Author: awhitetrashpoet
writer.
Now Available: Unease at Rest by Wil Gibson
Unease at Rest
by Wil Gibson
Available on Amazon $15.00
“Unease at Rest is an ‘ugly butterfly’, anatomized. It is the death’s-head moth pinning itself under glass. Every poem is another marking on the insect’s back, resembling a human skull. Each one steadfastly reminds its author that it isn’t, in fact, a skull. But each feels about that heavy. In this grossly gorgeous collection, Gibson doesn’t wrestle or toss away the bones on his back. He quietly, humbly carries them. Wil doesn’t fly straight into the lantern’s yawning flame. He stares it down, he names it, and he reaches for it. He does so for us, sparing us the discomfort. And he does it with a steady and trained hand: imperfect palms stretched perfectly. The textual body of his 
poems, too, flex and fold this way. Every page a ‘soft, awkward, and most authentic’ wing. Wil reaches for the fire with such an ugly human grace, that it explains the ugly human light that swallows us too, by which we are lit from inside, to which we all are bound.”
– Bill Moran – author of “Oh God Get Out Get Out” – Write Bloody Press
Pen and Poet Interview: Gina Marselle
The amazing podcast, Pen and Poet, hosted by Rene Mullen, has once again chosen a Swimming with Elephants Publications author to showcase, Ms. Gina Marselle.
Gina Marselle is not only a poet but a high school teacher, mother, wife, and photographer. You can find her work in many places like the Alibi, the Rag, Adobe Walls, among others. She’s author of the book of poetry called A Fire of Prayer: a Collection of Poetry and Photography. Her photography can be found, among other places, in A Fire of Prayer and also the book of poetry, September, by Katrina K Guarascio .
Pen and Poet hopes to conduct “intimate conversations and readings with poets, both page and stage” and Swimming with Elephants Publications, LLC has had several authors featured on Pen and Poet, including Kristian Macaron, Gigi Bella, Mercedez Holtry, Paulie Lipman, and Katrina Crespin.
You can find Pen and Poet on the web by clicking here.
You can find Pen and Poet on itunes by clicking here.
Please take a moment to listen to the broadcast and learn a little more about some of our authors.
Pen and Poet is recorded in Albuquerque, NM. If you would like to participate and be interviewed on Pen and Poet, please contact the host, Rene Mullen. Contact information is located at the end of each broadcast.
Bookwork Book Release: Mary and Aja Oishi’s Rock Paper Scissors
Mother daughter poets, Mary & Aja Oishi, read from their new Swimming With Elephants Publications collection, Rock Paper Scissors.
“…this collection carries both the beauty of human resilience and the searing pain of postatomic burning carnage. The poetry, like hope, is an obstinate and sturdy survivor, for ‘what could i do but write songs.’ These verses often push the envelope, asking questions that make more sense than our grammar. ‘are you out there in the stealth night on the edge of blue? listening/ are you loving me for sending you this fix of heartbreak/ slid down metal, taut and wound. electric. are you?’ …haunting, resonant odes and the rhythmic power of promises and truth, poems spread across Hiroshima and Barcelona, Laos and Albuquerque. These poems bring the world into a familial embrace, but spit out the naked power of truth, both personal and political, as if it were a well-chewed chicken bone, gnawed raw. Through it all, this mother-daughter poetic duo reminds us that, in the beauty of human hope, ‘nothing sacred can be lost.’”
–Carmen Tafolla, State Poet Laureate of Texas
Mary Oishi has two poetic voices: one stark and simple like that of her Japanese ancestors, and one that echoes the rhythms of preachers from her upbringing by her American father’s fundamentalist relatives. Both voices sing her songs of truth and social justice. She is the author of Spirit Birds They Told Me (2011) and is one of twelve U.S. poets in 12 Poetas: Antologia De Nuevos Poetas Estadounidenses (2017), a project of the Mexican Ministry of Culture. Her poems have appeared in Mas Tequila Review, Malpais Review, Harwood Anthology, Sinister Wisdom, and other print and digital publications. Oishi is a public radio personality since 1996, most at KUNM-FM Albuquerque, where she hosts The Blues Show.
Aja Oishi lives in northern New Mexico. Her writing draws from ecology, anthropology, and the years she spent in Spain, Japan, and New Zealand. She revels in the uncaged world and makes a living (and a life) by fighting for prisoners as an appellate public defender. This is her first collection of poetry.
Event date:
Friday, June 8, 2018 – 6:00pm
Event address:
4022 Rio Grande Blvd NW
Albuquerque, NM 87107
Pick up this new release from Bookworks ABQ or order from Amazon or Barnes and Noble today!
Already own a copy? Please write a review on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or Goodreads, or submit a review to swimwithelephants@gmail.com for publications on this site.
Beau Williams Live in ABQ
Join New England poet Beau Williams on his Nail Gun and a Love Letter tour as he performs at El Chante: Casa de Cultura on Monday, June 4, 2018 from 7pm-9pm.
Heralding from Portland, Maine, Beau Williams describes himself as a “fairly optimistic” poet, and what better way to describe his newest collection of poetry from Swimming with Elephants Publications than as “fairly optimistic.” Bittersweet journeys to bar floors and the bottoms of bottles, Nail Gun and a Love Letter is reminiscent of beat poetry days and the pilgrimages we must take to find ourselves.
Click here to learn more about this collection by reading the review by Maxine Peseke.
The show will be at El Chante Casa de Cultura (804 Park Ave SW, Albuquerque, NM 87102) on June 4, 2018. It will begin at 7 pm with a short Open Mic, following by the featured performer, Beau Williams.
Copies of his latest release, Nail Gun and a Love Letter, will be available for purchase and signing.
You may also pick up Beau Williams’, Nail Gun and a Love Letter, from Bookworks ABQ or order from Amazon or Barnes and Noble today!
