Eric Abbott was recently the University of Arizona Poetry Center Summer Poet-In-Residence, chosen by judge Richard Siken. He edits the microscopic press Impy from his home in Missoula, Montana. He is a graduate of the Master of Fine Arts program at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. His poems have appeared in American Letters & Commentary, Skanky Possum, Goodfoot, Spinning Jenny, Born, The Journal, The Sonora Review, and elsewhere.

Marcia Arrieta is the editor and publisher of Indefinite Space. Her poems and visuals have appeared in Eratio, MiPOesias, Zafusy, mrpsnd, melancholia's tremulous dreadlocks, gestalten, textimagepoem, Womb, Dusie, and elsewhere. Her chapbook experimental: was published by Potes & Poets Press.

Cynthia Arrieu-King is a doctoral student at the University of Cincinnati and an echocardiographer. Her chapbook The Small Anything City is forthcoming from Dream Horse Press. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, No Tell Motel, Pilot Poetry, Hotel Amerika, and Court Green.

John M. Bennett has published over 200 books and chapbooks of poetry and other materials. Among the most recent are rOlling COMBers (Potes & Poets Press, 2001), MAILER LEAVES HAM (Pantograph Press, 1999), LOOSE WATCH (Invisible Press, 1999), CHAC PROSTIBULARIO (with Ivan Arguelles; Pavement Saw Press, 2001), HISTORIETAS ALFABETICAS (Luna Bisonte Prods, 2003), PUBLIC CUBE (Luna Bisonte Prods, 2003), THE PEEL (Anabasis Press, 2004), GLUE (xPress(ed), 2004), LAP GUN CUT (with F. A. Nettelbeck; Luna Bisonte Prods, 2006), INSTRUCTION BOOK (Luna Bisonte Prods, 2006), la M al (Blue Lion Books, 2006), CANTAR DEL HUFF (Luna Bisonte Prods, 2006), SOUND DIRT (with Jim Leftwich; Luna Bisonte Prods, 2006), and BACKWORDS (Blue Lion Books, 2007). He has published, exhibited and performed his word art worldwide in thousands of publications and venues. He was editor and publisher of Lost and Found Times (1975-2005), and is Curator of the Avant Writing Collection at The Ohio State University Libraries. His work, publications, and papers are collected in several major institutions, including Washington University (St. Louis), SUNY Buffalo, The Ohio State University, The Museum of Modern Art, and other major libraries.

Erin M. Bertram is a fellow in the MFA Writing Program at Washington University in St. Louis. She writes for The Vital Voice and edits shadowbox press, which publishes progressive writing, always by hand, and often by underrepresented writers, with a tendency toward poetry. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Bloom, Columbia Poetry Review, MiPOesias , and Ugly Accent. Two chapbooks are forthcoming: Alluvium (dancing girl press, 2007), and, with Sarah Lilius, Here, Hunger (NeO Pepper Press, 2007).

David-Baptiste Chirot was born Lafayette, Indiana, grew up in Vermont, and has lived in Gottingen, Germany, Arles and Paris, France, Hastveda, Sweden, Wroclaw, Poland, Boston and currently Milwaukee. His books include Anarkeyology (Runaway Spoon), Offender Handbook and Zada (Reflections, Chicago/Kiev), HUNG ER (Neotrope), found rubBEings (Xerolage 32), and Zero Poem (Traverse). His work has appeared in the anthologies Word Score Utterance Choreography (ed. Bob Cobbing, London) and Loose Watch (ed. John M. Bennett, London). His work has also appeared in numerous journals, including Crayon, Score, O!!zone, Nedge, Mass Ave, Otoliths, Kairan, Vortex, Pintado El Verde, Radikales Libros, Lost and Found Times, Pavement Saw, Big Bridge, Traverse, and Unarmed Journal. More of his own work, plus an ongoing assembly of new visual poetry by other artists, can be found at davidbaptistechirot.blogspot.com.

Peter Ciccariello is a visual artist and writer living in Providence, Rhode Island. He has studied at Pratt Institute (Brooklyn, New York), Rhode Island School of Design (Providence, Rhode Island), Parsons School of Design (New York, New York) and Electron Movers – Research in the Electronic Arts (Providence, Rhode Island). More of his visuals, poems, and photographs can be found online.

John Cotter's work has appeared or is forthcoming in Hanging Loose, Volt, 3rd Bed, The Columbia, Journal of American Studies, failbetter, Coconut, Good Foot, and the anthology Oh One Arrow from Matthew Klane and Adam Golaski's new Flim Forum Press. An excerpt from his completed a novel, plus more of his work, can be found at his website: www.johncotter.net.

