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About Gloria Mindock |
Nothing Divine Here by Gloria Mindock |
Blood Soaked Dresses by Gloria Mindock
"There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed. "
~Ernest Hemingway
New release June 10, 2013:
Flavia Cosma is an award winning Romanian-born Canadian poet, author and translator. She has a
Masters degree in Electrical Engineering from the Polytechnic Institute of Bucharest. Later she
studied Drama at the Community School of Arts—Bucharest, Romania. She is also an award winning
independent television documentary producer, director, and writer, and has published seventeen
books of poetry, a novel, a travel memoir and five books for children. Her work has been
represented in numerous anthologies in various countries and languages, and her book, 47 Poems,
(Texas Tech University Press) received the ALTA Richard Wilbur Poetry in Translation Prize.
Cosma was nominated three times for The Pushcart Prize with poems from Leaves of a Diary
(2006), The Season of Love (2008) and Thus Spoke the Sea (2008).
Flavia Cosma was awarded Third Prize in the John Dryden Translation Competition- 2007, for
co-translating In The Arms of The Father, poems by Flavia Cosma, (British Comparative
Literature Association & British Literary Translation Centre)
Cosma’s Songs at the Aegean Sea made the Short List in the Canadian Aid Literary Awards
Contest, Dec. 2007. Her translation into Romanian of Burning Poems by George Elliott Clarke was
published in Romania in 2006. Her translation from Spanish into Romanian of work by the
Argentinean poet Luis Raul Calvo was published in 2009 under the title Nimic Pentru Aici, Nimic
Pentru Dincolo. Her translation of work by the USA poet Gloria Mindock was published in 2010
under the title La Portile Raiului. Her translation into English of Profane Uncertainties by
the Argentinean poet Luis Raul Calvo was published by Červená Barva Press in 2010.
Flavia Cosma was appointed International Affairs Chair for The League of Canadian Poets in 2008.
Cosma’s poetry book Leaves of a Diary was studied at the University of Toronto E. J. Pratt
Canadian Literature during the school year 2007-2008. Flavia was decorated with the Golden Medal and was
appointed Honorary Member by the Casa del Poeta Peruano, Lima, Peru, 2010, for her poetry and her work as an international cultural
promoter.
Flavia Cosma is the director of the International Writers’ and Artists’ Residency, Val-David, Quebec, Canada
As in Flavia Cosma's whole literary production, nature isn't reduced here to the role of
a neutral backdrop to the poet's life; it influences her imagination and consciousness in
innumerable ways becoming a source of inspiration for a thorough studying of existing ideas
and for awakening new ones. Flavia is an expert in using nature as an adequate space for
metaphors, comparisons, symbols. She humanizes nature, granting it an interior life,
with the highest intensity, at the supreme level.
—Dr. Irena Harasimowicz-Zazecka PhD Philology, University of Bucharest, Romania
$15.00 | ISBN: 978-0-9844732-6-7 | 128 Pages | In Stock
New release May 27, 2013:
Krikor Der Hohannesian lives in Medford, MA and has been writing poetry for some 40 years though only
submitting work over the past several years. Since then, he has had poems published in many literary
journals including The Evansville Review, The South Carolina Review, Atlanta Review, Peregrine, The New
Renaissance, Hawaii Pacific Review and Connecticut Review. He also received honorable mention for the
New England Poetry Club's Gretchen Warren Award for best published poem of 2010. His first chapbook,
"Ghosts and Whispers," has been published by Finishing Line Press (2010). He also serves as Assistant
Treasurer of the New England Poetry Club.
Cover Art: Garabed Der Hohannesian
"In Krikor Der Hohannesian's poetry, we hear things we might not be able to hear otherwise. "A man is down"
signals the wind and rain coming in from the east, and the poet listens. In another poem a wife is keening,
a child is crying, and the poet listens, listens with all his imagination and his heart. We hear colonial whispers
emanating from the Granary Burial Ground. We hear the particular beauty of the names of the winds in many languages,
and in another poem we hear the equally specific sadness of parents grieving a lost child. We hear final words, and
words that should have been said, and we hear in several of these poems the long, agonized memory traces of the Armenian
genocide. In all there is a deeply empathic imagination at work, and these poems give the poet and the reader alike a
place of refuge, a place in the shadows in which to hold onto what is so profoundly dear and filled with meaning."
