This publication by 25 poet members of the Green Mountain Writers Group in Underhill, Vermont introduces our innovative model of consensus leadership. As a community of writers, we believe that everyone's voice deserves to be heard, and our new leadership model ensures that every member has an equal say in group decisions. Through open communication, active listening, and mutual respect, we work together to reach a consensus that best represents the group as a whole. Our model values collaboration over competition, and fosters a >We are excited to showcase this model in action in our first book of poetry. Each member has contributed their unique voice and perspective to create a beautiful and diverse collection of poems. We hope that our book inspires others to embrace consensus leadership in their own communities and organizations, and to celebrate the power of collaboration and inclusivity. "You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." - R. Buckminster Fuller Photographer, filmmaker, writer and graphic designer, Stephen Kastner produces distinctive, digital media from text to photography and video, often blending them together in campaigns that extend the genres of print and digital publication, web design, social media, filmmaking, and photography. You can find more about him and his company, DesignWise Studios at DesignWise.net. Moving to Vermont in 1993 to become a professor of Education at Northern Vermont University brought Darlene Witte to a landscape far more physically, emotionally, and socially embracing than she knew. Vermont has become her new spiritual home. She blends this new, gentle, land-and-people-scape into her life-long internal vision, and she hopes you enjoy her poetry and workshop. R.M. Beckhardt found his poetic talent late... almost too late. His roots reach back to Dada, the Surrealists and the Burroughs/Gysin cut-up technique. He takes it to a novel, never-before-seen extreme that speaks to what it makes you feel before you know if it's to be understood any other way. David C. Brydges is a community legacy builder based in Cobalt, Ontario. He is artistic director of Spring Pulse Poetry Festival. Memberships include Stroll of Poets, Parkland Poets, Ontario Poetry Society, Haiku Canada, and League of Canadian Poets. In 2021 he became the "Poet Emissary" for the Ontario Poetry Society. Patrick Connors first chapbook, Scarborough Songs was released by Lyricalmyrical Press in 2013, and charted on the Toronto Poetry Map. Other publication credits include: The Toronto Quarterly, Spadina Literary Review, Sharing Spaces, Tamaracks, and Tending the Fire. His first full collection, The Other Life was released in 2021 by Mosaic Press. His new chapbook, Worth the Wait will be released this Spring by Cactus Press. Edward DiMaio published Sound Scent & Light, a chapbook in 2002. He was one of three Write On, Door County poets in the 2022 Earth Day Everyday event and in 2023 at Woodland Pattern Books Poetry Marathon. Edward has been featured reader at the Emily Dickinson Poetry Series and the Green Mountain Writers Group. DiMaio was also one of six Door County Poets invited to be a part of the Door Community Auditorium's 2023 Words of Fire event. Karen Edwards was a Professor of Psychology, a therapist, and co-creator of a book titled Becoming Women of Wisdom. Her poems appear in Unpsychology Magazine, On Farm Pond: Poetry and Prose Chapbook, Lasting Memories: A Collection of Poetry, Write for your Life! Memoir group edition, and five Wickford Art and Poetry books. Kathy Fisher is an Edmonton and Isle La Motte-based multidisciplinary artist, performance poet, and documentarian. A keen collaborator, she regularly performs spoken word and song with a roster of musicians. In 2021, she wrote and produced video-poem wabi-sabi in collaboration with filmmaker Louise Abbott. Fisher premiered her Spanish Flu saga, Vox Virago, at SkirtsAfire in 2023. Currently, Fisher is polishing her poetry manuscript, below the belt. Jodi Girouard has been creating stories since she learned to hold a pencil. She is a native Vermonter who resides in South Burlington. Jodi has published four books of poetry and also has a poetry blog. Her most recent work is a combination of prose and poetry titled, Living with the Neighbors, published in 2022 by DesignWise Studios. She speaks regularly in the community and schools to reduce stigma associated with living with a mental illness. Dennis W. Gray is a semi-retired videographer and teacher from Cincinnati, Ohio. He started writing in college and published An Apology to a Fish in 1979 and co-wrote Backroad Ramblings, Wayfarers' Verse in 2022 with Amy Hadley. Amy Hadley is passionately committed to daydreaming and very enthusiastic about writing poetry and short fiction, as well as photography, painting and music. She enjoys spending her free time chasing inspiration, meandering the beautiful Alabama coastal county where she resides. A notebook, pen and camera are her constant companions. Geof Hewitt lives in Calais with his wife Janet Lind. Their two adult children live nearby and their two grandsons work in forestry, white water kayaking, winter skiing, and sugaring. Geof tries to capture it all in his poems, one of which appears in his latest collection, Affordable Poems, Alternative Facts. Jerry Johnson lives in a