Poets

Jason Bartlett is a Fine Arts student at CCRI.

Transguy. Vegetarian. Dog Lover. Artist. Beatlemania.

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  Ariana D. den Bleyker is a Pittsburgh native currently residing in New York’s Hudson Valley where she is a wife and mother of two. When she’s not writing, she’s spending time with her family and every once in a while sleeps. She is the author of three collections and twenty chapbooks, among others. She is the founder and publisher of ELJ Editions, Ltd., a 501(c)(3) literary nonprofit. She hopes you'll fall in love with her words.

* 2023 Update: Ariana's poem Kitsungi was nominated by the Origami Poems Project for the annual Pushcart Prize.

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Jason Hancock is primarily a visual artist.  (See his OPP Artist's page Here.)

He says about his art:  "My art is my solace, therapy, and love that makes me feel whole when life itself can be so fractured. As these characteristics come together my hope is sharing something sublime."

Rick Benjamin is the State Poet of Rhode Island. He teaches or has taught at Brown University, the Rhode Island School of Design, the MFA Program in Interdisciplinary Arts at Goddard College, in many schools, and in community & assisted living centers — where he has passed good time in the company of people who range in age from six to ninety-six. He also serves as a Fellow at New Urban Arts — an afterschool arts mentoring program for Providence high school students. His poems & essays have appeared in PRØOF, Watershed, The Providence Journal, Tongue, 350.org, The Writer’s Circle, American Poets in the 21st Century: The New Poetics (Wesleyan University Press), Urthona: An International Buddhist Journal of the Arts, Poem, Home: An Anthology of Ars Poetica (Paper Kite Press), and La Petite Zine.

He lives with his family in a very small village in the smallest state.

     Charlene Neely has been a dishwasher, waitress, cook, babysitter, nurse’s aide, stock clerk, elevator operator, paste-up artist, service girl at a candy factory, Fuller Brush man, Avon lady, printer, copy machine operator, circuit board imager, wife, mother, grandmother, great grandmother, chauffeur and sometimes tries to put it all into poetry. She is published in anthologies and magazines and mails silly postcard poems to friends and family. 

In 2016, her book The Lights of Lincoln was published by Fusion Media.  It chronicles the public art project Illuminating Lincoln: Lighthouse in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Her email motto is "The home of a poet is full of Delight!" 

* Charlene's poem, "The Poem I Should Have Written," is included under the Introspection category in the Origami Poems anthology The Best of Kindness available on Amazon.

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Phil Shils lives in Decatur Illinois where he works as a physician assistant.

His poetry can be found in various online and print journals including Rattle, Sixth Finch, BODY, 2River View, Stirring, and many others. A chapbook about life with his disabled daughter, Lucia, was published by Right Hand Pointing and can be ordered via his website: www.philshils.com. All proceeds from sales of the book go to the therapeutic horseback riding program in which his daughter participates.

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Stephen Wallace Coltin began writing poetry and short stories for his own amusement at an early age, but has always been shy of bringing attention to his work. While his poems have recently been included in two online anthologies, Stephen considers himself primarily an aphoristic writer, in the tradition of La Rochefoucauld and Yoshida Kenko. A collection of his aphorisms and fragments, under the title Almond Blossoms, should appear online sometime later in 2014. Stephen lives with his kitten, Groucho, in a suburb north of Boston.

    Norma Coleman Jenckes returned to Pawtucket, her hometown, after three decades teaching at the University of Cincinnati. She has written and published poetry since college and has most recently been experimenting with forms.

She blogs about poetry, Pawtucket memories and realities, in "BACK IN THE BUCKET" and has published in such journals as Ambit, Western Humanities Review, The Paris Review and Eastern Structures. She has published a volume of poetry DEMENTIA: The Undiscovered Country.

A produced playwright, Norma  taught drama and dramatic writing at Bryant University, the University of Cincinnati and Union Institute and University. She  now divides her time between Pawtucket and Green Hill where she lives with her husband, Yashdip.

She appreciates the free and open access that ORIGAMI POEMS PROJECT provides.