APRIL 2018 POEM-A-THON

Welcome to our April 2018 Poem-a-thon! We have poets participating from all over the globe. You can find their bios below. Each poet has committed to write one poem a day during the month of April. Support their creative efforts by clicking the “Sponsor A Poet” button below. Please complete the form and be sure to enter the name of the poet you are sponsoring and the dollar amount. Then enter your credit or debit card information and click the “Sponsor” button at the bottom of the form to complete your donation.

POET BIOS
Please click on the poet’s name to read their submissions.
	TRACY BROOKS believes in the power of poetry and stories. As an intuitive empath and Shamanic healer, she offers channeled writings and poems to support others, www.facebook.com/soulbeckons. Death has always been a teacher to her and she has communicated with those that have passed on for most of her life. This whispering between worlds is the foundation of her first book, which is being finished now. When not writing, she is busy homeschooling her children, receiving wisdom from her dog, teaching yoga to young people, and offering various spiritual practices to others. www.tracybrookswriter.com
	ALEXSONDRA TOMASULO has been writing on her personal and intimate journeys for a few decades. Her scope includes grief, depression, forgiveness, transformation and redemption. She loves poetry, short stories and essays. She is also an accomplished ceramic artist. Alexsondra now, after the loss of her beloved husband, has found a new rhythm in the art of play as it relates to each artistic endeavor. She resides on the coast of Maine.
	CAROL MIKODA teaches writing and new teachers in upstate New York. She lives in the country where she walks in the woods, studies the sky to photograph clouds, and grows vegetables and flowers. She also sings and plays piano, guitar, and bass. Although she enjoys travel, her cat, Zen Li Shou, would rather she stayed home.
	Author of 5 books, AUDREY CHIN is a Singapore based writer and 2017 Fellow of the Iowa International Writing Program whose work explores the intersections of faith, gender, culture and politics. She has been nominated once for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and shortlisted thrice for the Singapore Literature Prize. In 2016, she came out as a praying woman with her anthology of meditations, When Heart Meets Spirit. In the same year, her story Widow of Nain won the Inaugural Asian Women Writers’ Festival Short Story Prize.
	JANETTE KENNEDY, MAEd, MFA frequently dreams of multi-textured colors connecting people. Her poetry has appeared at Mothers Always Write and on the Tiferet Journal community blog. Ever since she wrote her education thesis on using comics in the classroom, she has been fascinated by the intersection of language and visual art. At present, she tutors students with diverse needs and lives with her family in Tennessee.
	As a free-range wordsmith making shadows dance a ditty til dawn, PEGGY REW knew she’d be an artist. Finally realizing it would be one who painted with words, she’s created trademarks as a poet, non-fictionalist and ghostwriter. Rew’s published hundreds of articles for Nevada publications, mentored writers from Reno’s Unnamed Writers’ Group which she facilitated for 14 years. She has published two books. www.rewcrew.com
	PALLINE PLUM is a visual artist and recovering social worker, who has published poems in Tiferet, in regional journals, anthologies, also…in Poetry in Buses in Kalamazoo. Her notable poetry credit was winning a Grand Prize at the Dancing Poetry Festival in San Francisco. (It was also a hoot!) Palline earned a BFA in Fine Art from University of Michigan, and an MFA in Sculpture from Queens College, CUNY. Currently, she obsessively photographs flowers in all their stages from bloom to decay, and exhibits and sells the results in a variety of settings. https://www.facebook.com/PallinePlumPhotography. Palline has also placed over 45 high school age foreign exchange students, who came from more than 20 countries to study in Indiana and Ohio. She considers this important work for the future of our world.
	DEBORAH LEIPZIGER is an author, poet, and professor. Her chapbook, Flower Map, was published by Finishing Line Press (2013).  In 2014, her poem “Written on Skin” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.  Born in Brazil, Ms. Leipziger is the author of several books on human rights and sustainability. Her poems have been published in Salamander, Voices Israel, POESY, Wilderness House Review, Ibbetson Street, and the Muddy River Poetry Review. http://flowermap.net/
	My name is JAMAAL JAMES FERGUSON. I write poetry do to its therapeutic nature. I usually write from the inside out to unravel the confusion of the soul. Although poetry doesn’t have to rhyme, do to my roots in hip-hop being a Bronx New York native, it’s engraved in the DNA of my work. Words are magic and can have a lifelong lingering influence upon those who choose to enter void of bias. Sit back relax and enjoy the journey for it will never be again!!!
	TOM MCMILLIAN. When I’m writing poetry, I relish when my Muse visits me. I love the dance and the places, people, and emotions my writing reveal. During the last five years as the Morris Arts board president, I’ve helped thousands of children nurture their artist souls. I’m ready to dig in and burnish my own.
	I am PIETRINA, a poet, trained human resource practitioner and psychologist, who believes that every experience is a learning point. Writing to me is life expressed in words and opinions… an opportunity to create, build, and sometimes destroy notions and preconceived ideas. I write poems, flash-fiction, and I also co-host OutSPOKEN a poetic diary event of Nigeria held at the Revolving Art Incubator in Lagos, Nigeria.
	JULIA MEYLOR SIMPSON. I’ve been writing poems since I was able to read a Dr. Seuss book. About 10 years ago, I started a blog where I shared my poems, and my poems were published in a number of literary journals around the country. Then, for several reasons, I put the poetry on the back shelf. I’m now retired and would love to challenge myself to write poetry every day during the month of April.
