Some Distant Pin of Light consider how to exist, even thrive, in a world where "the news gets worse/each day." Witte's speakers contemplate the past even as they look forward, look up and consider the sun, the titular "distant pin of light," imagine finally that "billions of miles/away, maybe someone is wishing on it,/wishing for a last desperate chance at love." With her trademark, vivid imagery, Witte captures both the intimate details of everyday life and the cosmic scale of existence, grounding ontological questions in concrete experiences. This is one stellar collection by a writer at the height of her powers.
—Sarah Freligh, author of Sad Math

The book starts out with a Map of Me, "Let’s start by saying this isn’t//A map you'd fold up in a glove box//or pull up on a GPS" guiding the reader into a room of observant wit, which takes center stage... These poems bring the reader wandering through a hushed room of the past: each poem is a relic of art that stands still in time. To observe them in their resting places, a past we cannot change, ends with hope: the last piece, turns our attention to the future in Our Star, where a billion mile lover, which doubles for a wave, "aching to break past his own beach-locked//future, finally able to get whatever he could//wish for on some distant pin of light." This collection of poetry is a true joy to explore.
—Jennifer Juneau, author of More Than Moon

$18.00 | ISBN: 978-1-950063-90-1 | 71 Pages

New Release: The Many Lives of Cathouse Farm: Tales of a Rural Brothel by bg Thurston

bg Thurston lives with her husband on a sheep farm in Warwick, Massachusetts. After a career in computers and finance, she received her MFA in Poetry from Vermont College in 2002. She has taught poetry courses at Lasell Village, online for Vermont College, and conducts poetry workshops. Her first book, Saving the Lamb, by Finishing Line Press was a Massachusetts Book Awards highly recommended reading choice. Her second book, Nightwalking, was released by Haleys in 2011. Her third book, The Many Lives of Cathouse Farm/Tales of a Rural Brothel, is the culmination of a decade of historical research about her 1770's farmhouse.

The Many Lives of Cathouse Farm/Tales of a Rural Brothel is the culmination of a decade of research into the 250-year history about the farm where the author has lived since 2000. The book contains historical facts and poetic musings about many of the inhabitants who have lived on the farm from 1770 to present. The small farmhouse is the original cape dwelling built in 1770 by two Revolutionary War soldiers from the Weeks Family and farmed by four subsequent generations. During the Prohibition era, the farmhouse was maintained as part of a rural brothel that continued to operate until the late 1940's. Presently Cathouse Farm is also home to sheep, chickens, dogs, and of course, many cats.

The Many Lives of Cathouse Farm — Tales of a Rural Brothel, a finely-crafted collection of poems giving voice to a 255-year-old farmhouse and its surprising history—and to the people and animals who have lived there since before the American Revolution. "We search all our days / for a place called home," Thurston observes, charting in meditative and musical tones the universal human need for rootedness and connection. In tracing the loves and losses of those who came before us—and our own part in the great drama—she reminds us that even if our name be recorded at the Registry of Deeds, we are really no more than caretakers, tenants, and that love grows in the soil and souls of those who paint clapboards and trim, plant flowers and water them, wander the pastures and woods of the world.
—David Thoreen, Assumption University

This compelling and singular collection is an expert weaving of history and poetry. The story of Cathouse Farm begins when poet bg Thurston spies "a small red farmhouse nestled behind tall sugar maples" which beckons her with its For Sale sign. Images presented throughout these pages elucidate Thurston's narrative of dwelling and landscape. We listen as the very house itself speaks in "Sister Houses, 1771" and "The Ruined House" and hear occupants, such as Sarah Weeks, who "labored long for all / these years on this forlorn farm, / birthed and buried our babies- / once within the same week." Section 3 links us to Prohibition-era owner George F. Rivers, who "set the property up as a speakeasy and rural brothel" and inspired persona poems that do not look away from these women's struggles. This book is a significant and fascinating accomplishment, full of curiosity, empathy and respect for the ghostly inhabitants of Cathouse Farm.
—Judith Ferrara, A Feast of Losses: Yetta Dine and Her Son, Stanley Kunitz

