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These brief biographies show the variety of backgrounds and interests of the poets published on The Ghazal Page. Note also the links to poets' Web sites, blogs, and other locations of interest. I recommend following the links in the bios.
If you are an editor or publisher who wants to contact one of the poets, please email me, and I will put you in touch. (I'm not posting poets' email addresses out of concern they would attract spambots.)
Bill Batcher is a native of Long Island, New York. After graduating from the New York City Public Schools, he received a Bachelors from Syracuse University, where he majored in English. Bill earned two Masters degrees from Teachers College, Columbia University, New York where, in 1992 he was a awarded a doctorate in the area of education of the gifted.
Margaret E. Bell earned a living as a newspaper reporter/ columnist and writer/editor of government publications. In 1973 her essay on "The Dangerous Side Effects of Women's Liberation" was awarded first place in an Armed Forces Writers League competition. She retired in 1991 and now publishes a quarterly newsletter. Her poetry has appeared on the Nevada County Commission of Arts and the Sacramento Bee/Placer County Poetry websites.
Kate Bernadette Benedict, of New York City, is the author of the full-length poetry collection Here from Away and the editor of Umbrella: A Journal of Poetry and Kindred Prose. Please visit her home page.
Laura A. Ciraolo lives and works in New York City. She has poems in the current issues of Agenda (UK) and Diakonos (Theology Journal of St. John's University). She's had poems in Words-Myth, Left Facing Bird, the New York Quarterly, the Long Island Quarterly, iota (UK), The Centrifugal Eye, MiPOesias, Rumble, and Orbis Quarterly International Literary Journal (UK).
Mary Cresswell is from Los Angeles and lives on the coast north of Wellington, New Zealand. She has published poems in a variety of journals, online as well as in the US, NZ, Canada and Australia, and is a science editor by trade.
A polyglot graduate of Harvard University's Regional Studies East Asia program, Danielle De Feo currently lives, writes and learns Hindi in Singapore, where she is Manager of Membership at Singapore's Asian Civilisations Museum. She is a veteran of London and Boston poetry slam scenes and her poetic and journalistic work appears in diverse publications including Harvard's Dudley Review and the Newsletter of the Indian Institute of Technology.
Sukhdarshan Dhaliwal is originally from village of Lohara, Punjab-India. He currently resides in Shawnee, Kansas. He works in the area of Mechanical
product design and development. He started writing Punjabi poetry in the
mid-eighties. He has published three books of Punjabi poetry. Punjabi is
the state language of Punjab. Some of his Punjabi Ghazals are composed and
sung by a famous singer Jagjit Singh Zirvi under the "Roo-B-Roo" (Face to
Face) Cassette/CD. In December, 2005 he started thinking about English
Ghazals. Besides writing, Sukhdarshan loves to listen to Urdu/Hindi Ghazals.
His first published English Ghazals are in the August issue of The Ghazal Page. He writes under the pen name of "Darshan."
Joanna Gardner lives in New Mexico with two dogs and one husband. Her poetry has appeared in Rogue Poetry Review, Flutter Poetry Journal, RiverSedge, South Dakota Review, and others. You can visit her online at Joanna Gardner.
Conrad Geller has been publishing poetry for sixty years. His poem in this month's Ghazal Page is his second published ghazal and hundreth published poem.
"I live in Bowling Green, Ky. I am retired and like to read poetry and novels, especially historical ones. I also like to study foreign languages which probably explains my interest in poetry and especially the Ghazal. Poetry for me is a challenge. I find it especially helpful to be able to be able to compose it at any time and anywhere.
"Some of my poems have been published in Words Words Words; moonset THE NEWSPAPER, cc&d magazine, and Poetic Hours. Others will be published in foam:e, Pink Chameleon, Language and Culture, Ink, Sweat & Tears, and The Tangled Web."
Carol Lynn Grellas is a Northern California-based writer, where she attended Santa Clara University as an English major. She is the author of two Chapbooks: Litany of Finger Prayers, soon to be released from Pudding House Press and Object of Desire, accepted for publication by Finishing Line Press, forthcoming sometime within the year. She has been widely published in magazines and online journals, including most recently, Writings from the River, The Storyteller Magazine, Chanterelle's Notebook, The Hiss Quarterly, and Flutter. She has published one full length collection of poems, titled I'm Packing Things for Heaven. Carol Lynn lives with her husband, five children and a blind dog named Ginger, who inspire much of her poetry. You may visit her at her
website.
CW Hawes is a human services worker who resides in suburban St Paul, MN, USA. He holds a Masters of Divinity degree. Aside from writing, he is an avid reader, enjoys music, and nature walks. He especially values the poetry of Wendell Berry, Rumi, Basho, Takuboku, Edna St Vincent Millay, and Adelaide Crapsey. His poetry has been published widely on the internet and has also appeared in print. He took 3rd place in the 2007 Adelaide Award and was a winner in the 2004 and 2006 Tanka Splendor contests.
Steffen Horstmann was recipient of the Brooklyn Poetry Circle's National Student Award while at the University of Arizona. He has new poems recently published or forthcoming in Baltimore Review, Blue Fifth Review, Candelabrum, Common Ground Review, Freshwater, Louisiana Literature, LYNX, Pegasus, and Tiferet. He lives in Holyoke, Massachusetts.
Ron Koertge writes poetry (Fever from Red Hen Press) and fiction for Young Adults (Deadville from Candlewick Press).
