5th Not-Exactly-Annual Haiku Death Match! The Strawberry Stormbringer!

Saturday, April 1, 2017

5th Not-Exactly-Annual Haiku Death Match! The Strawberry Stormbringer!

It's National Poetry Month, and this time next week, I'll be flexing my creative muscles and preparing for battle in the
5th Not-Exactly-Annual Haiku Death Match!

The Haiku Death Match, sponsored by Heights Arts Collaborative, Inc., will be held at the Dobama Theater, 2340 Lee Road, Cleveland Heights, OH, on Saturday, April 8, 2017, at 7 P.M.!

In this Death Match, eight poets will fiercely compete against each other with haiku (meditative, seventeen-syllable poems): "the audience votes for the poems they like best, competitors are eliminated, and the last poet standing is the winner. It's poetry, theater, talent show, and a jousting match rolled into one."

"The poets in the ring will have to fight hard for the trophy. In the first half of the Death Match, poets will read their contemporary haiku on the subjects: personal relationships, politics, animals in our life, the daily grind, and all things Cleveland. Poets with the hightest scores advance to the second half, in which they will read only classical, nature -oriented haiku. The winner of the classical round is declared the 2017 Haiku Death Math Master."

My competitive warrior name is the Strawberry Stormbringer, and I will be going up against some worthy and intimidating adversaries. Oh yes, and their blades will be wicked-sharp, I'm certain! But the Stormbringer intends to huff, and puff, and blow down their houses!

"Returning champions and contestants include Dianne Borsenik, poet and founder of NightBallet Press, Michael Ceraolo, retired firefighter/paramedic and writer, Celeste McCarty, artist and performer, Ray McNiece, actor, poet, and former Haiku Death Match champion, Mary Turzillo, poet, science fiction writer, and fencing champion, Geoffrey Landis, NASA physicist, poet, and science fiction writer. A few Death Match 'virgins' have entered the fray as well, including Christine Donofrio, artist, writer, and film maker, and Cordelia Eddy, 'zine writer and East Coast ex-pat."

(Quotes are from the event posting at Heights Arts.)

You can make a difference by voting for your favorite competitor through a donation to the cause, or you can buy a ticket and become a part of the Haiku Death Match by audience! The funds will help raise money to support Heights Arts Poet Laureate program and its Ekphrastacy series. Tickets ($15) can be purchased at the door, or online at Heights Arts.

This amazing and entertaining event will blaze across the Dobama stage next Saturday night...please come and support me, and join in the fun and fury of the 5th Not-Exactly-Annual Haiku Death Match! I'd truly love to see you there!