Already own a copy? Please write a review on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or Goodreads, or submit a review to swimwithelephants@gmail.com for publications on this site.
Keep your eyes open for Beau Williams as he continues his tour across the country. He may soon be coming to a town near you!
Upcoming Event: Poetry for a Cause
Swimming with Elephants Publications is excited to be part of the evening, Poetry for a Cause, sponsoring the Supportive Housing Coalition of New Mexico. Come out to see see a wonderful evening of performance and poetry. You will find special deals on all available SwEP publications with a percentage of all sales being donated to SHC.
Learn more about SHC and the event by clicking here.
Swimming with Elephants Poets in Public Service: MJR Montoya
During the month of April, the City of Albuquerque created a video series called Poets in Public Service to recognize the work local poets do in the community. Several of the poets interviewed are authors with Swimming with Elephants Publications.
Check out this video of Manuel (MJR) Montoya.
MJR Montoya’s book, The Promethean Clock or Love Poems of a Wooden Boy, was published by Swimming with Elephants Publications in late December 2017.
Click here to find Swimming with Elephants Publications on Facebook and ‘Like’ our page.
Find more videos and information regarding poetry events in ABQ at ABQtodo.com.
Swimming with Elephants Poets in Public Service: Katrina Crespin
During the month of April, the City of Albuquerque created a video series called Poets in Public Service to recognize the work local poets do in the community. Several of the poets interviewed are authors with Swimming with Elephants Publications.
Check out this video of Katrina Crespin.
She is published with Swimming with Elephants Publications as Katrina K Guarascio.
Click here to find her publications.
Click here to find Swimming with Elephants Publications on Facebook and ‘Like’ our page.
Find more videos and information regarding poetry events in ABQ at ABQtodo.com.
Swimming with Elephants Poets in Public Service: Mary Oishi
During the month of April, the City of Albuquerque created a video series called Poets in Public Service to recognize the work local poets do in the community. Several of the poets interviewed are authors with Swimming with Elephants Publications.
Check out this video of Mary Oishi.
Mary Oishi is one of the authors of Rock Paper Scissors, one of Swimming with Elephants Publications most recent releases.
Click here to find Swimming with Elephants Publications on Facebook and ‘Like’ our page.
Find more videos and information regarding poetry events in ABQ at ABQtodo.com.
Swimming with Elephants Poets in Public Service: Manuel Gonzalez
During the month of April, the City of Albuquerque created a video series called Poets in Public Service to recognize the work local poets do in the community. Several of the poets interviewed are authors with Swimming with Elephants Publications.
Check out this video by Albuquerque’s Third Poet Laureate and author of …But my friends call me Burque: Manuel Gonzalez.
Click here to find Swimming with Elephants Publications on Facebook and ‘Like’ our page.
Find more videos and information regarding poetry events in ABQ at ABQtodo.com.
Featured SwEP Author: Zachary Kluckman
Swimming with Elephants Publications, LLC would like to reintroduce to you to Zachary Kluckman.
Zachary Kluckman’s, Some of It is Muscle, was published by Swimming with Elephants Publications in December 2013, making it the second collection released from SwEP
Pick up Zachary Kluckman’s, Some of It is Muscle, from Bookworks ABQ during the month of April or order from Amazon or Barnes and Noble today!
Already own a copy? Please write a review on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or Goodreads, or submit a review to swimwithelephants@gmail.com for publications on this site.
Zachary Kluckman
A performance poet since 2006, Zachary Kluckman has been writing poetry for 25 years. He is a member of two consecutive Albuquerque National Poetry Slam Teams and has represented the city at the Individual World Poetry Slam.
A Pushcart Prize nominee, and recipient of the Red Mountain Press Poetry Prize, his work appears in print globally in such publications as the New York Quarterly and Cutthroat, as well as numerous anthologies. Featured on over 500 radio stations, with appearances on many of the nation’s most notorious stages, he is an accomplished spoken word artist. He serves as the Spoken Word Editor of the Pedestal. Twice recognized for making world history, he is the creator of the Slam Poet Laureate Program and an organizer for the 100 Thousand Poets for Change program, the largest poetry reading in history.
His first collection of poems, Animals In Our Flesh, was published in 2012 by Red Mountain Press. He has a collection titled, The Curious Circus, from Uncola Press. An activist and youth advocate, he lives in New Mexico with his four children.
Featured SwEP Author: R.B. Warren
Swimming with Elephants Publications, LLC would like to reintroduce to you to R.B. Warren.
R.B. Warren’s full length collection, Litanies Not Adopted, was published by Swimming with Elephants Publications in July in 2015.
Pick up R.B. Warren’s full length collection, Litanies Not Adopted, from Bookworks ABQ during the month of April or order from Amazon or Barnes and Noble today!
Already own a copy? Please write a review on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or Goodreads, or submit a review to swimwithelephants@gmail.com for publications on this site.
R.B. Warren
Bob Warren is without credentials of any kind. He never graduated from anything, never received a diploma or certificate of completion from any sort of institution of either higher or lower learning.
At the age of thirteen, he stole all of his school records and spent that school year teaching himself at the Detroit Institute of Arts. He quit school at fifteen. At seventeen, he took part in his first civil rights march. At twenty-one, he was elected Unit Steward for the Operating Engineers.
Two decades later in Houston, he went to work at a poverty church. His jobs were to lead morning prayers and to beg food for 125 to 150 families a week. He was for nine years the Associate Director for the Albuquerque Storehouse. Subsequent to that, he was Resource Director for Habitat for Humanity in Valencia County.
He is married to Barbara Warren who came to the marriage with five kids who have somehow become 19 grandkids and 18 great-grandkids.
Pick up Litanies Not Adopted, Warren’s first collection of poetry, from Amazon or Barnes and Noble.
