Dianne Borsenik — Poet, Perfomer, Publisher, Promoter, Producer, and Independent Editor: February 2020

Friday, February 28, 2020

Viva Retirement!

Dianne Borsenik is retired! The Big Day was January 31, 2020, and as of February 2, 2020 (0-2-0-2-2-0-2-0), I am a sixty-five year old retiree on Medicare, and I'm ready to rrrrrrrrrumble! The future is wide-open now, with time to devote to all those things I love most. I've already written three "retirement" poems, based on Wallace Stevens' Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird. They are

13 Ways of Looking at Retirement, With Only 19 Working Days to Go
13 Ways of Looking at Retirement from the Other Side (After the Party)
13 Ways of Looking at Retirement on Yet Another Monday Off Work

And, I've written a poem for all my friends, in celebration, with love.

*

Ice Cubes

Friends are ice cubes in the cocktail of life.
We chill together, tinkle and clink our way

out of the shaker and into the glass, mix
with sass and effervescence, irreverence

and unabashed joy; we entertain one long-
pour, united in spirit, no matter the garnish.

Crush us, we stay frosty; swizzle-stir us, we
go with the flow. We get juicy, we get saucy,

we get what it means to melt together as
we age, diluting the bad times, enhancing

the good times, just enough bump and
tumble to let them know we were here.

Friends are ice cubes in the cocktail of life.
This is our celebration. This is our Happy Hour.

*

The poems mentioned above are part of a new poetry manuscript I'm working on, also titled Ice Cubes. Other poems in it include

What You Need
I Tell James Not to Hit Jesus as We Circle the Walmart Parking Lot on Halloween
Lori Says Her Father Liked to Camp, But Doesn't Know He'd Want to Be a Bullet
Coming from the Cafeteria, I See Gerard Butler Walking with His Head Down, and I Wonder

*
I'm excited about what's possible in the days, weeks, months, and years to come. Some of my plans include the following appearances:

Poet-in-Residence at Loganberry Books
13015 Larchmere Blvd, Cleveland, OH
Saturday, April 11, 2020
12:00 to 4:00 p.m.

Featured Writer at the Ohioana Book Festival
Columbus Metropolitan Library
96 S. Grant Ave., Columbus, OH
Saturday, April 25, 2020
10:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

Featured Reader at Words & Wine
Steele Mansion Inn
358 Mentor Ave., Painesville, OH
Wednesday, May 20, 2020
6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.

*

NightBallet Press is active, with a number of manuscripts being formatted and edited, with an eye to publishing one title a month.

*
I'm acting as a judge for a local poetry contest. I have an independent editing job, aside from the press. I just applied for a fellowship. I have poems accepted for publication in Chiron Review (summer issue), Goddess (a National Beat Poetry women's anthology - this year), and What But the Music (a Baby Boomer music anthology - late spring).

Both James and I celebrated big birthdays this month of February (he turned 70 years old), and we've celebrated Chinese New Year, Valentine's Day, and Mardi Gras, as well. We had a retirement party at Speak of the Devil, and I feature-read at Poetry & Open Mic at the Arabica Bistro in Amherst, Ohio. Went along on a road trip to Toledo and saw/read with friends, and on another road trip visited Muskingham University to participate in a panel and classroom study group. I joined the Winking Lizard Tour of Beers, and I'm forty-six beers away from a golf umbrella...and only ninety-six beers away from a Winking Lizard jacket! LOL

I'm keeping busy. I'm having fun.

All we need now is for it to warm up enough to put the top down on the convertible!

Viva Retirement!

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.