The 1700's house speaks in tongues. Laths, horsehair plaster, hand-forged nails, wide pine boards; it holds hardscrabble lives filled with sounds of sweeping, smells of bread and woodsmoke, cries of children. bg Thurston, in The Many Lives of Cathouse Farm — Tales of a Rural Brothel, listens and gives voice to those who have lived and died in this house, her home. As Winfield Scott Weeks, of the poem "The Lost Boy," knows: "Some souls stay tethered to a place." bg understands that "Loss / is a language all its own." but life continues and, in this life, we are joined with those who have died before us, like Billie, "the last lady." In "Gardening with Billie," Thurston writes: "We are joined by what we plant, hands / dug deep in this soil that grew crops / and cows for two hundred years." Their lives restored through careful research, those who opened the doors to Cathouse Farm welcome us home.
—Susan Roney O’Brien, Thira and Bone Circle

$18.00 | ISBN: 978-1-950063-33-8 | 66 Pages

New Release: WordinEdgeWise by Brad Rose

Brad Rose was born and raised in Los Angeles, and lives in Boston. He is the author of five collections of poetry and flash fiction: Lucky Animals, No. Wait. I Can Explain, Pink X-Ray, de/tonations, and Momentary Turbulence. Seven times nominated for a Pushcart Prize and three times nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology, Brad's poetry and fiction have appeared in Los Angeles Times, The American Journal of Poetry, New York Quarterly, Puerto del Sol, Clockhouse, Folio, Cloudbank, Baltimore Review, 45th Parallel, Best Microfiction 2019, Lunch Ticket, Sequestrum, Unbroken, Right Hand Pointing, and other publications. Brad is also the author of seven poetry chapbooks, among them Democracy of Secrets, Collateral, An Evil Twin is Always in Good Company, and Funny You Should Ask. His website and blog can be found at bradrosepoetry.com.

The poems and microfiction of WordinEdgeWise, are predominately surreal and playful. Many are unified by the quirky voices of hardscrabble speakers who have experienced social and economic turmoil, and a resulting psychic instability. Via interior monologues and uncanny dialogues, speakers take liberties with standard colloquial speech, invent unusual similes, and employ unconventional variants of American idioms. They also offer startling insights and unexpected moments of wisdom. Both in spite of, and because of, speakers' peculiarities, the poems and microfiction of No. Wait. I Can Explain. seek to offer keen, if unsettling, glimpses into the darker—and often darkly humorous—underlying dimensions of contemporary American life.

Brad Rose's WordinEdgewise displays the madcap features that readers have come to relish in his work—fast-talking, unreliable narrators and surreal situations depicted with brittle sympathy and manic humor. When it comes to prose poetry, Brad Rose plays, to borrow his own phrase, "first violin in the orchestra of the absurd."
—Howie Good, author of Famous Long Ago and The Bad News First

WordinEdgewise, poet Brad Rose's most recent collection, is as high energy as the title advertises. This language-driven tour de force leaves the reader breathless, from line to line and poem to poem, as the speaker explicates on everything from blind dates to mobile homes, from lightning to ghosts. In this world, blind dates are lightning and mobile homes and ghosts, as the author makes expert use of such literary devices as chiasmus and zeugma to bring it all together. Each poem is a glittering tautology, each line disparate in its sameness. The pace of this book is addicting, and you will pick it up over and over again to the delight of your senses.
—Ralph Pennel, author of A World Less Perfect for Dying In, and fiction editor of Midway Journal

Brad Rose: master of the synaptic leap. He unearths suppressed premises (hidden in stark sight thanks to our jones for consensus reality), leading us to the inevitable across no matter how many unexpected ceiling tiles. Multiple vectors are at subcutaneous work here, clause by clause. These paragraphs are like incognito erasure poems, extended family trees with insoluble fan charts. "When I was counting backward in dog years, the judge sentenced my jury to another week of hard labor." Yes, ordinary life is exactly like this. We just need reminders.
—David P. Miller, author of Bend in the Stair and Sprawled Asleep

Cover: Hannah Rose

$19.95 | ISBN: 978-1-950063-69-7 | 108 Pages

New Release: In the Absence of Birds by Ruth C. Chad

Ruth C. Chad is a psychologist who lives and works in the Boston area. Her poems have appeared in the Aurorean, Connection, Psychoanalytic Couple and Family Institute of New England, Constellations, Ibbetson Street, Montreal Poems, Muddy River Poetry Review, Lily Poetry Review, Amethyst Poetry Review, Writing in a Woman's Voice, and others. Her chapbook, "The Sound of Angels," was published by Červená Barva Press in 2017. Ruth was nominated for a Pushcart prize in 2021.

