Spontaneous Spots: Not a Startling Skin Condition

The keen-eyed amongst you may have noticed that our contributors will sometimes include a detail in their biographies that seems to be in answer to a question. Indeed, it is not for lack of wit that all our first-time contributors feel the need to share their favourite fruit; it is because we compel them to do so. And then we ask about cherries, and then about masks, and then about books... All to a nefarious purpose planned from our very first issue: to sneakily interview all our contributors one poem-accompanying bio at a time.

It is therefore with great delight that we share the cumulative interviews produced by the first two poets to have shared ten poems with us outside of an official Feature: Sonya Taaffe and Joshua Gage.

Sonya Taaffe has a confirmed addiction to myth, folklore, and dead languages. Poems and short stories of hers have won the Rhysling Award, been shortlisted for the SLF Fountain Award and the Dwarf Stars Award, and been reprinted in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, The Alchemy of Stars: Rhysling Award Winners Showcase, The Best of Not One of Us, and Trochu divné kusy 3. A selection of her work can be found in Postcards from the Province of Hyphens and Singing Innocence and Experience (Prime Books). She holds master's degrees in Classics from Brandeis and Yale and once named a Kuiper belt object.

Joshua Gage is an ornery curmudgeon from Cleveland, His first full-length collection, breaths, is available from VanZeno Press. Intrinsic Night, a collaborative project he wrote with J. E. Stanley, is available from Sam's Dot Publishing. Bedtime Stories, his chapbook of fairy tale based poems, is scheduled to be released in the late summer of 2011 on Amsterdam Press. He is a graduate of the Low Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing at Naropa University and has a penchant for Pendleton shirts, rye whiskey and any poem strong enough to yank the breath out of his lungs. He stomps around Cleveland in a purple bathrobe where he hosts the monthly Deep Cleveland Poetry hour and enjoys the beer at Brew Kettle.

Interview with Sonya

Interview with Joshua

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