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The Public Persona

Dianne Borsenik is active in the northern Ohio, Cleveland-area, poetry scene and regional reading circuit, and travels to perform her poetry throughout the Midwest. She is a member of the Ohio Poetry Association and the Haiku Society of America. In 2011, she founded NightBallet Press (where she is M.F.W.I.C.), and has since published over 120 titles for poets across the U.S. In September 2015, she produced BeatStreet Cleveland as part of the National Beat Poetry Festival. In 2023, her book Raga for What Comes Next was studied as part of the Modern & Contemporary American Poetry course at Muskingum University in New Concord, Ohio. Borsenik spent a day at MU to discuss the book with the students and did a featured reading from her new collection of poems, Flight of Honey. Flight of Honey was published by Luchador Press in May, 2023. Her poetry has been published in hundreds of journals, magazines, anthologies, and more, including Main Street Rag, Chiron Review, The Offbeat, Rosebud, Slipstream, Lilliput Review, bottle rockets, Voices of Cleveland, Poems-For-All, Haiku World: An International Poetry Almanac, and The Magnetic Poetry® Book of Poetry. Her poetry has also appeared in numerous galleries and projects, including Cleveland Heights Arts Gallery's "Ekphrastacy," the Wick Poetry Center's "Speak Peace - American Voices Respond to Vietnamese Children's Paintings," the 2019, 2020, and 2022 Edith Chase Symposiums, Amy Mothersbaugh's Studio 2091, & S. A. Griffin's cross-country project "The Poetry Bomb." A copy of her haiku chapbook Blue Graffiti (Crisis Chronicles Press, 2011) is in the Decatur Haiku Collection at Millikin University. In 2016, Crisis Chronicles Press published her first full-length collection of poetry, Age of Aquarius, and in January, 2019, Stubborn Mule Press published her second full-length collection, Raga for What Comes Next, which was released at the "We're No Angels" event at the acclaimed cocktail bar Speak of the Devil in Lorain, Ohio. In September of 2019, Stubborn Mule Press published a four-woman anthology, Heaven We Haven't Yet Dreamed, containing 23 pages of new poetry by Borsenik. She has also performed her poetry with 2 Chefs and a Beat - "Poetic Justice Edition" - at Porco Lounge and Tiki Room in Cleveland, Ohio. Actor Jonathan Frid (Barnabas on television's Dark Shadows) used three of her poems in his one-man touring show Genesis of Evil. Her poem "Let's Get It On" (from her chapbook Thunderclap Amen) was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. In 2013 and again in 2014, she won first place in the Best Cleveland Poem Competition. She has taught poetry at Southview Middle School (Lorain, OH), given workshops at Lit Youngstown's Literary Festival, and serves annually as a juror in the Cleveland Institute of Art's Scholastic Writing Awards. In Summer 2015, her poem "Disco" was selected by the Youngstown Summer Festival of the Arts to appear on its reusable tote bags, and Lit Youngstown printed the poem on their tee shirts, which makes her feel like a rock star. She believes in the musicality of language and the originality of expression in poetry, and continues to seek publication in journals, magazines, chapbooks, and anthologies. She is willing to travel for readings, to present workshops pertaining to small press publishing, to serve on panels about editing and publishing, and to participate with her press at independent literary festivals. Contact Dianne at dborsenik@gmail.com.

The Personal Shizzle

Dianne Borsenik was born Dianne Lynn Keith on Wednesday, February 2 (yes, Groundhog's Day), 1955 in Oberlin, Ohio, during a waxing gibbous moon. She is the Zodiac sign Aquarius and the Chinese Zodiac sign the Sheep. In 1959 her parents moved to Elyria, Ohio, about thirty minutes west of Cleveland, along with daughters Dianne and her younger sister. Dianne grew up roaming Cascade Park: a jewel of green trees, Black River, and East and West Falls in the heart of Elyria, and bookstores, wherever she could find them. In 1977 she met James Borsenik, and in 1979, married him. Their honeymoon was made especially exciting by Hurricane David hitting Florida while their car was sitting disabled in a Kissimmee parking lot. She kept her maiden name and added (unhyphenated) Borsenik. People the world over know her by the initials DLKB. Sadly, Dianne's beloved husband James died July 1, 2023. She misses him profoundly. James and Dianne were blessed with several dog-children over the years: Nickolas Wonder, Bahloo, and Dory Kiss Me Quick; she is still grieving her much-beloved Bodhisattva and little Michel-Angelo. In 2020, Speak of the Devil in Lorain, Ohio, created a tasty cocktail and named it "Borsenik's Law" -- ("That which is poured must be consumed.") She is inordinately pleased to have a listing in the IMDb for photographs she took at the Lix & Kix Poetry Extravaganza, which appeared in the documentary "Twisted Sisters." Favorite Dianne things include Toronto, the Black Hills, Led Zeppelin (emphasis on Robert Plant), steak, lobster, shrimp cocktail, asparagus, Star Trek (emphasis on Leonard Nimoy/Spock), the Monkees (emphasis on Peter Tork), apocalyptic and disaster movies, the Weather Channel, the English Royals, reading (especially biographies, nonfiction), sleeping with the windows open, going barefoot, carnations, honeysuckle, rap music (Snooooooop), riding in a convertible yeah, we're rolling with the top down, strong coffee, sweet tea, Blackstrap Rum, spicy Bloody Marys, Old Fashions made with Old Overholt Rye, the internet, getting her hands dirty growing herbs and flowers, floating in the pool, Tennessee Williams, travel, thunderstorms, Glenn Miller, Frank Sinatra, Nine Inch Nails-the Closer album, Andrea Bocelli, Devo, Ravi Shankar, the Beatles, the Doors, Pink Floyd, and of course, poetry.