River Poets

One branch of Jerry Wemple’s family has lived in and around tiny Montour County since at least the mid-1800s. He supposes this may be partially responsible for his obsession with small towns along the Susquehanna. He continues to work on a series of narrative poems linked to 2013’s The Artemas Poems, which, oddly enough, are about people in small towns along the river.

 K. A. (Katie) Hays is the author of two full-length collections of poetry: Early Creatures, Native Gods (2012) and Dear Apocalypse(2009). Her poems have appeared (or will) in Gray’s Sporting Journal, The Kenyon Review, American Poetry Review, Northern Woodlands, Tin House, and many other venuesYou can read her poems online at the Poetry Daily and Verse Daily websites and watch a one-minute film of a poem of hers that was anthologized in Best American Poetry at Motionpoems.com. She currently lives in Lewisburg, PA, and teaches at Bucknell.

MC: Richard Brook

THEME – Finality

James (Jim) Murray started reading poetry 20 years ago at the Phillips Emporium, first at their open mic then at River Poets. He started when he first attended Bloomsburg University where he studied to become a Social Studies teacher. After college he read poetry in South Dakota, North Carolina, around Pennsylvania, South Korea, and Australia. After traveling the world he went back to his first job that he had out of college, which was teaching in the Midwest. In 2012 he started Hard Coal Studios, through which he publishes comic books, prose, and poems and other works.

MC: Dick Sweeney