Most Read Poets of 2023

Based on Readership

Three Poems by Akshaya Pawaskar

https://northofoxford.wordpress.com/2023/02/06/three-poems-by-akshaya-pawaskar/

Three Poems by T. J. Masluk

https://northofoxford.wordpress.com/2023/01/07/three-poems-by-t-j-masluk/

Calder at the Top of the Stairs by John Timpane

https://northofoxford.wordpress.com/2023/02/06/calder-at-the-top-of-the-stairs-by-john-timpane/

The Wedding Dress by Margaret Campbell

https://northofoxford.wordpress.com/2023/09/06/the-wedding-dress-by-margaret-campbell/

Two Poems by Ed Meek

https://northofoxford.wordpress.com/2023/07/10/two-poems-by-ed-meek/

Conversation with My Great-Grandfather by Sandra Rivers-Gill

https://northofoxford.wordpress.com/2023/07/10/conversation-with-my-great-grandfather-by-sandra-rivers-gill/

Our Children Are in the Fields Today by Cydney Brown

https://northofoxford.wordpress.com/2023/02/06/our-children-are-in-the-fields-today-by-cydney-brown/

Two Poems by Sean Howard

https://northofoxford.wordpress.com/2023/05/12/two-poems-by-sean-howard/

Love Stories for Girls by Susana H. Case

https://northofoxford.wordpress.com/2023/05/12/love-stories-for-girls-by-susana-h-case/

Song of the Green Flash by Catherine Chandler

https://northofoxford.wordpress.com/2023/10/08/song-of-the-green-flash-by-catherine-chandler/

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October 11th – Worrell and Kress at Northeast Philadelphia Regional Library

2^nd Wednesday’s Poetry @ Northeast Regional Library

Featured Poets + Open Mic

Curated By North of Oxford Literary Journal

6pm to 7:30pm

2228 Cottman Avenue, Philadelphia, Pa. 19149

October 11th

Dave Worrell and Leonard Kress

Dave Worrell’s latest collection, Runnemeade Boy was released in 2023. His chapbook “We Who Were Bound” was published in August 2012 by Casa de Cinco Hermanas Press. His limited-edition ekphrastic collection “Close to Home” appeared in 2015, featuring paintings by Catherine Kuzma. Dave’s poems have appeared in Slant, Canary, Shot Glass Journal, Heroin Chic, Referential Magazine, Symbiosis, U.S. 1 Worksheets, Exit 13 and elsewhere. He has performed his music-backed poems at Chris’ Jazz Café in Philadelphia and The Cornelia Street Café in New York.

Leonard Kress has published poetry, translations, non-fiction, and fiction in Missouri Review, Massachusetts Review, Iowa Review, American Poetry Review, Harvard Review, etc. His recent collections are The Orpheus Complex and Walk Like Bo Diddley. Living in the Candy Store and Other Poems and his new verse translation of the Polish Romantic epic, Pan Tadeusz by Adam Mickiewicz. Craniotomy Sestinas appeared in 2021. He lives in Blackwood, NJ and teaches at Temple University. https://northofoxfordreadingseries.wordpress.com/2023/05/04/2nd-wednesdays-poetry-northeast-regional-library-2023/ .

Ten Most Read Poets @ North of Oxford 2022

Ten most read poets as determined by the readership of North of Oxford for 2022

How Dreams Grow by Manasi Diwakar

https://northofoxford.wordpress.com/2022/03/12/how-dreams-grow-by-manasi-diwakar/

Layers of Blankets by Doug Holder

https://northofoxford.wordpress.com/2022/08/08/layers-of-blankets-by-doug-holder/

Pandemic of Violence Anthology II – Poets Speak

https://northofoxford.wordpress.com/2022/08/20/pandemic-of-violence-anthology-ii-poets-speak/

The Ballad of Morbid and Putrid By Sawyer Lovett

https://northofoxford.wordpress.com/2022/01/11/the-ballad-of-morbid-and-putrid-by-sawyer-lovett/