Featured SwEP Author: Danielle Smith
Swimming with Elephants Publications, LLC would like to reintroduce to you to Danielle Smith.
Danielle Smith’s chapbook, Gnarly, was published by Swimming with Elephants Publications in July in 2015 as part of the student poetry series.
“Gnarly” is not what you expect: a collection of love poems, this is not an assemblage of sappy sonnets or couplets. Smith catches the reader off-guard with her close attention to sound, metaphor, and form as she explores the chambers of a bruised heart. Pumping out vivid imagery, there is music in these poems that should make you read each word carefully and out loud, relishing in Smith’s clever twists of language. A compendium of catharsis, ‘Gnarly’ will make you realize just how far you can fall in love with heartache.
Pick up Danielle Smith’s chapbook, Gnarly, from Bookworks ABQ during the month of April or order from Amazon or Barnes and Noble today!
Already own a copy? Please write a review on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or Goodreads, or submit a review to swimwithelephants@gmail.com for publications on this site.
Danielle Smith
“Gnarly” is not what you expect: a collection of love poems, this is not an assemblage of sappy sonnets or couplets. Smith catches the reader off-guard with her close attention to sound, metaphor, and form as she explores the chambers of a bruised heart. Pumping out vivid imagery, there is music in these poems that should make you read each word carefully and out loud, relishing in Smith’s clever twists of language. A compendium of catharsis, ‘Gnarly’ will make you realize just how far you can fall in love with heartache.
Featured SwEP Author: Bill Nevins
Swimming with Elephants Publications, LLC would like to reintroduce to you to Bill Nevins.
Bill Nevin’s collection, Heartbreak Ridge and Other Poems, was published by Swimming with Elephants Publications in August of 2014.
“Heartbreak Ridge is a campfire of the resistance, a place where all kinds of poems—from jeremiads, scourgings, and passionate rants to absolutely beautiful works of love and loss—gather between its covers. Bill Nevins is a truth-teller,and what he has to tell us about the last half century of American life and politics is a matter of highly charged poetic urgency.”
Terence Winch, author of Boy Drinkers,
“When New York Was Irish” and many other works of poetry, music and fiction.
Pick up Bill Nevin’s, Heartbreak Ridge and Other Poems, from Bookworks ABQ during the month of April or order from Amazon or Barnes and Noble today!
Already own a copy? Please write a review on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or Goodreads, or submit a review to swimwithelephants@gmail.com for publications on this site.
Bill Nevins
Bill Nevins grew up Irish Catholic near and in New York City in the 1950’s and 60’s. He moved to northern New England and raised his three children, one of whom, Special Forces SFC Liam Nevins, died in combat in Afghanistan in 2013. Bill has lived in Albuquerque, New Mexico since 1996.
His poetry has been published in Malpaís Review, Green Left Weekly, The Rag, Central Avenue, Sage Trail, Adobe Walls, Más Tequila Review, Special Forces Charitable Trust online, Maple Leaf Rag II, The Cornelian, KUMISS, and other publications. His journalism is found in The Guardian, Forward Motion, Z Magazine, RootsWorld, Hyper Active, Trend of Santa Fe, EcoSource, LOGOS, Thirsty Ear, ABQ ARTS, Local iQ, TM Transmission, The Celtic Connection, Irish American News, An Scathan/Celtic Mirror and other journals.
Bill continues to perform at Voices of the Barrio, Fixed and Free, Jules Poetry Playhouse, Sunday Chatter and other Albuquerque poetry gatherings. He has recently performed at SOMOS in Taos, NM and The Maple Leaf Readings in New Orleans.
Bill has retired from teaching and divides his time between homes in the towns of Albuquerque and Black Lake, New Mexico, and traveling.
Featured SwEP Author: Niccolea M. Nance
Swimming with Elephants Publications, LLC would like to reintroduce to you to Niccolea M. Nance.
SwEP worked with Niccolea M. Nance to create, For Those Who Outlast Their Pain, a collection of poetry about survival created for a project to help bring awareness to sexual assault. All profits above the cost of printing the book and shipping will go to further the cause. Proceeds will be divided between local women’s shelters, the National Sexual Violence Resource Center and The Outlast Project.
Pick up Niccolea M. Nance’s, For Those Who Outlast Their Pain,from Bookworks ABQ during the month of April or order from Amazon or Barnes and Noble today!
Already own a copy? Please write a review on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or Goodreads, or submit a review to swimwithelephants@gmail.com for publications on this site.
Niccolea M. Nance
Niccolea Miouo Nance is a poet, artist, amateur fire-spinner, and soon to be world traveler via sailboat. Niccolea’s published work, which she explains is drawn from personal life experiences and the stories of those closest to her, can be found in Borderline, a cutting-edge personapoetryjournal and Canyon Voices, an Arizona State University journal for emerging writers.
She also has two books published on Amazon – her self-published The Words I Hold, and the charity project For Those Who Outlast Their Painreleased by Swimming With Elephants Publications (the proceeds above printing and shipping will go to organizations that help women and sexual assault survivors).
You can read more about Niccolea on her web site: niccoleamnance.com
Featured SwEP Author: Bassam
Swimming with Elephants Publications, LLC would like to reintroduce to you one of our newest authors: Bassam.
SwEP has it’s first international publication with the release of Bassam’s collection, bliss in die/unbinging the underglow, in March of 2018.
“Bassam writes poems that feel like slow motion car crashes where, at every turn, you’re also reassured that it’s ok to feel like this, like even if nothing is going to be ok, there is strength to hold like a parking brake, like the axis of a planet. Bassam’s words are a gut punch, a pull to beating heart chest, a hand that holds yours in the bleak. One senses that the act of poetry for Bassam is truly one of survival. What a strength it takes to show our deepest insecurities, to not ask for forgiveness. To not be the hero of your own story. Bassam is a bright non binary voice. One that asks not for acceptance, but simply is, and tells the stories of body and mind that is so intimate and accessible to those of us who endlessly battle with our shapes, our selves. What a gift to give.”
