Signed, Sealed, Delivered: the Motown Poetry Revue

Description

Signed, Sealed, Delivered:

The Motown Poetry Revue

edited by Cherise Pollard, Yalonda JD Green, Curtis L. Crisler & Luanne Smith

ISBN: 978-1-963695-55-7 paperback $22.95
ISBN: 978-1-963695-56-4 ebook $9.99
poetry anthology – multiple authors
November 18, 2025

Contributors

Kelli Russell Agodon – Chris Buckley – Sharnta Bullard – Rick Campbell – Annis Cassells – George Drew – Cornelius Eady – Michael Gaspeny – Nikki Giovanni – Kiana Grace – Sharon Hoffmann – Major Jackson – Mark Jarman – Matthew Johnson – Suzanne Kamata – M. Nzadi Kieta – Doug Lambdin – Betsy Mars – Mimi Merritt – Greg Powell – Linda Neal Reising – Alberto Ríos – Carla Rachel Sameth – Heidi Sander – Derek Smith – Jill Stockinger – Dana Stringer – Ann Teplick – Allison Thorpe – Tjizembua Tjikuzu – Cameron Walker – Terri Witek – George Yatchisin

The Editors

Cherise A. Pollard, Ph.D., is Professor of English at West Chester University and former director of the WCU Poetry Center. A Cave Canem and Callaloo Fellow, Pollard was awarded a grant from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund. Her poem, “Sugar Babe” was a Finalist for the 2015 Rattle Poetry Prize. Her chapbook, Outsiders, was chosen by C.M. Burroughs as the winner of the 2015 Susan K. Collins/Mississippi Valley Chapbook Contest sponsored by the Midwest Writing Center. Along with Wendy Scott Paff and Daniela Buccilli, Pollard is co-editor of the Show Us Your Papers poetry anthology (Main Street Rag Press, 2020). Her collection of poetry, Nodes of Growth, is forthcoming in summer of 2026 from Sheila-Na-Gig Editions.

Yalonda JD Green, Ph.D., (she/her) is a transdisciplinary artist and librarian from Detroit. Her poetic work has appeared in Inkwell, TORCH, Reverie, Mythium, various anthologies, bus shelters, on stages, and other creative spaces. She has received fellowships from Cave Canem and the American Library Association Spectrum Scholars and residencies at the Fine Arts Work Center, Delaware Writers Retreat, and Bethany Arts Community. Her creative and critical work encircle the art, lives, and afterlives of Black women and their girlhoods. As a versatile performer, seasoned educator, and former children’s librarian, Yalonda has gleefully joined musical collaborations, voiceover and improvisational projects, studio and stage work, documentary and indie film, youth music camps, children’s shows, and many more community-enriching  experiments. Often blending storytelling, improvisation, and song in her workshops, creative keynotes, performances, and teaching, JD is a vocal artist with the ensemble, Elevation, and a new member of Wilmington, Delaware’s rich creative community.

Curtis L. Crisler, Indiana Poet Laureate, was born and raised in Gary, Indiana. He received a BA in English, with a minor in Theatre, from Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne (IPFW, now PFW), and he received his MFA from Southern Illinois University Carbondale. His award-winning publications as well as his awards and fellowships are too numerous to list here. Crisler’s work exhibits what he calls an urban Midwestern sensibility (uMs). What uMs exemplifies is “the community and creativity of the varied relationships of descendants from the first through second waves of the southern migration, exploring their connections to place/environment, history, family, and self.” Also, he created the poetry form the sonastic and the Indiana Chitlin Circuit (a small circuit bringing writers to Ft. Wayne). Crisler is Professor of English at Purdue University Fort Wayne. Contact him for readings, workshops, presentations, lectures, etc. at poetcrisler.com.

Luanne Smith is a native Kentuckian who now lives in Florida. She spent 30 years teaching creative writing and film at West Chester University near Philadelphia. Her fiction has appeared in Puerto del Sol, The Texas Review, Oxford Magazine, and other literary journals and anthologies. She has published poetry and nonfiction as well. Luanne has hosted well-received AWP Conference panels focused on women writers and the challenges women face writing gritty material and bad-ass female characters. She last presented a panel on the double-standard women writers encounter compared to men when writing sexual content. Her most recent work includes three prose anthologies she edited for Madville Publishing.