century-old schoolhouse in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom. He taught at Fitchburg State University where he was a finalist for the school's excellence in teaching award. He has been a top-10 New England tennis player, civil engineer, carpenter, artist, and freelance writer. Visit Jerry at www.JerryJohnsonVT.com. Samantha's poems have appeared in Rattle, Oddball Magazine, Mom Egg Review, Hunger Mountain, Minerva Rising, and other journals and anthologies. She received her MFA from Goddard College and completed post-grad studies at the Solstice MFA Program. Her chapbook Birth of a Daughter (Kelsay Books, 2020) won the Human Relations Indie Book Award in 2021. She lives in Montpelier, where she runs Rootstock Publishing and occasionally remembers to write poems, mostly about her daughter. Joshua Loveday lives in Michigan. His work appeared in Grit Magazine, Detroit Metropolitan Woman, Michigan Chronicle and the Engraver's Journal. He wrote regular features for Michigan Tourist Monthly for over a decade and reviews literary fiction on his blog. You can find him on Instagram and Twitter @JLovedayWriter. Dawn L. C. Miller holds an MA degree in Literature. Her poetry has been published in The Bluebird Word, Backstreet Poetry Review and by Hopeworks. She enjoys life on Maryland's eastern shore with her two cats and her orchids. Vermont poet Linda Quinlan's book Chelsea Creek was published in 2020 and won the "Wicked Woman Book Prize" in 2019. Many of her poems have been published in numerous journals which include: Black Mountain Press, The New Orleans Literary Review, North Carolina Review and Sinister Wisdom. She was named "Wisconsin Poet of the Year" and had a play entitled When I Go to Sleep performed at the Players Theater in Waitsfield, Vermont. She co-hosts a tv show called All Things LGBTQ. Presently, she lives in Montpelier with her partner. Scott Norman Rosenthal was never allowed to finish 9th Grade due to the public school system's incapacity to deal with autism at that time. He studied poetry at Stockton State College, Pomona, NJ by special invitation of Stephen Dunn, who was later awarded a Pulitzer Prize in poetry for the year 2000. Otherwise, Scott never attended college. Max Vandersteen is a retired pipefitter who resumed writing poetry after a career in the petrochemical industry. He strives to use poetry that deals with social justice, environmental consequences of our resource and land use, and the need for a global community to deal with them. He has published 3 books: Iguanas of El Ray, Fair Play, and Work of Words and has had numerous poems included in anthologies. He is a member of The Parkland Poetry Society, The Ontario Poetry Society, and is currently vice president of The Edmonton Stroll of Poets Society. Clare Wilmot says, "Poetry has been strongly enjoyed in both my childhood home, schooling, courtship, and my marriage. I came 'out' as a poet after I had been hospitalized with leukemia, and became involved in the early days of The Hippocrates Initiative, University of Warwick, where poets and doctors submitted poems on a medical theme. At the prize giving in London in 2013, I provided a 15-minute presentation on the value of poetry in illness as a therapeutic tool." Stephen Kastner was a professional newspaper columnist and photo-journalist for many years at The Door County Advocate in Wisconsin, and The Leesburg Commercial, a New York Times owned publication in Florida. Since 2016, he has been leading a weekly open-genre, writers' workshop in Vermont. His work is regularly published in Unpsychology Magazine and The Green Mountain Literary Review. Winner of the 2023 Longleaf Press Book Prize for Caravaggio's Kimono, Ken Fifer's five previous poetry collections include After Fire and Falling Man. His poems have appeared in magazines and journals, including Barrow Street, New Letters, The Literary Review, and Ploughshares. He has a Ph.D. in English Language and Literature from The University of Michigan. Chris Gallagher is an amateur poet living in Brooklyn. The themes of his poetry (in English, French and Italian) include love, loss and longing, air travel and America, past and place. Originally from Wisconsin, Chris studied in New England and in France, and now works in international education. Cathy Hailey teaches in JHU's MA in Teaching Writing program and previously taught high school English and Creative Writing. She is Northern Region VP of The Poetry Society of Virginia and organizes In the Company of Laureates. Her chapbook, I'd Rather Be a Hyacinth, was published by Finishing Line Press. Laura Holley has always been a reader but says for most of her life, she has not been brave enough to be a writer. "Oftentimes, courage is simply a byproduct of action. And, so, with a deep inhale, I write my words, and offer them up to the world. When I'm not reading or writing, I can often be found loving on my two dogs, hiking in nature, or playing loudly on my drums. Be well, be kind." Alex Moore writes creative nonfiction and fiction, short stories, flash fiction, and poetry. She's the author of a memoir titled The Miseducation of a Traveler which chronicles her adventures working and traveling in New Zealand. She's also been published in The Green Mountain Literary Review, In Parentheses, The Meadow, and The Hurricane Review.