–Fred Marchant, Author of The Looking House
CRATERS OF THE MOON
"…and the dead tree gives no shelter"
T.S. Eliot – The Wasteland
the land is not quite black here,
more the deathly gray of volcanic ash
that mimes the absence of color.
Hiroshima might have looked like this
the morning after. Squeezed hard
between fissures in a vast mantle of tuff
haphazard scrub pine stretch gaunt fingers
skyward, clawing for what they cannot eke
from leached earth. Forlorn natural scarecrows
with no birds to scare off nor crops to shade
forsaken even by black buzzards
looping in futile parabolas.
Craters of the Moon National Monument Idaho
Reviews
Boston Area Small Press And Poetry Scene
Review by Dennis Daly
June 9, 2013
Refuge in the Shadows: by Krikor Der Hohannesian
http://dougholder.blogspot.com/
$7.00 | 44 Pages | In Stock
New release May 27, 2013:
Winner of the 2011 Cervená Barva Press Poetry Contest
Alan Elyshevitz is a poet and short story writer who was born in New York City and now lives
in East Norriton, PA. He is the author of a short story collection, The Widows and Orphans
Fund (Stephen F. Austin State University Press), and two poetry chapbooks, The Splinter in
Passion’s Paw (New Spirit) and Theory of Everything (Pudding House). He is a two-time
recipient of a fellowship in fiction writing from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.
Currently, he is an Assistant Professor of English at the Community College of Philadelphia.
"To put it in baseball terms, Alan Elyshevitz is a five-tool poet: his poems smooth as silk,
whether he's imagining Akhmatova, trying to make sense, as we all are, of this often
confusing world, or acknowledging that while pizza may be bad for you, it’s heavenly and he’s
going to enjoy some slices. How can you not love a poet who writes, "The soul cranes its
neck to observe/the maximum number of yellow bikinis"? Imaginary Planet is full of such
nuggets, a book with intelligence and compassion to burn. Elyshevitz is a poet to savor and
be thankful for."
—Tim Suermondt, author of Just Beautiful
$7.00 | 35 Pages | In Stock
New Release: Hyperlinks of Anxiety by Daniel Y. Harris
Daniel Y. Harris holds a Master of Arts in Divinity from The University of Chicago, where he
specialized in the history and hermeneutics of religion and wrote his dissertation on The Zohar.
He is the author of The New Arcana (with John Amen, New York Quarterly Books, 2012), Paul Celan and the
Messiah’s Broken Levered Tongue: An Exponential Dyad (with Adam Shechter, Červená Barva Press, 2010; picked by The
Jewish Forward as one of the 5 most important Jewish poetry books of 2010) and Unio Mystica (Cross-Cultural
Communications, 2009). He is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee. His poetry, experimental writing, art and essays have
been published in The Denver Quarterly, European Judaism, Exquisite Corpse, The New York Quarterly, Poetry Salzburg
Review, among others.
His website is www.danielyharris.com.
Daniel Y. Harris’s new volume of poetry brings together a range of texts – older and newer – evocative
of the qualms and uncertainties of our new millennium. A subtle and highly affective read.
—Sander L. Gilman, Distinguished Professor of the Liberal Arts and Sciences;
Professor of Psychiatry, Emory University
Is cyberspace the most recent iteration of the diaspora? Will the next Zohar be composed
in computer code? Can notarikon generate lyric poems out of the discourses of pharmacology,
neurology, biophysics…? Welcome to the Hotel Url, Daniel Y. Harris, sole owner and proprietor,
where these questions—and others that the reader has yet to dream—will be answered.
No need to be anxious: in less than a nanosecond, the hyperlinks elaborated in Harris’s poems
will whisk you from catastrophe creation to apocalypse and beyond. Beam me up, Ezekiel!