The lyrical and powerful poetry in this book addresses the complexity of family life, grief, loneliness and communion. Many of the poems convey the poet’s urgency to notice and appreciate the richness of nature and the sadness of watching its demise. "In the Absence of Birds" brims with personal and universal poetry, offering insight and solace.

Ruth Chad's In The Absence of Birds relates on many levels. It cuts to the chase. She is fragile yet blunt, as she draws us into her world with poetry that exudes emotion and expresses her lamentations. With the keen sensitivity of a psychologist she delves beneath the surface of family life, death and nature. She opens herself to the reader in the manner of other fine women poets: Plath, Oliver and Dove. Ruth Chad is a poet worth careful reading.
—Zvi A. Sesling, Author of War Zones and the Lynching of Leo Frank

In the Absence of Birds is a breakthrough work, imbued with a relevance far beyond the usual audience for 21st century poetry. The poet's commitment to authenticity shines through in her creative approach to grief; her persistent theme of nature-as-solace; and a gentle, dark wit that finds something enviable in wildness. If there is an opposite of "overwrought," that is Ruth Chad's style: her beautiful, clean syntax and simple lines create a welcoming space, inviting the reader to linger, and fill in the spaces with feeling.
—Eric Hyett, Poet and Translator

Ruth Chad chooses her words with great care to create gem-like poems—although gems are cool and hard, her poems are warm and full of heart. They are also full of sensual detail, ranging across life experiences from peeling a ripe plum to watching her mother fade away in a nursing home. Whatever the situation, simple or profound, Ruth draws us right into it with her, generously sharing what she sees, hears, smells, tastes and feels, compelling us to experience it with her. In the Absence of Birds is a feast.
—Lawrence Kessenich, Winner of Ireland's Strokestown International Poetry Prize

Cover Image: Ruth Chad

$19.95 | ISBN: 978-1-950063-98-7 | 102 Pages

New Release: WINDOW OF BABEL by Borche Panov
Translated from the Macedonian by Daniela Andonovska-Trajkovska

Republic of North Macedonia
Borche Panov was born on September 27, 1961 in Radovish, Republic of North Macedonia. He graduated from the "Sts. Cyril and Methodius" University of Skopje, Faculty of Filology in the filed of Macedonian and South Slavic Languages in 1986. Panov has been a member of the Macedonian Writers' Association since 1998. He published 15 poetry books and 8 plays in Macedonian language. He has also published poetry books in other languages: "Hematite particles" (2016 - in Macedonian and Bulgarian and "Photostiheza" 2019, Bulgaria), "Vdah" in Slovenian (2017, Slovenia), "Shaving balloon" in Serbian (2018, Serbia), "Blood that juggles 8000 poetic thoughts" in Croatian (2021, Croatia), "Underground Apple" in Arabic language (United Arab Emirates, 2021), "Underground apple" in English (Netherlands, 2021), "Dandelion Cadence" in English (co-author, India, 2021), "Sculpture of Breathing" in Italian and English (2022, Italy), "The Morning Line" in Romanian (2023, Romania). His poetry has been translated into 40 languages and published all around the world. He received many literary awards such as the following: Premio Mondiale "Tulliola-Renato Filippelli" in Italy for his book "Shaving the Balloon" (2021), "City of Galateo- Antonio De Ferraris" (Italy, Rome, 2021), Premio "Le Occasioni" in Italy, the Sahito World Literary Award in 2021, Predrag Matvejevic in Croatia for his book "Shaving Balloon," Naji Niman Award in 2022. He has edited many poetry books and poetry anthologies and has launched many authors and books published in Macedonia. He also translates poetry from Macedonian into Serbian and Croatian language and vice versa. Panov works as a Counselor for Culture and Education at the Municipality of Radovish, and he is also a president of the program board of the "International Karamanov's Poetry Festival" for more than 20 years.

ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
Daniela Andonovska-Trajkovska (1979, Bitola, Republic of North Macedonia) is a poetess, author, scientist, editor in chief of two literary magazines in North Macedonia, literary critic, doctor of pedagogy, university professor at the University "Kliment Ohridski" Bitola (Faculty of Education), a member of the Macedonian Writers' Association; Macedonian Science Society - Bitola; Slavic Academy for Literature and Art in Varna - Bulgaria, and Bitola Literary Circle. She was president of the Macedonian Science Society Editorial Council and now - a head of the Linguistics and Literature Department at the Macedonian Science Society - Bitola. She has published two books of stories, 9 poetry books, one book for children, a book of literary criticism in Macedonian and 3 academic and scientific books that are part of the curriculum at the university where she works, and over 100 scientific articles. She has also 6 poetry books published in English, Italian, Arabic and Romanian language in India, United Arab Emirates, Italy, and Romania. She has also published her translations from English into Macedonian and vice versa in North Macedonia, Italy and Netherland (7 poetry books and many articles). She has won several important awards for literature: "Krste Chachanski" (2018); "Karamanov' for "Electronic Blood" (2019); Macedonian Literary Avant-garde for "House of Contrasts" (2020); "Abduvali Qutbiddin" (2020, Uzbekistan); Premio Mondiale "Tulliola-Renato Filippelli" in Italy for "Electronic Blood" (2021); Award of excellence "City of Galateo - Antonio De Ferrariis" (Italy); Award for Literary Criticism in 2022, Poetry Award "Dritero Agioli" (Albania, 2023); Poetry Award "Mihai Eminescu," a Golden Medal and a recognition as ambassador of culture in Romania by the Mihai Eminescu Academy (2023) and "Aco Shopov" for poetry (the most important national poetry prize by Macedonian Writers' Association in 2021). Her poetry has been translated and published into more than 40 world languages.

Cover Art: "Tower of Babel" by Witold Zakrzewski

$21.95 | ISBN: 978-1-950063-83-3 | 118 Pages

New Release: HOUSE OF CONTRASTS by Daniela Andonovska-Trajkovska

Daniela Andonovska-Trajkovska (1979, Bitola, North Macedonia) holds PhD in Education. She is an awarded poetess, writer, scientist, literary critic, translator, editor, full professor at the University "St. Kliment Ohridski" in Bitola, co-founder of the Center for Literature, Art, Culture, Rhetoric and Language at the Faculty of Education in Bitola, a member of the Macedonian Writers' Association, Slavic Academy for Literature and Art in Varna, and a head of the Literature and Linguistic Department (Macedonian Science Society in Bitola). She has authored 16 books in Macedonian (poetry, prose, literary criticism, scientific books), 6 poetry books in English, Arabic, Italian, and 9 poetry books of renowned world poets in her translation. Her poetry is translated into 40 languages.

DESCRIPTION BY BORCHE PANOV, literary critic, poet, editor:
"In the poetry book "House of Contrasts" by Daniela Andonovska-Trajkovska somewhere at the beginning we can read that "a tear without metaphysics has no aesthetics." This discourse completely determines the poetics of this very well-known and notorious Macedonian poetess. She is awake in each word and in this book, she creates her poetic alphabet by freezing the moment and by claiming that her alphabet was born on the knife with which the umbilical cord was cut. Although, she writes about things that are not so perfect or beautiful, such as the pain and the loss, she is always on the bright side by using the poem as the most subtle defense of life. At the same time, she stands in front of the vertical mirror of love and she confronts us with the naked truth by showing us the finest lines on our faces from which time rises like a wall between us and the world. She makes us to be aware that we live in a room of the autistic time, and even when insomnia speaks loudly, no one can hear the fractures of the day that assembles in us piece by piece like in an X-ray image, and no one can see our nakedness and our vulnerability. We hide behind the image that we show to the world wanting to be accepted and appreciated. In the poetry book "House of Contrasts" we see for a moment the world in which every night, humans made of paper return to the keyhole of their houses cursing the day that does not last long enough so they could find themselves. But that is precisely why the day in this book lasts long enough to see how the poetess Daniela Andonovska-Trajkovska shows us that the paramecium of the meaning develops into a multicellular organism breathing with human lungs in the chest of the readers."

