Isabell VanMerlin

Isabell VanMerlin calls herself a piker poet because she never took a poetry class in school and only occasionally attends a poetry workshop because she works full time at her day (well, actually night) job. She got hooked on poetry at an open mic in Lynn, MA, in 2008. When she moved farther north on the North Shore, she discovered there was no open mic. Separation anxiety got the best of her and she started Merrimac Mic in 2013, and has been hosting it ever since. Isabell has compiled and edited five anthologies for Merrimac Mic poets and is looking forward to an 'artistic poetry' or 'poetical art' show in September 2020, at the Merrimac (Mass.) Public Library where they usually meet. This show will, hopefully, turn into the sixth anthology!

Isabell has a wide range of interests and skills and has written an epic poem, "Turkish Oddyssey" about her adventures as the photographer on an archaeological excavation; "naming God with CLOUDS," illustrating names of God from the book "High Mysticism" by Emma Curtis Hopkins, with her color photos; "Body Speak," a manual on dowsing the body for health - and a kind of spiritual memoir; and is working on "Love and Garlic, the Deformative Years," the first volume of her memoir, to be in print October 2020.

Ms. VanMerlin takes great pleasure in encouraging writers to publish their words and has edited many books and manuscripts, some of which are available on Amazon, by K. Peddlar Bridges, and Vergie Lesea. She also compiled an anthology of dowsing stories from the Lobster Coast Dowsers, which is called, appropriately: "Lobster Tales."

Isabell has traveled widely and moved many times; she currently lives in New Hampshire.