Books published by Leaky Boot Press

The delightful short poems of French poet Robert Notenboom are reflections on life, love, God, death and growing old. They are the words of someone who has lived through tumultuous times and has come to terms with the inevitable fact that lives, like the seasons, come and go, and that the most important thing that any of us can hope to achieve is a sense of peace and understanding of ourselves. Roberts poems triumphantly reflect the life that he has lived and the man that he is. Reading the poems, hearing the voice, in Quatrains & other short poems is like hearing time itself singing a song of the passing of years.Robert Notenboom was born in Paris in 1931 to a German mother and a Dutch father. He did not speak French until 1939 and had a difficult and lonely childhood. It was only at the age of 21 that he took French nationality. He has published numerous books of poetry, also fiction and non-fiction, in French, all in the 21st century. Quatrains & other short poems is his first book in English. Paraphrasing Jean Prouvé, Robert likes to say of his writing that "every word that is not indispensable is harmful".

This collection is a poetical tribute to the Anglo-saxon artists who made me love the English language through their music, their energy. Like many I became a musician thanks to The Beatles. Between songs and poetry the border is very thin. Writing is for me intimately linked to the sounds, the melodies, the harmonies.The translation of my poems into English here published is a dream come true. Tales, inner journeys, forgotten sensations resurfacing between the lines, between the words. Gardens, vegetables, places, dear ones, lost loves, all part of a world of images and emotions,. Poetry goes wherever it wants. The inspiration is wandering, volatile. I sometimes catch it by chance when it comes close to me.Manuel Renaud is a French musician and poet. He both writes lyrics and excels in playing various musical instruments such as the guitar, bass, ukulele and mandolin. He also teaches guitar, bass and singing.His passion for poetry originated when he was at school. At the age of 14, he was awarded a school prize, Les Oeuvres Complètes d'Arthur Rimbaud (The Complete Works of Arthur Rimbaud), for outstanding achievement in the French language. As a teenager and young man he was much influenced by British pop music. This awakened an interest in learning and understanding English. First he wrote lyrics in English and French, then he began writing poetry in both languages.

This visionary and innovative novel explores the intersections of representation, desire, prophecy, evangelism, and American consumerism, as it tracks the narrative contained in each photo spread of a J. Crew catalogue. The chorus of voices, the models, the photographer, the copywriter, as well its main consumer/observer-a US Senator's wife who is obsessed with breeding and bringing a golden calf from an American farm to Israel to bring on the apocalyptic end times-tell the tale of a world beginning to spin on a different axis.Elizabeth A.I. Powell is the author of The Republic of Self a New Issues First Book in Poetry Prize winner. Her second book of poems, Willy Loman's Reckless Daughter: Living Truthfully Under Imaginary Circumstances was a 2016 "Books We Love" in The New Yorker, a Small Press Best Seller, and won the 2015 Anhinga Robert Dana Prize.

Mac Oliver's second book of poems, The Savior of New Netherlands, is a powerful narrative sequence in six chapters in which a temp in the Wall Street district of New York faces the transit strike of December 2005. Oliver creates in this physical setting an experience of a symbolic, historical and even mythical nature. Lower Manhattan reveals layers of creation and destruction. The distances are for walking, the streets are narrower, while at the same time the buildings are formidably enormous. Here we see tension between permanence and change in the architecture as well as in the market as it moves from high to low. Gradually the poems merge into a unified whole that crosses thresholds and creates intersections between the sacred and the profane.Mac Oliver was born in 1971 in New Haven, Connecticut. He studied at Tulane, Reed, The University of Minnesota, and The University of California at Santa Barbara. Mac's first book of poems, The Mercury Road was published by Leaky Boot Press in 2016.