Pandemic of Violence Anthology I – Poets Speak

https://northofoxford.wordpress.com/2021/12/27/pandemic-of-violence-anthology/

Sisson’s by Eric D. Goodman

https://northofoxford.wordpress.com/2022/01/11/sissons-by-eric-d-goodman/

High Stakes by Ryan Quinn Flanagan

https://northofoxford.wordpress.com/2022/02/12/high-stakes-by-ryan-quinn-flanagan/

Two Poems by Susana H. Case

https://northofoxford.wordpress.com/2022/02/12/two-poems-by-susana-h-case/

The Game by Matthew Ussia

https://northofoxford.wordpress.com/2022/10/16/the-game-by-matthew-ussia/

Two Poems by Kerry Trautman

https://northofoxford.wordpress.com/2022/02/12/two-poems-by-kerry-trautman/

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Poetry coming on September 13th

Alexander Lazarus Wolff, Donna Pucciani, Michael Gushue, and David Kozinski

Fine Lines by Sean Howard

Fine Lines 

Standing at the edge of the sea is exhilarating. This is the meeting place of terrestrial and marine life, where two ecosystems intertwine.

Jeffrey C. Domm, Canada’s Atlantic Seashore

i. Northern Rock Barnacle

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Mouth at top

is closed during

low tides’

.

(Slow rush,

tongu-

ing…)

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ii. Eyed Finger Sponge

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‘Branches have small

holes, or “eyes”’

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(Wave, hand

staring back

at you…)

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iii. Northern Quahog

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‘Interior of shell

milky-white

with purple

stain’

.

(Quahog Grail,

bloodstain

rim)

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iv. Samphire

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Salad days

(no takers?) –

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‘Succulent stem and

branches, bright

green in spring’

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v. Maritime Garter Snake

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‘Rests very

still in the sun,

collecting warmth’

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(What beggar

could choose

more?)

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vi. Piping Plover

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‘…nest in a

depression…’

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(How many

of us dare?)

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Sean Howard is the author of five books of poetry in Canada, most recently Unrecovered: 9/11 Poems (Gaspereau Press, 2021). His poetry has been widely published in Canada, the US (including North of Oxford), UK, and elsewhere, and featured in The Best of the Best Canadian Poetry in English (Tightrope Books, 2017).

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High Stakes by Ryan Quinn Flanagan

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High Stakes 

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Seizing the high ground is important,

have you not read of the great campaigns?

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 And here this stooped man with his back to me,

a pile of stakes which he hammers into the soil above.

 .

 An old slag heap now repurposed and green again,

stakes driven deep into this unnatural hill to form a line.

 .

 A drooping pair of overalls, I see each faded denim strap

disappear over a mountain of disjointed shoulders.

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 The stacks from the nickel mines in the distance.

Billowing out their many black dahlia plumes.

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Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author residing in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his wife and many bears that rifle through his garbage.  His work can be found both in print and online in such places as: Evergreen Review, The New York Quarterly, Chiron Review, Setu, Red Fez, and The Oklahoma Review. 

Dear Anonymouse by Mike Maggio

Dear Anonymouse

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Dear Anonymouse:

I’ve noticed how lately

you’ve taken up residence

and claimed free reign of my humble home —

as if you were meant to be here.

.

How you scurry about my kitchen, Earl of Morning,

Prince of Demurity, Sovereign of Shyness

scorning contact, refusing to concede even my presence

while I’m perking coffee or scrambling eggs

or simply puttering about.

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The pantry, too, has succumbed to your shenanigans.

You’ve raided the rice, finagled the figs

rummaged the rind of a yet-to-ripen melon.

And all you’ve given for my unwilling generosity

is the back of your timorous tail

and a profligate amount of your prodigious pellets.

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Now I’ve tried to be lenient with you —

even, one might say, tolerant of your presence.

