Poets Wear Prada at Sunday's Hoboken Arts & Music Festival

HOBOKEN ARTS & MUSIC FESTIVAL
Sunday, May 3, 2015
11AM - 6PM
Washington Street from City Hall to 7th Street, Hoboken, NJ

Join Poets Wear Prada in our hometown, the birthplace of Frank Sinatra and professional baseball, Hoboken, New Jersey, Sunday, May 3, 2015 from 11AM to 6PM for a day of FREE LIVE MUSIC, GOOD EATS,  an OUTDOOR ART SHOW, and many, many SMALL BUSINESS VENDORS.  We will be selling our beautiful poetry books and launching our new line of poetry greeting cards. There will also be a sneak preview of  Roxanne Hoffman's upcoming July art show at the Hoboken Library.  Meet author, recording artist and performance poet, Tantra-zawadi who will be signing her books and CD's at our table all day at the event.

POETRY GREETING CARDS FROM POETS WEAR PRADA

POETRY BOOKS FROM POETS WEAR PRADA

Poet Daniel Simpson Launches Debut Collection at Dodge Poetry Festival in Newark New Jersey

October 25, 2014, Newark, NJ - Poet Daniel Simpson will be reading from his debut collection "School for the Blind" at 2014 Dodge Poetry Festival today from 3:00 to 4:10PM at NJPAC/Victoria Theater. Simpson's reading is part of a panel discussion titled "Present Imperfect: Poets on Poetry and Disability" with fellow poets Jennifer Bartlett, Ona Gritz, and Alex Lemon. Copies of the new book can be purchased on site all day and on Sunday from Barnes and Noble, the official bookseller for the Festival. There will be an official book signing today from 4:15PM to 4:45PM on the second floor across the hall from the onsite bookstore.

A recipient of a Fellowship in Literature from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Simpson has published poems in "Prairie Schooner," "The Cortland Review," "Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review," "Passager," "Atlanta Review," "The Louisville Review," and "Margie," among other literary journals. Cinco Puntos Press, El Paso, Texas, published his essay “Line Breaks the Way I See Them” and four of his poems in "Beauty Is A Verb: The New Poetry of Disability," a 2012 ALA Notable Poetry Book called “unusual and powerful” by "Publisher’s Weekly" in a starred review.

Daniel Simpson and his identical twin brother, David, were born blind in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, in 1952. After attending the Overbrook School for the Blind through eighth grade (1956 - 1966), Dan became one of the first blind students in his county to go to a public school. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in English and music from Muhlenberg College, Allentown, Pennsylvania, where he graduated Summa cum Laude and Class Salutatorian. 

Not only an accomplished poet, but musician too, Simpson has a Master of Music from Westminster Choir College, Princeton, New Jersey, as well as Master of Arts in English and a teaching certificate from the University of Pennsylvanina. He traveled to Paris for a year of private study with the world-renowned organist André Marchal.  Simpson has been singing with the Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia, a 140-voice choir, for twenty years.

He serves as Access Technology Consultant to the Free Library of Philadelphia and works as a Technical Support Specialist for the Library of Congress. He and Ona Gritz are the Poetry Editors for "Referential Magazine."   He currently lives in Lansdown, Pennsylvania.

Simpson's collection of twenty poems addresses blindness not as disability but as another dimension of a multi-faceted, multi-talented self. For Simpson, blindness is not a loss nor a right denied, but an essential fact of his identity, a birthright embraced and shared with a partner in childhood crimes, his twin brother. Any pity is misplaced, any assessment that his blindness is  a shortcoming inaccurate.  In one poem he promises to tell his Aunt Polly his vision of  paradise in the afterlife: "It's really going to be something," I'll say. / "In Heaven, you'll finally get to be blind."  

Poet Stephen Dunn, 2001 recipient of a Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, has said "Daniel Simpson's fine 'School for the Blind' could as easily have been called 'An Education for the Sighted,' because is works both ways. Simpson makes us privy -- without hype or sentimentality -- to what it feels like to be blind, to live with and fall in love with the tactile world and its language."

"School for the Blind" is published by Poets Wear Prada, a small literary press founded in 2006 and based in Hoboken, New Jersey. 

Michael T Young Wins Jean Pedrick Chapbook Award for "Living in the Counterpoint"

New Jersey Poet Michael T. Young Receives Jean Pedrick Chapbook Award

Michael T. Young of Jersey City, New Jersey, and Kyle Potvin of Derry, New Hamshire, were announced as co-winners of the New England Poetry Club's 2014 Jean Pedrick Chapbook Award, judged by poet David Ellis.

"Living in Counterpoint" (L), Author Michael T. Young (R)

New England Poetry Club
(f. 1915)

PRLog - Oct. 8, 2014 - JERSEY CITY, N.J. -- Michael T. Young of Jersey City, New Jersey, has been named co-winner of the 2014 Jean Pedrick Chapbook Award for his third poetry collection, “Living in the Counterpoint.” He shares the award with Kyle Potvin of Derry, New Hamshire, who received it for her debut poetry collection, “Sound Travels on Water.” This year’s judge was poet David Ellis. Both collections were published by Finishing Line Press of Georgetown, Kentucky.