	D.D. ASPIRAS is a poet and printmaker. Her previous experiences as a performer and designer inform her writing and artmaking. She is interested in writing haiku as a contemplative practice, writes poetry daily, and deeply values art’s power to transform and connect us to meaning. She is a mother, wife, and runner. If she had more time she would have a garden of bonsai trees and learn how to weld.
	MARGARET R. SARACO is a writer, poet, teacher, mother, and feminist Publishing credits include anthologies, newsletters and journals, the Poeming Pigeon’s Love Poems, Italian and the Arts (American Italian Historical Association), Peace Poems (New Jersey Peace Action), Just Bite Me, Passing, Shalom: The Jewish Peace Newsletter, Free Verse, and Jewish Currents. Margaret also has been featured at several readings including Welcome the Sabbath Bride, The Art and Poetry of Teaching, and Poetry U: An Evening of Spoken Word.
	LILA DANIELLE writes with her body first and her pen or keyboard second. She facilitates weekly dance events on the beach and holds embodied, creative movement retreats for women twice a year. She enjoys a good laugh and a deep cry, refreshing cocktails and evocative conversations. She lives on the island of Maui with her husband, bed and breakfast guests from around the world and many orchids.
	LILIA LUKOWSKY leads a double life as a poet and scientist. Growing up in Ukraine, she was fascinated with the works of great Russian poets. After arriving in Los Angeles, Lilia’s poetry has transitioned from Russian to English and broadened to addresses social and environmental justice, empowerment of women, against Antisemitism, racism, and misogyny. Lilia belongs to Las Lunas Locos, a community of self-identified women. Some of the submitted works were created or inspired by Luna’s circle.
	SUSAN GJESDAL HAGEN. I have lived in Montana much of my life. I have been in the mental health field for 16 years, and recently retired from work I loved. I have been writing for over 30 years, and now have the time to complete my memoir that focuses on Grief, Loss and the triumphs and trials that went with all the losses. Poetry has helped me express those feelings.
	ARUNI WIJESINGHE works for Affinis Labs, an award-winning social innovation firm that helps clients creatively tackle complex global challenges through entrepreneurship. She holds degrees in English, dance and TESOL. Aruni is getting her feet wet in the Los Angeles lit scene and has read with Roar Shack and Angels Flight Literary West. She lives a quiet life in with her husband Jeff and cats Jack and Josie.
	ZACHARIAH HAUPTMAN is a Reference Librarian at the South San Francisco Library by day, a CCSF student at night, and a gigantic genderqueer nerd at all times (they/them pronouns, please!). With their group, Truth Sans Justice, they run panels on popular culture, misogyny and the queer community, and write LARPs that run in and around the SF Bay Area. In their copious free time, they write poetry, short fiction and snarky blogs about social issues.
	EMILY REID GREEN’S poetry has appeared in publications including: Skipping Stones, Common Threads, The Font, The Linnet’s Wings, and Khroma Magazine. This spring, she will share her poetry in the Women of Appalachia Project’s “Women Speak!” performances. An unabashed bookworm and avid knitter, she lives with her family in Toledo, Ohio.
	GABRIELLE MARTIN is a sophomore at Emerson College pursuing a BA in Writing, Literature, and Publishing. She is returning from her fall semester abroad, where she attended classes at Emerson’s Kasteel Well campus in the Netherlands. When not attending school in Boston, she lives with her mother and two dogs on the South Shore of Massachusetts.
	LIN OSTLER. Engaging with poetry since establishing a college literary magazine, Satori, Lin’s embodied, earthy work has been incorporated into multi-cultural collaborations and anthologized in various poetry journals. A familiar reader in Utah, Lin has read with an international group of writers, the “Faraway Poets,” in Santa Fe, New Mexico and Ojai, California.
	JOHN (“Jake”) COSMOS ALLER is a novelist, poet, and former Foreign Service officer having served 27 years with the U.S. State Department in ten countries – Antigua, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Korea, India, St Kitts, St Lucia, St Vincent, Spain, and Thailand. Prior to joining the U.S. State Department, Jake taught overseas for eight years. Jake served in the Peace Corps in Korea. Jake has been an aspiring novelist for several years and has completed five novels, (Giant Nazi Spiders, “the Great Divorce” and “Jurassic Cruise”, and “Ft. Ashland” and is pursuing publication. He has been writing poetry and fiction all his life and has published his poetry fiction in over 25 literary journals. He speaks Korean, some Spanish and Thai. He grew up in Berkeley, California but has lived in Seattle, Washington DC and Stockton, California. He has traveled to over 45 countries and 49 States.
	SUSAN POWERS BOURNE works creatively with words and images in the lovely village of Chester, Vermont in New England USA. Bits and pieces of her fledgling memoir — Settling for Essential: Defragmenting a Life — have begun to appear here at this site: http://susanpowersbourne.net. Varieties of Ms. Bourne’s other creative explorations may be found at these WordPress blogs: FoundArtWorks, FoundPoetryWorks, FreeVerseWorks, as well as the creative herstorical review blogsite WomenBornAlive.
	HAZEL SAVILLE is from Carmarthen, Wales, in the UK. She has been writing poetry since her early teens. She has worked as a social worker and since 2000 as a hypnotherapist/psychotherapist. Amongst other things, she is a visual artist, a songwriter and plays the Celtic harp. Hazel likes exploring ideas in her work. She particularly enjoys the musicality of poetry. Her poems have been published in a number of UK magazines and anthologies.