Credits

Editor

Mary Sands has been a web designer for Big Bridge, and worked with Ira Cohen and Robert La Vigne on large art cyber-spectives. She designs and hosts beat and counter-culture galleries by Larry Keenan, and has published articles in Rain Taxi, Kerouac Rag, and The Kerouac Connection. Mary is also a freelance editor for Trafford Publishing. She has been a part of the Coast Guard Auxiliary in Dana Point, California, and currently is a member of the Surfrider Foundation.

Contributing Editor

Born in Miami Beach, Florida in 1951, Michael Rothenberg is a poet and songwriter. He has been an active environmentalist in the San Francisco Bay area for the past 25 years, where he cultivates orchids and bromeliads at his nursery, Shelldance.

His broadside Elegy for the Dusky Seaside Sparrow was selected Broadside of the Year by Fine Print Magazine. The broadside of his poem "Angels" was produced in limited edition by Hatch Show Prints as part of The Country Music Foundation's museum resources. His songs have appeared in the films Shadowhunter, Black Day Blue Night, and Outside Ozona. He is also editor and co-founder of Big Bridge Press and Big Bridge, an online magazine.

Rothenberg's books of poems include Favorite Songs, Nightmare of the Violins (Twowindows Press), What The Fish Saw, Man/Women w/ Joanne Kyger, The Paris Journals (Fish Drum), Grown Up Cuba (Il Begatto Press, Amsterdam), and Intoxications. He is also author of the novel Punk Rockwell (Tropical Press). Other editorial projects include Overtime, Selected Poems by Philip Whalen (Penguin Putnam, Inc., 2002) and As Ever, Selected Poems by Joanne Kyger (Penguin Books, 2002). He is presently working on the Selected Poems of David Meltzer (Penguin, 2004), and Selected Poems of Ed Dorn (Penguin, 2006).

Michael Rothenberg divides his time between Pacifica, California and Miami, Florida and is on the constant lookout for bottle caps and pennies for his son Cosmos.

Artist

Joanna Barnum is a freelance illustrator from White Plains, NY. She is currently an undergraduate student in the illustration department at Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, MD. She firmly believes that the only necessary difference between "fine art" and "illustration" is context, and it is her goal to help break down preconceived notions about what illustration can and cannot be, as well as to synthesize traditional fantasy and science-fiction subject matter with a more experimental style. More of her work can be found at her website, and she can be contacted with comments or concerning commissions at jbarnum@mica.edu.

 

 

Eco-Watch

John Aiello is a poet and journalist with over 25 years experience in the field. From 1987 through 2001, Aiello worked at the San Francisco Chronicle, and from the year 2000 through December 2002, Aiello served as National Correspondent for American Muse Magazine, editing and writing entertainment articles of national interest.

As a writer, Aiello has written extensively on the Beat Generation since 1988. His articles and poetry have appeared in various national and international publications (including the San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Sunday Chronicle and Examiner, The San Jose Mercury News, The Los Angeles Journal, The Beat Page, American Muse Magazine, Jack Magazine, and the Siskiyou Pioneer).

Aside from his work as a journalist, Aiello has written some 15,000 poems. Working mostly in pocket notebooks, Aiello blends the short lines of William Carlos Williams with the word fever of the late Jack Kerouac: "Writing is truly a sacred practice," Aiello once wrote in an essay. "The blank page like an altar like a new-born planet of infinite dimension. Images at once grow wings and twist into 'sound', perfect and sleek, moving through the holy mysteries of the eye. A truly sacred practice that, in the end, has defied all practical explanation." Presently, Aiello is adapting a newspaper article he wrote about the murder of his paternal grandfather into a feature film script.

Mark Koslow is a painter and poet, and spends large amounts of time in the natural world. He is particularly concerned with the relation of animal and human rights, and the protection of both human and wild beings, against those whose main concern is wealth, power, and ideology. More of Mark's poetry and paintings are at Nature's Rights.

