Djelloul Marbrook

Career

He was a reporter for The Providence Journal and an editor for the Elmira Star-Gazette, Baltimore Sun, Winston-Salem Journal and Sentinel, The Washington Star, and Media News newspapers in northeast Ohio, and Paterson, New Jersey, and Passaic, New Jersey.

His poems, essays, and short stories have appeared in a number of journals.

Published Books

Books forthcoming 2017

1. Riding Thermals to Winter Grounds (2017, Leaky Boot Press, 114 pages, $14.99)—One day the poet climbed Overlook Mountain in the Catskills. An eagle began riding a thermal column in great circles, wings outstretched and motionless. In one circle the eagle came close—poet and eagle stared into each other's eyes. The poet came to see the incident as a metaphor for old age—riding the thermals of experience. Most of these poems were written with that incident on the mountain in mind.
2. A Warding Circle: New York stories (2017, Leaky Boot Press 182 pages, $15.99)—In the title novella, young artist Artemisia Cavelli is struck by lightning on Giant Ledge in the New York’s Catskill Mountains. Waking in a Kingston hospital, she sees a companion, a white wolf only she can see. All the conventions she had lived by now strike her as absurd as new intuitions lead her to correct the course of her life, fashioning a warding circle to protect a fragile group of friends. She is wrongly accused and betrayed by her mentor, a museum curator. When her mentor's life is shattered Artemisia draws her into the circle of protection.
3. Making Room: Baltimore stories (2017, Leaky Boot Press, 171 pages, $15.99)—In the title story Paolo, a Manhattan artist who moves to Baltimore for studio space, creates a magical room for a young psychiatrist's adopted and traumatized infant nephew—a room with the heavens projected above and hideaways in the walls. To help him, Paolo recruits a metallurgist haunted by a disturbed upbringing. As the three collaborate, a rewarding friendship unfolds to enrich and complicate their lives.
4. Nothing True Has a Name (2017, Leaky Boot Press, 108 pages)—These alchemical poems inquire deeply into the passion for containment symbolized by classical Greek vessels. They challenge our compulsion to categorize and pigeonhole. They seek to define the idea of ennobling elixirs. The image of galleys sailing on the winds and laden with Greek amphorae tied to each other by their necks haunts this collection. The poet concludes that names inevitably mislead us. He urges us to transcend them, not revel in them.
5. Even Now the Embers (2017, Leaky Boot Press, 93 pages)—A hospital’s there now / where nightmares hid in closets / and stairwells echoed Vesti la giubba. So opens this collection of poems recalling a turbulent childhood. In these poems the poet rescues the child left behind but encounters grievances and must account for himself.
6. Other Risks Include (2017, Leaky Boot Press, 93 pages)—Taking his title from the fine print of pharmaceutical advertisements, the poet addresses the risks we take, the risks we don’t take, and the consequences. The title of the poem clear cache escape program help reveals this unending struggle to confront or escape risk. How much of our lives can we say we have truly lived? the collection seems to ask. What are the risks of sleepwalking?
7. Air Tea with Dolores Air Tea With Dolores (2017, Leaky Boot Press, 105 pages)—A poignant homage to the poet’s first love, an English girl sent to a British boarding school on Long Island to escape German bombing during World War II. The girl used to invite him into a gazebo where she served imaginary tea in painted tin cups. The experience and his memory of Dolores remained throughout his life an encounter with the fey. He never quite recovered from their separation at the end of the war.

Journals:

His unpublished work includes several poetry manuscripts, as well as books two and three of the Guest Boy trilogy: Crowds of One and The Gold Factory

He is the editor of the English-language version of the trilingual journal Arabesques Review.

Prizes and awards