—Charlie Petch, Spoken Word Artist, Playwright, Musician
Pick up Bassam’s collection, bliss in die/unbinging the underglow, from Bookworks ABQ during the month of April or order from Amazon or Barnes and Noble today!
Already own a copy? Please write a review on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or Goodreads, or submit a review to swimwithelephants@gmail.com for publications on this site.
Bassam
Bassam (they/them or xe/xim) is a spoken word poet, proud auntie, and settler residing on the traditional territory of the Dish with One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant (Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee, Huron-Wendatt, and Mississaugas of the New Credit). they are a member of the League of Canadian Poets, an executive board member with Spoken Word Canada, and has toured Turtle Island performing spoken word. Bassam earned title of national poetry slam champion at the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word (CFSW) in 2016 with the Guelph Poetry Slam team, and Canadian Individual Poetry Slam (CIPS) finalist in 2017. they were editor-in-chief for ‘these pills don’t come in my skin tone’, a poetry collection exclusively by Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour (BIPOC) on the topic of mental health and illness, released in fall 2017. a (gender)queer, Jewish person of Middle-Eastern descent and a long-time sufferer of body dysmorphia, bipolar and eating disorders, bassam believes in radical kindness as resistance to colonization, that there is no peace without justice, and that intersectionality is vital in the struggle against kyriarchy.
Featured SwEP Author: Manuel Gonzalez
Swimming with Elephants Publications, LLC would like to reintroduce to you to ABQ Poet Laureate Manuel Gonzalez.
Manuel Gonzalez’s collection, …but my friends call me Burque, was published from Swimming with Elephants Publications in October of 2014. Since that time, Manuel was named Poet Laureate of Albuquerque from 2016-2018.
Listen to Manny read from his collections here:
Pick up Manuel Gonzalez’s collection, …but my friends call me Burque, from Bookworks ABQ
or order from Amazon or Barnes and Noble today!
Already own a copy? Please write a review on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or Goodreads, or submit a review to swimwithelephants@gmail.com for publications on this site.
Manuel González
Manuel González is a performance poet who began his career in the poetry slam. He has represented Albuquerque many times on a national level as a member of the Albuquerque poetry slam team. Manuel has appeared on the PBS show, Colores, in “My Word is My Power.” He was one of the founding members of the poetry troupe The Angry Brown Poets.
Manuel teaches workshops on self-expression and poetry in high schools and youth detention centers. He also works with an art therapist to help incarcerated young men express them-selves. He was also one of the coaches and mentors for the Santa Fe High Poetry Slam team from 2006-2010. Manuel is from Albuquerque, New Mexico.
His mother’s family is from Barelas. His father’s family is from a small town in Northern New Mexico called Anton Chico, and his father was the lead singer of the band Manny and the Casanovas. He identifies himself as being Chicano. The history, culture, and spirituality of his people are among his inspirations.
His connection to his culture helps him connect to his students. Manuel teaches poetry as a means for self-expression. Looking within oneself and examining ones roots is the essence of the type of poetry he works with emotions, feelings, experiences, and prose in an historical and cultural context is the goal of his workshops. Self esteem, finding something to say, figuring out how to say it eloquently, and letting your voice be heard are just some of the benchmarks in Manuel’s workshop. Manuel resides in Albuquerque, NM with his wife and children.
For information on booking a workshop and/or performance, please send inquiries to: xicanopoet@yahoo.com.
Featured SwEP Author: Mercedez Holtry
Swimming with Elephants Publications, LLC would like to reintroduce to you to Mercedez Holtry.
Mercedez Holtry’s first collection, My Blood is Beautiful, was published in October of 2015 after winning a performance competition for Southwest Shootout, a annual, regional poetry event sponsored by Poetry Slam International. Her second collection, I bloomed a Resistance from my Mouth,was published in early 2018 in anticipation for her 2018 tour.
Listen to Mercedez Holtry perform her poetry here:
“Mercedez Holtry’s poetry speaks to the origin stories of her Chican@ and Mestiz@ people. It is a mixed bag of mixed blood and the celebratory songs of family, culture and the history of the la tierra that she has blossomed from. Her poems are resistance and resilience. She is a fierce page poet warrior who also casts her spells from the stage, as a true bruja does. Oppressors beware. Holtry mixes up curses, prayers and incantations with her poetic brew. This is a poet who uses her mas palabras for healing and retribution. Her collection de poesia es muy firme, a true reckoning of what is to come from a generation of woke poets who have much to say and aren’t afraid to say it. “
-Jessica Helen Lopez,
ABQ Poet Laureate
Catch Mercedez Holtry on tour this spring or order one of her publications from Amazon!
Mercedez Holtry
Mercedez Holtry is a poet, writer, mentor, and Xicana feminist who focuses on bringing out her roots, experiences and lessons learned through her poetry in hopes they embrace her people and other artists around her. She has represented ABQ on multiple final and semi final stages for national poetry events. She placed 3rd out of 72 for best woman poet for the year of 2015 and holds multiple Albuquerque Slam Championships. She is a National Poetry Slam Group Piece Champion (2016), the winner of Modesto’s “ILL List Slam” in California (2017), and was featured in Mexico City’s “Diverso” Poetry Festival embracing Mexican voices through poetry (2017). She has worked with youth in poetry workshops in multiple cities around the country including Aspen Words’ “Poetry in the Schools” project since 2015. Mercedez is not only a poet but an outreach coordinator for the youth in Albuquerque in which she organizes workshops and poetry events for the youth to participate in. Since graduating from the University of New Mexico with her bachelors in Chicano Studies and Journalism, she continues to host a monthly poetry reading for the UNM called “Lobo Slam.” She is passionate about spoken word and aspires to continually learn all she can about her art through working, slamming, and organizing for her community.