Essays

John Aiello: (see bio above)

Mark Smith: Some of his poems have appeared in The Heron's Nest: An On-line Haiki Journal, Mountainechoes, Riverrun, Calliope, Quiddity, Screaming Zebra, Writer's Roundtable, and other publications. Also, his collection, Words Homeward, won the award for Best Poetry Collection in the 2002 West Virginia Writer's Annual Creative Writing Competition. Mark has poems forthcoming in Wild Sweet Notes: More West Virginia Poetry, Moments (an on-line haiku page), and In Other Words.

Mark Spitzer, punk provacateur & novelistic translator, is now a professor somewhere in Missouri. His latest books include From Absinthe to Abyssinia (Rimbaud translations) and The Church (Celine translation).

Fiction/Nonfiction

Bart Plantenga is an Amsterdam-born U.S.-bred DJ, non-fictionalist, and novelist. He has been a radio DJ for 17 years in Paris, NY, and Amsterdam. His annotated playlists can be found at a variety of web locations under Wreck This Mess. He is the author of many radio / music / culture articles as well as a short story collection, Wiggling Wishbone. His novel Confessions of a Beer Mystic has been declared the most famous unpublished novel. But that is probably an exaggerated overstatement. He is also the author of Paris Sext Tete (excerpted at 3 AM) and Spermatagonia: The Isle of Man (Autonomedia, Fall 2003). He has recently finished the first-ever "complete" book of yodeling. Yo De Lay Eee Ooo: The Secret History of Yodeling. (Routledge) will appear in the Fall of 2003.

A. J. Ferguson was, in his infancy, the 23rd duke of Westcesterton, until the great fletcher's uprising of ought-four. Fortunately, his youth spared him the excesses visited upon various other members of the nobility, and after a lengthy apprenticeship he entered into a quiet life of whittling and sheep love.

His writings can be deciphered, when the sun is just right, from megalithic formations spread throughout the Midlands. Guided balloon tours of the region depart at 8:22 each morning, excepting Sundays and alternate Thursdays, in order to give poor Mabel a rest. Tips are appreciated, but avoid making a big show of it, lest your trip end much faster than the itinerary generally allows.

Tamara Sheehan is a Victoria BC based writer with an interest in short fiction, long fiction, futurist and modernist poetry.

Soma de Noche is an artist and an art therapist, about to complete an MA.

Poetry

Richard Denner is a Berkeley street poet of the 60s, self-exiled to Alaska outback, printer of dPress chapbooks, and treeplanter on the slopes of Mt. St. Helens. After the blast, longtime bookseller, Richard Denner is living with his elderly mother in North Bay suburbia, gaining a little weight, getting a little grayer, and still reading his poems in coffeehouses. Visit his website at http://www.dpress.net.

Aaron Duchan: born in Detroit in 1948, attended Wayne State University part time, never finished. Marxist (Groucho) freak by inclination, lived in Detroit, Ann Arbor, Cincinnati, Paris, Jerusalem. Life changed by Coltrane. Muddy Waters, Jimmy Hendrix, Aretha & better living through chemistry. You may contact Aaron at alduchan@hotmail.com.

Lisa Flowers is a freelance proofreader residing in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Her five poems are taken from her unpublished verse memoir, Niwot's Wake.

Aryan Kaganof was born again in Johannesburg in 2001. He drove a Toyota Corolla until that got stolen. He shoots Glock.

Published work includes Hectic! (Pine Slopes Publications, ISBN 0-9584660-1-7) a novel, Sugar man & Other Bitter Stories (Pine Slopes Publications, ISBN 0-9584660-2-5) a novel in ruins, Drive-Thru Funeral (Pine Slopes Publications, ISBN 0-9584660-3-3) re-verse.

Films: Western4.33 (Mandala Films, Namibia, 2002, 35mm, 32min), Best Documentary, Africa and Islands Festival of Reunion, 2003, First Prize, African Film Festival of Milan, 2002; Sharp Sharp! (Mandala Films, South Africa, 2003, DVCAM, 26min).

Links: http://www.africanreviewofbooks.com/Reviews/kaganof1.html, http://www.donga.co.za/interviews/kaganofinterview.html, http://www.artthrob.co.za/02aug/news/kaganof.html, http://www.apple.com/za/hotnews/articles/sharpsharp/, and http://www.digitalhammer.com/writing/ak/.