The loneliness of shape is a moment's relief from the great burdens imposed on us by the ordering of society to serve the few. These poems challenge the way we are parsed by marketers in order to be sold goods, services and ideas and the way we are coerced into thinking of ourselves. They explore our connectedness, our action on each other, our operation as elixirs, our oneness, our indivisibility. They speak of our names, our stereotypes, our categories as baggage that hinders our understanding of ourselves as part of a cosmic whole.Djelloul Marbrook's previous works have won critical acclaim and prestigious prizes, including the 2007 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize, the 2010 International Book Award in poetry, and the 2008 Literal Latté fiction prize. As a journalist, poet, writer and activist, he has invested his talent and intellect in an artistic voice exemplifying the best qualities of humanity. Through an engaging, well-reasoned and powerfully clear voice, he gives flight to a spiritual awakening and casts a wise shadow on the canon of American poetry.

Throughout my life I have come across people who claim to have experienced inexplicable things as they have gone about their everyday routines-raising children, working, making a home, taking a holiday. Perhaps they have seen something at the periphery of their vision, which when they turn to look properly isn't there at all, or seen a movement where no movement should be-in a shadow, a sudden swirl of dust, something in the corner of a room.Most of the short stories in this book were written in response to accounts of 'minor hauntings' that have come my way. They don't need dark and stormy nights. They don't need creaking country houses surrounded by ominous trees. They are the stories of ordinary people, people like you and me, with ordinary names, in ordinary places. They are the stories of Everyman and Everywoman, who are made a little less ordinary because they have experienced something inexplicable. (from the author's introduction)James Goddard lives in Yorkshire, England. He is a small press publisher and freelance book editor.

Perhaps it is a myth that writing poetry is a lonely art. Collaborations among poets have a long history and in these days of the internet it has become easier to collaborate than ever before-using text messages, email or even working on the same poem while living thousands of miles apart... these impromptu collaborative works grew organically into a form challenging the role, gender, age, personality, culture which are usually the mark the individual. Here all bets are off . We trusted each other and took the many directions the words steered us into without being judgemental about what the other had written. The joy in creating something together is immeasurable. Time was a big challenge as both of us are writers with large workloads, but we somehow managed to hold on to what we were doing and assigned times to get together online to write new pieces and enjoy our collaborative time together.Tikuli is an internationally published poet, author and blogger from Delhi whose work has appeared in print and online literary magazines including Le Zaporogue, MiCROW 8, The Smoking Book (Poets Wear Prada Press, US), Life and legends, Levure Littéraire 10, The Enchanting Verses Literary Review, Open Road Review, Cafe Dissensus, Mnemosyne Literary Journal, Dissident Voice, Women's Web, Tuck Magazine, The Criterion, Peregrine Muse, Knot Magazine, Asian Signature Magazine, The Bombay Review, The Thumb Print-A Magazine From the East, The Peacock Journal and The Peacock Journal Anthology, TEKSTO-The People's Magazine, Guntur National Poetry Festival Anthology, Melange -a Potpourri of Thoughts, Le Zaporogue Print edition and the much acclaimed Chicken Soup For the Indian Romantic Soul (Westland). She is the proud mother of two sons. You can follow Tikuli's blog at tikulicious.wordpress.com.James Goddard is an editor and small press publisher who sometimes writes. He lives in Yorkshire, England. No recent photographs of him exist.

Kill me, skin whispers / to arctic bone, / I'm finished / with this disguise…So begins the poem Blue Ampersand in Djelloul Marbrook's tenth collection of poems, Singing in the O of Not, songs of algebraic obliteration in which our identities dissolve in the grandeur of a cosmic whole. Algebra, al jabara, means the joining in Arabic, and here the singer sings himself into divine invisibility.Djelloul Marbrook's previous works have won critical acclaim and prestigious prizes, including the 2007 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize, the 2010 International Book Award in poetry, and the 2008 Literal Latté fiction prize. As a journalist, poet, writer and activist, he has invested his talent and intellect in an artistic voice exemplifying the best qualities of humanity. Through an engaging, well-reasoned and powerfully clear voice, he gives flight to a spiritual awakening and casts a wise shadow on the canon of American poetry.

