Blurbs

Spotlighting the Poets who Generously Wrote Blurbs for Screens

Jun 27, 2025

Having had the honor of blurbing the poetry collections of poet colleagues, I wanted to give a spotlight to the poets who gave of their talent and time to write blurbs for my new book Screens. So, without further ado, here’s a pop-up poetry reading with performances by my blurbers: Don Illich, Luther Jett, Jean Nordhaus and Katherine Williams.

Take a minute to enjoy these excellent poets.

Don Illich

For me, a poem that lacks a certain amount of surrealism, humor or irony is lacking. Don delivers as is evident to anyone who has read his works or attended his readings. Here’s Don riffing off a poem of mine that eventually found it’s way into Screens.

Check out his collection, Chance Bodies and his Substack, Sketch of an Astronaut. I hope we can do some readings together this season.

Luther Jett

A blurb for a blurb. Back in 2022 was honored to be asked by Luther to blurb his collection, Watchman, What of the Night? This Café muse performance from July of 2023 is astonishingly prophetic of the dark time in which we now find ourselves.

What happened to that watchman? Was he asleep?

Jean Nordhaus

Jean is one of the cornerstones of DC area poetry. When she appeared at Cafe Muse in April of 2024, I goofed and failed to turn on the recorder. Ouch! Through this mishap, we got to know each other as I back-filled her profile for our end-of-year video. Her poetry is deep and emotionally moving. Here’s a terrific poem from her collection The Music of Being.

Thanks for your thoughtful reading and blurbing of Screens.

Katherine Williams

I had the pleasure of helping Katherine format her collection, Still Life. Her careful attention and intelligence made her a joy to work with and the resulting book a masterpiece. Here is Katherine reading the title poem of the collection.

Thanks for shining your smart light on my book.

Don’t take my word for it…

Helping me to promote Screens is none other than my cat Sinbad, who has taken on the prestigious role of the collection's official "spokescat". How does one become a spokescat, you ask? It took a lot of purr-sistence!

Coming Up

Monday, July 7, 2025, at 7:00 pm, at the Writer’s Center in Bethesda, Maryland, and online in Zoom, Café Muse Literary Salon will feature poets Adam Chiles, Eileen Sirota and Majda Gama.

Have a reading or event coming up? Let me know and I’ll pass it along. And as always, feel free to email me with questions or comments at henrycrawfordpoetry@gmail.com. Use the subject “Coming Up” Stay creative!

If you’d like me to list an upcoming poetry event in Everyday Poet, please let me know by emailing me at henrycrawfordpoetry@gmail.com. Use the subject: “Coming Up”.