DESCRIPTION BY SLAVICA GADZOVA SVIDERSKA, PhD, literary critic, poetess, editor, publisher:
"The poetry of Daniela Andonovska-Trajkovska is powerful and striking example of Écriture feminine, which is essentially atypical and non-classical, because the prism of this author goes beyond the classical framework of the so-called writing from the womb. Searching for the perfect and most appropriate way of expressing her view and thinking about the world, the author playfully moves between the forms and ways of poetic expression: from short elliptical poems reduced to simple but semantically layered poetic images, through lyrical poems that are thought provoking, to poems where the verse hybridizes with the narrative tone. At the beginning, the lyrical subject searches for itself (in the world, through the Other and in the Other, in the rational and the irrational, in the real and the oneiric), and the most appropriate form to express this search is the paradox. Furthermore, the search is an endless attempt to find harmony and balance amidst the noise of a world that is becoming increasingly chaotic, illogical, and sometimes nightmarishly phantasmagoric. At the end the search for the metaphysical vertical takes place, a search for the eternal, for the Absolute, for God. The decadence, the downward movement and the erosion of the values are constantly semantically emphasized: the images are broken, the words are crashed, the breathing is trapped, the woman is a doll with winded up steps, the face is a salt mosaic, ethics is "Cain-ethics," that is, the world is "on red alert." Nevertheless, the lyrical subject knows how to find meaning even in the era of meaninglessness, living its search for itself, for a perfect understanding with the Other, for a home without contrasts and for the Absolute. Andonovska-Trajkovska's poetry brings fresh and original voice that carries the archetypal one, thick semantics, explosions of meanings, feminine wisdom and aesthetics that ennoble the "collapsing world" so that it does not collapse. For that reason, the poetry book "House of Contrasts" deserves a special place in the contemporary world literature."

"Daniela Andonovska-Trajkovska's poetry brings fresh and original voice that carries the archetypal one, thick semantics, explosions of meanings, feminine wisdom and aesthetics that ennoble the "collapsing world" so that it does not collapse. For that reason, the poetry book "House of Contrasts" deserves a special place in the contemporary world literature."
—Slavica Gadzova Sviderska, PhD, literary critic, scholar, poetess, editor, publisher

"In "House of Contrasts" by Daniela Andonovska-Trajkovska the silence is not silent, but dramatical and loud. It seems that here is a compromise and an awareness that the antonymies are compatible contradictions like the day and the night, the sky and the earth, the angel and the devil, the cosmos and the chaos. Like ying and yang. Like life."
—Jordan Stojanoski, PhD, literary critic, university professor of literature

Cover art: Ljupka Galazkava-silev

$19.95 | ISBN: 978-1-950063-84-0 | 92 Pages

New Release: The Unfinished Family Poems Barbara E. Murphy

Barbara E. Murphy's poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in journals including Green Mountains Review, Threepenny Review, Barrow Street, and New England Review. She is a recipient of a Vermont Arts Council Fellowship and twice-nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Murphy served as a faculty member at the New England Young Writers Conference and is a board member of Sundog Poetry. A collection of her poems, Almost Too Much was published by ČervenÁ Barva Press in 2015. Her essays and reviews have been published in several venues including The New York Times, Plume Poetry, Full Grown People, and Green Mountains Review. She lives and writes in Burlington Vermont.

Description:
Barbara E. Murphy's compelling The Unfinished Family comes to terms with the notion that families can ever be "finished.' The poems in this brave and provocative collection explore the impulses of duty and loyalty, love and fear and compulsion for perfection as the speaker comes to embrace the mistakes that are inevitable in every family. These poems are as honest as they are hopeful in their insistence that we return again and again to the messy work of being with our people and starting again.

In The Unfinished Family, Barbara Murphy offers a master class on the compressed narrative and the withheld detail. Whether she turns a discerning, critical eye on her birth-family—a troubled father, a mother born into "the wrong era, wrong marriage, wrong life"—or her own made family she brings a wealth of memorable phrases, smart insights, and emotional yearning as well as an empathetic eye and forgiving mind that "lets a little light in too."
—Neil Shepard, author of The Book of Failures

Part of our human beauty is that we live in a state of being unfinished. This is why memory is so powerful. Barbara Murphy's exquisite, beautiful poems are a series of finely etched portraits that enact how our moments accumulate into meaning as they move toward another world we will never know yet help create. Muscular, lyric language and an agile form makes these powerful poems tap us on the shoulder and awaken us from our delirium and into the transcendent. Murphy's poems show us how personal history and time intersect leaving behind a memory that never vanishes. These poems claim life and life claims these poems. This book is a treasure.
—Elizabeth A.I. Powell, author of Atomizer