Featured SwEP Author: Gina Marselle
Swimming with Elephants Publications, LLC would like to reintroduce to you to Gina Marselle.
Gina Marselle’s collection, A Fire of Prayer, was published in the winter of 2015 by Swimming with Elephants Publications, LLC.
Listen to her perform here:
Pick up Gina Marselle’s collection, A Fire of Prayer, at Bookworks ABQ,
Amazon or Barnes and Noble.
Already own a copy? Please write a review on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or Goodreads, or submit a review to swimwithelephants@gmail.com for publications on this site.
Gina Marselle
Gina Marselle, M.A.Ed, resides in New Mexico with her husband and children. She is a high school English teacher, and finds enjoyment in being creative through poetry, painting, and photography. She has been awarded three grants for various philanthropy poetic projects. In addition, she has published poetic work with The Sunday Poem Online Series, in the Alibi, the Rag, SIC3, Adobe Walls: An anthology of New Mexico poetry, Catching Calliope, Fix and Free Poetry Anthology I and II, and La Palabra Anthology I and II.
Gina reads her poetry at local coffee shops, art galleries, and has been a featured poet at the Church of Beethoven (now known as Sunday Chatter). She has one chapbook (self published) titled ‘Round Midnight (2012). Furthermore, she has coordinated the poetry event for the Summer Open Space Series sponsored by The City of Albuquerque since 2009. Currently, she is honored to be part of the collective La Palabra: The Word is a Woman, which is a writer’s collective founded by poet Jessica Helen Lopez.
Beyond poetry, she is an accomplished photographer. Her photos of New Mexico poets have been featured in the Santa Fe magazine Trend (March of 2011).She also photographed the cover of Jessica Helen Lopez’ poetry book, Always Messing With Them Boys (West End Press, 2011), and has her photography featured in September: traces of letting go a poetry book by Katrina K Guarascio (Swimming With Elephants Publications, 2014).
Featured SwEP author: Kevin Barger
Swimming with Elephants Publications, LLC would like to reintroduce to you to Kevin Barger.
Kevin Barger has been a SwEP author since 2015 when his collection, Observable Acts, was published.
Observable Acts had the distinction of ranking up into the top 10 selling poetry collections in its category the week it was release.
“Observable Acts” is an amazing collection of poetry! It moved me and touched my soul. At every page, the ink all but leaped off the page as I learned of the author’s life and points of view. Each poem is artfully crafted and elicits an emotional response in the reader. Read and learn, dear people. Tell your friends and tell your families. Teach this book in your high schools and universities. Kevin Barger’s first foray into the published word is a great success, and I’m hoping to see more.
Review by Brady Reece
via Amazon Customer Reviews
Order Kevin’s book Observable from Amazon or Barnes and Noble today!
Kevin Barger
Kevin Barger is a performance poet, writer, and retired slam organizer based in Asheville, NC. He was instrumental in bringing slam poetry back to popularity in Asheville after its rise, fall, and subsequent misfirings in the area by helping to lay the groundwork for Poetry Slam Asheville from 2008 through 2011. He has also appeared on many other stages in and around the Carolinas including the Lake Eden Arts Festival, Lexington Avenue Arts and Fun Festival, the Individual World Poetry Slam, and Southern Fried in which he was on the first team from Asheville sent to Southern Fried in nearly a decade. Now, semi-retired from the slam scene but itching to get back on stage again, he has compiled old favorites and new material in Observable Acts; his first endeavor onto the published page.
New Release from Swimming with Elephants Publications, LLC
Rock Paper Scissors
Poetry by Mary Oishi and Aja Oishi
Available at Amazon for 14.95
“…this collection carries both the beauty of human resilience and the searing pain of postatomic burning carnage. The poetry, like hope, is an obstinate and sturdy survivor, for ‘what could i do but write songs.’ These verses often push the envelope, asking questions that make more sense than our grammar. ‘are you out there in the stealth night on the edge of blue? listening/ are you loving me for sending you this fix of heartbreak/ slid down metal, taut and wound. electric. are you?’
…haunting, resonant odes and the rhythmic power of promises and truth, poems spread across Hiroshima and Barcelona, Laos and Albuquerque. These poems bring the world into a familial embrace, but spit out the naked power of truth, both personal and political, as if it were a well-chewed chicken bone, gnawed raw. Through it all, this mother-daughter poetic duo reminds us that, in the beauty of human hope, ‘nothing sacred can be lost.’”
-Carmen Tafolla, State Poet Laureate of Texas
Join Mary and Aja for their official Book Release at Bookworks ABQ on June 8th at 6pm.
Mary Oishi
Mary Oishi has two poetic voices: one stark and simple like that of her Japanese ancestors, and one that echoes the rhythms of preachers from her upbringing by her American father’s fundamentalist relatives. Both voices sing her songs of truth and social justice. She is the author of Spirit Birds They Told Me (2011) and is one of twelve U.S. poets in 12 Poetas: Antologia De Nuevos Poetas Estadounidenses (2017), a project of the Mexican Ministry of Culture. Her poems have appeared in Mas Tequila Review, Malpais Review, Harwood Anthology, Sinister Wisdom, and other print and digital publications. Oishi is a public radio personality since 1996, most at KUNM-FM Albuquerque, where she hosts The Blues Show.
Aja Oishi
Aja Oishi lives in northern New Mexico. Her writing draws from ecology, anthropology, and the years she spent in Spain, Japan, and New Zealand. She revels in the uncaged world and makes a living (and a life) by fighting for prisoners as an appellate public defender. This is her first collection of poetry.