I’ve left you offerings for your midnight snack —

tempting morsels meant to appease your avid appetite —

a crumble of cheese beneath the sink

.

a pat of peanut butter near the fridge

even, once, a bowl of fruit left, unwrapped,

beside a special cocktail I concocted

meant to con you, meant to attract you

to my little contraption in which I wished to whisk you away.

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And yet, to no avail. You avoid my good will

and continue to sashay through my kitchen

ogling me as if I’m the one who should take his leave.

Dear Anonymouse:  please understand:

I do not wish to harm you.

I merely bid you and your progeny godspeed.

.

So please: pack your things.

Make haste with your belongings.

Seek shelter in some other domicile.

Because come tomorrow

a certain calico companion is about to join my campaign.

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Mike Maggio is a poet and fiction writer with nine full-length works to his name and numerous publications in journals including The Northern Virginia Review, The L.A. Weekly and others. His newest poetry collection, Let’s Call It Paradise,  , will be released in 2021 by San Francisco Bay Press.. He is an adjunct assistant-professor at Northern Virginia Community College and an associate editor of The Potomac Review His web site if www.mikemaggio.net

Celestial Elbow by D.R. James

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Celestial Elbow

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The sky wore the regalia of flames but

turned lavender-violet quietude

in a moment’s romance. And the breeze, how

it finessed everything and cradled me.

Awakened by the dazzle, I reposed—

riveted, infused, imbued by satin.

Gift after gift from ginger tongues, then glow

audible like visions. It was never

a coddling. The nod from the heavens

judged some memories mere indulgence—and grudge.

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D. R. James’s latest of nine collections are Flip Requiem (Dos Madres, 2020), Surreal Expulsion (Poetry Box, 2019), and If god were gentle (Dos Madres, 2017), and his micro-chapbook All Her Jazz is free, fun, and printable-for-folding at Origami Poems Project. He lives in the woods near Saugatuck, Michigan.

Two Poems by John Dorroh

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For Mary Oliver Who Loved Dogs

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We are learning new things

about the history of dog bones,

how they permeate the soil

on every continent, a gauge

of the manner in which civilizations

have flourished and failed, burying

their own bones beside them.

.

The collective souls of canine

beings – wolves and chihuahua,

beagles and basset, mixed breeds

and the paperless hound – form a cool

gray layer that only those who’ve

fallen in love with them ever sense

or see. It’s in our marrow, saturating

the pulp of existence.

.

We’ve always loved them, even

as they crouched on the perimeters

of pre-historic fires, inching forward,

cowering on bellies that kissed

the cold ground, stealing bits of skin

and meat while humans slept under

the stars.

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Reluctant Crow

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There’s a reluctant crow stuck in my throat,

unable or unwilling to recognize my face.

.

How could he not remember these acid-etched

furrows, this cute pink nose, such rosy cheeks

.

and a head the shape of a cube? He’s not trying,

that’s all. Sad bird. If I can remember the way

.

that green bottle flies entered the dead man’s mouth

at the river when I was 8, their drone-like metallic

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buzzing, the way the lemon sun felt on my neck,

and the excitement when we pulled up obsidian

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glass shards from the bottom of the gravel pit,

then why can’t this crow remember me? Perhaps

.

he harbors some gene for resilience, or experienced

a traumatic avian childhood with blood-drenched

.

scenes that he can’t get out of his head: witnessing

a bald eagle being shot from the sky, or seeing

.

his father murdered?  Hundreds of articles

documenting the intelligence of crows and cousins

.

of crows, feathered beings worthy of scientific literature,

of behavioral antics that defy description: Betty,

.

a New Caledonian, picks up a piece of wire

in her cage, uses an object to bend it, like a junior

.

engineer, into a hooked tool that she uses to lift

a chunk of scrumptious pig heart up into her beak.

.

Instead, I have the special crow, the one who doesn’t

fit the mold, the one who grew up just like me.

.

John Dorroh’s poetry has appeared in about 75 journals, including Feral, Dime Show Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Os Pressan, and Selcouth Station. He also writes short fiction and the occasional rant.

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