Stone Canoe Poets– a reading by a sampling of poets who have been featured in the highly regarded Syracuse University journal of arts, literature and social commentary; David Lloyd, Beth Twiddy, Charles Martin and Jesse Nissim. Each will discuss and read from their latest book.

DAVID LLOYD directs the Creative Writing Program at Le Moyne College in Syracuse. He is the author of eight books, including two poetry collections: The Everyday Apocalypse (2002) and The Gospel According to Frank (2003, reissued in an expanded edition in 2010). In 2004 he published a fiction collection, Boys: Stories and a Novella. His poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Crab Orchard Review, Denver Quarterly, DoubleTake, Natural Bridge and Stone Canoe. A new poetry collection, Warriors, will appear in 2012 from Salt Publishing (London, UK). David served as fiction editor for the 2008 issue of Stone Canoe.

BETH TWIDDY took degrees in Chemistry and Biochemistry, with a minor in English, from Penn State University at University Park.  While there and immersed in a 3-year research project in a bioinorganic and physical chemistry lab, she designed, synthesized, and completed laser studies on a potential MRI contrast agent.  She began a Ph.D. in Pharmacology at Yale Medical School and dropped out when poetry took over her dreams and insisted on being recognized. Now, nearly 15 years later, she’s earned her MFA in Poetry from Syracuse University’s Creative Writing Program (2005).  Her first full-length book of poems, Love-Noise, was published in November, 2010, by Standing Stone Books (Syracuse and Brussels), and her chapbook, Zoo Animals in the Rain (Turtle Ink Press: Philadelphia, 2009), includes several poems that have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes.  Among other awards, she won The Joyce Carol Oates Award for Poetry and her poems appear in Barrow Street, POOL, the Australian journal Skive, and others. She teaches poetry at the Downtown Writer’s Center through the Syracuse YMCA, and taught literature and composition at Le Moyne College.  She serves as an editor for the poetry journal Comstock Review.

CHARLES MARTIN’s most recent book of poems, Starting from Sleep: New and Selected Poems, was a finalist for the Lenore Marshall Award of the Academy of American Poets in 2003.  His verse translation of the Metamorphoses of Ovid received the Harold Morton Landon Award from the Academy of American Poets in 2004. In 2005, he received an Award for Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His other books of poems include Steal The Bacon and What The Darkness Proposes, and a translation, The Poems of Catullus, all published by the Johns Hopkins University Press. Other works include Catullus, a critical introduction to the Latin poet, published in Yale University Press’s Hermes Series.  He is the recipient of a Bess Hokin Award from Poetry, a  Pushcart Prize, and fellowships from the Ingram Merrill Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He served as Poet in Residence at The Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York from 2005 to 2009.  His poems have appeared in Poetry, The New Yorker, The Hudson Review, Boulevard, The Threepenny Review, and in many other magazines and anthologies. He has taught at The Johns Hopkins University, Syracuse University, the Sewanee Writers Conference, the West Chester Conference on Form and Narrative in Poetry, and the Unterberg Center of the 92nd Street YMHA. He is currently on the faculties of the Stonecoast MFA Program and the School of Letters of The University of the South. His most recent book of poems, Signs & Wonders, was published by the Johns Hopkins University Press in the spring of 2011. His current projects include a collaborative translation with Gavin Flood (Academic Director of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies) of the Bhagavad Gita, to be published by W.W. Norton & Co. in 2012.

JESSE NISSIM is the author of Diagram Her Dream of Flight, finalist for the 2011 National Poetry Series Open Competition, runner-up for the 2008 Cleveland State University Poetry Center First Book Award, finalist for the 2011 Ahsahta Press chapbook award, and semifinalist for a number of others.  Her chapbook Alphabet for M was published by Dancing Girl Press in 2007 and her work has appeared in 26, Barrow Street (forthcoming), Borderlands, Court Green, ecopoetics, Fourteen Hills, Mad Hatter’s Review (Winner of the Trajectory Award), New American Writing, Requited, RHINO (Winner of Editor’s Award), Stone Canoe (forth-coming), Transfer, XANTIPPE, and Verse, among others. She is currently a Faculty Writing Fellow at Syracuse University.

Stone Canoe by Tom Huff

Stone Canoe, a journal of arts and ideas from Upstate New York, is published annually, each spring, by University College of  Syracuse University. Stone Canoe showcases the work of a diverse mix of emerging and well-established artists and writers with connections to Upstate New York. In doing so, the journal supports Syracuse University’s ongoing efforts to nurture creative community partnerships and seeks to promote a greater awareness of the cultural and intellectual richness that characterizes life in the region.

For more information: stonecanoe@syr.edu 315-443-4165