—Norman Finkelstein, Professor of English, Xavier University and author of
On Mount Vision: Forms of the Sacred in Contemporary American Poetry
Daniel Y. Harris combines impressive erudition with a profound awe for continuity—that the
eternal energies underlying Life itself constantly (re)iterate and (re)incarnate in myriad
waxing and waning forms. Ideas birth Art; Art births Ideas. In such fashion, to employ classic
terms, the heart and mind forge a dynamic union resulting in both clarity of perception and
depth of feeling. These are poems to be read and reread, concepts and descriptive phrases
operating like portals into other worlds. In Hyperlinks of Anxiety, Harris functions as a
twenty-first century, digital alchemist, adeptly yoking the abstract and concrete, offering
us singular and transformative experiences, all the while reminding us that Poetry is trans-authorial,
Mystery our only true teacher.
—John Amen, author of At the Threshold of Alchemy; editor of The Pedestal Magazine
$17.00 | ISBN: 978-0-9883713-4-7 | 156 Pages | In Stock
May 3, 2013: Sweet Snow A novel of the Ukrainian famine of 1933 by Alexander J. Motyl
Cover Photograph: Mark Hewko
Alexander Motyl is a writer, painter, and professor. He is the author of four novels, Whiskey Priest,
Who Killed Andrei Warhol, The Jew Who Was Ukrainian, and Sweet Snow, and two novellas, Flippancy and My Orchidia;
his poems have appeared in Mayday, Counterexample Poetics, Istanbul Literary Review, Orion Headless,
The Battered Suitcase, Red River Review, Green Door, and New York Quarterly. He has done performances
of his fiction and poetry at the Cornelia Street Café and the Bowery Poetry Club in New York.
Motyl’s artwork is represented on the Internet gallery, www.artsicle.com, and has been exhibited
in solo and group shows in New York, Philadelphia, Westport, and Toronto. He teaches at Rutgers
University-Newark and lives in New York.
Sweet Snow is set in the winter of 1933 in Ukraine. A terrible famine is raging in the countryside, while the
Soviet secret police is arresting suspected spies in the cities. A German nobleman from Berlin, a Jewish communist
from New York, a Polish diplomat from Lwów, and a Ukrainian nationalist from Vienna come to share a cell in some
unknown prison. One day, as they are being transported to another prison, their van overturns, their guards are
killed, and they are freed — to wander amidst the devastated villages, desolate landscapes, snowbound villages,
and frozen corpses. As they struggle to survive, they come to grips with the horror of the famine as well as
with their own delusions, weaknesses, and mortality.
$18.00 | ISBN: 978-0-9883713-7-8 | 154 Pages | In Stock
May 12, 2013: The Bonsai Curator by Pamela L. Laskin
Pamela L. Laskin is a lecturer in the English Department, where she directs the Poetry
Outreach Center. Poetry collections include: Remembering Fireflies and Secrets of Sheets
(Plain View Press), Van Gogh’s Ear (Červená Barva Press), Daring Daughters/Defiant
Dreams (A Gathering of Tribes), and The Plagiarist (Dos Madres Press). Several children’s
books have been published.
In The Bonsai Curator, through metaphor, myth, and fairy tale, Pam Laskin
chronicles a life, from the figurative museum, into the woods, then out of that
museum, into the world. But my favorite moments live in her language and
imagery, like: “The pines, bamboo, and plum trees... from the same father, / a
recluse / who made his children lovely, / but lonely.” / and “I am good at
stunting growth; / I’ve kept myself / five forever.” As always, Laskin doesn’t
blink, and she doesn’t flinch, either.
—Estha Weiner
In this subtly complex collection of poems, Pam Laskin takes the image of
bonsai—stunted and scarred into beauty through deliberate human
artifice—and makes it a metaphor of being mothered, smothered and
“wretchedly loved.” Then with great deftness, she uproots the image and
offers us a fresh and expansive vision of a tree, one that summons us to the
sprawling beauty of parenting—and of poetry—that is nurtured in respect
and love.
—David Groff, Author of CLAY
Bonsai Beauty
I have been birthed/unearthed
from air,
a mutation
my odd, atrophied limbs
are startling.