Jukka-Pekka Kervinen lives and writes in Espoo, Finland. He is mainly interested in computer processing and manipulation of text and language. He has been published in Poethia, Moria, SHAMPOO, Aught, Swirl, Word/For Word, sidereality, 'can we have our ball back', 5_Trope, Generator, m.a.g and BathHouse Magazine. He is an editor of xStream and xPress(ed). He also works as a composer--music performed in Finland and U.S.

Charlton Metcalf is a poet and songwriter from Minneapolis, MN. His most recent works are in 3 AM magazine, ache magazine, and the Unarmed Adventurous Poetry Journal. He is a musician with the band Lavabloom, and founder of the red dragon poetry group.

Jennifer Murphy was born in Bakersfield, California in 1975 and educated at Syracuse University and at the University of Chicago. Her work has been published in A Gathering of the Tribes Magazine: Issue 10, Inkwell Magazine, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, and the anthology Bum Rush the Page: A Def Poetry Jam (2001). She has received writing fellowships from the New York Annenberg Foundation and the Vermont Studio Center. Murphy's first volume of poetry will be published by Fly by Night Press in 2004. She lives in New York City.

Matt Myftiu was born and raised in Michigan and has called the state his home for all but two years of his life when he took a brief sojourn to Florida. He has been working in the evil empire known as the media (in the field of journalism) for the past ten years for various information-giving periodicals, and in that time has covered news, sports, entertainment and written many opinion pieces. He has also held several editing positions over the years and is currently editing and doing page design/layout.

He is a graduate of Michigan State University, where he studied Spanish, journalism, and film studies. He is fluent in Spanish and Albanian in addition to English and hopes to continue his travels of Europe once he invents the solution to battery dependency and retires to Spain.

Krisette Sia is a graduate student of the liberal arts as well as a freelance writer and painter. Her works can be seen in various literary publications such as 3am Magazine, Locust Magazine, Another Toronto Quarterly, The Meeting of the Minds Journal, Poetry Magazine, The Naked Muses, Avenue Magazine, The Storyteller Magazine, and The Poets.

Steven J. Stewart lives in Reno, Nevada with his wife and two children. His poems and translations appear in numerous publications, including Harper’s, Poetry Daily, Crazyhorse, Atlanta Review, Hotel Amerika, Seneca Review, The Diagram, and Apalachee Review. His book of translations of Spanish poet Rafael Pérez Estrada is forthcoming from Hanging Loose Press in December, 2003. He is currently finishing book-length manuscripts of translations of the work of Spanish poets Carlos Edmundo de Ory and Angel Crespo. He works as a Writing Specialist in the English Department of the University of Nevada, Reno, and is also the book review editor of www.sidereality.com.

Mark Young is a New Zealander who lived in Sydney, Australia for many years but who, four months ago, succumbed to the lure of the Tropic of Capricorn and moved north to Rockhampton. He published reasonably widely in both countries during the sixties and first half of the seventies but then drifted into twenty-five years of silence and has only started writing poetry again in the last few years. His most recent work has appeared / is to appear in Snow Monkey, brief, Trout, Alba, sidereality, and Tin Lustre Mobile. Links to his online poems can be found at the New Zealand electronic poetry centre.

Road

Cece Chapman is a graphic designer and artist who writes and then designs format and presentation. Originally from Northern California, she says that bodysurfing and art have led her to travel and explore, which in turn has led her to write. Laguna del Tigre is an excerpt from The Adventuress, a seven-story inkjet print graphic novel/comic book sized format available from Artist's Press for $12. E-mail Cece for copy at ccchpmn@earthlink.net. Also see Suggested Reading. The picture to the right is Cece waiting on a wave and was part of the 2002 Santa Cruz Bodysurfing Association calendar.

Mary Sands (see editor, above)

Tea-Party

Donovan Miyasaki is currently a PhD student in philosophy at the University of Toronto, but hasn't been able to shake his disreputable interest in poetry. He tries to lace his poems with doses of the philosophical without killing anyone in the process. His main influences are Stephen Crane, Black Francis, and Mike Topp.

*All other sections have been reprinted by Beat Generation News and are written by Mary Sands and other reviewers.