Featured SwEP Author: Emily Bjustrom
Swimming with Elephants Publications, LLC would like to reintroduce to you to Emily Bjustrom.
Emily Bjustrom’s chapbook, Loved Always Tomorrow, was published in April of 2014 by Swimming with Elephants Publications.
Emily Bjustrom’s work applies truth like healing; the uncovered wound, the blood, the sting, the cool breath, the forehead kisses. The most explicit topics are slid under our vulnerable doors with internal rhymes, consonance, and diction that soothes us into unlocking every lock. We let her in, not because we’re afraid she’ll break down our doors, but because we have to see the face tethered to a voice we know we could never live without. Her sound is the sweet violin amidst burning buildings, the piano in the desert. Loved Always Tomorrow is our moment to smile a tear off our itching cheeks before returning to the rubble.
John S. Blake
– Author of Beautifully Flawed, Pushcart Prize nominee, Teaching Artist
Pick up Emily Bjustrom’s chapbook, Loved Always Tomorrow, from Bookworks ABQ or order from Amazon or Barnes and Noble today!
Already own a copy? Please write a review on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or Goodreads, or submit a review to swimwithelephants@gmail.com for publications on this site.
Featured SwEP author: Courtney Butler
Swimming with Elephants Publications, LLC would like to reintroduce to you to Courtney A. Butler.
Courtney Butler’s collection, Wild Horses, was published in late 2017 after winning third place in a SwEP’s 2017 chapbook competition.
“Courtney A. Butler has written a book that manages to be strong and fierce while remaining innocent and full of wonder. Balancing the line between jaded adult and hopeful youth while painting the clearest picture of why the writing evokes that same sentiment- this is a fun, emotionally fulfilling collection that I will enjoy the 37th time as much as the 1st. I’ll be pre-ordering her next book, as there will surely be many more.”
-Review by Wil Gibson,
Author of Quitting Smoking, Falling In and Out of Love, and Other Thoughts About Death
Order Courtney A Butler’s Wild Horses from Amazon or Barnes and Noble today!
Courtney A Butler
Courtney Alyssa Butler grew up in south Texas, which accounts for her very decisive twang when she’s been drinking just a little too much, or supremely pissed off. Her family moved to New Mexico, where she developed a strong affinity for performance poetry and theater. She attended St. Andrew’s University in North Carolina, mostly because it had ponies and green grass to play in, but ended up with a double major in English and Creative Writing nonetheless. To continue her sordid love affair with the written word, she earned her master’s in Creative and Media Writing from the University of Swansea in Wales. She moved to Chicago, Illinois and worked as an English instructor and tutor, and earned her cosmetology license, before moving back to New Mexico in 2013. Now, she works in the non-profit sector by day, while doing hair, special effects makeup, and writing at night…like Batman but with more flair. You can find her first book of poetry Season for Season at St. Andrew’s University Press, Laurinburg, NC.
If you’re interested in poetry-in-progress, or the rambles of a mad woman, you can also check out her blogs:
TheCourtRose at thecourtrose.blogspot.com
and
Un Bel Mondo at thecourtrose-abeautifulworld.blogspot.com
Featured SwEP Author: Gigi Bella
Swimming with Elephants Publications, LLC would like to reintroduce to you to Gigi Bella.
Gigi Bella’s collection, 22, was published from Swimming with Elephants Publications in January 2017 in preparation for her move to New York City.
Listen to Gigi perform a poem from her collection here:
Pick up Gigi Bella’s collection, 22, from Bookworks ABQ
or order from Amazon or Barnes and Noble today!
Already own a copy? Please write a review on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or Goodreads, or submit a review to swimwithelephants@gmail.com for publications on this site.
Gigi Bella
GiGi Guajardo//{gigi bella} is an award-winning poet, musical theatre actress, and educator of the arts. She recently earned the title of Albuquerque’s Woman of the World 2017 representative. She was named a group piece champion at the 2016 National Poetry Slam and a National Semi-Finalist at the 2013 National Poetry Slam as a member of the Albuquerque Slam Team. She is a student at the University of New Mexico pursuing a bachelor’s degree in American Studies with a Theatre minor. She loves marshmallows, sparkling purple lipstick, and Wes Anderson movies. She continues to be a hopeless romantic.
Featured SwEP Author: Kat Heatherington
Swimming with Elephants Publications, LLC would like to reintroduce to you to Kat Heatherington.
Kat Heatherington’s collection, the bones of this land, was published in 2017 after winning first place in a SwEP’s 2017 chapbook competition.
“The Bones of this Land is an exquisite collection of poetry and craft at its apex. Heatherington is an expert at subtle but powerful verse. Her words read like a whisper but resonate like a bomb. Here is a book that will leave you satiated, but curiously enough, hungry for more. ”
~Jessica Helen Lopez,
author of Always Messing With Them Boys and a recipient of the Zia Book Award
Pick up Kat Heatherington’s the bones of this land from Bookworks ABQ
or order from Amazon or Barnes and Noble today!
Kat Heatherington
Kat Heatherington is a queer ecofeminist poet, sometime artist, pagan, and organic gardener. She has been living in Albuquerque since 1998, when she moved here to earn a Master’s in English at UNM.
In 2007 she collaborated with a group of three other unrelated adults to buy land in the Rio Grande Valley and form Sunflower River intentional community, sunflowerriver.org. Ten years and many life lessons later, Sunflower River is still going strong, and still providing plenty of material to write poems about.
Kat’s work primarily addresses the interstices of human relationships and the natural world. She has several self-published chapbooks, available from the author at yarrow@sunflowerriver.org. Her work can be read at https://sometimesaparticle.org.
Featured SwEP Author: Jessica Helen Lopez
Swimming with Elephants Publications, LLC would like to reintroduce to you to Jessica Helen Lopez.