“‘After Benn’ is an homage to Gottfried Benn, patterned to some extent on his poem, ‘This Is It.’‘Kevin Caron's Nuclear Dream’ was partially inspired by Chris Tonelli's ‘Birds’ dream poem in issue 10. There really is someone named Kevin Caron, a comic book artist who collaborated with me in 3rd bed a few years ago…. ‘Monkey See’'…was also partially inspired by Heiner Miiller (his poem ‘Television’ and his brilliant play Hamletmachine,) but it's autobiographical too.”

Justin Dodd is a book designer with HarperCollins Publishers. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Fourteen Hills, Phoebe, Heliotrope, Western Humanities Review and EBB:FLO.

Stephanie Countiss Emens is originally from Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and is currently pursuing a double major in English and Spanish with a minor in liberal arts from the University of Alabama.

Noah Falck teaches Language and Thought at Northridge Local Schools. His poems appear or are forthcoming in journals such as Gulf Coast, LIT, Combatives, Bat City Review, H_NGM_N, Absent, The Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel – Second Floor, and others. He lives in Dayton, Ohio.

Adam Fieled is a poet, musician, playwright, and actor. He has released three albums: Darkyr Sooner (mp3.com, 2000), Raw Rainy Fog (spoken word, Radio Eris Records, 2002), and Ardent (Webster Street Gang Productions, 2004). His writings have appeared in Jacket, American Writing, the Philadelphia Independent, Cake Train, Siren's Silence, Night Rally, Hidden Oak, Mind Gorilla, and Hinge. Four of his one-act plays were produced by the “Outlaw Playwrights” in State College, PA. He has also acted as a member of NYC's 13th Street Repertory Theater Company.

Thomas Fink is the author of four books of poetry, most recently No Appointment Necessary (Moria Poetry, 2006), and two books of criticism. Next year, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press will publish the critical anthology that he and Joseph Lease edited on David Shapiro's work. Fink's paintings hang in various collections.

Jason Fraley works at an investment firm in West Virginia and is pursing his M.B.A. His wife and cat see him occasionally. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Redactions, Confluence, Words on Walls, Pebble Lake Review, Stirring, The Salt River Review, and elsewhere.

Vernon Frazer has published eight books of poetry and three books of fiction. His work has appeared in Aught, Big Bridge, First Intensity, Jack Magazine, Lost and Found Times, Moria, Miami SunPost, Muse Apprentice Guild, Sidereality, Xstream and many other literary magazines. His most recent works are the longpoems Avenue Noir and IMPROVISATIONS, the now-completed work which he introduced in his 2001 reading at the Poetry Project. Frazer is married and lives in South Florida. His web site is http://vernonfrazer.com.

Trina Gaynon: “Having graduated from the MFA in Creative Writing Program at University of San Francisco, I've relocated to Los Angeles for love, not the air. Recent publications include 26, Absomaly, Poetry East, In the Teeth of the Wind, Slant, MO, and The Sierra Nevada Review.”

Jim Goar received an MFA from the Kerouac School at Naropa University.  He has spent the past few years teaching English at universities in China, Thailand, and South Korea. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Typo, LIT, Harvard Review, The Page, GutCult, No Tell Motel, Snow Monkey, Octopus, The Tiny and Ellipses. His chapbook, Whole Milk, is available from effing press. He edits the online journal past simple.

“This is from the latest series I am working on, 33 Times Before Sunrise. I am living next to a temple, and in that temple a bell is rung, 33 times before sunrise, sometime around 4:30a. I am certain that bell has something to do with what I am doing. A few pieces from this series are up at the latest Typo and horseless press.”

Adam Golaski is co-editor of Flim Forum, a new poetry press, and co-editor of New Genre, a literary journal devoted to horror and science fiction. Most recently, he's had work in McSweeney's and Conjunctions. Two essays, one about the Canadian radio series Nightfall, the other about the film The Exorcism of Emily Rose, will appear in upcoming issues of All Hallows.

Noah Eli Gordon will have two books appear in 2007: Novel Pictorial Noise (selected by John Ashbery for the 2006 National Poetry Series) and A Fiddle Pulled From the Throat of a Sparrow (New Issues). His other books include The Frequencies (Tougher Disguises, 2003) and The Area of Sound Called the Subtone (Ahsahta, 2004). Ugly Duckling Press recently published That We Come To A Consensus, a chapbook written in collaboration with Sara Veglahn. His reviews have appeared in dozens of journals, including Boston Review, The Poker, 26, Jacket, and The St. Marks Poetry Project Newsletter. He writes a new chapbook review column for Rain Taxi, teaches creative writing at the University of Colorado at Denver, and has an essay slated to appear in Burning Interiors: On the Poetry of David Shapiro.

