CONCRETE WINK
Poetry with a hefty trowel of attitude
In 2017, long-time friends Sandy Feen, Rikki Santer, and Chuck Salmons formed a poetry troupe as a way of fulfilling a dream of touring the U.S. and giving poetry readings, much like a rock band. Since then, they have gigged throughout the Midwest as Concrete Wink and are eager for more.
To book Concrete Wink, use the contact form at the bottom of the page. Read on for more info about Sandy, Chuck, and Rikki. Follow the troupe on Facebook.
To book Concrete Wink, use the contact form at the bottom of the page. Read on for more info about Sandy, Chuck, and Rikki. Follow the troupe on Facebook.
"Highly recommended. Powerhouse poetry troupe. Three of Ohio's most thoughtful and engaging writers. Book 'em, Danno!" - John Burroughs, the 2022–2023 U.S. Beat Poet Laureate, founding editor of Crisis Chronicles Press, and author of The Eater of the Absurd and Beat Attitude
Photographer Sandra Feen was inducted as the 2022-2024 Ohio Beat Poet Laureate by the National Beat Poetry Foundation. She won Heavy Feather Review’s second-annual Zachary Doss Friends in Letters Fellowship, with Rikki Santer, for their poetry collaboration titled, Emotion Bus. She is the author of Evidence of Starving (Voice Lux Journal 2021), Meat and Bone (Luchador Press 2019), and Fragile Capacities: School Poems (NightBallet Press 2018). Fragile Capacities – nominated for the Ohioana Book Award – highlights her 32-year teaching career in an urban school system. The poem “Palms Monday” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. In addition, she has performed work by Holocaust writers in Susan Millard Schwarz's Anahata Music Project. She will perform again in January 2024, for the International Day of Remembrance. She is currently editing an anthology You’ve Been Poemed: the 121 Project, and co-writing There is A Rock on Martin Avenue, with retired journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner, Cliff Treyens. Contact her at poeteach(at)msn.com.
Chuck Salmons has served as part of the leadership of the Ohio Poetry Association for over a decade. His poems have appeared in several journals and anthologies, including Pudding Magazine, Evening Street Review, Common Threads, The Fib Review, Red Thread Gold Thread, Everything Stops and Listens, Shot Glass Journal, Poets to Come: A Poetry Anthology in honor of Walt Whitman’s bicentennial, and I Thought I Heard a Cardinal Sing: Ohio’s Appalachian Voices. His chapbook, Stargazer Suite, was released in December 2016 and is available from 11th Hour Press. His second chapbook, Patch Job, was published by NightBallet Press in 2017. He is a recipient of a 2018 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award for his poetry. Click here to read more about Chuck.
Poet Rikki Santer has been described as “a rad and ready alchemist who is expert at excavating the universal and the personal in the popular and remixing it all into a glorious concoction that tingles the tongue as it reflects, refreshes and nourishes.” Her poetry has received many honors including Pushcart and Ohioana and Ohio Poet book award nominations as well as a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities. She is also a member of the teaching artist roster of the Ohio Arts Council, a vice president of the Ohio Poetry Association, and a member of the poetry troupe, Concrete Wink. Her thirteenth poetry collection, Zebra Lashes, will be published in November 2023 by Fernwood Press. Please contact her through her website: www.rikkisanter.com.