Crab Creek Review: Notes on Contributors: Spring/Summer 2003

AK ALLIN lives aboard her own 26' sailboat on the ship canal in Seattle, Washington. She recently returned from French Polynesia, where she spent six months crewing aboard a 43' yacht. Her next port is City College of New York, for an MA in Creative Writing.

CHRIS ANDERSON, Corvallis, Oregon, is a Professor of English at Oregon State University and author of several books, including Edge Effects, a finalist for the Oregon Book Award in creative nonfiction. A book of his poems, My Problem with the Truth, is forthcoming. He is also a Catholic Deacon. " A strong memory led me to the word 'Confirmation,' which then began to resonate as a pun, as what can we really confirm? What can we really know? I meet with a wonderful writer's cooperative at a local tavern called 'Squirrels.' 'BLT' describes a recent experience I had there by myself one day-an experience of grace maybe? Or foolishness? What moves us?"

MICHAEL BRADBURN-RUSTER, Prescott, Arizona, translates the work of José Luis Puerto. "Puerto's work is deeply wedded to the landscape and rhythm of the seasons of his native soil, the Sierra de Francia, west of Salamanca. Many of his poems represent winter and death not as a terminus, but a germination, a prelude to regeneration." This poem is the first part of a triptych.

E.G. BURROWS writes from Edmonds, Washington. His works have appeared in Malahat Review, Iowa Review, Poet Lore, Southern Poetry Review, Windsor Review, Chariton Review, Confluence, Reflections, New Zoo, Snake Nation, and others.

TOM CHANDLER is the Poet Laureate of Rhode Island and has been named Phi Beta Kappa Poet at Brown. "Sometimes obsession takes the form of small, intimate gestures."

JUSTIN COURTER, New York, New York hates SUVs. "This story is based on actual events."

ALICE DERRY teaches English and German at Peninsula College in Port Angeles, Washington, where she co-directs the Foothills Writers' Series. Her most recent volume is Strangers To Their Courage (Louisiana State Press, 2001). A chapbook of translations from Rainer Rilke appeared in July 2002 from Pleasure Boat Studio. "The poem's beginning came to me as I was stuck in traffic, listening to the radio. I've taught Othello quite a bit; its lines are often available to me."

STEVE EDWARDS, Lafayette, Indiana, teaches writing at Purdue University and travels west every chance he gets. "The poems came about during a seven-month excursion into solitude provided me by PEN/Northwest and the Boyden family, to whom I'm grateful beyond words."

STEPHEN FRECH, Cincinnati, Ohio, has published two volumes of poems: Toward Evening and the Day Far Spent (Kent State U.P., 1996) and If Not For These Wrinkles of Darkness (2001), which won the White Pine Press Poetry Prize. "'Here Now, Intent Now' lived with me for a time like birds themselves; lines came to me I couldn't understand but seemed vitally important. The writing then doesn't so much yield to direct approaches, inquiries-poems can be as shy as birds on a branch. It can be hard to know what will make them stay or what will scare them. The last lines articulate that tenuous engagement with wild creatures, with poems, with loved ones even. We do our best knowing that the smallest of gestures make all the difference."

KENNETH FROST writes from Wilton, Maine. His poems have appeared in Salmagundi, Southwestern Review, The Southern Review, and many others.

GREGORY HISCHAK, Seattle, Washington, is a writer and performer. He holds the keys to the Farm Pulp family library (www.farmpulp.com) and he's not a bad dancer for someone his age. "After a long dinner, one passes peacefully through the bright utility of a kitchen-its steady white hum follows you to the back door and the veil beyond."

NILE LANNING is a writer in Manhattan, New York. She has spent the last year working on a profile of Bill Buford for New York. Her non-fiction has appeared in a number of British and American glossies. "This is my first published story. It's about my Dad. I miss him."

DEBORAH MERSKY'S Works on Paper have been called "organic, richly decorative, and radiantly colorful." They are included in the collections of Microsoft, Safeco Insurance Company, University of Washington Medical Center, Washington State Arts Commission and others. Currently living in Seattle, Washington, Deborah has also created much public art, including the Vashon Transfer/Recycling Station.

KEVIN MILLER lives in Tacoma, Washington. Blue Begonia Press published his second collection, Everywhere Was Far. "Each of these poems deals with attraction."