Barbara Murphy's The Unfinished Family is haunted by the archetypal ghost of a perfect family against which the speaker holds memories—brilliantly precise and unequivocally rendered—and finds them wanting. Yet, the honesty, bravery and fidelity with which she acknowledges her disappointments burnish these poems with love, humor and pathos. We should read her.
—Nancy Mitchell, author of The Out of Body Shop

Photo: Karen Pike

$18.00 | ISBN: 978-1-950063-92-5 | 58 Pages

New Release: Lunch in Chinatown poems by Mary Bonina

A fellow of the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Mary Bonina was finalist for the Goldfarb Fellowship and awarded several residencies, including one at the VCCA retreat, Moulin a Nef, in Auvillar, France. Previous publications include My Father's Eyes: A Memoir and two poetry collections—Living Proof and Clear Eye Tea, all from ČervenÁ Barva Press. Her poems and essays have appeared in The Lowell Review, Hanging Loose, Poets and Writers, Salamander, Mom Egg, Ovunque Siamo, Adelaide, and many other journals, and her work has been included in several anthologies, including Entering The Real World, VCCA Poets on Mt. San Angelo from Wavertree Press. Her completed novel, My Way Home, is on submission to publishers. Her poem "Drift" won Boston Contemporary Authors/Urban Arts prize and is carved in a granite monolith, a permanent public art installation in the City. Bonina has collaborated with composers of arts songs and new music, a sculptor, and her work has been translated into Japanese. She received a full fellowship from the Vermont Studio Center. A voiceover artist, she has recorded fiction, non-fiction, and poetry for blind readers. She offers classes, workshops, conference presentation, and individual coaching for writers. Bonina has been a long-time member of the Writers Room of Boston, where she served on the Board for more than a decade. She earned her M.F.A. in Fiction Writing from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her website is www.marybonina.com

Description:
New from Mary Bonina—and particularly timely—LUNCH IN CHINATOWN is a poetry collection inspired by the poet's work teaching the English language to immigrants from Haiti, China, Poland and other European countries, Central, Latin American, and African nations, and others. The poems highlight, as Patrick Sylvain, Professor of Global Studies, states in his introduction, "the universal nature of human connection, understanding, and a sense of shared humanity in the face of cultural and linguistic differences" Bonina sees her classes as offering survival skills, and compares her necessarily improvised lessons to the act of writing a poem, "that familiar process of one word, one thought, leading to another, often unanticipated one, recognizing endless possibilities, and finally settling on the right one in a moment of revelation."

In this vivid, wonderfully empathetic book of poems, Lunch In Chinatown, Mary Bonina is an inquisitive seeker, not only set to teach English but also to learn about the lives of her immigrant students. There’s the student who worked with the very ill and the job did not allow wearing jewelry “without that ring on her finger/her hand felt too light, made her think/that she wasn’t in the world anymore,” another puzzled over the same abbreviation for Saint and Street, a young man recalled his young love in Port au Prince. In her masterful telling Bonina has given us glimpses of their worlds, both before and after the immigration. These poems celebrate the common human language, of disappointments and loss, aspirations and love, and also how poetry and the resolve of students and their teacher can make all the difference in the world.
—Pui Ying Wong, author of Fanling in October

In Lunch in Chinatown "Mary Bonina's eloquent verses breathe life into the seemingly mundane, turning lunchtime into an exploration of the extraordinary moments hidden within our daily routines."
          from the Introduction
          Patrick Sylvain, P.H.D., M.F.A
          Author, Unfinished Dreams/Rev San Bout (bilingual poetry)

Cover photo: Abbi Sauro
Author photo: Christopher Collyn

$16.00 | ISBN: 978-1-950063-88-8 | 27 Pages

A New Release from Glass Lyre Press:
Grief Touched the Sky at Night by Gloria Mindock

Gloria Mindock is editor of Červená Barva Press. She is an award-winning author of six poetry collections and three chapbooks. Her poems have been published and translated into eleven languages. Her recent book, Ash, was translated into Serbian by Milutin Durickovic and published by Alma Press in Belgrade in 2022. Ash, published by Glass Lyre Press (2021), won the International Impact Award, the NYC Big Book Award, the Firebird Speak Up Talk Radio Award, The Pacific Book Award, the International Award - The Princess, Noble Poetry Skills, Art Club of Ragkonik in Smederevo, Serbia, a Distinguished Favorite for the Independent Book Award, and a Bronze Medal from the North American Book Award. Other awards include the Allen Ginsburg Award for Community Service by the Newton Publishing Center, the Ibbetson Lifetime Achievement Award, the 5th and 40th Moon Prize from Writing in a Woman's Voice, numerous Pushcart nominations and three citations for Červená Barva Press as an editor and community service from the MA House of Representatives.

