ONE ART’s March Reading — Featured Poets: Joanne Leva, Tresha Faye Haefner, Jennifer Browne, Ethel Rackin, Dana Knott, Allison Blevins

~ The ONE ART Reading Series ~

ONE ART’s March 2025 Reading! 

Sunday, March 2 — 2pm Eastern (via Zoom)

Tickets are FREE or Donation

>>> Tickets Available Here <<<

Featured Poets: Joanne Leva, Tresha Faye Haefner, Jennifer Browne, Ethel Rackin, Dana Knott, Allison Blevins

Joanne Leva, author of Eve Heads Back and Eve Would Know (Kelsay Books) and an advocate for creative writing and community service. Joanne is founder and executive director of the Montgomery County PA Poet Laureate Program (MCPL), directed by Chad Frame (who is an upcoming Featured Poet!! So, I hope you’ll plan to tune in to ONE ART’s future readings). She also oversees the new Montgomery County PA Youth Poet Laureate program (YPL), directed by Evan Wang. Leva founded and has coordinated the Forgotten Voices Poetry Group and workshop, the first Saturday of every month from the Indian Valley Public Library, in Telford, for over 34 years. 

Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Peace is a Haiku Song, 50 Over Fifty, Apiary, Schuylkill Valley Journal, Rag Queen Periodical, Mad Poet’s Review, Bucks County Writer, Transcendent Visions, among others. Her poem, God Walks into a Bar, was featured in a Philadelphia Calligraphers Society Exhibit and Poetry Reading and companion publication entitled, Scripta. Her poem, Looking Back on the Mountain, was featured in an exhibition and companion publication entitled, Making Magic: Beauty in Word and Image, at the James A. Michener Museum in Doylestown, PA.

Ask me about the Caesura Poetry Festival & Retreat!

The MCPL is a program of the Indian Valley Arts Foundation, a 501c3 non-profit corporation. Please consider supporting our efforts with a donation.

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Allison Blevins (she/her) is a queer disabled writer and the author of five chapbooks and four collections. Winner of the 2024 Barthelme Prize, the 2023 Lexi Rudnitsky Editor’s Choice Award, and the 2022 Laux/Millar Poetry Prize, Allison serves as the Publisher of Small Harbor Publishing and lives in Minnesota with her spouse and three children. allisonblevins.com. If you would like to support the Blevins family during their current health crisis, you can donate to their Meal Train or purchase an item off their wishlist.

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Tresha Faye Haefner is an award-winning poet, performer, educator and general facilitator of the fun times. Her work has been widely published and garnered several awards, including the Robert and Adele Schiff Poetry Prize, and the Pangea Prize. Her first book, When the Moon Had Antlers (Pine Row Press, 2024) was a finalist for the Glass Lyre Poetry Prize. She is best described as an eco-poet, travel-poet, and performance poet. She writes words for the stage, page, coffee shop, words for sitting under a tree alone, and words for reading to someone you love while rowing them down a river towards dawn.

In addition to writing her own poems about nature and other mysteries, her most important role is to help others feel safe and inspired to write work of their own. Most importantly, she is founder of The Poetry Salon, an online learning community where poets meet to share inspiration, education and support as they write together and cheer one another on! You can get new information, updates and invitations to events at The Poetry Salon by joining The Poetry Salon on Substack at ThePoetrySalonStack.Substack.com.

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Dana Knott’s writing has recently appeared in The Selkie, Moss Puppy, Minerva Rising, Cosmic Daffodil, and Dust Poetry Magazine. Her micro chapbook “Funeral Flowers” was published by Rinky Dink Press in 2024. Currently, she works as an academic library director in Ohio, and is the editor of tiny wren lit, which publishes micro poetry and micro chapbooks. Check out her profile on Chill Subs: https://www.chillsubs.com/user/dana.a.knott.

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Jennifer Browne falls in love easily with other people’s dogs. She is the author of American Crow (Beltway Editions, 2024) and the poetry chapbooks Before: After (Pure Sleeze Press, 2025), In a Period of Absence, a Lake (Origami Poems Project, 2025), whisper song (tiny wren publishing, 2023) and The Salt of the Geologic World (Bottlecap Press, 2023). Her work has recently appeared in Poets for Science, Humana Obscura, Trailer Park Quarterly, and One Sentence Poems. Find her in Frostburg, MD and her poems at linktr.ee/jenniferabrowne.

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Ethel Rackin is the author of four books of poetry: The Forever Notes (Parlor Press, 2013); Go On (Parlor Press, 2016), a National Jewish Book Award finalist; Evening (Furniture Press, 2017); and In Time (Word Works Books, May 2025). In addition, she is the author of the text Crafting Poems and Stories: A Guide to Creative Writing (Broadview Press, 2022).

Her collaborative lyric sequence, “Soledad,” written with Elizabeth Savage, was awarded the 2016 Thomas Merton Prize for Poetry of the Sacred by Elizabeth Robinson, and another collaborative sequence, “Silent e,” is included in They Said: A Multi-Genre Anthology of Collaborative Writing (Black Lawrence Press, 2018). Her work has appeared in The American Poetry Review, Colorado Review, Columbia Poetry Review, Kenyon Review, New England Review, Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, Volt, and other journals.