BERN MULVEY, Columbia, Missouri, a 10-year-resident of Japan, is currently in the Ph.D. program in creative writing at the University of Missouri-Columbia. His poems and articles have appeared in Poetry, London Times, Nimrod, American Language Review, and Hokuriku Shijin Shishuu to name a few. "This poem arose from a combination of things: blizzard, divorce, a neighbor's dog hit by a car, and two cherry willows visible from the front porch. The biggest challenges, considering my mood at the time, was writing a poem without blame."

LEONARD ORR, Richland, Washington, is an English professor at Washington State University. His poems have recently appeared in Rosebud, Poets West, Bellowing Ark, Poem and Möbius. "Many of my poems are sparked by a Proustian flood of memory sparked by the mundane (in this case, sliding into a booth in a diner)."

FRANCESCA PRESTON, Healdsburg, California, is an MFA student in the Creative Writing Program at Mills College. She has a chapbook out from Osso Press as well as work in Walrus. "Kore is another name for Persephone."

JOSÉ LUIS PUERTO is one of Spain's leading literary voices and has published several volumes of poetry. He received the City of Segovia Prize as well as the Adonais and the coveted Gil de Biedma prizes.

FERNAND ROQUEPLAN, Olympia, Washington, has new work appearing in Short Story, Hunger, Spectacle, Moon Reader, Pitchfork, and Chaffin Journal. "I wrote most of the notes for this poem in Hiroshima; I don't sleep well, and substituted my confusion at waking to a crash in a strange place to the security I feel in my old house and feral garden."

LISA ROULLARD lives in Moses Lake, Washington where she teaches at Big Bend Community College. "'This Day, Late July' was inspired by an actual sign that said 'Free Roosters.' I still wish I'd at least stopped to see them."

MAYDA RUMBERG grew up in New York City and received an M.A. in English Literature from Cornell University in 1972. She now lives in Greenwich Village and retired from her career in publishing to become a visual artist. Her main goal is writing and illustrating Boxy the Turtle, a to-be-published work of great wit. Previous poetry has appeared in Plainsongs, Pangloss Papers, Poetpourri, The Round Table, and other magazines. "'Double Cream' is as self-explanatory as a poem can get. I am a great anglophile, adore the 'bovine south,' am of average weight, and now drink a lot of 1% milk."

STUART SILVERMAN, Hot Springs, Arkansas, is an expatriate Brooklynite living part-time in Chicago and part-time in Hot Springs. He also divides his poetry between formal and free verse. Hawk Publishing Group publishes his collection, The Complete Lost Poems. About 400 of his poems and translations appear in periodicals. "'Shell Game' began as a brief lyric based on literary materials and half on my own experiences in college and watching an unpleasant vet at work. It grew into its present form over quite a long time as I pursued my own feelings about its ramifications."

ELIZABETH TROTTER, Vashon Island, Washington, most recently published poems in Field and Ohio Review. "Before coming to Washington, I lived in Wisconsin. The endurance in memory of what I left behind never ceases to fascinate me."

RYAN G. VAN CLEAVE, writes from Green Bay, Wisconsin. His most recent books include a poetry collection, Say Hello (Pecan Grove Press, 2001), an anthology, Like Thunder: Poets Respond to Violence in America (University of Iowa Press, 2002), and a creative writing textbook, Contemporary American Poetry: Behind the Scenes (Allen & Bacon/Longman, 2003). "The longer I live in the Midwest, the more sinister and hypnotic I find it to be. These poems express my evolving relationship with this peculiar dichotomy of Middle America."

THOMAS WALTON, Boulder, Colorado, is the founding editor of 4th Street (Olympia, Washington) and is currently studying poetics at Naropa University. His work has appeared/will appear in Delmar, Arnazella, and The Penny Lane Anthology. "'No Hands' is my contribution to the ever-burgeoning turn of the millennium genre: the computer poem."

J. MARIE WILKINSON, Tucson, Arizona was born and raised in Seattle. Presently he is Poetry Editor of Senora Review and teaches University of Arizona. "This poem is from a series based on paintings by Susan Rothenberg. The poem is called 'Drag Your Careless Body out of the Careful Dusk.'"