Latest Issue of Lips Reading June 6

 

On June 6, 2026, there will be a launch event for the new issue of LIPS poetry magazine. Issue 63/64 marks the 45th year of Lips. 

 

The reading will be from 2pm to 4 pm at the Clifton Public Library main branch at 292 Piaget Ave Clifton, NJ 07011, and will feature poets who have work in this issue.

 

Lips was founded in 1981 by poet Laura Boss, a close friend of Maria Gillan and a fellow poet. They read together many times and hosted poetry workshops together, including their long-running poetry weekends.

 

Laura served as the Lips editor until her passing in April 2021.

Laura and Maria

The magazine is now supported by the non-profit Laura Boss Poetry Foundation. The editor, Jim Gwyn, will be the event's host.

Lips has published poems by Robert Bly, Allen Ginsberg, Ruth Stone, David Ignatow, Marge Piercy, Michael Benedikt, Nicholas Christopher, Anne Waldman, Ishmael Reed, Gregory Corso, Lyn Lifshin, Ted Berrigan, Paul Hoover, Jana Harris, Toi Derricotte, Joseph Bruchac, Alice Notley, Warren Woessner, Robert Phillips, Hal Sirowitz, Theodore Weiss, Alicia Ostriker, Maria Mazziotti Gillan, Stanley H. Barkan, Michael Weaver, Molly Peacock, and Richard Kostelanetz.

Lips will be accepting submissions for the 2027 issue from September 1, through November 30.  

Book Launch for the Laura Boss Narrative Poetry Award Saturday April 26

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Please join us as The Poetry Center celebrates the publication launch of the winning book for the Laura Boss Narrative Poetry Award with a reading by the winning poet and finalists. 

The winning 2024 poet is Suzanne Cleary for her manuscript The Odds. Her collection has been published by NYQ Books. This award includes a $5,000 prize, 25 author copies, and a featured reading at the book’s release. 

"Suzanne Cleary does, as Wordsworth wrote, see into the life of things. The language of her poetry is clear as just-washed windows&emdash;or maybe I should say an open window, because I feel as though there's no distance between the scenes that Cleary delivers and me. With compelling detail and surprising turns, she considers the odds of our very survival, of maintaining our delicate balance of being "breakable but never broken." These poems offer a poignant tenderness in encounters with art, literature, history, and memory, small moments of transformation, "like a tear in fabric, through which light passes." This is a poet who reminds us"Attention is love," and I love these poems. "
     —Ellen Bass (author of Indigo)

"Suzanne Cleary's The Odds speaks of the tender moments of unknowing in all of us. In sure-footed lines, these poems cover great distance: from the foibles we all experience to our dreams of bigger worlds. This moving collection creates breath, and room to travel between worlds as we speak to the dead as well as the living."
     —Jan Beatty (author of Dragstripping)

"Suzanne Cleary's poems brim with curiosity, insight, and humor, each a testament to keen observation and ready imagination. She writes about a worry stone, a green glove, a young poet waiting in line for his mother's prescription, about artists and actors, and lesser-known others we must remember. She is a poet who takes us somewhere we've never been and want to stay."
     —Mara Bergman (author of The Night We Were Dylan Thomas)

The five finalists and their manuscript titles are: Rowhome in Flickering Light, Daniel Donaghy;  A Brief History of My Sex Life, Subhaga Crystal Bacon; BREASTS/MOM  Emily Hyland; Smolder, Colleen Morton Busch; All the Wrong Things, Susan Rothbard.

There will be a catered reception at the Poetry Center at PCCC in Paterson starting noon. The reading by Suzamme Cleary will begin there at 1 pm and will also include readings by finalists Colleen Morton Busch and Susan Rothbard.

The event is free and open to the public.

See the Poetry Center website for information, directions, and parking.

Visit laurabosspoetryfoundation.org for information on the Foundation’s work, the manuscript award, and the poetry magazine Lips.

(from top left) Cleary, Bacon, Busch, Hyland, Donaghy, Rothbard

Lips Poetry Magazine Publication Launch Reading June 15

I will read as part of the Lips poetry magazine 2024 issue #59/60 publication launch event on Saturday, June 15, 2024. The event is from 2-4 PM at the Clifton (NJ) Public Library, Main Branch. (292 Piaget Ave, Clifton, NJ 07011) The reading is free and open to the public and there is on-site free parking.

Poets published in this issue have been invited to read their contributions at the event. Copies of the new issue and selected back issues will be on sale at the event and are available through their Submittable site.

As a close friend of Laura Boss, I have contributed to Lips since its inception in 1981. Laura was the founding editor and served as its editor until her passing in April 2021.