She earned her MFA from Bard College and her PhD in English Literature from Princeton University. A MacDowell fellow, she has taught at Penn State Brandywine, Haverford College, and Bucks County Community College in Pennsylvania, where she is a professor of English.

Camera Man by Ethel Rackin

Camera Man

I had to swim part way there because the land was submerged
or maybe hadn’t been there in the first place, for all I knew.
The stripes of blue and gold were the same for both of us—
gender neutral? Not exactly, but close enough.
You wore your best encampment and I wore the jeans
I had left. I couldn’t help myself
from falling asleep: the waves, the paddling,
the fatigue, treated (not very well) by 30 mg.
It was a miracle but only if you could afford it.
All of the new thinking is like…. Anyway, just as
someone stole the only photo I had left of that
time, a photo simultaneously sad and magical,
I lit a fire under us. You wouldn’t have minded
except now you and everyone you knew
had to get involved, to which I responded
by asking exactly who you were and what
business you had taking my picture after all.

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Ethel Rackin is the author of three books of poetry: The Forever Notes (Parlor Press, 2013); Go On (Parlor Press, 2016); and Evening (Furniture Press, 2017). Her new teaching text is Crafting Poems and Stories: A Guide to Creative Writing (Broadview Press, 2022).

Six Poems by Ethel Rackin

Pride

Some things go with it—
the anxious stares
the desire to attenuate things—
so that a flower in a vase
stands just
as it is
as long as it is
invisibly and because.

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The Color of Trees

All these creatures filled
with petrified wood
as I am—little bird—
as I am—snow-filled skull—
ornamental nightingale—
so my early years and late
stretch in a thin line—
break and breathe—
as trees thrown by a river
rise—what’s the difference
bird—call me if you need
any 200-year-old trees.

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Frets

The forest will take you—
you with your sudden
aching parts
your steely starts
and uneven gait
your unconscious fits—
don’t fret, Friend, walk—
something will roll you
something will lift you up
as if by wind—
a frond.
A river walk.

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Idyll

Something it is that hangs
on the backs of bushes—
laundry-line or vine, half-
occluded woodbine—
or those rotten birches—
the hollow ones—now
that we’ve become
no more useful to them
than this unpredictable sun.

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Another Summer

Dogs walked the streets
trees snuck behind shadows
the world was an alley
in my heart a tune played
ice fell and melted
large drinks were served
these were the salad days
but we didn’t yet know it
we were so busy counting
our private miseries
our secret wishes.

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Remains

What remains in my notebook
now that the day is done
here on this sick planet
I think I’ll pour another
look up at the dim
stars—for tonight
they’re on fire.

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Ethel Rackin is the author of three books of poetry: The Forever Notes (Parlor Press, 2013), Go On (Parlor Press, 2016), and Evening (Furniture Press, 2017). Her new text, Crafting Poems and Stories: A Guide to Creative Writing, is forthcoming from Broadview Press. Poems are forthcoming in Allium, Colorado Review, and Guesthouse.

5 poems by Ethel Rackin

This Late

in the day
the sky’s thirsty tilting
staring down on us—
all of it—the drinks—drunk—
as you and I might slip
into the kind of trance
we were in
at the beginning
if we’re not careful
if it’s still possible:
trust—arrive
on another side.

 

A Solitary Box

is arranged
to you it’s just
a box
but to me it holds
so much
forgiveness.

 

A Way Out

The shells you wear you
withdraw into—
by staying motionless
you prepare
a temporary explosion—
not to say whirlwind—
it’s in your nature.

 

Sun

Someday you’ll rise
and face the sun
head into the hills—
your heart’s interest—
nearly stunning
in your vicissitudes
you’ll shun that sun,
shadow.

 

Small Things

get to you
wherever you are you are
whether or not you leave
you leave—
this flowering triangle
will come to nothing
if you’re not steadfast
or true. Be the wind
in sail. All precious
metals.

 

 

Ethel Rackin is the author of three books of poetry: The Forever Notes (Parlor Press, 2013); Go On (Parlor Press, 2016), a National Jewish Book Award finalist; and Evening (Furniture Press, 2017). She is currently at work on Crafting Poems and Stories: A Guide to Creative Writing (Broadview Press). Her collaborative lyric sequence, “Soledad,” written with Elizabeth Savage, was awarded the Thomas Merton Prize for Poetry of the Sacred by Elizabeth Robinson, and another collaborative sequence, “Silent e,” is included in They Said: A Multi-Genre Anthology of Collaborative Writing (Black Lawrence Press, 2018). Her work has appeared in The American Poetry Review, Colorado Review, Columbia Poetry Review, Hotel Amerika, Jacket2, Kenyon Review, Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, Volt, and other journals. The recipient of a MacDowell Colony fellowship, she has taught at Penn State Brandywine, Haverford College, and Bucks County Community College in Pennsylvania, where she is a professor of English.