Scott Helmes' books include 3 Visual Poets: Ernst, Helmes, Rosenberg and Thought Bubbles (Helmes and K.S. Ernst). He has been published in over 80 magazines in 17 countries, including such publications as Paris Review, White Walls, Against Infinity Anthology, WestEast Anthology, Minnesota Monthly, The Midwest Quarterly, Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes 2nd Ed., xtant, and fugue. His work has been collected in numerous museums, including Museum of Modern Art-New York, Victoria & Albery Museum-London, Biblioteque Nationale de France-Paris, Museum for Kunsthandwerk-Frankfurt, Museum of Contempory Art-Chicago, Yale University, Harvard University, Brown University, and the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

W. Scott Howard teaches and writes at the University of Denver. His digital publications, interviews, and course syllabi may be found here at http://www.du.edu/~showard/

Sandra Huber's poetry has appeared in the Milieu Portfolio Anthology of Canadian Women Writers and in idea&s. She is the former poetry editor for Opium Magazine (NYC) and current poetry editor for The Shore Magazine (Toronto).

Genevieve Kaplan's poems have appeared in The Northwest Review, Mustachioed, Can We Have Our Ball Back?, Delmar, 580/Split, and Fence.

Justin Marks edits LIT magazine and lives in New York City. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Absent, Fulcrum, H_NGM_N, MiPOesias, La Petite Zine, Soft Targets, and the Outside Voices 2008 Anthology of Younger Poets. His first chapbook, You Being You by Proxy, was published by Kitchen Press in 2005. [Summer insular], his second chapbook, is forthcoming from Horse Less Press in 2007.

Kristi Maxwell is a doctoral candidate at the University of Cincinnati. Her poems have recently appeared in 580 Split, Coconut, How2, Spinning Jenny, and Tarpaulin Sky. Her first book, Realm Sixty-Four, is forthcoming from Ahsahta Press.

Sheila E. Murphy is the author of numerous books, including Continuations (with Douglas Barbour, The University of Alberta Press, 2006), Incessant Seeds (Pavement Saw Press, 2005), Concentricity (Pleasure Boat Studio, a Literary Press, 2004), Proof of Silhouettes (Stride Press, UK, 2004), and Letters to Unfinished J (Green Integer, 2003, winner of the 2001 Gertrude Stein Award).

Marci Nelligan's work has appeared or is forthcoming in syllogism, Moria, Dusie, Chain, Free Lunch, Verse, and H-ngm-n. She is currently co-editing an interdisciplinary book about sidewalks titled Transience, due out spring 2007 from Chain as part of its Chain Links book series. Her chapbook, Dispatch, a collaboration with poet Nicole Mauro, was just published through Dusie Books.

Michael Rothenberg has been an active environmentalist in the San Francisco Bay Area for the past 25 years. His books of poems include The Paris Journals (Fish Drum), Monk Daddy (Blue Press) and Unhurried Vision (La Alameda Press). Rothenberg is editor and publisher of Big Bridge. He is also editor of Overtime, Selected Poems by Philip Whalen (Penguin), As Ever, Selected Poems by Joanne Kyger (Penguin) and David's Copy, Selected Poems by David Meltzer. He is presently working on Way More Out, Selected Poems of Edward Dorn (Penguin, 2007) and the Collected Poems of Philip Whalen (Wesleyan University Press, 2007).

Kate Schapira received an MFA in Poetry from Brown University's Literary Arts program. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Diagram, Shampoo, Watchword, H-ngm-n, Paragraph, Ecopoetics and Archipelago. Her manuscript Phoenix Memory was a finalist for the Action Books December Prize in 2005. She teaches fiction, essay-writing and poetry to students at Brown and to women incarcerated in Rhode Island's Adult Correctional Institute.

Her poems appearing in this issue are from her manuscript The Another Notes: “The book is primarily concerned with the ethics of seeing as a foreigner, as well as problems of authenticity, privilege, communication and being a guest; to address these, I use a series of forms or attempts, such as ‘travel diaries,’ ‘themes,’ ‘phrasebooks,’ and ‘measure words.’ ‘Circular Treasure’ and ‘Lease,’ two themes, deal more directly with problems of ethics as they play out in a specific place: the public spaces of Beijing.”

Will Skinker: “It seems that rain comes up often in these poems. I'm a gardener and when it rains I have more time to sit around and do the necessary waiting around for the poems to come. They are cryptic, I admit, but not surreal, just re-presenting what the San Francisco ghetto where I live and the millionbillionaires where I work will give me I guess. I like doom/black metal, French novelists, American poets, and Chinese food.”

Matina L. Stamatakis lives in upstate New York, and is currently working on her master's in creative writing. She has had works featured in: Down in the Dirt, The Wright Side, SP Quills, Can We Have Our Ball Back?, Eratio, Zafusy, Cynic Magazine, and Albany Poets: Other__.