This new collection poems, Sketches, is every bit as incisive as we have come to expect from Seb Doubinsky. His gentle words frequently cloak a barbed wit, and each of the poems in this book demands a response from the reader. If you are familiar with Doubinsky's poetry, you will delight in what you read, if you are a newcomer you will have many surprises in store. All readers will, however, share the frisson of pleasure and the sense of revelation that only the best contemporary poetry can bring.Seb Doubinsky was born in Paris and spent part of his childhood in the USA, an experience that indelibly marked him for life. He currently lives in Denmark with his wife and children. He writes fluently in both French and English and has published more than a dozen novels that blur the boundaries between literary fiction, science fiction and crime fiction, and a volume of short stories. His poetry has been published around the world to great acclaim and has been collected in at least eleven stand-alone volumes. He edited the bi-lingual literary magazine Le Zaporogue, publishes books under his Les Editions du Zaporogue imprint and is at work on at least one new novel.

A man awakens, not from sleep but from spiritual torpor, and finds himself waiting elves' tables and attending elementals' parties. His journey is fabulous and perilous, like Sindbad's. His recognitions are like forbidden fruits. He fills in the blanks, connects the dots, and remembers how the heron departs at evening.Djelloul Marbrook's previous works have won critical acclaim and prestigious prizes, including the 2007 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize, the 2010 International Book Award in poetry, and the 2008 Literal Latté fiction prize. As a journalist, poet, writer and activist, he has invested his talent and intellect in an artistic voice exemplifying the best qualities of humanity. Through an engaging, well reasoned and powerfully clear voice, he gives flight to a spiritual awakening and casts a wise shadow on the canon of American poetry.

Matt Bialer's mind-expanding epic poem "Third Eye of the Inner Light" is an absolute must-have for every self-respecting psychonaut.Seb Doubinsky (author of The Song of Synth and Missing Signal) Famous for his long poems exploring the paranormal, the weird, the unexplained and what makes us human, Matt Bialer turns his poetic talents to the cutting edge and controversial realm of psychedelic drugs. Dr. Robert Strand of the University of New Mexico School of Medicine in Albuquerque has spent 25 years researching the effects of psychedelic and hallucinogenic drugs on humans. Of interest to him are the effects of N, N-dimethyltryptamine or DMT or The Spirit Molecule. When injected with this powerful drug volunteers find themselves in other realms that to them feel realer than real. Most fascinating of all is that many of the volunteers share similar experiences. They encounter Breakthrough, beyond life and death and space and time. They see folding rooms, fractals, extreme geometric explosions of color; they meet many of the same 'beings' such as self-transforming elf machines, Stick Men, Hyper Space Jesters, clowns, self-dribbling basketballs. Are these people dreaming? Are they hallucinating or experiencing some form of the collective unconscious? Or are they being transported to other realms or dimensions? Dr. Strand believes the drug effects the thalamus which acts as a filter for our sensory perception. As he asks more questions he feels he has discovered something profound, and fears that there are forces in play that are conspiring to bring an end to his study.Matt Bialer is the author of many books of poetry including Radius and Wing of Light (Les Editions du Zaporogue), Already Here, Ark and Black Powder, (Black Coffee Press), Bridge, Frequencies and The Valley of the Eight (Leaky Boot Press), Tell Them What I Saw (PS Publishing), He Walks On All Fours and Kings of Men (Dynatox Ministries), Formation (Weirdo Magnet) and Ascent (Bizarro Pulp Press). His poems have appeared in print and online journals including Le Zaporogue, Green Mountains Review, Gobbet, Forklift Ohio and H_NGM_N. He is an acclaimed black and white street photographer and watercolorist who has exhibited widely. Matt lives with his wife and daughter in Park Slope, Brooklyn.

