Category: Poets

Photos from RWB 18 Launch!

Hey everyone, if you missed the RWB 18 launch last Wednesday, check out the photos below.

To get your own copy of RWB 18, you can order it online here or get it at our next in person reading on November 5th, featuring the poets Rick Mullin and Joel Allegretti.

Thanks for 18 years of great poetry!

The Red Wheelbarrow Nr. 18 Launch on Wednesday, October 8, 2024, 7 PM

You’re invited to The Red Wheelbarrow #18 launch!! Join us on October 8, 2025 at 7 PM at The Felician University Little Theater at 230 Montross Avenue in Rutherford, NJ, for a fantastic poetry reading, featuring the writers published in RWB #18.

If you have work in this issue, congratulations! We would love you to attend the October 8 launch to read your work from the book. 

PLEASE NOTE: We moved the launch to 10/8 because Rosh Hashana is 10/1. Please put it on your calendar if you’re available. 

At the launch, we’ll have books for sale for the promotional price of $15, two whole dollars less than our listed price online! Come and get your copy! Our contributors are our only “subscribers,” so there are no free contributor copies—but reading at the launch qualifies you to submit to RWB 19! 

Our featured poet this year is Shane Wagner. We’re excited to include the two special sections that continue to expand our local poetry circle: one of them is guest-edited by poet John T. Trigonis, and another one is dedicated to Montclair High School poets. Our main poetry section is curated by Arthur Russell and includes many new names, alongside our core group. You can also admire the black and white photos by Donald Zirilli on the section frontispieces. All this exciting work is wrapped up in a beautiful dark cover, featuring a gorgeous peony digital collage by Frank Rubino.

We hope you’ll find this edition inspiring, a slice of the best contemporary writing in New Jersey and New York. We also hope that The Rutherford Red Wheelbarrow Nr. 18 will motivate each one of you to continue to write, create, and attend our weekly workshops on Zoom and our monthly events at The Felician University Little Theater. Our community and annual journal are proving this year once again that the William Carlos Williams legacy is still going strong in Rutherford, where the epic is indeed the local fully realized. The good doctor would be so proud.

Hope to see you all on October 8 at the launch in Rutherford!

The Red Wheelbarrow 18 Is Now Open for Submissions! Deadline for Poetry and Essays: July 4, 2025

The Red Wheelbarrow (Volume 18) is open for submissions of poetry and essays from poets who have attended one of the monthly Red Wheelbarrow Poets reading series from June 4, 2024, through July 3, 2025. You are also invited to submit if you participated in any of the Red Wheelbarrow Poetry Workshops during the same period. Submission deadline: July 4, 2025. 

Please indicate in the submission form when you attended a reading or when you’ve participated in the workshop to qualify. Simultaneous submissions are OK, but please notify us immediately if your work is accepted elsewhere. 

Please note: 

  • We are a community journal. We do not require a submission or reading fee and cannot provide complimentary copies of our book to writers whose work is included. We strongly encourage people and hope that they will support everyone’s work by attending our launch and buying copies of our journal.
  • Poets selected by one of our guest editors to submit work for RWB 18 are not eligible to submit in the general submissions as well.
  • Poets with poems accepted for publication in this general call for submissions are not eligible to have their work published in the guest editor section as well.             

When you submit, please complete the online form for one paragraph of relevant biographical information. 

  1. Limit your bio paragraph to 50 words.
  2. In the bio refer to yourself in the third person using your preferred pronoun.

We plan to publish and release Volume 18 in the fall of 2025. 

Submission Guidelines for Essays 
Please submit 1 (one) essay in a single Word document. The only acceptable file formats are .doc or .docx. No pdf or other file types will be accepted. 

We are particularly interested in short (a page or less) reviews of books published in the last year by members of our community.  Book reviews should include the name of the book, the author, the publisher, publication date, and of course, the review. 

Format for the Submission Document  

  1. Submit one Word document containing 1 (one) essay. Topics may include but are not limited to: William Carlos Williams, New Jersey or Rutherford history, art or poetry scenes, book reviews, writing craft. We’re pretty flexible.
  2. Maximum length: 2,500 words.
  3. Use Garamond, Times, or Times New Roman 12-point font.
  4. Do NOT use headers, footers, or automatic page numbering in the document.
  5. Do NOT use the footnote feature in Microsoft Word! If you want footnotes, do it manually.  
  6. Your name should appear above the essay. Do NOT use All caps.
  7. If your submission relies on a special layout, please be aware of the print area this edition can allow: page printable area width is 4 3/4 inch by 6 3/4 inch length.