Jessica Helen Lopez’s chapbook, cunt.bomb., was the first book published by Swimming with Elephants Publications in December of 2013. Her follow up collection, The Language of Bleeding, was published with SwEP in preparation for her travels to Nicaragua.
Listen to Jessica Helen Lopez perform at Ted X ABQ:
Jessica Helen Lopez’s chapbook, cunt.bomb. and The Language of Bleeding, from Bookworks ABQ
or order from Amazon or Barnes and Noble today!
Already own a copy? Please write a review on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or Goodreads, or submit a review to swimwithelephants@gmail.com for publications on this site.
Jessica Helen Lopez
Recently named one of 30 Poets in their 30’s to watch by MUZZLE magazine, Jessica Helen Lopez is a nationally recognized award-winning slam poet, and holds the title of 2012 and 2014 Women of the World (WOW) City of ABQ Champion.
She’s also a member of the Macondo Foundation. Founded by Sandra Cisneros, it is an association of socially engaged writers united to advance creativity, foster generosity, and honor community.
Her first collection of poetry, Always Messing With Them Boys (West End Press, 2011) made the Southwest Book of the Year reading list and was also awarded the Zia Book Award presented by NM Women Press.
She is the founder of La Palabra – The Word is a Woman collective created for and by women and gender-identified women. Lopez is a Ted Talk speaker alum.
You may find some of Lopez’s work at these sites –LaPalabra.abqnorthwest.com, thebakerypoetry.com, and asusjournal.org.
Her work has been anthologized in A Bigger Boat: The Unlikely Success of the Albuquerque Slam Scene (UNM Press), Earth Ships: A New Mecca Poetry Collection (NM Book Award Finalist), Tandem Lit Slam (San Francisco), Adobe Walls, Malpais Review, SLAB Literary Magazine and the upcoming Courage Anthology: Daring Poems for Gutsy Girls (Write Bloody Press).
Featured SwEP Author: Wil Gibson
Swimming with Elephants Publications, LLC would like to reintroduce to you to Wil Gibson.
Wil Gibson’s full length poetry collection, Quitting smoking, falling in and out of love, and other thoughts about death, was published by Swimming with Elephants Publications in April 2016.
Listen to Wil Gibson perform his poetry here:
Wil Gibson’s full length poetry collection, Quitting smoking, falling in and out of love, and other thoughts about death, from Bookworks ABQ
or order from Amazon or Barnes and Noble today!
Already own a copy? Please write a review on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or Goodreads, or submit a review to swimwithelephants@gmail.com for publications on this site.
Wil Gibson
Wil Gibson was born from a good idea and a bottle of bourbon and raised in some of the poorest communities in northern Illinois and eastern Arkansas. He has had work appear with Midwestern Gothic, Radius, Yellow Chair Review, Drunk in a Midnight Choir, and Electric Cereal (among others), was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net 2015. He would like to talk to you for hours on end about lighthouses and random other things. (also, in the interest of full disclosure, he has already started smoking again) He currently lives in California, but the locals call it Jefferson.
Featured SwEP Author: Jack Hirschman
Swimming with Elephants Publications, LLC would like to reintroduce to you to Jack Hirschman.
Jack Hirschman is an emeritus poet laureate of San Francisco, a member of the Revolutionary Poets Brigade, and the League of Revolutionaries for a New America. Both his publications with Swimming with Elephants Publications honor the work and words of revolutionaries from around the world.
His first collection with SwEP, entitled Passion, Provocation and Prophecy, serves as an ode to Pier Paolo Pasolini. It contains an interview between Jack Hirschman and Justin Desmangles discussing the work of Pasolini and the influence his work has had over time. The interview is followed by two arcanes written by Hirschman which reflect on the man Pasolini was.
Jack Hirschman’s newest release from Swimming with Elephants Publications is a translation of the poetry from Jusef Gërvalla, known as a journalist and a musician as well as a poet, novelist, and founder of the Marxist-Leninist group, the National Movement for the Liberation of Kosovo. In collection, entitled BEKIMI I NËNËS / A Mother’s Blessing, Jack Hirschman and Idlir Azizaj present a the first translation of Jusef Gërvalla’s poetry in the English Language.
Find Jack Hirschman’s newest translation, BEKIMI I NËNËS / A Mother’s Blessing
from Bookworks ABQ or order from Amazon or Barnes and Noble.
Jack Hirschman
Jack Hirschman (b. NYC, 1933) is the emeritus 4th Poet Laureate of the City of San Francisco (2006-2009). He has published or edited more than 100 books of poetry and essays, including translations from ten languages: Mayakovski (Russian), Neruda (Spanish), Artaud (French), Lombardo (Italian), Celan (German), Laraque (Haitian), Gjakova (Albanian), Gogou (Greek), Glik (Yiddish) and Nwadike (Swedish), among many others.
His own major work is The Arcanes, (2006) published by Multimedia Edizioni of Salerno, Italy in the American language in which the two Arcanes in this book appear. It is a 1,000 page book of his longer poems, which he calls Arcanes, and a 2nd massive volume of more than 150 new Arcanes are scheduled to be published by the same publisher in 2015.
He is a founding member of the Revolutionary Poets Brigade of San Francisco, and the World Poetry Movement in Medellin, Colombia.
Featured SwEP Author: Kai Coggin
Swimming with Elephants Publications, LLC would like to reintroduce to you to Kai Coggin.
Kai Coggin’s collection, Periscope Heart, was published in late 2014 after winning first place in a SwEP’s 2014 chapbook competition.
“Kai Coggin’s first full-length collection, Periscope Heart – as the title may suggest – overflows with intimate reflections on life and love that offer the reader heartfelt observations into places ordinarily beyond our range of vision. Through sensual chronicles that beautifully illuminate taboo subjects, Coggin’s poetry draws from nature and personal narratives to intimate us with her passion for justice, social change and spirituality, in dynamic, seductive strokes.”