Adam Strauss is currently reading, among others, Pound's Arnaut Daniel translations, Marjorie Perloff's Differentials, and Wallace Stevens. He lives in Vegas, a place he likes living, but wouldn't want to visit. He has poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Shampoo, Kulture Vulture, and the Colorado Review. His review of Dan Beachy-Quick's Spell was published in Interim.

Lynn Strongin has published numerous books, including Dovey & Me (Solo Press, 2006), The Birds of the Past Are Singing (Cross-Cultural Communications), and Countrywoman / Surgeon ( L'Epervier Press in 1979), which was nominated for the Elliston award. She is the editor of The Sorrow Psalms: A Book of Twentieth Century Elegy (University of Iowa Press, 2006). Her work has appeared journals such as New Works Review, StorySouth , Tryst , Avatar , C / Oasis, New Works Review, Terrain, Ciahroscuo, Moria, Verse Libre Quarterly, and Entelechy: Mind and Culture. More information about Strongin's work is available at her website.

Thomas Lowe Taylor lives in southwestern Washington State on the Long Beach Peninsula and copublishes Xtant Magazine with Jim Leftwich. He is the author of The Homages of Eagle (2004) 900 p., two vols, from anabasis.xtant Books, 1512 Mountainside Court, Charlottesville VA 22903, $100 plus s/h. His has work has appeared in eratio, samsara, Xpressd , EXP, MPRSND, tin lustre mobile, 5 trope, Moria, Big Bridge, BlazeVox2, Great Works, QLRS, Neon Highway, and Softblow. Email: ttaylor002 at cenurytel dot net. The first part of “At the Margin” was published in eratio.

Andrew Topel

to·pel
Pronunciation: 'toe-pell
Function: verb
Inflected Form(s): to·pel·inzki /-p(&-)el[ki]/
Etymology: from the mind of God, from the womb of Topel, Sharon, 1977
intransitive verb : to form poetry or as if from language robed in Swahili
transitive verb
1 : to cause a deep rumble trapped in whispers
2 : to make compositions made of letters, music or thoughts (as paper, cloth, or wood)
    glued on a surface of linguistic texture

an·drew
Pronunciation: 'an-(")drü
Function: noun
Usage: to name what changes shape
Etymology: And (&) from the bowels of other universes
                 Rew, proper name and short for renew
: a person who is sewn in ink

Ashley VanDoorn's poems have appeared in No Tell Motel, WebConjunctions, American Letters & Commentary, Seneca Review, Northwest Review and Gulf Coast. Her “device” poems have also been published or are forthcoming in Typo, Coconut and GlitterPony.

“The ‘devices’ poems are a series where I used various symbols from the keyboard and the ‘insert symbol’ function to create a graphic element as prompt for a title, and then I used the title as prompt for a text. The only other rule I assigned myself was that each of the poems have a different formal/spatial arrangement and that they could also correspond with each other.”

Caroline Whitbeck received an MFA in poetry from Brown University and is currently in the PhD program in Comparative Literature at The University of Pennsylvania. Her poems have previously appeared in Horse Less Review and Lumina.

Brian Whitener currently lives in Mexico City. His forthcoming translations include The Escraches from Chainlinks and a translation of Lyn Hejinian's My Life into Spanish, available from Bonobos. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in the Denver Quarterly and from Moria. He also forms a part of the La Lleca collective, a research and social-intervention project that carries out a number of programs in prisons in Mexico City.

Scott Wilkerson is a Professor at the Georgia Military College-Columbus and a Research Associate at the Halawaukee Studio for the Arts.

Joshua Marie Wilkinson is the author of two book-length poems: Suspension of a Secret in Abandoned Rooms (Pinball, 2005) and Lug Your Careless Body out of the Careful Dusk (University of Iowa Press, 2006), which won the 2005 Iowa Poetry Prize. Two new chapbooks are forthcoming: The Book of Truants & Projectorlight (Octopus Books, 2006) and The Book of Flashlights, Clover, & Milk (Pilot Books, 2007). His first documentary film— Made a Machine by Describing the Landscape about the band Califone on tour—is forthcoming in 2007. A former poetry editor for The Denver Quarterly, he teaches aesthetics at Rocky Mountain College of Art & Design and literature at University of Denver where he is completing a doctorate.

David Wolf is the author of three collections of poetry: Sablier (IA Books, 2006), Open Season (Center Press Books, 1999; IA Books, 2006) and The Moment Forever (IA Books, 2006). His work has appeared in The Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, Hiram Poetry Review, New York Quarterly, Poet & Critic, River Styx Magazine and numerous other literary magazines and journals. He lives in Des Moines, Iowa, and teaches writing and literature at Simpson College .