Elise Marie Cleva graduated with distinction from the Area Program in Poetry Writing of the Department of English at the University of Virginia. She holds an M.A. from Johns Hopkins University and works in communications for the housing and urban planning divisions of her local government. She has read her poetry at the Athenaeum in Old Town Alexandria and on the Irish music chat show Friday Night Live. Her poems reflect what she has learned from reading other poets (notably, John Donne, Mark Doty, and Claudia Emerson) and from nonliterary disciplines such as filmmaking and Spanish and Portuguese tilework. She lives in Arlington, Virginia, with her beloved husband and their Mensch of a cat.
Skeleton Flowers Press 