– Catherine Ghosh
Editor of Journey of the Heart: An Anthology of Spiritual Poetry by Women
Listen to her read here:
Order Kai Coggin’s Periscope Heart directly from her per her website: kaicoggin.com
or from Amazon or Barnes and Noble today!
Kai Coggin
Kai Coggin is a poet and the author of PERISCOPE HEART, her stunning debut collection released by Swimming with Elephants Publications, (2014). Her second full-length collection is entitled Wingspan, a deeper dive into the soul and sound of this woman, this activist, this lover, this spirit. Wingspan was released on Earth Day, April 22, 2016, by Golden Dragonfly Press. 2017 brings the poet off the page into sound with the much anticipated release of her debut spoken world album SILHOUETTE.
Kai was born Kimberly Katherine Coggin on New Year’s Day 1980 in Bangkok, Thailand. She was raised in Southwest Houston (Alief), and is currently a happy blip in the 3-million-acre Ouachita National Forest in Hot Springs National Park, Arkansas.
Before transitioning to a career in writing, Kai was first a 9th and 10th grade English teacher, who took her students outside for poetry and drum circles on the lawn, and built a life-size balcony, and meter-stick-aluminum-foil-wrapped swords in her classroom for Romeo and Juliet. People wondered about her methods… but the students learned… and loved her. She convinced her students of the power of their own writing with a poetry and persuasive writing project that culminated with a visit from the internationally acclaimed author of The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros.
Kai believes that learning is a personal journey for everyone, that cannot be constricted and confined by the classifications and labels of standardized testing. She strives to, someday, help change the paradigm of education as a whole. In Houston, despite (or because of) her radical methods, she was recognized as Teacher of the Year, District Secondary Teacher of the Year, and competed for Regional Teacher of the Year against 5, out of 85,000 teachers.
Presently, with her focus shifted more towards poetry, Kai is a specialized Teaching Artist of Creative Writing, on the Arts in Education Roster for the Arkansas Arts Council and Arkansas Learning for the Arts. She also teaches a community adult creative writing class at Emergent Arts called Words & Wine.
Kai holds a Bachelor of Arts in Poetry and Creative Writing from Texas A&M University, and an honorary degree from the school of Hard Knocks. She writes poems of love, spirituality, the striving of the soul, feminism, race, sexuality, global injustice, metaphysics, and beauty. Everything that she writes is infused with Heart and Light.
Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Blue Heron Review, Lavender Review, Broad!, The Tattooed Buddha, Split This Rock, Yellow Chair Review, Drunk Monkeys, Snapdragon, ANIMA, Elephant Journal, and many other literary journals and anthologies. Her poetry has recently been nominated twice for The Pushcart Prize, as well as Bettering American Poetry 2015, and Best of the Net 2016.
Kai knows that words hold the potential to create monumental and global change, and she uses her words like a sword of Beauty. She can be found most Wednesdays at a local venue, reading her poems into an open mic, hoping the wind carries her words out to the world.
⌘
Featured SwEP Author: Matthew Brown
Swimming with Elephants Publications, LLC would like to reintroduce to you to Matthew Brown.
Matthew Brown’s collection, Verbrennen, was published from Swimming with Elephants Publications in January 2014 marking it one of the earliest publications by SwEP.
Listen to Matthew Brown perform a poem from his collection here:
Pick up Matthew Brown’s collection, Verbrennen, from Bookworks ABQ
or order from Amazon or Barnes and Noble today!
Already own a copy? Please write a review on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or Goodreads, or submit a review to swimwithelephants@gmail.com for publications on this site.
Matthew Brown
Matthew Brown is a young poet born and raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Though relatively new to slam poetry, he has preformed alongside some of Albuquerque’s most seasoned poets, and represented New Mexico two years in a row as a member Unidos Poetry Collective at Brave New Voices. Matthew Brown’s poems expose social, racial, and economic inequalities from both a Hispanic and African American perspective.
SwEP Featured Author: MJR Montoya
Swimming with Elephants Publications, LLC would like to reintroduce to you to MJR Montoya.
MJR Montoya’s collection, The Promethean Clock or Love Poems of a Wooden Boy, was published in late 2017 by Swimming with Elephants Publications, LLC after winning 2nd place in our 2017 chapbook competition.
“These poems are a way of telling you what I saw, at least the remnants of those things. My poems have codes in them. They have forms that have long since lost favor. They have rhyme schemes and syllabic structures of old and new places. They have formlessness that abides by current trends, but embraces none of them wholesale. They are, as Milton once wrote, poems that attempt to champion the unnamable and the indeterminable. Mine are the equations of empty sets and irrational numbers as much as they are of ritual and nostalgia. I have decided not to appease all critique. I am at rest, because the people I trust most have said that there is something in them, something of where I am from, what became of my home, and what is becoming in the world. And for the first time in a long time I’m not ashamed of my part in this story. With all that I am, let these poems be a part of my apology to the world and to my beloveds, an apology for each moment as it passes to the next…”
Pick up MJR Montoya’s collection, The Promethean Clock or Love Poems of a Wooden Boy, from Amazon or Barnes and Noble today!
Manuel (MJR) Montoya
Manuel (MJR) Montoya, was born and raised in Mora, New Mexico. He is a professor at the University of New Mexico. He blends studies of philosophy and literature with studies of international relations, economics and management to understand the evolution of the global political economy. He received his undergraduate degree at UNM, with graduate schooling from New York University, Oxford University, and Emory University. He is engaged in community work to support the creative economy, he is dedicated to work that eliminates child exploitation worldwide, and he is passionate about handmade craft – he has been an amateur watchmaker for 12 years. He has published poetry and short stories in various national publications.
Swimming with Elephants Publications 