Submission deadline: July 4, 2025. Click this Submittable link to submit. 

Submission Guidelines for Poems 
Please submit 5 (five) poems in a single Word document. The only acceptable file formats are .doc or .docx. No pdf or other file types will be accepted. 

Format for the Submission Document  

  1. Submit one Word document containing up to 5 (five) poems. Translations are counted as part of the five poem limit.
  2. Use Garamond, Times, or Times New Roman 12-point font.
  3. Do NOT use headers, footers, or automatic page numbering in the document.
  4. Do NOT use the footnote feature in Microsoft Word! If you want footnotes, do it manually.  
  5. Your name should appear above the first poem. Do NOT use All caps.
  6. Each poem must have a page break at the end. Your poems should each start on a new page of the document.
  7. If your submission relies on a special layout, please be aware of the print area this edition can allow: page printable area width is 4 3/4 inch by 6 3/4 inch length.

Submission deadline: July 4, 2025. Click this Submittable link to submit.

The Red Wheelbarrow Nominations for the 2025 Pushcart Prize

We are proud to announce our nominations for the Pushcart Prize of 2025 from The Red Wheelbarrow #17:

Baby by Marian Calabro

Murdering the Mud Daubers by Judith A. Christian

Devil‘s Menagerie by Rob Goldstein

The Heavyweight Crown by Rick Mullin

Your Uncle From Canarsie Teaches Sunday School by Will Nixon

Tractate by John J. Trause

Congratulations to these poets and their terrific poems! All of them are available in The Red Wheelbarrow #17, a great gift for the poetry lovers on your list. Happy Holidays!

Highlights from The Red Wheelbarrow #17 Launch!

Here are some of the photos from our launch of The Red Wheelbarow #17 on October 9 at The Felician University Little Theater in Rutherford! Many thanks again to all who attended, read, and contributed poems to this terrific issue. If you don’t have your copy of the RWB17, come to our next reading on November 6 to buy one from Arthur, or order online here.

You’re invited to The Red Wheelbarrow #17 launch!! 

Join us on October 9, 2024 at 7 PM at The Felician University Little Theater at 230 Montross Avenue in Rutherford, NJ, for a fantastic poetry reading, featuring the writers published in RWB #17.

If you have work in this issue, congratulations! We would love you to attend the October 9 launch to read your work from the book. 

PLEASE NOTE: We moved the launch to 10/9 because Rosh Hashana is on 10/2. Please put it on your calendar if you’re available. 

At the launch, we’ll have books for sale for the promotional price of $15, two whole dollars less than our listed price online! Come and get your copy. Our contributors are our only “subscribers,” so there are no free contributor copies—but reading at the launch qualifies you to submit to RWB18! 

Our featured poet this year is Tom Benediktsson. We’re excited to include two special sections that continue to expand our local poetry circle: one of them is guest-edited by poet Tamara Zbrizher, and another one is dedicated to Lyndhurst High School poets. This year, our main poetry section is curated by Arthur Russell who also took the photos for the section openers (we love the tomatoes prose section!) Don’t miss the insightful prose pieces curated by Frank Rubino, covering topics from Williams’ life and poems to memoir and prose poetry. All this exciting work is wrapped up in a beautiful blue cover, featuring the painting Crow Story #2 by Kay Stanfield, a nod to the doctors’ famous white chickens. We hope you’ll find this edition inspiring, a slice of the best contemporary writing in New Jersey and New York. We also hope that The Red Wheelbarrow Nr. 17 will motivate each one of you to continue to write, create, and attend our weekly workshops on Zoom and our monthly events at The Felician University Little Theater.

Hope to see you all on October 9 at the launch in Rutherford! Please forward this email to your family and friends—this will be a huge celebration.

The Red Wheelbarrow 17 Is Now Open for Submissions!

The Red Wheelbarrow (Volume 17) is open for submissions of poetry and essays from poets who have read their poetry as a featured poet or at the open mic at the monthly Red Wheelbarrow Poets reading series from July 7, 2023, through July 3, 2024. You are also invited to submit if you participated in any of the Red Wheelbarrow Poetry Workshops during the same period.            
             
Please indicate in your cover letter when you’ve read with us or that you’ve attended the workshop to qualify. Simultaneous submissions are OK, but please notify us immediately if your work is accepted elsewhere.            

When you submit, please complete the online form for one paragraph of relevant biographical information.

  1. Limit your bio paragraph to 100 words.
  2. In the bio refer to yourself in the third person using your preferred pronoun.