In Ice and Autumn Glass, Mark Dillon marries the Jacobean line and gothic imagery to a colloquial, thoroughly modern, goth-punk demotic, a frenzied coupling that yields up a species of frictive, delirious lyricism, a monstrous infant both old and new. This is a strong, accomplished debut, work imbued with the sensibility of a twenty-first century Beddoes, a Poe slumped over his eggs and ham in a midnight, neon-soaked diner, a Webster condemned to walk forever through thick, luminous snow, lost, bereft, and contemplating the skull beneath his own skin.Richard Calder-author of Dead Girls and BabylonA poet, W.H. Auden tells us, is a person who is passionately in love with language. That love is evident in everything Mark Fuller Dillon writes, but is perhaps more perfectly suited to the poetic form. That passion, coupled with his command of form is in abundance here. But poetry is more than the sum of its parts, and while language and form obviously play a pivotal role they are ultimately just the bones upon which flesh and blood poetry exists. Another Canadian poet, Leonard Cohen, referred to poetry as the evidence of life. It's the life that makes this collection remarkable, the flesh that Mark has placed upon the bones, the blood that flows through each and every carefully chosen word. Yes, these poems have strong bones, but they also have heart. They have a soul that reveals much about the poet and even more about ourselves.Jason E. Rolfe-author of ClocksThe poetry of Mark Fuller Dillon is born of a scintillating intellect. It is elegantly, meticulously constructed, one might say classical in composition, but it is far from stiff or affected. Indeed, the emotions conveyed - particularly of loss and longing - are accessible and acutely felt. There is, though, also humor herein (as in Abomination Corn, significantly written on April 1st), and much beauty. Often, nature is used as in the fiction and poetry of Thomas Hardy, to reflect the author's inner state. And always, that gorgeous craftsmanship. Poems such as This Heritage of Ice and Autumn Glass and Everything I Need Right Now, To Live share a striking relationship between their opening and closing lines, this bookending effect giving their respective last lines a powerful "oomph." There are, in fact, many lines throughout that give me that gut punch effect, as in this from Perspective: "I write because I spend my nights alone...As many living do, and all the dead." So engage your mind, and your emotions, and gaze into the reflective surface of Ice & Autumn Glass.Jeffrey Thomas, author of Haunted Worlds and PunktownMark Fuller Dillon lives in Québec, where the Gatineau Hills region has long been the central influence on his writing. He has had stories published in All Hallows, Alone On the Darkside and Weird Fiction Review. Two novellas, All Roads Lead to Winter and At First You Hear the Silence, and one collection, In a Season of Dead Weather, are available from his website at markfullerdillon.blogspot.ca and from Smashwords.com.

These are poems that have been created out of the material of love. Love is, in all ways, a force that destroys. And since in destruction, as the Tantra says, are the seeds of creation, therefore love also births, and profoundly so. Poems such as these must be read without reserve and with empathy.Dr. S. N. Dev (PhD, Oxon.)Arjun Choudhuri is a poet and translator. He lives in Assam in Northeast India, where he teaches English literature at Gurucharan College, Silchar, and is curator for both the Anuvad Festival For the Arts and Humanities (Assam's first indie arts/lit festival) and The Northeast India Company (an indie arts collective). He has published six previous books of poetry: In the House Next Door (2006, Writers Workshop, Kolkata), The River Roads (2009, Wordsmith, Kolkata), Bordering Poetry: An Anthology of Translated Poetry from Barak Valley (2010, Vyatikram, Guwahati), Ajobithi and Other Poems: Translations (2009, Utsa Prakashani, Dhaka), Metrophobia (2012, Aquarius Publishing, USA) and Rain Tree Deity (2014, Editions du Zaporogue, Aarhus). He lives with his mother and sister in his ancestral home, where he occasionally dabbles in digital art and street photography and avidly collects ritual texts and icons relating to the Mahayana/Vajrayana doctrines and the Hindu Tantras.