The Jean Pedrick Chapbook Award is given for the best chapbook published in the previous two years. A chapbook is small poetry collection usually under forty pages in length and typically published as a pamphlet. Started in 2008, the Pedrick Award is administered by the New England Poetry Club. Founded in 1915 by poets Amy Lowell, Robert Frost and Conrad Aiken, the New England Poetry Club is the oldest poetry reading series in America.

Michael T. Young has published two other collections, an earlier  chapbook, “Because the Wind Has Questions” (Somers Rocks Press, 1997), and a full-length collection of poems, “Transcriptions of Daylight” (Rattapallax Press, 2000). Advance copies of his latest book, “The Beautiful Moment of Being Lost,” are available from New Jersey's Hoboken-based publisher Poets Wear Prada. Young has received a fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and the Chaffin Poetry Award. He was also a recipient of a William Stafford Award.

Jean Pedrick (1922 - 2006)

“Living in the Counterpoint” was published by Finishing Line Press in 2012. “The book explores how we identify who we are, best, in the context of what we are not. The central theme of the collection is the necessity of taking risk in self-exploration. It’s similar to the odd way that candies are made better-tasting by adding a little spice to them," said author Michael T. Young. "Living in the Counterpoint" is a prelude to Young’s latest full-length collection, “The Beautiful Moment of Being Lost,” which continues his poetic exploration of self-identity and risk.

Both co-winners will each receive $100 and are invited to read at the New England Poetry Club.

Poets Wear Prada Furnishes “The Key” by Chicago Stylist Ice Gayle Johnson

Poets Wear Prada announced today publication of Ice Gayle Johnson’s debut poetry collection “The Key: Lady Grizzly & Sir Charles Otter,” her very personal account of love and loss, both familial and romantic.

(Hoboken, NJ – May 6, 2012) Poets Wear Prada today announced release of “The Key: Lady Grizzly & Sir Charles Otter” by Ice Gayle Johnson. Creator of “The Five-point Cut,” “Graduated Bob” and “Fire Fly,” Chicago-based stylist Johnson, a member of Intercoiffeur, the international honorarium and organization for hairdressing professionals, served on Clairol’s Presidential Council with First Lady Nancy Reagan’s colorist. An accomplished photographer, she has been represented by the Ward Nasse Galley of New York, her photos appearing on Marcel Schulman Greeting Cards, Signature Greetings, and others. Jack Cooper, Production Editor at Poets Wear Prada, said “I am happy and proud to announce ‘The Key’ by Ice Gayle Johnson. It is profoundly beautiful: an unexpected turn of the lock. Hidden chambers of the heart lead from a girlhood kitchen to the panorama of windows that survive the woman's adult life. Its author already distinguished for her perspective gained through the camera lens and in fashioning the human head turns observant eye and scissor-hands to literary style.”

THE KEY
By Ice Gayle Johnson

Johnson’s debut poetry collection shares her very personal experiences of love and loss, first the familial and then the romantic. The books begins with scenes from life with a mysterious, mysteriously well-educated father, lone survivor of Nazi tyranny in a Lithuanian town living out his days as a janitor in Chicago; a neurotic, often-abusive mother, rival for the father’s affection; and an older sibling, rival for the mother’s. Mother and daughter become estranged, reuniting shortly before the mother’s death. The book ends with a sequence of love poems recounting romances mostly broken but still treasured.

“The appeal of this book begins in its generosity as a memoir. The real-life scenes seem triggered by the discovery of a shoebox full of unsorted snapshots, the same moments seen again and again, different angle and lens -- out of focus, in focus, telescopic to panoramic. In fact, they are carefully selected and laid out on the kitchen table steadily to reveal ‘the big picture,’ as the author matures, accepting the truth about her family, her lovers and herself,” said Poets Wear Prada Publisher and Senior Editor Roxanne Hoffman.

Leni Zumas, author of “Farewell Navigator: Stories” (Open City, 2008) writes “These poems are raw, brave, and sometimes hilarious. Ice Gayle Johnson searches the hidden rooms of family history with a determined eye. From nuns to nightmares to cheesecake, she traces with great compassion the debris of haunted relationships.” Barry Wallenstein, author of six poetry collections, “Drastic Collections” (New York Quarterly, 2012) his most recent, writes “Ice is anything but cold. These confessions of unashamed love, expressed frankly and directly, are warm enough to heat a city.”

Author Ice Gayle Johnson

A founder and shaper of Uphook Press, Ice co-edited and contributed to its debut collection, “A Cautionary Tale: Peer into the Lives of Seven New York Performing Poets,” in 2008. Three other anthologies have followed: “you say. say.” (2009), “Hell Strung and Crooked” (2010), and “gape-seed” (2011). Ice Gayle Johnson has performed her poetry, coast to coast -- from the Bowery Poetry Club in New York to The Beat Museum in San Francisco. Her spoken word tracks have been featured by Stay Thirsty Media and Poetz.com. Eponymous CD and DVD are available at CDbaby and at DVD.com.

“The Key: Lady Grizzly & Sir Charles Otter” by Ice Gayle Johnson (Hoboken: Poets Wear Prada, 2012), 42 pages, ISBN-10: 0615606512, ISBN-13: 978-0615606514, list price: $12.00, is available in paperback from Amazon Books and other popular booksellers.

Founded in 2006, Poets Wear Prada publishes beautifully designed, well-crafted poetry chapbooks from Sinatra’s hometown, the birthplace of professional baseball.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:
Jack Cooper
atelierprincipen@gmail.com
201.253.0561