Like a fixture I stand
paralyzed
by motherless memories.
Yes, there is a tree here
but at fifty
I still can't grow.
$17.00 | ISBN: 978-0-9883713-5-4 | 72 Pages | 3 in Stock
March 2013 Workshops
at the Červená Barva Press Studio
"From Get That Pen Out: Writing Exercises"
Pictures courtesy of Irene Koronas
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ABOUT THE PRESS
ČERVENÁ BARVA PRESS was founded in April of 2005.
The press solicits poetry, fiction, and plays from various writers
around the world, and holds open contests regularly for its chapbooks,
postcards, broadsides and full-length books.
I look for work that has a strong voice, is unique, and that takes risks with language.
Please see submission guidelines for current information.
I encourage queries from Central and Eastern Europe
Gloria Mindock is editor and publisher of Červená Barva Press. In 2007, she took over as editor of the Istanbul Literary Review,
an online journal based in Turkey. In 2010, she co-founded an experimental journal, X Peri, with Irene Koronas.
She is the author of two chapbooks, Doppelganger (S. Press), Oh Angel (U Šoku Štampa) and is the author of three books,
Blood Soaked Dresses (Ibbetson St. Press, 2007), Nothing Divine Here (U Šoku Štampa, 2010), and
La Portile Raiului (Ars Longa Press, Romania, 2010), translated into the Romanian by Flavia Cosma.
Gloria has been published in numerous journals including River Styx, Phoebe, Poet Lore, Blackbox, Ibbetson St., WHLR, Poesia,
Arabesques, and Bogg. In Romania, her poems can be found in UNU: Revistă de Cultură, Gând Românesc, Citadela and the anthology Murmur of
Voices (Cogito Press) with translation by Flavia Cosma. Other anthologies include: Bagel With the Bards No.1 and No. 2,
WHLR Anthology # 1, and City Lights.
Recently, she was interviewed by Luis R. Calvo and Flavia Cosma in the literary magazine,
Generación Abierta (Buenos Aires, Argentina). The interview was translated into Spanish by Flavia Cosma.
Gloria has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, St. Botolph Award and was awarded a fellowship from the Somerville Arts Council.
From 1984-1994, she edited the Boston Literary Review/BLuR and was co-founder of Theatre S & S. Press, Inc.
Theatre S. received grants from the Polaroid Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, The Globe Foundation,
New England for the Arts, Massachusetts Cultural Council, and the Somerville Arts Council.
With an extensive background in theatre, Gloria has written and performed numerous performance pieces including
BIG BOMB BUICKS, WHERE DID ALL THOSE BIRDS AND DOGS COME FROM?, I WISH FRANCISCO FRANCO WOULD LOVE ME, and
SKIN CELLS, MAGGOTS, AND OTHER POINTS OF INTEREST. Her poetry collection called Doppelganger was a text of a
theatre piece of the same name performed by THEATRE S. A review by STAGES stated she took great liberties with
Poe and "captured the romantic desperation of "William Wilson," a tale of self-destructive double-identity."
Gloria has performed, acted, composed music, and sang in the theatre.
Her newest performance piece is called WALKING IN El SALVADOR. Gloria works
as a Social Worker and freelances editing manuscripts and conducting workshops for writers.
Gloria Mindock's Website is currently under construction.
Nothing Divine Here by Gloria Mindock
U Šoku Štampa Press, 2010
Gloria Mindock is the author of the forthcoming book, La Porile Raiului (Ars Longa Press,
2010, Romania) and Blood Soaked Dresses (Ibbetson Street Press, 2007).
She is editor of Cervena Barva Press and the Istanbul Literature Review,
an online journal based in Istanbul, Turkey. She has had numerous
publications including Poet Lore, River Styx, Phoebe, Blackbox, Poesia,
Bogg, Ibbetson, WHLR, UNU: Revista de Cultura, Citadela, Aurora, and
Arabesques. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, St. Botolph
Award, and was awarded a fellowship from the Massachusetts Cultural
Council distributed by the Somerville Arts Council.
From the Preface
Passionate and rebellious, Gloria Mindock’s poetry jumps forcefully from the page, grabs the reader
by the collar of his coat and holds and hangs on to his/her attention.