Please consider donating to the Laura Boss Poetry Foundationdonating to the Laura Boss Poetry Foundation. The Foundation was established to honor Laura Boss’s memory and to support poets and poetry. The Foundation now provides financial support for Lips and makes the continued publication of the magazine and the ability to allow submissions without a reading fee possible. The Foundation is a 501(c)(3) corporation and all contributions to support its work are tax-deductible.

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Maria Mazziotti Gillan's newest poetry collection is When the Stars Were Still Visible (2021). Other recent publications are the poetry and photography collection, Paterson Light and Shadow, and the poetry collections What Blooms in Winter and The Girls in the Chartreuse Jackets, a pairing of her poems with her paintings.
Maria's artist website is MariaMazziottiGillan.com and her poetry website is MariaGillan.com.

Laura Boss Narrative Poetry Award Reading March 16

Clockwise from top left: Levine, Mills, Hyland, Webb, Kennedy-Nolle, Lubarsky

The Winner & Finalists Reading and Book Launch for the 2023 Laura Boss Narrative Poetry Award will be held at the Poetry Center at PCCC in Paterson, NJ on Saturday, March 16, 2024. The winner and finalists are all scheduled to read at this event. 

The winner is Miriam Levine of Concord, NH. Her collection, Forget About Sleep, was published this month by NYQ Books as part of the award. 

The five finalists and their manuscript titles are Emily Hyland, Divorced Business Partners;  Nancy Lubarsky, Truth to the Rumors; Stephen S. Mills, We Will Always Be Perverts; Sharon Kennedy-Nolle, Not Waving, and Sean Webb, Disappointment Awaits.

Miriam Levine's Forget about Sleep portrays the gifts and perils of aging as she remembers lost lovers, friends, and beloved family, and it celebrates treasured places and the near and dear still alive. These bold poems of sensual and spiritual life move from gritty Northern New Jersey to New England and Florida, from interior spaces to landscapes and the gardens she tends.

Miriam Levine is the author of five previous books of poetry and three books of prose. Her honors include the Autumn House Poetry Prize. A fellow of the NEA, and grantee of the Massachusetts Artists Foundation, Levine is Professor emerita at Framingham State University and lives in Florida and New Hampshire. You may find more information about her work at miriamlevine.com

A Reading Celebrating the Publication of the Winner of the Laura Boss Narrative Poetry Award

On April 29, 2023, a reading will be held celebrating the publication of Man at the Railing (NYQ Books, 2023) by Edwin Romond, winner of the 2022 Laura Boss Narrative Poetry Award.

Maria Mazziotti Gillan was the final judge for this inaugural award.

The event will be held at the Poetry Center at PCCC in the historic Hamilton Club in Paterson, New Jersey. (directions)

Also reading at the event will be the five finalists for the award: Tony Gloeggler, Lisa Nicolaou, Svea Barrett, Carole Stone, and Jennifer Poteet.

The event will include a catered reception at noon and the readings starting at 1 pm. The celebration is free and open to the public.

The Inaugural Laura Boss Narrative Poetry Award

Maria Gillan was the final judge for the inaugural Laura Boss Narrative Poetry Award. Edwin Romond of Wind Gap, PA is the inaugural award winner. Romond’s manuscript, Man at the Railing, will be published in Spring 2023 by NYQ Books. The award also includes a $5,000 prize, 25 author copies and a featured reading.

Edwin Romond

Maria Mazziotti Gillan was a longtime friend of Laura Boss. “Because all the finalist manuscripts were beautiful and moving in different ways, this was a very difficult choice to make. I finally selected Edwin’s manuscript because the poems reminded me of Laura. After I chose the manuscript and found out whose manuscript it was, I felt that I was right because I remembered that he is a poet whose work Laura loved and admired and I felt that my choice would have made Laura very happy."

Her son, Barry Boss, who created the Laura Boss Poetry Foundation in her memory said “I can think of no more fitting tribute to my mother than the work of the Foundation.  In her last days in hospice, the notion that her legacy would live on through the continued publication of Lips and the Narrative Poetry Award brought her comfort and joy during a difficult time. She would have loved Man at the Railing and been impressed with all of the finalists’ manuscripts.”

For a list of the five finalists and information on the Foundation, the award, and Lips poetry magazine, see laurabosspoetryfoundation.org

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Maria Mazziotti Gillan's new poetry collection is When the Stars Were Still Visible (2021). Other recent publications are the poetry and photography collection, Paterson Light and Shadow and the poetry collections What Blooms in Winter and The Girls in the Chartreuse Jackets which pairs her poems with her paintings. Maria's artist's website is MariaMazziottiGillan.com and her poetry website is MariaGillan.com.