geminations
Rich Follett & Constance Stadler
About the Authors
Constance Stadler is the author and co-author of eight books of poetry in print and online format, including Descending Upward (NightWing Publications) and Responsorials (with Rich Follett, NeoPoiesis Press). She was awarded honors in the 2023 International Erbacce Prize competition, which numbered over 14,000 submissions. Constance holds a doctorate in International Studies from New York University and lives in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley.
Her relationship with poetry dates back to early teenage years, when she was given a copy of The Collected Works of Dylan Thomas, which still sits, dog-eared, on her bookshelf.
Rich Follett is a Middle School Theatre Arts teacher who has written poems and songs for more than fifty years. He was born on Long Island and moved after college to Virginia, where he serves as the official Poet Laureate for his adopted hometown of Strasburg. His poems have been featured in numerous online and print journals, including BlazeVox, the Montucky Review, the Willows Wept Review (Pushcart nominee), and the late Felino Soriano’s CounterExample Poetics, for which he was a featured artist. Rich co-authored Responsorials with Constance Stadler (2009) and two solo collections, Silence, Inhabited (2011), and Human &c. (2013) through NeoPoiesis Press, and Photo-Ku (2016) through NightWing Publications.
In this volume, Constance Stadler and Rich Follett remind us that poetry is not some solitary, solipsistic pursuit. Rather, it is a dialogic and social activity, one that involves collaboration, and yes, competition, but most importantly a conversation among the living, and with those whose voices have long since been silenced, but still echo across the ages through words inscribed on pages. Here they demonstrate the literary power of language made visible, and memory made palpable, summoning the demons of trauma and the angels of delight. But most of all they show us the strength we can gain from communing with the muses that are available to all of humanity, if we would only open ourselves up to their inspiration, as Stadler and Follett have done.
—Lance Strate, author of Diatribal Writes of Passage in a World of Wintertextuality
ISBN 979-8-9858336-316
116 pages
$14.95
5.5" x 8.5" perfect bound, paper
Reviews
“The poems in this collection read like an orchestrated dance between Follett and Stadler and the noted authors whose quotes serve as inspiration.”
—Bill Glose, author of All the Ruined Men and Virginia Walkabout
“In these enthralling and masterful poems, the art of collaboration reaches a new height. The two authors skillfully established rules to create poems inspired by quotes from a wide range of eminent authors, including Gwendolyn Brooks, Charles Dickens, Pablo Neruda, Emily Brontë, and others. In addition, the authors refrained from sharing their work with each other until their poems were finalized. Praiseworthy is the skillful use of typography, alliteration, gemination, and diction to enhance the musicality of each piece. This well-honed book not only reveals the value of collaborative writing, but also unveils insights that will resound for years.”
—Dr. Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda, Virginia Poet Laureate Emerita
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