Nicola Masciandaro is Associate Professor of English at Brooklyn College, CUNY and a specialist in medieval literature. He is the author of The Voice of the Hammer: The Meaning of Work in Middle English Literature (Notre Dame, 2006) and articles on eros, sorrow, and the animal/human boundary. For more ghazals and other writings, see his blog The Whim.
Esther Greenleaf Mürer lives in Philadelphia. At 72, she considers herself an emerging poet. She first learned about ghazals from her son George, an ethnomusicologist with a particular interest in Persianate cultures. She finds the ghazal a congenial form for using snippets of experience that she doesn't know how to develop. She has been surprised to discover that her youthful immersion in Ogden Nash helps with the tension and surprise of the ghazal rhyme.
Joel Neubauer has enjoyed writing with various groups and is passionate about exploring the roles of ancient and established poetic forms in a postmodern context. Poetry becomes his orderable chaos wherein faith and life may freely intersect by verbal means. Originally from Maryland, he now lives a busy vegetarian life with his dog, Sal, in New England where he serves as a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
I'm born and brought up in south India. Software is my profession. I love sufi ghazals (Rumi), zen haikus (Yosa Buson) very much. I love Osho (discourses), Nikos Kazantzakis (novels), Buddha (sutras), Bhagavat Gita and many more.
Apart from reading I love guitar, penciling, watercolor painting, listening to music.
Linda Papanicolaou is an art teacher and art historian living in the Bay Area of California. She is the editor of Haigaonline, an editor of Modern Haiga, assistant director of WHChaikumultimedia, and a resident artist at Moonset. A newcomer to ghazals, she was introduced to the form last summer at an NEH poetry seminar led by Eric Selinger at DePaul University.
Tree Riesener is the author of three poetry chapbooks: Liminalog, a collection of ghazals and sijo (Inmates Run The Asylum Press, 2006), Angel Poison (Pudding House Publications, 2007) and Inscapes (Finishing Line Press, 2008). You may read more of Tree's work on her website. She also has an active blog. . She'd love to hear from readers by email. Anyone interested in books can order them from Tree and get free shipping.
She has published poetry and prose in numerous literary magazines, including 5_Trope, Evergreen Review, Ginosko, Blue Fifth Review, Loch Raven Review, Pindeldyboz, Identity Theory, Blood Lotus, Boxcar Poetry Review, Belletrist Review, NEBO, Acclaim, The Source, Hinge, Schuylkill Valley Review, Diner, Mad Poets Review, Albatross/Anabiosis, Lynx, The Ghazal Page, Fine Print, Anthology of the Philadelphia Writers Conference, Hidden River, and Ernest Hilbert's E-Verse Radio. Three short stories — "On The C Bus," "Lighted Ships," and "The BVM" — have been staged in the Writing Aloud productions of InterAct Theatre, Philadelphia.
A winner in the Authors in the Park Short Story Competition, she also won a double first at the Philadelphia Writers Conference for the Short-Short Story and the Literary Short Story and was a Semi-Finalist in the Pablo Neruda Poetry Competition. During summer 2002, she was a Hawthornden International Writing Fellow at Hawthornden Castle, Scotland. In 2004, she was awarded the inaugural William Van Wert Memorial Fiction Award by Hidden River Arts.
I am a 30 year old, ghazal enthusiast and have been listening and reading ghazals in urdu/hindi from the age of 14. As India has a rich tradition of ghazals, the classical Urdu poets like Ghalib, Meer and Daagh have had a great influence on me. Amongst the contemporaries, poets of the stature of Jigar Moradabadi, Ahmed Faraz and Nida Fazli make an impact on me greatly. I deal a lot on the beher of ghazals and it is my hobby to scan and determine the beher of ghazals. I regularly publish such articles on my blog, although the analysis is in the Devnaagri script.
Ghazal as a form of music is also very popular in our part of the world. I am greatly influenced by the mastery of singers like Mehdi Hassan and Jagjit Singh who are pioneers in the field of contemporary ghazal singing.
David Sklar's novella Shadow of the Antlered Bird will be published in print and e-book formats by Drollerie Press. His poetry appears in over a dozen publications, including Blue Light Red Light, Wormwood Review, and Paterson Literary Review. David lives in the state of New Jersey with his wife (who lives in a state of exhaustion, thanks to) their 2-year-old son (who lives in a state of chaos) and their cat (who lives in a state of terror, thanks to the — aforementioned — 2-year-old).
Lemuel Harik and Liane McAllister are characters from the novel-in-progress The Skin We Wear: A Cynical Romance about Shapeshifters and Anti-fur Activists, in which Lemuel performs these ghazals with the band Things That Go Bump in the Night.
Visit David's web page, davidwriting.
J.E. Stanley is an accountant and part-time guitarist from the grayscale suburban wilderness of Northeastern Ohio. A member of The Deep Cleveland Tribe of Poetry and the Cleveland Speculators, he is the author of the book, Dark Intervals (vanZeno Press), the chapbook, Dissonance (deep cleveland press) and the short collection, Ink (Gypsy Lips Press).
Derek Updegraff grew up in San Diego, California, and earned BA and MFA degrees from Cal State Long Beach. He also holds an MA from the University of Missouri, where he is currently a PhD candidate and instructor of English. His poems and translations have appeared in Light, The Lyric, The Classical Outlook, and other literary journals. Please visit his website.
Juliet Wilson is based in Edinburgh, blogs at Crafty Green Poet and edits Bolts of Silk. She has only recently discovered ghazals but plans on writing many more!