Gloria's work recently has appeared in Gargoyle, The James Dickey Review, 10 x 10, Ibbetson, Growth: Journal of Literature, Culture, & Art (Macedonia), KGB Lit, and others. Gloria was the Poet Laureate in Somerville, MA in 2017 & 2018. For more information about Gloria Mindock, visit her website at: www.gloriamindock.com

Gloria Mindock's book touches the very soul of Ukraine. The elevated stylistics and exceptional talent of the author reveal in depth all possible dimensions of the inhuman Russian aggression. This poetic diamond is a generalized universal message to the world, it is also the call of the Ukrainian heart, and it is a resistance against Putin's obscurantism. It is a powerful expansion of the senses that, through the depth of feeling, shows us that even in the darkest hour the human spirit does not stop resisting, rising, denying violence and carrying with it the eternal light of revelation and freedom. The author has achieved the perfect balance between the senses, reality, experience and emotion, and has reached the first literary sublimation of its kind; it is a book-message, unique in spirit, an artistic achievement woven of pain, hope, suffering, empathy and philanthropy. Gloria Mindock's genuine work is the poetic witness on the war. It sings the song of Ukraine. It hurts. It soars. It peaks. It rises above. This is the artistic blast that will defeat and outlive the apocalypse of Putin and his bloody regime. Grief Touched the Sky at Night is a book that will wait for peace and victory and then be read and studied for a long time.
-Svet DiNahum, author of Escape from Crimea, Winner of Červená Barva Press Dissident Award, Honorable Member of the Ukrainian National Writers' Association

These stark, candid, and radiant poems in Gloria Mindock's new collection give shape and space to voices lifted from the clutter and clamor that is the matrix of war. The war is upon us now, but poets forever have sung such lamentations and haunted us all too often throughout history. One thinks of Homer, Wilfred Owen, and Carolyn Forche. A fierce and generous tenderness and enviable humanity ungirds these unflinching poems. Mindock's is the voice we need to hear at this very moment.
-Eric Pankey, author of Not Yet Transfigured

Gloria Mindock's poetry collection was written during the living experiences of the war, which unfortunately, continue. The language of the poems is direct and full of metaphors, understandable, but concrete and abstract at the same time. Abstract to the point that the words war, blood, killing, loss, Bucha, and Kyiv are now in a line synonymous with a huge tragedy, "My body is naked// I did not remove my clothes. My dignity remains //while the dirt covers me //I love my country. //I love my country. //I am Ukraine" In the poem Boots, as if the name is of a Ukrainian soldier or refugee, the poet presents an opposing understanding to create the maximum effect of doom and helplessness. But at the same time an inner resistance and stubbornness are presented in its last lines, bearing witness to resolve and hope. In Mindock's poems, despite the depiction of a modern-day apocalypse, the understanding exists that "Everyone needs to be protected, // to be loved." Clearly the role of poetry hasn't lost its significance.
-Vasyl Makhno, author of Paper Bridge, Translated by Olena Jennings; with an introduction by Ilya Kaminsky

Cover photo: Natalia Zhurminskaya

$16.00 | ISBN: 979-8-9885737-3-9 | 71 Pages

Ash by Gloria Mindock from Glass Lyre Press

Gloria Mindock is the author of I Wish Francisco Franco Would Love Me (Nixes Mate Books), Whiteness of Bone (Glass Lyre Press), La Portile Raiului (Ars Longa Press, Romania) translated into the Romanian by Flavia Cosma, Nothing Divine Here, (U Šoku Štampa), and Blood Soaked Dresses (Ibbetson). Widely published in the USA and abroad, her poetry has been translated and published into the Romanian, Croatian, Serbian, Montenegrin, Spanish, Estonian, Albanian, bulgarian, Turkish, and French. Gloria has been published in numerous literary journals including Gargoyle, Web Del Sol, spoKe, Constellations: A Journal of Poetry and Fiction, Ibbetson, The Rye Whiskey Review, Muddy River Poetry Review, Unlikely Stories, Pratik: A Magazine of Contemporary Writing and Nixes Mate Review and anthology. Gloria has been awarded the Ibbetson Street Press Lifetime Achievement Award and was the recipient of the Allen Ginsberg Award for Community Service by the Newton Writing and Publishing Center. She received the fifth and fortieth Moon Prize from Writing in a Woman's Voice. Gloria was the Poet Laureate in Somerville, MA in 2017 & 2018.

