Warren Kaplan is a professor at the BU School of Public Health, teaching and doing research in pharmaceutical policy and “access to medicines." He is also a "recovering patent attorney” who last worked as an attorney at Biogen. Before that, he earned a PhD in ecology, also from BU, but at the Marine Biological Lab in Woods Hole, Mass. “Patent lawyers have to be science geeks from a prior life...,” he says. “I worked in Brazil studying production and consumption of greenhouse gases in the rain forest, among other places. I've written poems and haiku before but I've never won anything.”
Mark Bernstein is a grandfather, cook, cyclist, architect, and technical writer who has lived in Newton Centre for 40 years. On a beautiful spring day he noticed Poetry Newton’s call for haiku. “I was sipping my morning coffee on the front porch,” he explains, “immersed in the quiet I love so much. No irritating machine noise to sour my day!"
Ralph Culver's haiku and senryu have been widely published, along with his poetry in longer forms. His latest collection of poems is “A Passable Man” (2021), and he has a new book, “This to This,” forthcoming in 2024. He divides his time between Vermont and central Pennsylvania.
Melinda Gordon loves learning about other cultures and has long been interested in Japanese haiku, tea ceremonies, Asian-inspired art and landscaping. “My grandfather was an immigrant from a shtetl near Kiev,” she says. “He avoided fighting for the Tzar and instead fought for the US in WWI, stationed in France. Returning home, he started a family and a business of a Five and Dime store. But he always wrote philosophical poetry.” Young Melinda would happily spend hours with him, correcting his spelling and copying his poems, which now reside in a small book and in her mind and heart. As an adult, she has taught art, photography, and video. “However, when a poem pops into my head, I feel like I am channeling my grandfather,” she says.
Julia Dun Rappaport began writing poems shortly after the pandemic hit. Since then, her poetry has appeared in numerous publications, including The Formula, The Weight, and The Telling Room. She won the Longfellow Prize, which honors the best poem by a high school student in Massachusetts. In addition, her visual art has won several local and national competitions. Hugh Dun Rappaport is Julia’s dad. Many years ago, he won a couple of small poetry contests, wrote a Shakespearian sonnet to propose to Julia's mom, published an op-ed in the Hartford Courant, and contributed an article about conjuring to an international trade magazine. Aside from the Haiku Newton contest, his recent writing has consisted of appellate briefs he has submitted to federal judges in his role as a Special Assistant U.S. Attorney.
Ayan Gupta is in first grade at Cabot Elementary in Newton. He likes to play tag and soccer. His favorite type of poem is haiku. “I thought of this poem because there is a cherry tree in our backyard and I like watching the birds fly in and out of view while I eat breakfast,” he said, via an email from his mom.
Jim Krosschell’s poems and essays have appeared in some 70 journals, and he has published two essay collections: “One Man's Maine,” which won a Maine Literary Award, and “Owls Head Revisited.” He lives in Northport, Maine, and Newton, Mass., and is Board President of the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance.
Margaret Geller grew up in Nova Scotia, England, and New England with parents who instilled in her a love of language, music, and travel. "I'm retired now, after careers in education and information technology — and some amazing trips,” she notes. “Twice married and twice widowed, I live in Newton with my elderly cat, Walter, and process life in 17-syllable chunks.
Ravi Kiran is an electronics engineer and a working professional. Ravi’s haiku have won international contests and are featured in journals like The Heron’s Nest, Modern Haiku, and Frogpond. Ravi is a web-editor with the leading journal, haikuKATHA, and is an editor with Leaf – the journal of The Daily Haiku. He lives in Hyderabad, India.
Kerry Loughman is a retired educator and photographer living in the Boston area. She writes about memory, art, family, and nature in the city, looking for small transient moments of beauty ... or discord. Her work has appeared in Mass Poetry's "The Hard Work of Hope" and "Poem of the Moment," Nixes' Mate, What Rough Beast, The Main Street Rag and Lily Poetry Review.
Chris O’Carroll is the author of two books of poems, “The Joke’s on Me” and “Abracadabratude.” He has been a Light magazine featured poet as well as a contributor to The Great American Wise Ass Poetry Anthology and multiple volumes of the Potcake Chapbooks series. His work appears in New York City Haiku, Extreme Sonnets, and Love Affairs at the Villa Nelle, among other collections.
Anna Tackie is a high school student who loves poetry and writing . Words are her favorite type of expression, especially in the form of music or song. “This helps me transition to poetry, or more specifically to haikus,” she says. “I'm also a student of abstract thinking, so I hope my poem stirs up some thoughts for you.”
Poet and Literary Activist
Grey Held is a recipient of a NEA Fellowship in Creative Writing, and the 2019 Future Cycle Poetry Book Prize Winner. Three books of his poetry have been published.
Reviewer and Interviewer
Elizabeth Lund writes about poetry for The Christian Science Monitor, where she served as poetry editor for 10 years. She also hosts and produces Poetic Lines at NewTV.
Writer and Senior Library Assistant
Greg Fulchino is a writer and Senior Library Assistant who is passionate about bringing poetry to communities.
Founded in 1989, Newton Community Pride (NCP) is a non-profit organization building community through free arts and culture programming, public art, beautification and service projects. If you’d like to learn more about NCP, please visit newtoncommunitypride.org.