About

ABOUT DARK MATTER:

The poetry, show listings, and occasional poetic musings of Tony Brown, former slammer and current performance poet from Worcester MA.  Includes transferred  posts from LiveJournal; new stuff starting in May of 2009.

ABOUT TONY BROWN:

A veteran of both page and stage in the poetry world, I’ve been publishing and reading in journals and on stages around the US for over forty years.  My work has appeared in anthologies including A Generation Defining Itself, from MPW Press; Look, Up In the Sky! and Appleseeds, both from Sacred Fools Press; From Page To Stage, The Wordsmith Press; Knocking At The Door, Birch Bench Press  (all US); 100 Poets Against the War, from Salt Publishing (UK); Best Indie Literature In New England anthology’s first volume; “Drunk In A Midnight Choir Vol. 1, The New Hallelujah; “Again I Wait For This To Fall Apart,” from FreezeRay Press; two volumes of the “Poets Speak…While We Still Can” series of political poetry anthologies, “Trumped” and “Survival;” and “Sh!T Men Say To Me,” an anthology of poems about toxic masculinity from Moon Tide Press.

My work has also appeared in many journals (among them: Stone Quarterly, Riverwalk Journal, The Ballard Street Poetry Journal, nthposition, The Worcester Review, The Furnace Review, New Verse News, The November Third Club,  Spindle, Breath And Shadow, Home Planet News, and World Literature Today).

I was named a “Legend of Slam” at the 2006 National Poetry Slam in Austin, TX, and was elected “The Poet Laureate Of The Blogosphere” by voters at thebloggingpoet.com for 2008.

In 2022, I was awarded the Stanley Kunitz Medal for lifetime achievements and contributions to the Worcester poetry community.

A seven-time Pushcart Prize nominee, I’m the author of seventeen chapbooks, a growing list of eBooks, and seven collections of my work with The Duende Project, which features the stellar bass and nylon string guitar work of Steven Lanning-Cafaro (aka “Faro”) and, as of 2013, the consummate drummer Chris O’Donnell and guitarist extraordinaire Christopher J. Lawton. The band became inactive in March of 2022.  Thanks, COVID. Our website is The Duende Project. Everything from tracks to show schedule is available there.

If you’d like a copy of any recent chapbooks (or eBooks), contact me through here. In addition, the Duende Project’s albums are available on all the usual download and streaming services, though our preferred commerce outlet is through Bandcamp.  Our most recent album, “Incomplete,” came out in 2022 and is available for purchase or streaming on all the major outlets. I released a solo album, “Songs From The Couch,” in early 2023.  Available at the same Bandcamp site.

I welcome your comments, thoughts, offers of gigs, cash, etc…

ABOUT WHY I POST PRETTY MUCH ALL MY POETRY HERE:

I have a love/hate relationship with copyright law.  I get it, understand it…but I’d rather get my whole body of work in front of people — the good, the bad, the mediocre.

Everything I do is licensed under a Creative Commons license.  It allows you to redistribute the work with credit and without modifying it.

Pretty much everything I write which I feel is “finished” (as much as it ever is) will end up here on the blog.  Consider it an extended effort at self-publication.

You’re welcome to comment, critique, etc.  I read everything, take what seems valuable for improvement, and respect your opinions…although I am human, and that means that sometimes we’ll disagree; I try to keep disagreements here civil.  I hope you’ll do the same.

This, by the way, doesn’t mean I still don’t submit to journals, anthologies, etc.  I do.  This is a self-publishing experiment that I’m committed to and have been for years — getting myself out there…a kind of online “Collected Works.”  As of 2023, have completed work on a full length manuscript of selected poems…stay tuned.

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