In unison with the poet’s heart, the nature of things is in big turmoil here, forever searching for the
elusive Divine Harmony, the only force capable of rearranging the world into one of love and
understanding.
In a perpetual state of sadness and grief, these poems descend to the very core of the raw discourse
of the soul, devoid of artifice and pose. The stark simplicity of their statement disarms us and leaves
us vulnerable in front of the bitter reality of life.
—Flavia Cosma, author of seventeen books of poetry, a novel, a travel memoir, and
four books for children
The stunning thing about Mindock’s work is its overwhelming sense of
the real world in real time. It’s “poetic” in its own way,
well-crafted, agile, nicely balanced, but in terms of content, you move
into Mindock’s world and you’re suddenly in a basic, essential reality
that hardly anyone in the poetry world touches: “I see your skull
veiled by a cloud/Eyelids sunk/Hands pressed on knees/Heart gone/A
sight of secrets//I think living is brave/Death is a release/The dog
knows -- heaven is nothing but a frill.” (“Dog Dance,” p.41). An
interesting mixture of existential toughness crowned by an ultimate
sense of final nothingness.
It’s interesting how Mindock’s world-view combines a dispairing sense
of expanding out into the horrific Now with a vision of everything
eventually dissolving into nothingness: “Living on this earth is/one
big nightmare.,/This landscape frightens me./Too much death./Think
about it.//I refuse to fall short of detail so/ here it is: Death of
emotion/Death of love/Death of skin...//I’m going away to where I
really belong./To me, this is uplifting.” (“Aftermath,” p.63).
Very few style-games here. This is poetry as a minimalist Declaration
of Finality. And the very fact that Mindock doesn’t play style-games
makes her vision a thousand times more effective/powerful than the
word-game players who turn poetry into a kind of syntactical
basketball.
—Hugh Fox
In Nothing Divine Here, Mindock invokes a resurrection, the power of love to spring eternal from
the hurt we all know. She looks at the personal and the political, that haunting polarity, and weaves
a gentle but brave hopefulness between them.
—Afaa Michael Weaver, Simmons College
Gloria Mindock is a fearless poet. She gets right in the face, in the very nostril of death. She
confronts her past lovers, her dreams, dashed or otherwise, not with cool detachment, but with a
visceral lyrical and emotional engagement. She has made her pain into high art, into the high holy.
Mindock, is a force to be reckoned with, so watch your back!
—Doug Holder, Arts Editor The Somerville News, Founder Ibbetson Street Press
Review by Michael Parker at Unlikely Stories:
http://www.unlikelystories.org/blog/
$15.00 | ISBN: 978-0-578-04760-7 | 87 Pages | In Stock
Blood Soaked Dresses by Gloria Mindock
Ibbetson Street Press, 2007
In her fascinating poem cycle, Gloria Mindock jolts back into memory the roots of El Salvador's present day violence.
Mindock coaxes to the page the voices of the dead who lie, less in peace, than in restless obsession with the atrocities
they suffered. She brings forth as well the voices of the living who seem startled to find that they died somewhere between
the horrors they witnessed and the grave they have yet to lie down in. Blood Soaked Dresses is a beautiful,
harrowing first book.
--Catherine Sasanov
Also available at Grolier Poetry Bookstore in Cambridge, MA., and can be ordered online at: Amazon, Barnes and Nobles, and Powells.
For signed copies: order directly from the author at: P.O. Box 440357, W. Somerville, MA 02144-3222 ($13.50 plus $3.00 S/H)
"El Salvador, 1983" was translated into Serbian by Berislav Blagojevic:
http://hiperboreja.blogspot.com/2011/05/el-salvador-1983-glorija-mindok.html
Berislav Blagojevic's Blog:
http://berislavblagojevic.wordpress.com/2011/05/17/el-salvador-1983/
To read reviews go to:
Boston Globe review by Ellen Steinbaum
Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene Reviews:
http://dougholder.blogspot.com/search?q=lo+gallucio
http://dougholder.blogspot.com/search?q=irene+koronas
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