We plan to publish and release Volume 17 in the fall of 2024.

Submission Guidelines for Essays
Please submit 1 (one) essay in a single Word document. The only acceptable file formats are .doc or .docx. No pdf or other file types will be accepted.

Format for the Submission Document  

  1. Submit one Word document containing 1 (one) essay. Topics may include but are not limited to: William Carlos Williams, New Jersey or Rutherford history, art or poetry scenes, book reviews, writing craft. We’re pretty flexible.
  2. Maximum length: 2,500 words.
  3. Use Garamond, Times, or Times New Roman 12-point font.
  4. Do NOT use headers, footers, or automatic page numbering in the document.
  5. Do NOT use the footnote feature in Microsoft Word! If you want footnotes, do it manually.  
  6. Your name should appear above the essay. Do NOT use All caps.
  7. If your submission relies on a special layout, please be aware of the print area this edition can allow: page printable area width is 4 3/4 inch by 6 3/4 inch length.

Submission deadline: July 4, 2024. Click this Submittable linkto submit.

Submission Guidelines for Poems
Please submit 5 (five) poems in a single Word document. The only acceptable file formats are .doc or .docx. No pdf or other file types will be accepted.

Format for the Submission Document  

  1. Submit one Word document containing up to 5 (five) poems.
  2. Use Garamond, Times, or Times New Roman 12-point font.
  3. Do NOT use headers, footers, or automatic page numbering in the document.
  4. Do NOT use the footnote feature in Microsoft Word! If you want footnotes, do it manually.  
  5. Your name should appear above the first poem. Do NOT use All caps.
  6. Each poem must have a page break at the end. Your poems should each start on a new page of the document.
  7. If your submission relies on a special layout, please be aware of the print area this edition can allow: page printable area width is 4 3/4 inch by 6 3/4 inch length.

Submission deadline: July 4, 2024. Click this Submittable link to submit.

Jim Klein at Red Wheelbarrow Poets, February 7, 2024


Terrific event last Wednesday at the Red Wheelbarrow Poetry Readings, featuring our founder, mentor, and teacher, poet Jim Klein. A wonderful tribute, full of heart. If you missed it, you can watch it at this link.

And here is a great article by Mark Fogarty about the reading last Wednesday, Jim Klein, and The Red Wheelbarrow Poets. Thanks so much, Mark!

Many thanks to Frank Rubino for the video and to all who attended, shared memories and read poems. Jim, you rock.

Save the Date! The Red Wheelbarrow Readings Featuring Jim Klein on Wednesday, February 7, 2024, 7 PM


Join us on Wednesday, February 7, 2024, at 7 p.m. at The Felician University Little Theater, 230 Montross Avenue, Rutherford, NJ 07070, for a fantastic poetry reading featuring our founder, JIM KLEIN, plus the best open mic in New York and New Jersey.

This will be a special evening highlighting Jim’s career as a poet, mentor, and teacher. Poets can use their time on the open mic to read one of Jim’s poems, talk about Jim’s work and their relationship to Jim if they wish so, or read their own poem as usual.

JIM KLEIN’s books include Beautiful Latinas; Love Handles; The Dumb Have the Advantage; The Preembroidered Moment; Blue Chevies; To Eat Is Human, Digest Divine; and Trinis Talk Like the Birds, a chapbook. He has published more than 100 poems in literary magazines, including Mudfish, Beloit Poetry Journal, Berkeley Poetry Review, Field, Gandhabba, Onthebus, Poetry Now, Pulpsmith, Unmuzzled Ox, and a Special Section of the Wormwood Review. For twelve years, he led the Red Wheelbarrow Workshop, a weekly poetry workshop in Rutherford, NJ, and was the editor-in-chief of The Red Wheelbarrow.

The Red Wheelbarrow #16 is now available! If you didn’t get your copy yet, you can buy one here.

See you all in person on Wednesday, February 7, at 7 PM!

Nominations for the 2024 Pushcart Prize

We are proud to announce our nominations for the Pushcart Prize of 2024 from The Red Wheelbarrow #16 (listed alphabetically by author):

“Double-Clutch” by Tom Benediktsson

“Detail” by Theresa Burns

“once you’ve sliced off the skin” by Brigidh Duffey

“Just Paint the Damn Thing Black” by Jim Klein

“Food Shopping with my Mother” by Francis Lombardi

“Horse and Rider, Falling” by Margo Taft Stever

Congratulations to these poets and their terrific poems! All of them are available in The Red Wheelbarrow #16, a great gift for the poetry lovers on your list. Happy Thanksgiving!