In Gloria Mindock's powerful new book, the flames of love die out and the ashes linger until they dissolve into air. The body is hostage, in charred relics of failed intimacies—The burnt-out ends of smoky days (T.S. Eliot). There's beauty in the truth of Mindock's words and images: Things got smokier, battling the embers with//false waters. And there's hope: Not everyone believes in destruction.// All the heart wants is to beat. Above all, these poems radiate feeling, compassionately aware, attuned to a world of broken love that is burned beyond recognition, the ashes drifting and settling: how much sorrow can this heart take?// There is never an answer. Ash sears and sings.
—Dzvinia Orlowsky, author of Bad Harvest

In Ash, Gloria Mindock writes a gritty, beautifully haunting collection of poetry. Ash is what remains behind after destruction, ruin, death, and burning. Similarly, the poems in this collection are what will remain. Fight the shadows and wade through the darkness on a path paved by Mindock's vivid imagery, stark language, and dynamic voice, all of which, make for a most memorable experience. Now more than ever, we need these poems. With the utmost economy of words, skillful syntax, and emotional connections, each poem reverberates into the depths of your consciousness. Dark, intense, and wholly unique, Ash, by Gloria Mindock is what you've been waiting for—a collection of poetry that consumes and smolders. Are you ready?
—Renuka Raghavan, author of Out of the Blue and The Face I Desire

Gloria Mindock is a poet with singular vision: in Ash, a human heart is rolled out, then baked, then thrown to the birds; broken crucifixes are shoved into junk drawers and gather dust; a spurned/murdered woman turns into a beautiful plant that gives her ex-lover a rash. With mordant, Pinter-esque wit, Mindock explores just how far love, and even human decency, can unravel—to the point of arson, to the point of war.
Ash begin with a series of poems about lethal house fires that may be literal or metaphorical ("my skin was burned by your compulsion to be famous"), then expands to pinpoint the similar essence of human cruelty that enables soldiers to kill. As the narrator of "Doomed by the Numbers" explains: "the fact is people will still go on brutally/killing each other./Who will take my place and write about it?"
Ash concludes with an engaging, Rabelaisian roundelay of voices—mini-plays, summed up in just two stanzas, about complicated relationships between two people.
Once again, with Ash, Mindock proves herself to be unafraid of the dark. She is truly a leading, contemporary master of the edgy.
—Karen Friedland, author of Places That Are Gone and Tales from the Teacup Palace

Passionate and observant, Gloria Mindock is a tragic poet. Her books are wounds revisited. She knows that nothing, never heals.
"With a rolling pin in my hand, I roll your heart out flat... stop it from beating. The redness of blood turns to wax, sticky while wet." (Baked)
She senses the pain of the world in her being.
"The void looms deep, scorched like the desert blowing aimlessly." (Exit)
As her latest book Ash attests without doubt, Gloria is both a warrior and a martyr. Her words are swords that slowly transform into tears.
Her anger at life's injustice is mighty, but mighty is her generosity and her openness towards repair, harmony and universal peace. A must-read Ash conducts the reader through thorny labyrinths of pain and despair, allowing now and then a glimpse of ultimate resolve and liberation in verses of a rare beauty:
"...but gravity is about to free me into space... People will look at me day and night and ask, "what is it?" There is no control over what happens. The cathedral is high and my freckles fell on the floor as I left. Paleness now, that no one sees, but in the universe, I will be a prism." (Gravity)
"...A hunger surrounds us, dust gathers, and is wiped off, space evading all this as songs of the wind come through the window and we all hum." (Room)
—Flavia Cosma, author of In the Arms of the Father, Val-David, QC

$16.00 | ISBN: 978-1-941783-75-7 | 71 Pages